Apple's iPhone trade-in program has just hit the United Kingdom and Germany. First launched prior to the iPhone 5s / 5c's September announcement in the United States, it allows customers to gain some credit back for their current iPhone and trade said handset in for a shiny new one. Unfortunately, though, the return on any iPhone seems to be way below what most would perceive as a respectful amount, and thus, the trade-in program is probably just for those who find the business of private selling just way too intolerable.
Privacy is something that is very much the hot button topic on the Internet of late, and location privacy is possibly one of the biggest things that people are most concerned about. In a world where everything can track us in one way or another, people always feel like they're winning the battle if they can maintain a little bit of privacy.
In the world of the App Store, the chances are always fairly good that you'll be able to find an app that fits almost any particular need. Take sending hand-written notes and gifts to friends and family, as an example.
The iPhone 5s may be the latest, and technically greatest iPhone on the market, but being a new device allied to a new OS, it has been experiencing its fair share of issues. Notably, users have been reporting that apps seem to be crashing on a more frequent basis, and according to research from Crittercism, there's actually some truth in this notion. In fact, it would seem that apps crash twice as often on the newer of the two aluminum-clad Apple handsets, and although this is perhaps to be expected given the newness of device and the software, it's still a bit of an eye-opener.
Apple, known for its painstaking attention to detail and unerring design principles has been accused of losing its charm of late, with the iPhone 5c's official case proving quite the catalyst for much discussion about whether the Cupertino firm is as focused on the details as it used to be.
Apple's engineering team works hard to ensure that as little room inside its products are wasted and as such, nearly every square millimeter within your iPhone, iPad or iMac is put to use. With such a meticulous process involved in arranging everything, it makes for quite an eye-catching spectacle, and if you ever wondered what the interior of your machine / device looked like, but didn't want to open it up, then iFixit has your back with a set of delightful wallpapers.
iOS, as most of you will be more than aware, doesn't allow for custom launchers, and having enjoyed several when using Android, it's a great shame that Apple's ecosystem doesn't offer any kind of native support to manipulate the way the home screen looks and functions. However, Launch Center Pro for iPhone, formerly known as App Cubby, offers something resembling the functionality of your traditional Android launcher, and thanks to an update pushing the version number up to 2.0, it's now very much in-keeping with the simplistic beauty of the Cupertino's all-new iOS 7.
The little icon that pops up in iMessage to indicate that the other person is writing a reply can be something of a double-edged sword. Most of the time, we sit there and wait for the message to come through, in which cases it proves a useful implementation, but on other occasions, when the other person pauses their response or replies with something innocuous like (my biggest gripe) "LOL," we often curse the fact that iMessage has essentially given a false-positive. Now, if you want to irritate somebody by feigning an elongated response, you can do using the very simple trick of sending a copy of that very same icon.
When it comes to RPGs, Final Fantasy may not be considered among the best like it once was, but the engrossing, almost iconic nature of the original Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation continues to live on today. In what must go down as the most exciting news for FF fans in a good while now, Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy VI will be heading to iOS and Android later this year. Perhaps not surprising, especially given that Final Fantasy IV and V took their respective mobile bows not so long ago, but if you enjoy playing games on your iOS or Android smartphones and tablets, then you won't have to wait too long for Final Fantasy VI to arrive.
If you want to get your hands on that shiny new iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c but just don't want to stump up the cash required, then trading in your existing iPhone is always going to be one of the best ways to get what you're pining for without breaking the bank. Starting this past August, the iPhone trade-in program has made it possible for people to swap out an old iPhone for a new one at an Apple Store across the United States, simply paying the difference between the price Apple pays for their old hardware and the new handset they want to buy. It has always seemed popular amongst those talking about the program on social networking sites, and now it seems that Apple is set to launch the program outside the US.
