While the App Store contains quite a few remote desktop apps for iOS devices, the Cydia Store is surprisingly light in this department. SoftPad for iPhone and iPad has sought to break the mold, and although we wouldn't consider it an out-and-out RDP client, it does allow you to control many of your PC's aspects right from your iDevice.
When you consider how insanely popular photography apps are on the iPhone and iPod touch, it kind of makes you wonder why more of the well-known camera companies haven't taken the plunge and called in the developers to produce an app that lets users indulge in photography goodness whilst promoting their own brand at the same time.
The App Store contains over 600,000 apps in total, and while there are plenty to choose from in a variety of categories, the improvement of the iPhone's camera has seen a meteoric rise in the number of camera and image manipulation-based apps.
The innovation, dedication and commitment to user experience of the jailbreak development community never ceases to amaze us. It was only yesterday when a concept video did the rounds which showed a more user friendly method of highlighting, selecting and editing text on the iPad. In a community where time seems to stand still when developers are pushing out tweaks, a quick thinking coder has pushed out his SwipeSelection tweak to Cydia that mimics the exact functionality that was shown in the concept video.
Besides the obviously buttery-smooth scrolling, tight integration with iTunes and lack of customizability (without jailbreak), the first thing I noticed when I shifted to the iPhone camp was the sheer abundance of well-designed apps especially those in the Photography category. Camera+, Photosynth, SloPro and Instagram are good, established examples of this.
There seems to be a growing trend in the world of iOS for apps and tweaks that allow users to use gestures, taps and swipes to navigate within an application, or when it comes to Cydia-based packages, even navigate around the OS. The SwipeNav tweak from Cydia continues that trend of implementing swipes but does it in a different way compared to how others have gone about it.
Facebook's eye-watering $1 billion acquisition of Instagram last month shocked many, but certainly outlined its intentions to reign supreme in the increasingly popular socio-image market.
Slide To Unlock is arguably the most recognizable feature of iOS. Although Apple was only granted the patent for the feature late last year, it has been an omni-present feature of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch ever since each device made its respective introduction.
The recently released Image Grabber tweak that has just hit Cydia is a tool that affords users the ability to extract any image from within any web view that is found within iOS. The tweak itself is effectively a fully-featured image extraction tool that integrates into Apple's mobile operating system to give users some additional power to handle displayed media.
For those of you who think that using a smartphone should require the minimal amount of effort possible to operate, then having to arrange icons on the iPhone’s home screen may involve more effort than some are willing to expend. Thankfully, those who are jailbroken, and pay regular visits to the Cydia store will more than likely have managed to find some packages to automate certain processes.
