Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission fines Apple $700k over iPhone pricing

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars, or roughly $670,000 USD, by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission for interfering with mobile service providers and handset distributors' pricing.

The Commission found Apple guilty of violating article 18 of the country's Fair Trade Act after discovering emails from the Cupertino company to Taiwan's three main service providers, telling them how much their iPhones should sell for...

Apple kicks off its ’12 Days of Gifts’ event with Justin Timberlake EP

Christmas may be over now, but that doesn't mean you have to be done getting presents. Apple has kicked off its '12 Days of Gifts' event this morning with a free gift for its faithful users, and will continue to give one each day for the next week and a half.

Today's gift is the iTunes Festival EP from music superstar Justin Timberlake. The album contains 4 live performances from Apple's annual music festival this year, and is free for all users in qualifying areas who have downloaded the 12 Days of Gifts app...

The 10 best games of 2013

Games are the most popular downloads in the App Store. On any given day, games make up about 80 percent of the top 10 lists for free and paid apps. Because there are so many amazing and cool titles launched in the App Store every day, this best-of list was hard to narrow down.

After much consideration and deliberation, the writers at iDownloadBlog have come up with a list of what they think are the 10 best games of 2013. Check out our favorites and then vote for the one you like best to be added to our Best Apps of 2013 list…

BiteSMS beta 8.0 for iOS 7 is a work-in-progress

While the wait continues for an updated version of MobileSubstrate, following the unexpected release of an iOS 7 jailbreak, the developers of biteSMS are moving ahead with an updated version of the popular jailbreak tweak for iOS 7. BiteSMS beta release 8.0 remains a work-in-progress, and should be seeded to the public in the coming days.

An official post on the biteSMS forums reads:

The evad3rs post 2nd letter to the jailbreak community

Following the release of their first update for evasi0n7, the evad3rs have published their second letter to the jailbreak community. The group posted the link to its Twitter account last night, saying that Taig has been removed and that it wanted to address some additional concerns.

The letter essentially covers 3 concerns regarding the app store that originally came bundled with the Chinese version of evasi0n7: privacy, piracy and money. The evad3rs say that Taig has been completely removed from their app, and that they haven't collected any money from them...

‘RadiSpot’ brings “Open in Spotify” support to Pandora

Pandora is great, but there are times when you don't feel like being told what to listen to, and you know exactly what you want to hear. For times like these, Spotify is best suited for your needs. The point is, both apps have strong points—Pandora is best for music discovery, while Spotify is best for playing exactly what you want to hear.

Wouldn't it be great if these two apps could join forces and take on the evilness that is silence? Indeed! That's what Hashbang productions had in mind when it created this new tweak. Have a look inside to see how RadiSpot works.

A look back at some of Apple’s old Christmas commercials

Apple's been causing a lot of commotion lately with its latest iPhone 5s commercial 'Misunderstood.' The ad, for those who haven't seen it, depicts a teenager with his head buried in his smartphone while the family participates in holiday activities, and has a delightful twist.

But Apple hasn't always been so sentimental around the holidays. In fact, it's been making Christmas-themed spots for over two decades now, and many of them tended to err on the side of humor. Don't believe me? Check out some of these Apple ads from the last 20 years...

How to access Apple’s secret internal SpringBoard settings menu on iOS 7

As predicted, the flood of new tweaks has started to pour in. The latest tweak, one called HiddenSettings7, allows users to access Apple's hidden internal SpringBoard settings menu. This menu, which contains a plethora of settings to garner fine grained control over the look and feel of your device's SpringBoard, is accessible via a shortcut found in Control Center.

We've taken the liberty to film a high level overview of HiddenSettings7 for you to enjoy. Have a look inside to see where to get the tweak and how to access a wealth of new settings.

Reviews agree: the new Mac Pro is a dream desktop with some serious oomph for pros

Apple's radical new Mac Pro went on sale last week and despite critics slamming it for Apple's high asking price (although it isn’t more than you’d pay for a similarly configured Windows PC), shipping estimates for the re-engineered pro desktop slipped to February 2014 just hours after release, indicating pent-up demand among creative professionals.

Though baseline configurations of the Texas-built machine started shipping to first customers yesterday, those who purchased built-to-order machines will have to wait a month or so. Meanwhile, first Mac Pro reviews have hit the web and the verdict is unanimous: this is every video editor/creative pro's dream machine...

Tim Cook said to be working on $4 billion iPad deal with Turkish president

Tim Cook is reportedly scheduled to travel to Turkey next year for the opening of Apple's first retail store in the country. The store is located in the city of Istanbul, in the Zorlu Center, and is expected to open on February 4, 2014.

But according to a new report, that won't be Cook's only order of business for the visit. The CEO is also believed to be meeting with President Abdullah Gül to discuss a potential education iPad deal worth between $3 and $4 billion...

How to fix Cydia “failed to fetch” errors by removing the UltraSn0w repo

One of the more common error messages that new Cydia users will come across is the error that says Failed to fetch [...] HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found. This is a typical 404 message that you get when you visit a webpage location that no longer exists. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but it causes an error message to appear in Cydia each time you refresh your list of packages and it attempts to pull data from the non-existent UltraSn0w repo.

You'll receive an error that states: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Yeah, so no big deal, but it's still a huge annoyance, because this interrupts the stream of refreshing the list of Cydia packages. The fact is that you'll probably never need to use UltraSn0w, and even if you did, you can always add the repo back to Cydia manually.