We are now on day 8 of the big 12 Days of Gifts event, meaning Apple has removed Rayman Jungle Run and has posted a new free item for download. Today’s gift is the iBook: Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.
For those unfamiliar with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, it started out as a web comic in the early 2000's and has since branched out into a wildly popular franchise with books, movies and more. This is book #1 in the series...
Control Center, as expected, has been the subject of quite a few new jailbreak tweaks ever since the iOS 7 jailbreak was released. But one of the best tweaks for Control Center, and one of the best tweaks that I've ever tested in some regards, is CCControls.
CCControls is a new jailbreak tweak that takes Control Center toggle customization to the next level. Have a look at our full video walkthrough, which appears after the fold, to see what I mean.
Prior to the iOS 7 jailbreak being released, I think pretty much everyone imagined some of the cool things that would be able to be accomplished by tweaking the iPhone 5s' Touch ID sensor. As of today, we no longer have to imagine any more.
Virtual Home is one of the first Touch ID based jailbreak tweaks available on the iPhone 5s, and it's awesome. See our full video walkthrough inside.
Back in September 2013, Google announced it was buying the popular mobile file-sharing apps Bump and Flock for an undisclosed sum. It was a typical acqui-hire (a talent-focused acquisition) so we were expecting the Internet giant would phase out these apps from the App Store and fold their functionality into Android.
Sure enough, the Bump team last night issued a notice informing users that the service will shut down effective January 31, 2014.
Customers are given a chance to export all their data ahead of the shutdown, including photos, video, contacts from both Bump and Flock and more...
Vimeo, the popular video-sharing service, has updated its free iPhone and iPad application by bringing back the search feature to the iPad and adding the ability to tap and hold video thumbnails to share, download "and do other fun stuff".
Though originally part of the experience, the ability to search for videos got inexplicably removed as part of Vimeo's major iOS 7 overhaul.
The team re-enabled search on iPhone and iPod touch devices in mid-October and now the feature is finally making a comeback on iPads...
Bad news, Snapchat fans: a group of anonymous hackers have successfully exploited a nasty security hole in the popular IM application to hijack a whopping 4.6 million usernames and phone numbers, publishing this private data on a website called SnapchatDB.info.
The circa 40MB SQL database dump (also available as a CSV file) includes phone numbers and usernames, along with the affected users' geographical region information.
Why did they do it? The leaked private information “is being shared with the public to raise awareness” of a Snapchat API exploit they'd used for the hack.
Snapchat has been aware of the security loophole in its application since August, but did literally nothing to patch it. Is there a way to see if you've been affected? Yes, there is. Read on for the full reveal...
Apple's 12 Days of Gifts holiday promotion continues as the seventh day brings us a cutesy little free platformer for the iPhone and iPad, Rayman Jungle Run by the famous French developer Ubisoft.
The winner of many awards and Apple's iPhone Game of the Year 2012, Rayman Jungle Run is presented in beautiful, crisp Retina graphics, courtesy of the same UbiArt Framework engine that powers Rayman Origins, the console-only release and the winner of numerous Game of the Year and Platformer of the Year awards...
Most gamers have played Street Fighter. Even if you weren’t born until after arcades went the way of the dinosaur, the classic fighting game has been ported to so many gaming consoles that it is nearly impossible to avoid. Street Fighter spawned decades of fighting games that, to this day, still include the same basic mechanics.
Fightback is a fighting game that features the tried-and-true punch/kick combos of our youth, but also adds a few fun aspects to make your street brawling adventure just a little cooler…
Games are fun. Judging by both the paid-for and free app charts in the App Store, they're also extremely popular. A look at the top-grossing apps on the iPad shows that 9 of the top 10 (in the UK store) are games. The odd one out is a newspaper, oddly enough. If you look outside the top 10 list, the trend continues throughout the chart.
With gaming clearly so popular on the iPad, and indeed the iPhone, developers are rightly beginning to throw considerable resources at creating some truly impressive iOS games. The likes of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Oceanhorn are effectively console or handheld games that run on a smartphone or tablet. Both are a far cry from the games we used to play on our mobile devices. Does anyone remember Snake on the Nokia phones of old? Ahh, fond memories indeed.
For all the increased attention that game development on iOS has received over the last couple of years, and with both big names and smaller independent developers bringing some excellent titles to the platform, there is still something lacking. We're being treated to games that look absolutely stunning on the latest hardware and voice acting as well as story building have both improved dramatically of late, but there's one issue remaining. One that's become all too apparent to me as I've started playing games on an iPad mini (with Retina display, of course) as well as my iPhone. That issue is syncing.
The syncing of game progress, to be precise...
And just like that, a year went by again.
I can still remember last year at the same time, when I started making resolutions for the new year that was about to start. As it turns out, I didn’t follow through most of them.
As we grow older, and as our lives get busier, it seems harder and harder to find time to do the things we really want to do. Various obligations make our days shorter, sometimes forcing us to miss the essential parts of life.
I’ll consider myself lucky for doing something I love for a living, which really makes my days more enjoyable than the average worker, I assume. I’m also very lucky to have such an amazing family. My daughter, my wife, and our future baby are constant reminders that life is wonderful and that you should enjoy every single moment. Carpe diem!
Maybe I’m drifting away from the original intent of this post.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that life is short, so I hope you’re getting the best of it. A new year is the right time to look back at where you’re at in life and where you want to get to. Maybe it’s a good occasion to make slight changes and make sure you’re on the right track to do whatever you want to do.
On behalf of everybody at iDB, I would like to wish you a happy new year. I hope this new year will bring you health, wealth, love, and everything else in between. I also want to thank you for being a loyal or occasional reader. Whether you read iDB every single day or you’re just stopping by, my message to you is the same.
Happy new year!
If you've been around jailbreaking for any measurable amount of time, the name "Barrel" has a significant meaning for you. It's the tweak that I, and many others, view as the flagship jailbreak tweak. It's the tweak that represents jailbreaking as a whole.
Barrel is the type of tweak that you use to convince skeptical friends that they should jailbreak, and often the end result is that they do. No, Barrel isn't a tweak that will improve the usability of your device, such as biteSMS' quick reply. It's not a practical release like iFile, or Safari Download Manager. But it's still one of the first tweaks that come to mind when a new jailbreak arrives.
I'm happy to say that Barrel has been updated to support iOS 7. In fact, it works beautifully on my iPhone 5s. If you're new to jailbreaking and don't know what Barrel is, then I invite you to step inside and enjoy the visual roller coaster.
The little heads up display that appears when you adjust the volume on the iPad or iPhone is often the subject of tweaking when it comes to the jailbreak community. The latest tweak to alter the look of the volume HUD is called TransparentVolume—a jailbreak tweak that adds transparency to the HUD's background.
Once installed, a new preference panel for TransparentVolume is placed in the stock Settings app. From here, you can use a slider to adjust the background transparency. Have a look at our video walkthrough inside to see how it works.