Alongside the sweeping changes in iOS 7, Apple gave its Notification Center a complete overhaul. It's been divided into three sections, it no longer sports a linen background, and it's lost a few features, such as the handy Weather widget.
But it's also gained some nice features, such as the new 'Today' view. The column offers up all kinds of useful information including stock prices, Calendar events, and apparently, traffic information for your frequently visited locations...
Since the moment Apple unveiled its completely redesigned mobile OS on Monday, the comments regarding its UI, and particularly the new icons, have been flowing nonstop. Some folks like the changes, and others refuse to believe it's the product of Apple designers.
And as it turns out, the latter group may be right. Sort of. A new report is out this afternoon claiming that there are explainable reasons behind the strange-looking app icons and inconsistant UX in iOS 7. And according to insiders, it's still a major work in progress...
We've always contended that while Android has a numerical advantage over Apple's iOS, the iPhone and iPad see much greater usage.
More evidence of that belief: more than half of all 3G cellular traffic comes from Apple devices.
When combined, the iPhone 4, 4S and 5 account for about 53 percent of all 3G cellular traffic. Adding the iPad boosts the number to nearly 60 percent, according to a firm that analyzes cell network traffic. Where is Android? Samsung's Galaxy S, S2 and S3 combined make up a bit over eighteen percent of 3G traffic...
Apple appears to have quietly made a subtle yet significant change to iTunes backend in an effort to make it easier to comb through your Purchased App Store items.
As observed by an iDB reader, the iPad storefront now includes a brand new lefthand bar which makes it easy to sort your Purchased apps alphabetically.
The tweak certainly helps find a needle in the haystack, especially when compared to having to scroll through a long list of Purchased items that used to be sorted chronologically. Coupled with the handy search field, this enhancement lets you zero in on a previously purchased item in no time...
As expected, Apple introduced a new streaming music service on Monday during its WWDC keynote. It's built into the Music app in iOS 7, and it plays full songs, at random, based on a genre, album or artist of your choosing. It's a lot like Pandora.
But it's better than Pandora. I can't explain it, but I've been using it non stop the past two days and it almost always feels like the DJ is playing my song. Maybe it's magic. Or maybe it's my 5+ years of iTunes purchase history. Either way, it rocks.
My only complaint about the service is that, for some reason, there doesn't seem to be any music with explicit lyrics. Even with rap songs, all I get are edited versions. So I have to ask, Apple, what happened to all of the curse words in iTunes Radio?
Yesterday we posted a list of 24 iOS 7 features that Apple didn't talk about during its keynote. Well, there's probably hundreds of features it didn't talk about. But these were listed on a slide shown behind Tim Cook towards the end of the event.
One of the features listed, which you can see in the image above, is WiFi HotSpot 2.0. For those unfamiliar with the technology, it allows devices to switch seamlessly between cell networks and public WiFi networks without needing authentication...
Good news for those who love to personalize their iPhone with the photos depicting their significant other, kids, dogs, kittens and what have you: with iOS 7 Apple has gone beyond adding a bunch of new wallpapers, having implemented cool new enhancements to really bring those wallpapers to life.
Taking a page from Google's Android (obviously), iOS 7 includes dynamically animated wallpapers created by Apple's design team. Not only that, the operating system lets you set any panoramic image from your Camera Roll as your Lock/Home screen background for a jaw-dropping effect. But wait, there's more...
Apple makes it sound like a life or death scenario when developers decide to install iOS 7 beta on a test device. In fact, it's always done so with its beta releases. In the notes for iOS 7, Apple states that "Devices updated to iOS beta can not be restored to earlier versions of iOS."
The thing is, that simply isn't true. I've always been able to successfully downgrade my firmware in the past for a beta test device, and I've confirmed that the process still works perfectly fine on iOS 7. In fact, it's extremely easy to downgrade your firmware from iOS 7 to iOS 6.1.3; it doesn't even require any special tricks or techniques like some downgrades do. Check inside as I walk you through the extremely simple step-by-step process for downgrading iOS 7 back to iOS 6.1.3.
As with any major Apple event, where numerous announcements are made, I feel like some of what was talked about yesterday flew under the radar. Specifically, there were several cool features in iOS 7 that didn't get enough attention.
One of those features is support for third party gamepads. Physical controllers for iPhones and iPads have long been left to the ThinkGeeks and the Kickstarter projects, due to the lack of support. But that's going to change with iOS 7...
Let's state the obvious; iOS 7 borrows heavily from many of our favorite jailbreak tweaks. Without even really trying, I came up with a list of ten different jailbreak tweaks that may have inspired the iOS 7 development team.
Yes, the obvious ones are here, like SBSettings and LiveClock, but some not so obvious ones have made the cut as well. Check inside, as I walkthrough all 10 jailbreak tweak inspirations on video, and compare them with their iOS 7 counterparts.
Apple's Monday announcement that its new iOS 7 would include an 'Activation Lock' comes just days before the iPhone maker is to attend a Smartphone Summit. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón say they await details of the new iPhone feature.
After being stung by reports that it is not doing enough to prevent a rash of iPhone thefts, Apple argued Activation Lock would prevent thieves from using a stolen handset...
When Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue during yesterday's keynote said that Siri in iOS 7 will integrate Bing web search results, everyone went silent. While Google is still the default search engine in Safari, Apple will pre-install the Yandex search engine in Russia and several other countries, a Russian newspaper reported Tuesday. The development could signal Apple's intention to gradually distance itself from Google search...