Apple this week revealed a new initiative that's meant to help protect children. The Expanded Protections for Children effort is three-fold, each feature baked into Apple's major platforms. Two of the new additions appear to be going over well enough, but it's the other one, the photo scanning one, that's ruffled a lot of feathers.
Yesterday, Apple unveiled new child safety features that are going to be baked into iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 Monterey, and watchOS 8. The goal is to help protect minors from being abused, seeing explicit material, and more. However, to reach that goal, the company has to implement some intrusive features.
As an iPhone’s battery level approaches the dangerous sub-20% territory, the handset will automatically alert the user. One thing that has always peeved me about this, however, is that the alert isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as I’d come to expect from a company with a reputation for good looks such as Apple.
For those who agree, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Electrode by iOS developer biD3V offers refuge, as it replaces the iPhone’s traditional low power alerts with something called a Toast, which looks like the pop-up you get when toggling the ringer/silent switch on an iPhone or attaching an Apple Pencil to an iPad to charge.
User privacy and security is a major focal point for Apple. Safety, too. Making sure that a user is able to keep their data safe, for instance, is one of the selling points of iOS in general. So it makes sense that Apple would want to broaden that scope, especially as it relates to protecting children.
When you tap on the Calculator shortcut in Control Center, it insta-jolts you from Control Center to the Calculator app. Wouldn’t it be so much sleeker if Control Center had a dedicated Calculator module just like the many other modules it offers?
Apple used its Wallet app to push deals to Apple Card holders before, but this is the first time the company has offered exclusive deals that includes one of its own services as a perk.
As a chronic Dark Mode user on my iPhones and iPads, I’ve grown accustomed to displays that don’t sear my eyes out of their sockets when I operate my mobile device. In essence, I like the interface to be as dark as it possibly can be, even if Apple doesn’t want it to be.
Around three months ago, I shared my user experience with Visible as a second carrier for my iPhone. Visible, which operates on the Verizon Wireless network, offers outstanding network coverage for as little as $25 per month with unlimited 4G LTE & 5G data, talk, and text, and with unlimited tethering included!
Just this past week, however, Visible did something I never saw coming. They added support for cellular-capable Apple Watches. And much like Visible’s hyper-affordable cellular plan, enjoying cellular connectivity with Visible is just as affordable.
The iOS 15 software update has been found to reduce, and in some cases completely remove unwanted iPhone lens flare artifacts in photographs taken with Apple's stock Camera app.
If you own an iPhone, then a substantial part of the user experience would be tinkering with the powerful camera systems that Apple invests millions of dollars into improving year after year. This holds true even for jailbreakers since they can enjoy even more convenience and performance out of their iPhone’s camera than basic iPhone users thanks to being free of Apple’s software limitations.
It was just over a year ago that we showed our readers a free jailbreak tweak called Peep that allowed jailbroken iPhone users to hide their Status Bar with a single tap, and it was an instant hit.
App Store Events is one of the newest features coming soon to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. It's a way for developers to highlight in-game and in-app events that users can participate in. This new feature is going to launch to the public alongside those software updates later this year, but Apple is already testing it out.