"Love is in the air" is a famous phrase, and one that you're probably going to be hearing ad nauseam as we close in in Valentine's day halfway through next month. Apple has, quite naturally, sought to latch onto this brief period of gift-buying, and with the iPad Air being among its marquee products, used that trusty old saying to its advantage. But while, as the company states on the promotional landing page, "love is in the Air" (like, the iPad Air.. geddit?), the feel-good vibe doesn't extend to any sort of price-cut for the new, and highly sought-after device. Still, there are plenty of gifts lovingly hand-picked by the fruit company, (see, we can all do bad puns), and if you feel like treating yourself (or that special someone) this Valentine's, Apple is looking to reel you in.
A week ago, app developer Steven Troughton-Smith revealed some interesting screenshots regarding the forthcoming iOS in the Car feature from Apple. Although it is unknown when exactly the grand roll out will commence, Troughton-Smith's findings manifested through a beta build of iOS 7.1, and as such, we anticipate that the final version may well include the new automobile-friendly implementation. Since last week, the well-known dev has been digging into iOS 7.0.3 and discovered that certain features of iOS in the Car are already present (albeit hidden) deep within this release, and using the iOS Simulator, has posted a clip onto YouTube, offering - for the first time - a brief glimpse of the dash-tailored system in operation.
Apple's notification banner feature, which first arrived with iOS 5, ensured that the days of constant, obtrusive pop-ups were long gone. But it's fair to say that amid some of the changes Jony Ive and the interface design team made with iOS 7, the new banner was more rather less flattering and more just flattening, with a plain, neutral drop-down seeming the product of thirty seconds of thought. But a new jailbreak tweak by the name of Coono takes the dominant color of an app's icon and uses it to shade said app's notifications.
Although certain areas of the tech world seem drunk with excitement about Google's Glass project, there remain plenty of questions regarding the device's viability as a consumer product. Price, for example, is one area that could make-or-break this emerging technology once it enters the end-user later this year, but cost alone is not the only hurdle. Those accustomed to wearing normal, prescription lenses cannot comfortably utilize Glass due to its lack of support for those in need of visual aids, but today, those in ownership of the beta Explorer Edition (v2 only) can select from one of four different styles of prescription lens made available by Google for an additional $225.
Zephyr was one of the most popular tweaks for iOS 6, and if you happened to use it yourself, you'll know exactly why. The ability to swipe between app windows with such fluidity felt like a feature that should always have been a part of the iOS experience, and since the iOS 7 jailbreak came about courtesy of Evasi0n, we've heard from a number of readers asking if Zephyr for iOS would be making a reappearance for the latest and greatest version of Apple's mobile operating system. Just recently, a new tweak entered the jailbreak scene called MultitaskingGestures, which, as the name implies, brings that Zephyr-esque experience to the new firmware.
Jailbreaking iOS devices has many different benefits, but possibly the one that causes most to go through the process is the added ability to customize just about everything. In our experience we've found that people will customize just about every aspect of iOS, often in ways that we would never have imagined being useful. Useful or not, it seems people like to tweak things, especially when it comes to visual elements.
Ever since security contractor Edward Snowden started leaking classified NSA documents last year the subject of what security agencies can and cannot find out about us has been on the forefront of many an agenda. Just recently, the U.S. President was forced to make a statement on the subject, clarifying what information its agencies were collecting about its own citizens, and now a new report claims that both the NSA and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, can scrape data from the very apps we use on our smartphones.
Well, we didn't see that one coming! A report from industry sleuth Eldar Murtazin suggests that Google may cease its popular Nexus line of smartphone and tablet from next year. Instead, Murtazin says, the Big G will focus instead on re-releasing pre-existing devices as Google Play Edition models, running on stock Android and without any OEM bloatware.
Samsung's product range is ubiquitous, and when it comes to the mobile industry, the South Korean outfit has proven time and again that it is unafraid to experiment and, if necessary, hit every corner of every market going. The sheer number of smartphones it currently has on sale only underlines this point, but with the phablet market locked down with the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Gear ensuring a smartwatch entry, the company may now be turning its attentions to Google's Glass. As The Korea Times Reports, Samsung is apparently prepping its own flavor of face computer, and all could be revealed as soon as IFA in September.
As of today, Microsoft's cloud service SkyDrive will be known as 'OneDrive,' a move that no doubt strengthens connections with the all-new Xbox One console. The decision is not entirely voluntary, with the name change very much the result of a trademark case involving the Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), but it does, in a sense, afford Redmond company's product range an improved degree of uniformity.
