iOS

EA announces Tetris Blitz for iOS and Android, a twist on the famous puzzler

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Hot on the heels of launching its free to play Real Racing 3 this morning on the New Zealand App Store (two weeks ahead of schedule), games publisher Electronic Arts announced a new game for iOS and Android devices, Tetris Blitz.

It's an “innovative new twist on the world famous puzzle game,” says Electronic Arts. A bite-sized, frenzied Tetris Blitz experience challenges you with a two-minute sprint to clear lines and rack up as many points as possible before time runs out.

Electronic Arts, the super publisher which in 2011 alone raked in $1 billion in digital revenue, brought the original Tetris game to the iPhone back in December 2009. The iPhone version of Tetris costs 99 cents and the iPad version is an additional three bucks...

Microsoft details band-aid fixes for iOS 6.1 Exchange bug

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

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...

Real Racing 3 will be free, coming February 28

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 6, 2016

Electronic Arts has a release date for Real Racing 3, the latest installment in its popular racing franchise. The game is scheduled for release on February 28 and will be offered for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android smartphones and tablets for free, a major shift in strategy for the super publisher which in 2011 alone raked in $1 billion in digital revenue.

In fact, developers say that Real Racing 3 was designed from the ground up to be a free to play experience. That right there is your undeniable proof that the freemium model is slowly but surely taking over from paid downloads...

Apple posts iOS 6.1.1 firmware fixing iPhone 4S reliability, 3G issues

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 11, 2013

Right on cue, Apple has rushed out the new iOS 6.1.1 firmware update to the iPhone 4S owners to fix 3G connectivity issues, enterprise problems and quite possibly squash a few reliability related bugs. iPhone 4S owners can apply an over-the-air update by going to Settings > General > Software Update. Of course, if you're already jailbroken, do not update to iOS 6.1.1 until it becomes clear whether or not it breaks the jailbreak...

Google paying Apple $1 billion annually in per-device iOS search fees

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 11, 2013

Analyst Scott Devitt of Morgan Stanley has estimated that Google pays Apple up to a billion dollars each year to be the default search engine choice on iOS. That's $1 billion in pure profit.

The two companies apparently have a per-device deal in place rather than a revenue sharing deal, he wrote in a report titled "The Next Google Is Google." The fee-based co-operation was agreed on in order to simplify accounting and it lets Apple collect upfront payments.

By contrast, Devitt estimates that Google pays around $300 million annually to Mozilla to be the default search engine for Firefox.

While one billion in traffic acquisition costs isn't much relative to Apple's $13 billion in holiday quarter profit, it ain't spare change either. Moreover, it just shows that Google is very much keen on having iOS users search the web using Google search...

Poll: 3G, battery and overheating issues on iOS 6.1?

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 10, 2013

Like any software release, the January 28 iOS 6.1 firmware update did fix some known bugs, but also has introduced a new set of issues. Specifically, the update is said to contain a bug that affects your iPhone's battery life and 3G performance.

The battery inefficiencies could be related to an Exchange bug, clever people at AOL have learnt). Quick searches on the Apple Support Communities forum for iOS 6.1 battery and iOS 6.1 3G clearly prove these issues are more widespread than originally thought. While some people are seeing their iPhone 5 battery life dropping after updating to iOS 6.1, others are bitching about overheating issues.

To make matters worse, Vodafone advised its UK customers against upgrading to iOS 6.1 until Apple fixes 3G hiccups, which include the occasional difficulty in connecting to the network to make or receive calls or texts or connecting to the mobile Internet.

What are you seeing?

Hackers still have exploits for use in future jailbreaks

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

On Wednesday, Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 6.1.1 to developers. It came just a few days after evasi0n was released to the public, so it was widely assumed that it had something to do with patching the new jailbreak.

Pod2g has since squashed the theory, at least for now, reporting that the beta doesn't mess with any of their exploits. But as it turns out, it wouldn't matter if it did, because the evad3rs still have several of them in reserve...

Twitter refreshes its terrible iPhone app with revamped search, tweaks

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 6, 2013

The popular micro-blogging platform Twitter today announced a freshly redesigned search experience for its iOS/Android apps and the Twitter.com web interface. This helps you find relevant tweets, trends and people to follow in a single stream. Plus, the reorganized search is now available anywhere in the mobile apps via a new icon.

You can see your five most recent searches, tap them to redo the search and clear your recent search history. Twitter says the updated iOS client launches faster, especially on older iDevices. It's a nice, albeit way overdue refresh. If you're using Twitter's official client, you can update your devices now. I'm sticking with Tweetbot...

Dropbox’s new Sync API lets apps treat cloud files as if they were local

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 6, 2013

The hot cloud storage startup Dropbox today announced a new application programming interface (API) for in-app synch. It makes programmers' life much easier by letting their native iOS/Android apps treat users' cloud-based files as if they were stored locally.

"Give your app its own private Dropbox client and leave the syncing to us", Dropbox proclaims.

By way of plugging in the API, apps can easily gain rich features such as file sharing and seamless real-time syncing akin to the Documents in the Cloud feature found in some iCloud-enabled apps. Without the Sync API, Dropbox apps can only support manual downloads and uploads and devs must do all the heavy lifting themselves...

Gartner: more than half of mobile apps will be HTML5/native hybrids by 2016

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

A convergence of mobile trends is setting the stage for a day when more than half of the applications will support both HTML5 and native iOS/Android environments. That's the word from research giant Gartner, who predicts companies must support multiple platforms as well as native features, such as mapping, cameras and location-based services. Additionally, the researcher forecasts brand-name smartphone makers could be pushed out of the low-cost market as countries such as China and India produce home-grown alternatives priced as low as $50...

Four days later, 26% of iDevices run iOS 6.1

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 1, 2013

Apple acknowledged in a press release Monday that there are now more than 300 million devices on iOS 6.0 and above, concluding it “may be the most popular new version of an OS in history”. Logs and various other data points support Apple's data. OnSwipe, a service which presents traditional web sites in a format better suited to touch screen devices, found iOS 6.1 installed on nearly 21 percent of iPad and iPhone devices in less than 24 hours following its release.

By comparison, it took a week for 44 percent of users to update to iOS 6. The firm on Friday re-analyzed their logs comprised of thirteen million monthly active users, reporting that iOS 6.1 adoption has now passed the 25 percent mark in the first four days of availability...

iOS 6.1 gains 22% adoption in under 2 days

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 31, 2013

Apple's recent update to iOS 6.1 may be important more for what it says about users and the never-ending competition with Android than what new features were added to the software running iPhones, iPods and and iPads. Released earlier this week, iOS 6.1 could become the most-quickly adopted version of Apple's mobile software. Nearly 22 percent of iOS users have installed the update in less than 48 hours, one developer claims.

Apple's iPhone users were the fastest to adopt iOS 6.1 with nearly 24 percent installing the updated software in less than one day. Tablet users were only a bit slower with one-fifth of iPad owners installing 6.1 by the 20-hour mark. By comparison, it took a week for 44 percent of users to update to iOS 6...