New AirPods patent reveals exactly how seamless Bluetooth pairing method functions

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 12, 2017

A new patent application for “Wireless audio output devices,” published Thursday by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), describes exactly how Apple's new W1 chip inside AirPods enables zero-configuration Bluetooth pairing. In a nutshell, the charging case that comes with AirPods doubles as a physical pairing interface.

Aside from a built-in battery, the case features its own microprocessor and communications stack, a motion-detecting lid for starting the seamless pairing process with an Apple device and a physical button for manual Bluetooth pairing with non-Apple hardware, like Android handsets.

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Google launches Toontastic 3D, a playful storytelling app for kids

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 12, 2017

Google today launched a new education-focused apps aimed at kids aged 6-8 years old, called Toontastic 3D. With this app, your youngsters can draw, animate and narrate their own cartoons. The concept and game mechanics are easy to grasp so your kids should feel right at home. They simply move their characters around onscreen to tell their story. The app records their voice and animations and stores content on their device as a video.

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WSJ: Apple to launch original scripted TV shows and premium movies on Apple Music this year

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 12, 2017

A new report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Apple will push deeper into premium entertainment with original movies and scripted television shows by the end of the year, including serialized drama and feature-length pieces. The plan calls for premium shows along the lines of HBO's “Westworld” and Netflix's “Stranger Things” that don’t have any particular relationship to music.

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How to convert music tracks to Audiobook in iTunes

Steffen Reich ∙ Updated May 23, 2018

Venturing into the depths of iTunes is no longer an activity for the faint-hearted, as Apple’s gold mine is famously becoming more convoluted with every update. It is by no means impossible to keep up with the changes, but staying on top of every small cosmetic shift does pose a decent challenge today.

As somebody very fond of the spoken word on iTunes, I can attest that this general rule holds true for audiobooks as well. So as I was fiddling around with some old school CDs the other day and trying to move audio files within my iTunes library to the Audiobooks tab, I noticed my old methods were already outdated again. If you’re not up to speed on iTunes, here’s a refresher on how to get your talking book to properly identify as Audiobooks inside the application, followed by an encore for CD enthusiasts with regard to joining tracks during import.

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Why to avoid third-party Cydia Substrate “patches” for the iOS 10 beta jailbreak

Anthony Bouchard ∙ January 12, 2017

Yesterday, we shared our fullest opinion of why you should avoid jailbreaking with Luca Todesco’s beta jailbreak for iOS 10 until it’s out of its beta stages, but for those who’ve went ahead with it anyway because nostalgia got the best of them, there’s another difficult choice to make…

Cydia Substrate is disabled by default, and amid the nostalgia, many are already using third-party “fixes” or “patches” to get around this. Of course, there’s a reason Cydia Substrate is disabled by default, and those who’ve gotten as far as jailbreaking also have to decide whether or not to install these patches.

In this piece, I will attempt to eliminate some of the confusion about why Cydia Substrate is disabled by default and why you should avoid installing these third-party “fixes” to get around it.

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iSpaceship is finally coming together

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 11, 2017

Though Apple's yet to confirm a move-in date for the 13,000+ employees it's planning to house at a new Jony Ive-designed campus, the project is finally coming together after work on it began in 2013. New drone footage from Matthew Roberts suggests the campus may open its doors early this year.

Going by this gorgeous 4K clip, there’s still some work to be done before Campus 2 opens but the main building looks nearly complete, roads are being cleared and landscaping within the building and around its central courtyard is now visible.

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Kantar: iPhone 6s/7/Plus were 3 most popular smartphones in U.S. in November

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 11, 2017

Kantar Worldpanel previously said that iOS achieved its strongest growth and the highest market share in the United States in more than two years. In its latest survey, the market intelligence company found out that iPhone's share of the U.S. smartphone market grew 6.4 percent year-on-year in the three months ending in November 2016.

iPhone 6s, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were the country's three most popular smartphones during November, with the handsets taking share from Google's Android platform in most markets globally.

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How to verify your .shsh2 blobs with img4tool

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated February 23, 2021

We recently reported how some of the .shsh2 blobs saved with previous versions of tihmstar’s TSSChecker were faulty. One problem affected all iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus blobs, rendering them useless. This issue has now been fixed going forward, though past blobs are invalid.

The other problem was more complex and affected only certain models of certain devices. It is also fixed for blobs saved from now on, but given these occurrences, it is important to be able to check whether the blobs you saved in the past are in fact valid and fit for use with Prometheus.

In this article, we’ll go through how to use another tool from tihmstar’s Prometheus suite, img4tool, to verify that your .shsh2 files are good. This method will clarify whether you are affected by the second problem mentioned above, but will also work in general, when checking the validity of your blobs in future.

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The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth arrives after being yanked from App Store almost a year ago

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 11, 2017

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, an iOS version of the dungeon crawler game originally released back in 2014 by independent game studio Nicalis, is now available on iOS as a premium $14.99 download from App Store.

Nicalis originally submitted its dungeon crawler for iPhone and iPad a year ago, but the game got rejected for depicting violence against children. The iOS port has a 17+ rating.

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CoolBooter demo: the dual-boot tool for iOS

Joaquim Barbosa ∙ Updated April 20, 2017

Developer Jonathan Seals recently released a new piece of work called CoolBooter, an interesting tool which allows some 32-bit devices to dual-boot different iOS firmwares. With a simple reboot it can allow, for example, switching between iOS 6 and iOS 9. Whilst this functionality is commonplace in the desktop computing world, booting multiple operating systems on iOS devices is much rarer.

Sebastien and I talked briefly about the tool on Let's Talk Jailbreak 157, and in this article I'll give some more info, as well as a video demonstration of it in action.

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Former AppleScript lead Sal Soghoian writes about automation for MacStories

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 11, 2017

After Apple terminated his position as Product Manager of Automation Technologies for “business reasons,” Automator and AppleScript evangelist Sal Soghoian is now guest blogging about these technologies over at MacStories.

In his first post for the publication, Soghoian shares his thoughts on Automator, AppleScript and similar services versus app extensions. Soghoian spent almost 20 years leading AppleScript, Automator and related technologies at 1 Infinite Loop.

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