The luxury house of the X Factor's Savan Kotecha illustrated just how much of the world we now have at our fingertips. A music producer for the hit TV talent show, he's really kitted his pad out, and a large portion of his gadgets - including electric blinds, cameras and door locks - are all controlled from the comfort of his iPad. Although he spent a fair wad, these kinds of technologies are becoming more and more available to the average consumer, and as Samsung is now demonstrating with its Smart Air Conditioning systems, if it's electronic, it can be controlled by a mobile device.
Apple's iPhone 5 may have been a hit with consumers, but with those looking to take photos on the moderately-improved camera, the issue of purple haze has really put a dampener on proceedings. To be fair, the iPhone 5 isn't the only culprit - the new Google Nexus 4 has also seen similar issues - but despite Apple initially claiming consumers were simply holding their devices incorrectly when taking a shot, it's something that the smartphone industry needs to tackle as a whole. The case makers have attempted to amend the issue in the meanwhile, and while the camHoodie did a pretty decent job of removing that mauve mist from our snaps, the App Store developers are now trying their hand at sorting the problem.
An operating system upgrade is always worth having, in my opinion. Newer changes are almost always valuable, and the ability to utilize the latest technology on your smartphone, tablet, computer or laptop is a much-needed benefit. Similar holds true for Windows – the world’s most used PC operating system – where Windows 8 is the latest and greatest in the choices that you have. A lot of people have their issues with the operating system, but that isn’t stopping Microsoft from making constant updates to the OS, making it even better than before. I leave the debate of how useful Windows 8 is at that, and come to something that’s actually limited in the operating system: backward compatibility. Up until Windows 7, Microsoft allowed users to run applications that were compatible with, say, Windows XP, but that has been taken out in the latest iteration of Windows.
Apple's iPhone 5 was predicted to be the biggest smartphone release of the year, and so has proven to be the case. The first weekend sales eclipsed that of any other handset released in 2012, but despite high demand, yield issues have prevented the Cupertino company from producing the numbers to adequately meet demand. Initially, those looking to order the iPhone 5 from Apple's online Store were met with a wait of up to four weeks, but with that wait having recently been slashed to one week, the latest and greatest Apple smartphone is now listing as "in stock" in a handful of countries.
For some unknown and undocumented reason, Apple took it upon themselves to entirely remove the lyrics feature from the iPad Music app, but rather bizarrely left it in on the iPhone and iPod touch. If you never quite recovered from the trauma of missing lyrics on your iPad, then a rather magical iOS developer named Merlin has your back with the release of his Lyrics for iPad tweak.
As those of you well-travelled will be more than aware, the business of checking in, collecting luggage, waiting around and dealing with cancellations, gate changes and unforeseen delays tends to be part and parcel of the whole experience of catching a flight. To make things easier, there are an abundance of helpful apps purporting to keep us as informed as we need to be, and one of the most popular - FlightBoard - has just gone free for a very limited time only.
At the present moment in time the most popular mobile operating system of choice is Android. It isn't a coincidence that Android is also one of the most configurable and customizable operating systems that ships with mobile devices, allowing users to not only change the look and feel of their device, but to also change input methods through the installation of various different keyboard layouts and configurations.
As well as creating exciting new titles for gaming fans on smartphones and tablets to enjoy, developers and publishers are seeing more and more value in simply porting old classics through to mobile devices. Not only does a re-release / port press on the nostalgic buttons of those who previously enjoyed said title, but it also forges an all-new army of fans, and the news of Final Fantasy IV arriving soon on iOS and Android will do exactly that once more.
With the Wii U having succeeded the original Wii console late last month, count-ups of initials sales numbers seem indicative of a strong start in the market, but Microsoft's Xbox 360 - despite its age - still came out on top in the early period of holiday sales totals. According to resident numbers firm NPD, the 360 made the most sales during the month of November, with figures boosted on every console thanks to the multitude of Black Friday / Thanksgiving / Cyber Monday specials on offer.
If you've been using your jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, but needed to get quick access to important information such as the time, date, battery status of the device or just some network based information like what the SSID the phone is connected to, then you will realize the annoyance caused by having to pause or exit the game just to get this relatively simple information. Sure, it isn't life's greatest problem, but the whole point of advanced mobile devices is to make things easier for us, so maybe the Cydia based HUD Pro tweak could be the answer for some people.
