iOS

‘Ask to Buy’ lets you control what your kids buy in iTunes, iBooks, or App Store

After a period of Apple being under fire because kids were running up their parents' credit card bills with App Store and in-app purchases, Apple decided to do something about it. Apple's answer was to create a parental control system for the App Store so parents could approve or deny purchases that would otherwise have an impact on their credit card.

This parental control system is known as 'Ask to Buy' and it's available on both iOS and OS X in the latest releases of the operating systems, and in this tutorial, we'll tell you a little bit about how to configure and use Ask to Buy.

How to recycle your old tech with Apple’s Recycling Program

If you have old tech sitting in your closet or attic that you don't use anymore because you've got something better, Apple will gladly make sure that tech is recycled properly free of cost via the Apple Recycling Program. In some instances, the company will even give you an Apple Store gift card as credit towards a new Apple device or accessories.

The Apple Recycling Program has been around for ages, but is often overlooked as an option. Although better deals can often be had elsewhere, the urge to trade in your device can come at inopportune times, and when you want quick money for your old Apple devices, or a quick and easy way to get rid of your junk tech, Apple can come in handy in a pinch.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how you can use the Apple Recycling Program to make better use of your unused tech.

Phishing emails: what they are and how to report them

Emails are a popular way to keep in touch with people, be it friends, family, or co-workers, but often companies that you deal business with will send you the occasional promotional email if you signed up for subscriptions.

Sometimes, you get an email that you think is legit, and it turns out it's just a fake email pretending to be something it's not and it tries to get you to click on stuff or give up your personal information. These emails are malicious and they're known as phishing emails.

In this piece, we'll go over some of the things you can look for to tell if the emails you're getting are legitimate, or if they're a con artist trying to scam you of your personal information.

Video: Steve Wozniak sides with Apple in FBI fight

As a strong proponent of privacy and human rights, it is now wonder that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak would stand firmly with Apple in its fight against the FBI and the United States government regarding creating a backdoor into the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone.

Appearing on the Conan show last night, the Woz said the FBI “picked the lamest case you ever could”. It's “worthless” to expect something’s on the shooter's iPhone 5c that the FBI wants to break into because Verizon had already turned over all the phone records and SMS messages and law enforcement got iCloud backups form Apple.

Apple Maps adds 23 new Flyover locations

Apple continues to expand availability of the Flyover feature in its mapping service with today's backend update having enabled a total of 23 new landmark locations all over the world where three-dimensional Flyover view is available.

Select new cities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Taiwan have gained support for Flyover, such as Spain's A Coruña, Australia's Newcastle, England's Nottingham and more.

Some iPhone owners complain about receiving undeletable emails from 1970 and 1969

iOS has been hit with another strange bug which causes users to receive ghost emails from 1969 and 1970 that cannot be deleted.

As some Reddit users have discovered, an error with the mail server not downloading the headers correctly appears to be causing some iPhone owners to receive undeletable 'null' emails dated back to December 31, 1969 or January 1, 1970.

It's unclear if this issue is related to the infamous 'January 1, 1970' bug which can brick some devices and that Apple has fixed in the forthcoming iOS 9.3 software update. We have reached out to Apple asking them to comment on the new issue and will report if we receive a reply.

Apple’s Craig Federighi: creating iPhone backdoor would be ‘a serious mistake’

Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering who oversees the development of iOS, OS X and Apple's common operating system engineering team, has written an op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which he reiterates Apple's position that the FBI's demand that Apple create a version of iOS with decreased security would be “a serious mistake,” saying the FBI wants to “turn back the clock to a less-secure time”.

How Apple secures its products and services

Apple's security and privacy features that come standard on every iOS device, such as end-to-end encryption and Activation Lock, are getting all the talk around the internet as of late as the Apple vs. FBI case continues to escalate.

What can be learned from this case is not only does Apple want to protect your privacy, but the a large number of American people also want to have their privacy. The FBI, on the other hand, wants a quick way to get into any iPhone they deem "suspicious" so long as they can get a court order to search it.

So just how secure is your Apple data, and what protection standards does Apple have in place for you? That's just what we're going to talk about in this piece.

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: PreferenceTag3 & more…

Every Sunday we come at you with a roundup of all the jailbreak tweaks that get released in Cydia, and this week will be no different.

This week we haven't had any groundbreaking new tweak releases, but there have been some worth talking about. We'll go over our favorites first and then give you an outline of the other new releases.