We would quite happily wager that the humble Notification Center widget is one of the best additions to the iPhone and iPad that iOS 8 brought. By giving iOS something at least resembling the power of Android's own widgets, Apple has opened the door to a whole raft of useful, usually data-driven offerings that make using the platform a better experience. Surely, that's what it's all about, right?
JoinedJanuary 21, 2011
Articles20,133
Oliver Haslam has written about technology for over a decade. His work has been published in print at Macworld and online pretty much everywhere else. If it plugs in or has a battery, it's fair game.
Here's a simple way to get Android 5.0 Lollipop Smart Unlock feature on any older phone. Complete details and download link can be found right here.
Camera apps really are ten-a-penny on the App Store, with some not worth the effort they take to download and some being true works of art that turn the iPhone into nothing short of a professional grade camera. Well, considering its obvious hardware limitations, that is.
Google has been working on its driverless cars for quite some time now and if you happen to have been on the right street in California at the right time then you might have even seen one of the prototypes doing the rounds. If you'd looked really closely you would have spotted a rather ashen-faced human babysitting it, too. But the worst kept secret of it all was that Google didn't have any fully automated cars to call its own. That's now changed, with Google producing a prototype that has all the usual functionality that you might expect from an automobile. That means it starts, stops and turns corners, then. It's the stopping part we're most interested in at this point though, if we're totally honest!
Security updates - they're important, okay? Yes they are. But you already knew that, didn't you? Good, so the news that Apple has published a critical security update for OS X Mountain Lion all the way up to Yosemite, it’s already abundantly clear to you that it needs to be installed without any sort of delay.
We love it when apps go free, even if it's only for a short period of time as part of some sort of promotion. No matter the motivation for the developer, it's never a bad thing when app buyers get the chance to get something for nothing.
Apple's decision to ditch the iPhone 5s design in favor of something a little more rounded for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was greeted with equal applause and skepticism. We were fans of the clean edges that had the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s look like stealth phones from something like Knight Rider, but the new aesthetic does have something about it that feels hyper modern. We like both, but some people will always swear by the outgoing design. Which is a bummer if you need a new phone.
If you've ever struggled to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot that you know is there but may be on the brink of its wireless range then you will know how irritating it can be when iOS keeps showing it, then hiding it in the Settings app. That's because by default the Settings app will hide any Wi-Fi network that it deems to not have the required signal strength, effectively hiding anything it deems not usable.
It's the time of year where we all spend far too much money on food, gifts and all the other trimmings that tend to be part of the festive period. With so much money being splurged it's always good to bag a bargain or, if possible, pick something up for free. If it used to cost money then, well, that's just gravy.
Being able to record video on a smartphone is something that many of us never really understood the need for, but as the years have rolled on we have all become accustomed to having a mighty fine video recorder in our pockets at all times. As smartphones have matured, so has the camera technology inside them too, so where we first had to make do with poor quality recordings, 1080p HD video is now the norm from a modern smartphone while some are even capable of 4K Ultra HD.
















