The iPad goes to school: iBooks 2 app brings interactive textbooks for $14.99 or less

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  • January 19, 2012 at 3:51 pm

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iBooks 2 Textbooks on iPad

Apple has just vowed to reinvent textbooks, and of course the perfect delivery vehicle is the iPad. The big unveiling at today’s education and eBook related event in New York City was iBooks 2 for iOS. The latest version of the app now gives access to interactive textbooks. iBooks textbooks make things more exciting than you typical paperback with interactive 3D models, video and audio. You now also have the ability to pinch for the table of contents, and of course you still have all the typical multitouch navigation gestures.

Besides saving you from lugging big blocks of wood, electronic iBooks textbooks allow you to quickly search for content, highlight text, take notes and even turn them to virtual study cards. Textbooks are rather competitively priced at $14.99 or less, and publishers on-board for the launch include McGraw Hill, Pearson, DK Publishing and Mifflin Harcourt.
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Siri security protocol cracked, could allow it to be accessed on any device

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  • November 14, 2011 at 4:33 pm

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Siri ported to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

Ever since Apple released Siri, its voice control app, as an iPhone 4S feature only, there have been endless attempts to get the lady working on other iOS 5 devices. We’ve already seen Siri running on an iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, and the main challenge so far had been to get Apple’s servers to respond to Siri’s requests from non iPhone 4S devices.

Well the developers over at Applidium have one-upped everyone by cracking Siri’s security protocol and getting access to its recognition engine from any device. What they did was setup a fake local Apple server and listen to all of the Siri generated commands from their iPhone 4S going to this fake server. What they found is that Siri sends a unique iPhone 4S identifier with every command, which is what gets the server to respond. If you have an iPhone 4S you could potentially use your phone’s unique identifier and get Apple’s server to respond to any device, even a Mac or Windows PC or an Android phone.

Developers could write their own applications, that would send requests to Apple’s Siri server and get back responses. Obviously there are two issues here, first you need to own an iPhone 4S and then you never know when Apple might catch-up with this method and issue a patch effectively nulling it. In any case, very smart going to the developers, who have also provided a host of info on their website.
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iOS 5.0.1 update released: promises to fix your iPhone battery woes, includes new iPad multitasking gestures

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  • November 10, 2011 at 4:48 pm

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iPhone low battery level

A lot of iOS 5 users have complained of poor battery life, and we’ve reported that Apple has been working hard to fix the issue. Devices that could be affected include the iPhone 4S and any iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS that has been updated to iOS 5.

iOS 5.0.1 has been released today and promises to fix any battery woes that you’ve been facing. The update, also available for both iPads and the iPod Touch, includes security patches and various other fixes, while the original iPad also gets some new multitasking gestures.

If the update hasn’t reached your device yet, check Settings > General > Software Update on your device or connect it to a computer and launch iTunes.
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iOS 5 bug could allow for untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S and iOS 5 upgraded devices

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  • November 7, 2011 at 11:52 am

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iOS 5 Notification Center

All those with an iPhone 4S or iOS 5 upgradable devices, like the iPhone 4 or iPad, waiting to break the bonds from their computers and permanently jailbreak their device get a small glimpse of hope today. A ‘developer’ (or should we say hacker), @pod2g, has tweeted that a bug in iOS 5 could finally allow untethered jailbreaking.

Currently, if you have a jailbroken iOS 5 device, you need to connect it to a computer every time you restart in order for the device to start properly. A huge hassle. The developer warns though, that the exploit might not come soon, but we are crossing our fingers here. As the late Steve Jobs said, it’s the developer and hacking community that has always realized the true potential of technology.
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The lady speaks, Siri made to work on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch (video)

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  • October 30, 2011 at 7:56 am

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Siri ported to the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

Siri, Apple’s very talkative personal assistant app, which we’ve covered in detail, was announced together with the iPhone 4S. Apple has stated that Siri will only be made available on its latest handset, meaning that if you wanted to try out Siri, you would have to get the iPhone 4S. Well, when there’s a will there’s a way, and Siri found itself ported (or should we say hacked into) ‘unsupported’ iOS 5 devices like the iPad and the iPhone 4. However, so far, although the application ran, Apple’s servers would refuse to respond to any requests, so Siri remained silent.

Well, bright developers Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) and @chpwn, finally got the lady to answer back on an iPhone 4 and an iPod Touch 4G — at least from what we’ve seen in the video, which you can find after the break. According to Steve, Siri runs well on both the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch, although the latter requires you to speak louder since its microphone was not designed to phone specs.
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Is your iPhone 4S or iOS 5 updated iPhone suffering from short battery life? Apple is looking into it

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  • October 28, 2011 at 5:41 pm

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iPhone low battery level

Although not yet up to ‘battery-gate’ status, a lot of antagonized iPhone 4S owners are complaining of very poor battery lives. You only need to take a look over at Apple’s Support Communities and you will find a host of threads with issues related to fast battery drain under standby and short battery lives. There are also some iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS owners who have upgraded to iOS 5 and are also facing similar issues, so this might not be an issue with the iPhone 4S hardware but rather an issue with the new iOS 5 operating system.
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Apple’s Siri, Google Voice Actions, the past and the future of voice control

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  • October 16, 2011 at 6:57 am

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iOS 5 Siri and Google Voice Actions for Android

Controlling a device with your voice is certainly nothing new. It’s been implemented time and time again and the execution has ranged from terrible, to gimmicky, to just ok, but it has never taken off. It’s been the sort of thing that you show off at family gatherings to impress older relatives but you never end up using.

It has existed on mobile devices for a while but with very limited capabilities. Feature phones could only do things like call up a number. Then, Google brought it on Android with Voice Search and Voice Actions expanding its capabilities. Now, Apple has officially taken a big step into voice control with iOS 5, the iPhone 4S and its personal assistant Siri. Could this mean that we will soon start using our devices in a different way?

Apple didn’t invent the artificial intelligence (AI) and voice recognition technology that makes Siri happen. In fact, Siri on iOS is the result of Apple’s purchase of same named company, Siri, and the use of third-party voice recognition technology (probably Nuance). But Apple has an incredibly successful history of doing exactly this, taking an existing but flailing technology, ironing out the quirks and making it the norm. The Macintosh made the mouse popular, the iPhone revolutionized touch-screen technology and Siri could be the beginning of a new way to interact with our devices.
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iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 now available for download

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  • October 12, 2011 at 12:49 pm

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Apple iOS 5 released

We’ve been expecting this day to come and you can now finally update your iOS devices — iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, all iPads, 3rd and 4th generation iPod Touch — to iOS 5. This is a major update to iOS with over 200 new features, including Notifications (at last), iMessage, Newsstand, Reminder and of course iCloud integration.

As we warned you yesterday, you will need to be running iTunes 10.5 to update your devices. So if you haven’t done already, check out our coverage.
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iTunes 10.5 up for download, becomes part of iCloud, paves the way for iOS 5 and iTunes Match

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  • October 11, 2011 at 2:53 pm

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iTunes 10.5 becomes part of iCloud

The latest update for iTunes is now available for download, and it should make iTunes fans very happy, especially those anxious to update their iOS device(s) (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) to iOS 5 tomorrow.

Version 10.5 brings Wi-Fi syncing for all iOS devices and iTunes in the Cloud, which means that all your Apple Store music and video purchases will be available on all your computers running iTunes. Most importantly the latest update paves the way for iOS 5; if you want to update your device starting tomorrow, you must be running the latest version of iTunes to do so, so our advice is to get downloading.

Finally the update should allow you future access to Apple’s $25 a year iTunes Match service, coming by the end of the month. iTunes will scan your library and give you access to high quality copies of your local music stored in Apple’s servers, accessible anywhere.

If you already have iTunes installed, click on “Check for Updates” within iTunes or the ‘Apple’ logo and “Software Update” on a Mac. You can also get it from this link.

Just a heads-up, that tomorrow is a big day for Apple related services and software with the, as mentioned, release of iOS 5, iCloud and an update to OS X Lion 10.7.2.
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Apple to unveil Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud on June 6

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  • May 31, 2011 at 9:26 am

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Apple WWDC11 - iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud to be unveiled

We are used to Apple being very secretive about new products and services, keeping everything in the shadows until a big media event. So the first surprise to come in anticipation of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, being held on June 6-10, is Apple formally putting out a press release announcing iCloud prior to the event’s keynote speech.
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iPhone 5 engineering renderings show larger edge-to-edge screen, thin bezel, iPhone 4 design

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  • March 11, 2011 at 9:42 am

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iPhone 5 mold rendering full

Well with the iPad 2 just beginning to ship, more rumors have started to surface on the next iPhone, the iPhone 5.

While initially it was rumored that the iPhone 5 would have a curved back with a milled aluminum body (like the iPad) and the Apple logo acting as the antenna port, CAD renderings have come up on a Chinese website, iDealsChina, of mold engineering drawings of the iPhone 5 having a body similar to the iPhone 4 but with a larger screen and much thinner bezel.
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