A part of iOS 7 that has received next to no discussion but has the potential to be the biggest addition to the iOS feature set, iBeacon is Apple's attempt at taking location aware apps to the next level and, if the latest tests shown by Major League Baseball are anything to go by, then they might just be onto something.
One of Apple's biggest selling points for the iPhone 5s, or at least the one that is easiest to demo in-store, is the addition of the Touch ID system. Hidden below the Home button, Touch ID allows iPhone owners to unlock their device securely, without having to enter a passcode. Instead, the clever technology reads the fingerprint of the person pressing the Home button, and if it matches what it's looking for, then the phone unlocks. Magic.
Here's our full video comparison of Apple iPhone 5S vs Samsung Galaxy S4. It seems fit to put iPhone 5s and Galaxy S4 through a rigorous comparison to see which one actually comes out on top.
As is always the case with such things, and especially anything involving streaming video or music, Google’s Chromecast dongle immediately attracted the attention of modders and developers alike. If there’s anything that gets the geek juices flowing it’s going to be a mini dongle with a bit if computing power. Sure enough, Chromecast was hacked, but in a good way which we users always like.
It seems that the suggestion that Samsung is copying Apple by launching a golden smartphone has irked someone at the company. In fact, it seems to have irritated them enough that the firm's official Samsung Tomorrow blog has been used to point out that Apple isn't actually the first phone maker to gain the Midas touch. Samsung, as it takes great pains to point out, has something of a history with gold-colored phones.
Amid several rather significant announcements this week, Valve has just taken the wraps off an intriguing new game controller, which, in a break from market trends, will not feature any joysticks whatsoever. The strange looking peripheral includes in-built trackpads in the kinds of positions you'd normally expect to see sticky-outy bits, and with the buttons also having been placed in peculiar areas, this is certainly no ordinary, run-of-the-mill controller.
After what has seemed like a good couple of years of waiting by the sidelines and hoping consumers would buy into its Windows Phone ecosystem, Microsoft appears to be taking a much more proactive role in helping draft in new users. Having recently launched an iPad trade-in promotion offering two hundred bucks for your old iPad, the Redmond outfit has decided to run something similar for those wielding an iPhone. By heading over to your local Microsoft Store, the company will give you $200 credit towards a new device if you decide to get rid of your old iPhone 4s or 5, and with quite a few new entries to the Windows Phone range during the past few months, it could be an attractive proposition to a potential upgrader.
With the iPhone launch now, to all intents and purposes, out of the way, attention has quickly begun to turn to the iPad 5 and iPad mini 2, both of which are expected to be in line for some significant changes at some point next month. While it is widely assumed that the full-size Apple slate will take on a more iPad mini-esque form factor, the smaller of the two slabs is also in line for a few respectable upgrades of its own, and a new leaking of the iPad mini 2's shell via a Chinese site appears to indicate that we'll be seeing both the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and the popular gold color configuration.
VLC is undoubtedly the second most popular media player on both Windows and Mac. The app's ability to play just about any file thrown at it is the thing of legend at this point, and is something that plenty of other developers have tried to replicate. To date, the folks at VideoLAN are the only ones to manage it, and they've done a particularly good job of it, too.
With iOS 7.0.2 just released, many of our jailbreak users have been in contact asking whether updating the device would hinder any chances of a future jailbreak.
