The year is almost over, so we thought that it would be a good idea to take a look back at our favorite apps of 2011. The iDB staff has chosen its favorite App Store and jailbreak apps from this year and compiled the picks into a little retrospective.
All of the apps in this list were either released this year or updated with significant changes. Here's our favorite apps and tweaks from 2011...
Those of you who have been holding out for a good reason to jailbreak your Apple TV might have just got your wish. Well-known developer Steven Troughton-Smith has teamed up with another hacker to bring iOS applications to the Apple TV.
But they're not just trying to make it happen, they've done it. Troughton-Smith showed off several photos via his Twitter account tonight of his jailbroken Apple TV running a homegrown version of the iOS springboard and multiple iOS apps...
It seems like Apple has taken its fight with app piracy to a new level. Apptrackr, the web portal known for harboring hundreds of thousands of pirated apps, has published a blog post today about its recent troubles with the folks in Cupertino.
Apple has been serving Apptrackr and its many file hosts a number of takedown notices over the past several months. While the legal action hasn't disrupted Apptrackr's service, it has provoked the site to make a number of costly changes.
We knew the iPad was making its way into governments around the world, but we had no idea to what extent. The Telegraph is reporting that the British Prime Minister is having a customized iPad app built for government use.
No, Apple's tablet isn't going to help David Cameron run his country. But it is going to enable him to stay on top of news and other important information. Think Flipboard, but with a lot more classified information...
Siri has been grabbing a ton of headlines lately. Between the recently released jailbreak app called Spire and the ongoing development of SiriProxy, it seems like folks can't get enough of the digital assistant.
With that in mind, it's not surprising that we've come across another project starring the voice control feature: SiriPrefs. The utility allows you to launch iPhone applications and toggle system settings using Siri.
When Apple launches a new iPhone or iPad, it invariably has an affect on the rest of its business.
The number of downloaded apps is one metric that will always see an increase when Apple brings a shiny new iOS device to market, simply because of all the new customers want to get some apps! Whether they are paid or free apps, Apple benefits in the long run.
The release of the iPhone 4S was no different, with new numbers showing just what a jump it caused in those all-important download figures. The iPhone 4S helped the App Store see an 83% increase in app downloads for November when compared to the same month last year...
In the recently-released Steve Jobs biography, Walter Isaacson notes that the late CEO wanted Apple to re-invent three markets: TV, photography, and text books. Now it looks like the company has added another industry to the list: health.
PatentlyApple is reporting that Apple has just won a patent for a major fitness center app. Judging by the filing, the software is being built for the iPhone, and will allow users to virtually interact with their local gyms and fitness centers...
It's been a big year for the folks at Shazam. On top of receiving $32 million dollars during a mid-summer investment round, the mobile music lookup service just recently re-launched unlimited track-tagging for iOS users.
And it appears that the company is just getting started. Since January of this year, there has been a lot of talk about Shazam venturing into the TV business. How, might you ask? With interactive commercials of course...
Hopefully you've already got most of, if not all of, your Christmas shopping done. Especially since the holiday is now less than 48 hours away.
But if you do happen to still be looking for gifts for the iOS device-toting folks in your life, Walmart has you covered. The retailer is hosting a last-minute iTunes gift card sale...
Applications can turn a smartphone into a swiss army knife, enabling it to do a number of things outside of its native scope of abilities.
Action Movie FX is a perfect example of that. The recently-released app turns your iPhone into a bonafide action movie-maker, allowing you to add high-quality digital effects to your videos like explosions and car crashes...
We've seen a lot of iPhone news reader apps surface in the last month. First there was Flipboard, the popular iPad-turned-iPhone app. And then Zite, another prominent iPad news application, surfaced.
But my favorite news reader for both the iPhone and the iPad still has to be Pulse. Its image-driven interface is both attractive and user-friendly. And the app just got even better with the latest update...
One of the biggest things to come out of the smartphone revolution is the rise of the mobile app. Before Apple, Google and the rest all set about creating their own on-device app stores. Users were left to live a life of boring apps that needed installing via a memory stick or, in the case of some smartphone operating systems, the downloading of executables that needed to be installed manually after fighting through a selection of security issues. Windows Mobile, I'm looking at you.
Apple, along with Research in Motion, began to change all that with a little help from Google. Nokia also got in on the act, before Microsoft finally began to get things right with Windows Phone 7. Apps, as we have all learned over the last few years, sell smartphones. Now, they also sell tablets.
This is all a far cry from Apple's early stance on an 'app store' when it released the iPhone along with its little brother, the original iPod touch...