Highlights from Tim Cook’s Goldman Sachs talk

As announced yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Interactive Conference in San Francisco. Right on schedule, he began discussing topics of interest at 7.15am Pacific, 10:15am Eastern time, just after the markets open. Originally scheduled at 4:15pm Eastern, Cook's segment was shifted so he could be whisked more than 2,000 miles to Washington DC to sit beside Michelle Obama for the President's State of the Union address.

Apple is streaming its chief executive's remarks live on its Investor web site and should post the full audio shortly after the event. If you don't have the time to sit through the whole thing, we've got you covered with the most interesting bits and pieces from Cooks' presentation...

Flex patch highlight: 5 essential enhancements to iOS

As we've mentioned in the past, Flex is basically a Game Genie for the iPhone. While Flex can't create new content, it can nullify lines of code, override return values, and mess with variable return values. These can be used to prevent jailbreak detection, enable hidden features, hide interface elements in apps, and even, as you may expect, cheat in games.

Flex is a very versatile tool with a near limitless number of potential uses, so today we're going to highlight 5 general purpose Flex patches for iOS...

Forget the iWatch, Apple is researching iHuman – a wearable computer

Have you followed the talk of a possible iWatch from Apple, an all-glass iOS device supposedly putting a smartphone on your wrist? That would be small potatoes compared to a whole network of sensors turning your body into a walking, talking Apple device.

In an 84-page filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the iPhone and iPad maker describes what it calls a "Personal items network." Covering you head-to-toe, sensors would detect movement, temperature - even track how fast your heart beat when watching certain television shows, according to a Tuesday report...

New app streams Pokemon episodes for free

If you're a fan of Pokemon TV, a Nintendo-owned Japanese media franchise, there's a new app in town which lets you stream up to fifty different Pokemom television movies and even related movies, free of charge, no strings attached. That ain't some unofficial hack: the Pokemon TV app comes straight from Pokemon, the company.

You can stream Pokemon TV shows to your iPhone or iPad from the 700+ episode strong library, access special features, watch trailers for upcoming Pokémon movie events and more...

New tweak allows all Notification Center notifications to be sent to Pebble watch

A new jailbreak tweak has recently surfaced that will be of surefire interest to Pebble watch owners. The tweak is called BTNotificationEnabler, and it's created by Conrad Kramer, the same developer behind tweaks such as Graviboard, Gesturizer, etc.

The description for BTNotificationEnabler promises that you'll never miss a notification again. That's thanks, largely in part to its ability to send all Notification Center notifications to a Bluetooth device. The Pebble watch, obviously, is one of the first things that comes to mind. A jailbroken iPhone running iOS 6, mated with a Pebble watch just got a whole lot more interesting.

A&E Networks brings its top TV shows to the iPhone for free

Great news for all of you Duck Dynasty and Pawn Stars fans, you can now watch your favorite TV shows on your iPhone and iPod touch. A+E networks has updated 3 of its iOS apps today with full-length episodes and movies.

A&E, HISTORY and Lifetime apps all now each support the streaming of their top programming—including hit shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars —as well as iCloud sync, so you can always pick up where you left off....

iWatch, iTV: an $80 billion opportunity

The iWatch, a rumored Apple smart watch, and the iTV, a rumored standalone Apple TV set, may be just vapourware for the time being, but that's not stopping analysts from guesstimating what the two gadgets might contribute to Apple's bottom line.

Per analyst Katy Huberty, assuming annual sales of 50 million units and an average selling price between $200 and $300, the iWatch could drive an incremental $10 to $15 billion in revenue, or $2.50 to $4.00 in per-share earnings, each year. Dick Tracey's futuristic wrist watch has nothing on it...

Intel VP confirms it’s working on new set-top box and TV service

If Apple is really planning on revolutionizing the TV business, it may want to hurry up and do so before Intel beats it to the punch. Confirming rumors from earlier this year, the company's Media VP Erik Huggers said today that it's working on a set-top box.

But that's not all. In addition to the new hardware, Huggers says that Intel is also working with 'the entire industry' to bring a new Internet TV service—an all-in-one solution that will incorporate live TV, catch-up TV and on-demand TV—to the market...

Microsoft details band-aid fixes for iOS 6.1 Exchange bug

Apple yesterday fixed 3G and reliability issues with the iOS 6.1.1 firmware update for iPhone 4S users, but a bug with Microsoft's Exchange email service persists. First noticed in the iOS 6.1 software update, it kills your battery and AOL thought it was sever enough to temporarily disable the ability to manage meetings on company-issued devices. Theories abound that an Exchange server glitch is causing poor device performance and battery life and Microsoft just issued a support document providing workarounds for the bug...

HBO Go gains AirPlay streaming, Apple TV app due later this year

Good news, Apple TV users: later today, HBO will enable AirPlay streaming in its HBO Go iOS app. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal-sponsored D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, HBO’s Eric Kessler said that “effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay” for HBO Go. Bloomberg last month reported that Apple and HBO are working on a content deal.

He also re-iterated that HBO Go will eventually land on the Apple TV later this yeare. Until the Apple TV app materializes, Time Warner Inc.'s HBO Go subscribers can use the existing iOS app to stream HBO shows from their iPhone or iPad to their Apple TV over AirPlay...

Apple makes more on iTunes and accessory sales than most companies do on phones

Well known and respected Asymco analyst Horace Dediu is out with a new report this week entitled 'Counting stool legs.' The piece takes a look at Apple's newly-introduced revenue categories—mainly iTunes, which now includes sales from OS X, iWork, and Apple's other pro tools.

The big takeaway here is that, under this new structure, iTunes can no longer be considered a 'break even' business. Because, as Dediu points out, the combined sales from iTunes and accessories is now bigger in terms of revenues than any other phone vendor, except for Samsung...

Facebook now sends 180 million clicks to Apple and Google app stores

The social network Facebook has become such a behemoth in that space that it's now sending an astounding 180 million clicks to Apple's App Store marketplace and Google's Play Store for Android software. That's one of the nuggets from a speech Dan Rose, Facebook VP of partnerships gave at The Wall Street Journal-sponsored D: Dive Into Media.

He also touched on Facebook's mobile strategy and the social network's future prospects as it competes for our time with other popular mobile services...