Wallpapers of the week: lakes

Considering the popularity of last week's mountains Wallpaper of the Week post, this week we are featuring another set of naturally beautiful wallpapers. Although, to contrast mountains, the included images salute the water.

In particular, lakes offer stunning vistas often incorporating mountains based on their geography. The lakes featured past the fold are all captured by photographers whose work can be found on Interfacelift.com. We gleaned some of the best and are highlighting them for iPad, iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6.

29 new and updated jailbreak tweaks to check out this weekend

We've now had an iOS 8 jailbreak for just about a month and it seems developers are finally catching up with updating their tweaks and even coming up with new ideas based on iOS 8's new features. We do provide an ongoing coverage of what we believe are the most interesting jailbreak tweaks, but because of the sheer amount of releases and updates, we unfortunately can't write about each of them, hence this round up that provides a quick look at what's new and what's been updated in Cydia.

This week on iDB: going back to iOS 8.1

Like every Sunday, we get to take a look at some of the most popular posts that were published on iDB during the week that just ended. Whether it is a news item, a new jailbreak tweak, a tutorial, or an app review, we sum it all up in one convenient place for you.

As always, if you like what you're reading, please feel free to spread the love by sharing our posts on your favorite social network.

We're usually hanging out a lot on Twitter and Facebook, more rarely on Google+.

Don't forget to listen to the latest episode of our new podcast, Let's Talk iOS:

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Apps of the Week: Quetzcoatl, Swing Tale, Blippy, and more

This is the last weekend before the holidays are in full swing. If family is coming to visit, you may not have the luxury of spending all weekend playing games on your iPhone. This weekend, make sure to take some time for yourself and check out all of the new titles the App Store has to offer. We’ve got a list of apps and games that might just keep you sane before the in-laws come trickling in.

Amazon launches Black Friday sale with discounts on Beats, wearables and more

Amazon joined Walmart and others in launching its Black Friday sale early today. The online retailer will be discounting a number of products over the next several days in a mix of limited-time deals, pre-Black Friday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday offerings.

Among the discounts we're seeing on Amazon.com right now include select Beats headphones, which are being discounted by as much as $80 depending on the model, various iOS-connected wearables, and more. We're even seeing some Apple products on sale.

Chase offering card holders free iTunes music to try Apple Pay

Chase is launching a new promotion to entice its cardholders to try out Apple Pay. As noted by MacRumors, the bank is notifying customers that they're giving away free iTunes music this weekend to anyone who adds their card to Apple's payment service.

From November 21 to 23, those who add their Chase Visa card to Apple Pay will receive early access to David Guetta's new album "Listen." Once verified that their card has been added, users will receive an iTunes redemption code via the Chase mobile app.

YouTube issues affecting Yosemite’s Safari

According to user-submitted posts over at both Apple Support Communities and Google Product forums, an unknown portion of Mac owners who run Yosemite are having issues playing certain YouTube videos, with some getting Safari crashes when attempting to watch a clip.

It seems to affect some, not all, HTML5 videos and does not manifest itself when using the resource-hog Flash Player, causing Safari to fall back to Flash for video delivery.

Other browsers are unaffected by the annoying problem. Neither Apple nor Google have commented on the matter yet. Digging deeper, it would seem the hiccup could be traced to the YouTube backend because HTML5 videos in Google Chrome and other browsers play without a problem.

Court gives Apple final approval for e-book settlement with consumers

During a hearing Friday in Manhattan, a United States judge gave Apple final approval to pay $450 million to settle claims that it conspired with five publishers to raise e-book prices on the iBooks Store.

Reuters reports that Judge Cote approved what she called an “unusual” accord. The ruling came after Apple in July agreed to pay big bucks to settle price fixing allegations that the government and class action lawyers leveled against the Cupertino firm.

iCloud Photos app updated with new uploading capabilities

Apple updated its iCloud.com Photos app today, enabling the ability to upload photos. The feature, which developers have been testing on the iCloud beta site for the past two weeks, allows users to upload images to iCloud Photo Library.

Previously, those with iCloud Photo Library enabled in iOS 8 could view, download and delete their photos on iCloud.com, but there was no way to upload them. Now users can upload images—including those not taken with an iOS device.

This app records FaceTime calls to your Mac

I use FaceTime on a daily basis and have always hated it wouldn't let me save calls to my Mac in the form of a media file. Surely Apple could have implemented such a feature if they wanted, but they didn't and I think privacy is a big part of that.

If for whatever reason you need to record FaceTime calls to a Mac, Call Recorder by Ken and Glen Aspeslagh, twin brothers from Massachusetts, has you covered.

The app creates a QuickTime movie file containing an audio track for audio-only calls and a video track for FaceTime video calls. QuickTime is an industry-standard multimedia container, meaning you can play your saved video and audio chats pretty much anywhere, convert the files to other formats in software like iMovie or Adobe After Effects, upload them to YouTube and more.

New Microsoft ad says iPhone 6 Plus only makes Siri bigger, not smarter

Friday, Windows giant Microsoft published a new Apple-bashing ad on its YouTube channel.

The 30-second television commercial shows off the latest version of Cortana, Microsoft's Siri-like personal assistant, running on the Lumia 830 and interacting with a bunch of built-in applications.

Cortana amusingly brags to Siri about being able to perform functions Apple's personal assistant can't, like alert users to leave early for an appointment using traffic alerts, remind them of things based on who calls or texts and more.