One of the main driving forces behind users performing a jailbreak on their iOS device is the fact that it gives the ability to modify the feel and appearance of the operating system. As a company, Apple are a champion of innovative design and their current range of hardware is amongst the most beautifully designed out there, but a growing number of users feel the need to modify the stock interface elements to better suit their individual tastes.
The Mac App Store is still in its infancy when compared to its older brother, the iOS App Store. Opened officially in January 2011, it celebrated its first birthday last month and has been an extremely successful outlet for Apple in those twelve months. The Mac App Store offers digital downloads of software in similar fashion to the iOS application outlet but contains software designed and developed for machines running Mac OS X 10.6.6 and later.
Ask any seasoned jailbreaker and they will be able to tell you that the Cydia Store is literally jam-packed full of themes and aesthetic customizations which are designed to make an iPhone or iPad look as different as possible from the native iOS look. This isn't because designers believe there is anything wrong with the visuals in iOS per se, but jailbreaking is about the freedom to alter and change the way a stock iOS device looks and behaves, and producing themes is one way to drastically do that.
Of all the features of iOS hitherto, the Notes app has remained largely untouched, making for a nice, simple – if a little under-featured – note-taking utility.
One of iTunes and iOS devices’ biggest “limitations” is how users cannot sync with multiple iTunes libraries. It is one of the biggest shocks iOS converts receive when they set up their device for the first time as they are used to simply copy-pasting files from their PC and onto their device. This isn't very pleasant, but it forces the user to organize all their songs by placing them on one computer in iTunes.
Another day, and yet another Siri-based tweak emerges from the Cydia Store. Today's, which takes into account the equally-new Notification Center, allows you to launch the voice-activated technology with a simple downward swipe of the status bar.
When the iPhone 4 went on sale in June 2010, it appeared to be yet another flawless piece of engineering from the Apple design teams. The previous three releases had all featured a similar design to one another with the iPhone 3G and 3GS being practically identical. The iPhone 4 made a break away from the tried and tested iPhone form and featured an entirely new and beautiful design which comprised of two panels of hardened aluminosilicate glass and an uninsulated stainless steel frame.
The official iOS App Store has been open for business since July 2008, and in that time, it has passed a number of significant milestones including breaching the 100,000 available applications mark as well as dishing out billions of dollars to developers in the last four years. The popularity of the App Store has considered to grow as it gets older, with thousands of registered developers around the world submitting more and more free and commercial applications on a daily basis.
Samsung chose the biggest advertising day of the year in the United States to debut their Apple mocking, Samsung Galaxy Note commercial which aired for the first time during Super Bowl XLVI. The commercial, which featured a number of blatant attacks toward Apple, featured possibly an ageing British rock band as well as quite possibly the biggest mobile phone I have ever seen, which even comes with a stylus. Yes, 2012 and Samsung are releasing top of the range smartphones with a pen.
It is growing to be an increasingly difficult task to keep up with who owns what patents, and with companies applying for, and being granted more and more, the task looks set to be come even more tasking. We have seen news coming out of California in the last few days that Apple have just been awarded an additional nineteen patents related to various products and technologies, one of which relates to the design of their ultra thin MacBook Air range.
