Archives for 2014

Siri vs. Cortana – Happy Anniversary (Commercial)

I’ve recently been seeing this commercial from Microsoft about their Siri competitor, Cortana. Although I’m pretty sure I’ll never buy a phone from Microsoft (And I know no one that has one), this feature is really nice. Now I’m not sure how it works in real world scenarios but this seems impressive. Like Google Now, it adapts to your schedule, location, traffic and other information to make your life easier. Apple is behind on this one. There are location based tasks and Siri is really good at what it does but it doesn’t really seem to be getting much better lately. It needs to take a real leap to get ahead. What do you think? Also, according to the comments, the real Cortana voice doesn’t sound like that. [Read more…]

Hyperlapse from Instagram – Timelapse App by Instagram

Instagram has released a new app called Hyperlapse that is a very customizable timelapse video app. Funny how it’s put out by Instagram even though they are owned by Facebook. And it’s titled “Hyperlapse from Instagram” not to be confused with the app title just “Hyperlapse” which is a different timelapse app sorta kinda… Anyway, this app is not just a timelapse app. If so, it would become pointless once iOS 8 comes out because it is part of the Camera app update. This app claims some very nice features like: in house stabilization, speed up your hyperlapse to be up to 12 times the speed and quick recording with no account needed. [Read more…]

IN1 Case for iPhone – The Swiss Army Knife of iPhone Cases

MacWorld is going on right now and there are lots of crazy new tech being introduced. We’re going to share some of the apps, cases and other accessories that are being displayed. First, we’re going to take a look at a case that is not just a case. It not only protects your iPhone but it has the option to hold the following tools: blue pen, red pen, phillips screwdriver, flat-head screwdriver, nail file, tweezers, scissors & a toothpick. The case is made from polycarbonate, has scratch protection inside felt and a kickstand to prop up the iPhone for watching movies. The cost is $44.95. [Read more…]

Hide Stock Apple Apps in iOS 7.1

Today I found a video showing a quick way to hide Stock Apple apps on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 7.1 firmware. You do not need to be jailbroken for this to work, however, the apps will come back after powering off your device and turning it back on. Follow the steps carefully and you should be able to hide the icons you want (temporarily). If you want to hide stock apps without them coming back, jailbreak your device and install “Poof”. This allows you to hide stock apps without coming back. [Read more…]

Clear Background Apps – Close All Apps With One Tap

I’ve been looking for a nice, simple way to close all my apps in iOS 7 and I’ve found a hack I really like. It’s short and sweet and just takes one tap. Search Cydia for “Clear Background Apps” and install. Then just double click your home button and when the multitasking screen appears just tap the broom icon at the top. Depending on how many apps you have open, it might take a few seconds. Soon all your apps will be closed. This app is free and has no settings to configure. [Read more…]

Edit Clocks – Swipe to Delete Clocks

I always like hacks that seem like they are part of the original iOS and should have been there in the first place. This hack does this by allowing you to swipe to delete clocks under the World Clock tab in your Clocks app. Very simple and free hack found in Cydia. [Read more…]

App Store Updates – March 11th, 2014

There have been a lot of updates in the last 24 hours but I think one of the biggest is the addition of a lux slider to Instagram. This kind of feels like a brightness slider but is defined as “the unit of illuminance and luminous emittance, measuring luminous flux per unit area.” by Wikipedia. Here’s a quick video showing what it does. [Read more…]

NoLowPowerAlert – Disables Low Battery Alert

This is a simple little hack but just another one of the many reasons I still jailbreak my iPhone and iPad. The low battery alerts are super annoying. The worst is when I’m at the end of my work day and my iPhone is low on power and I’m trying to voice text my wife that I’m heading home and while I’m using the voice to text feature the low battery alert pops up and stops my dictation. AHHHH!!! Annoying!!!! I know that I have low battery because I can see the percentage in the top right of my screen at all times. I don’t need an alert at 20% and again at 10%. Ok, rant over. So, just search Cydia for NoLowPowerAlert and install. That’s it! Alerts gone. This hack is free. [Read more…]

PowerBanners – Low Power Alerts as Banners

So one annoying thing about the iPhone is the popup alerts telling you that your iPhone is low on power. It always seems to interrupt me at the worst moments and so I shut the alerts off using NoLowPowerAlert in Cydia. When writing the article about NoLowPowerAlert I was doing some research and I stumbled upon PowerBanners. This seems like a great way to be notified without stopping my video I’m watching or other task I’m trying to complete. This uses the banner notification method already built into iOS. It looks great and it’s available for free in Cydia. [Read more…]

Five Icon Dock (iOS7)

One of the most classic hacks is the ability to fit five icons on the dock of your iPhone. We’ve been writing about it since 2008! With each iOS firmware update different developers have released versions of Five Icon Dock and now we have one for iOS 7. Just install and then drag your fifth icon down to the dock. This app is free but you will need to add this source to Cydia to find this hack: Fr0st’s Beta Repository – http://gmoran.me/repo or http://repo.gmoran.me [Read more…]

Compose – Quickly Compose a Post Anywhere Using Control Center

For reasons we may never know, Apple likes to remove some of our favorite features from it’s iOS firmware when they release new versions. One of the most complained about features that has been removed recently is the ability to create a tweet quickly from Control Center. One of the biggest pieces of advice I try to give app developers when reviewing their apps is to never remove a feature. So, this is why we jailbreak! Compose is a very simple hack to add back this feature and give you even more options. Compose adds two buttons to the bottom of your Control Center that allows you to post from a multitude of services. They include Messages, Mail, Facebook Message or Post, Tweet and many more I will list below. Just pick which two services you’d like in the stock Settings app. This hack is just $0.99 in Cydia. [Read more…]

Display Recorder – Video Record Your iPhone or iPad Screen

This application works great to capture your iPhone or iPad screen along with the iPhone’s microphone. Everything done on the screen is captured at an adjustable frame rate with the option for showing your finger taps. This app is really great for two reasons: it works really well and it has lots of features. Cost is $4.99. We’ll be using it more to demo apps for our reviews! [Read more…]

NCSingleTapClear – Clear Notifications with Single Tap

I don’t use the Notification Center that often on my iPhone, but when I do, I’ve always hated the way you clear notifications. Having to tap twice made the whole process take too long and make me not want to use the feature even more. Thankfully there is NCSingleTapClear! This removes the second tap needed to clear a group of notifications. Just tap the x and it’s cleared. Usually you have to tap x and then tap the word clear. This little hack is free in Cydia. [Read more…]

iCleaner – The Ultimate iDevice System Cleaner

I’ve never used one of these “cleaner” apps before but my storage was really full of pictures and videos from iMessages. I never delete my messages and I have many that go back a couple years. I has started cleaning out some of the media by searching for “attachment” but it was a really slow process and a little buggy. iCleaner supports cleaning message attachments. It has a lot of other features that I will list below. Some include cleaning out all the unused languages or images used by other devices such as the iPad if you’re on an iPhone. These are all individually selectable before the cleaning. After using iCleaner the first time I had about 3GB more space available on my iPhone. When running it again today while writing this article I cleaned up 5GB! [Read more…]

iOS 7.0.6 Update Details & How to Jailbreak

Apple has recently released a security update to iPhones, iPods and iPads. Running this update will remove Cydia and your jailbroken apps if you have them. If you really want to update but want to jailbreak again, there is a fix for evasi0n over at idownloadblog.com that you can download. It’s the same evasi0n tool that has been modified to work with 7.0.6. This is a trusted source. [Read more…]