Although Facebook's IPO may not have taken off as successfully as Mark Zuckerberg and his team would perhaps have liked, there's little doubting the work ethic of Facebook in 2012. The mobile app finally seems to have been taken care of, and among a continual stream of new features and performance enhancements, the News Feed now supports the use of emoticons in comments.
The new and extremely useful Passbook app has now been an official part of iOS for nearly a month, and although a number of high profile companies are starting to create their own virtual coupons and cards to be used within the app, it could really do with some high profile support to give it the boost that it deserves. It looks as if that boost could arrive quite soon, with the news that Apple themselves are extending their in-store payment capabilities to support their own Passbook creation for iOS 6 users.
Microsoft seems to be getting pretty good at producing video commercials that make their products stand out from the rest. I'm pretty sure we have all seem the wonderful TV commercial for Internet Explorer that makes us actually want to give IE a second chance. Apart from that, we also recently saw the first Windows 8 ad going live that introduces us to the OS.
Users of iOS 6 will be more than aware by now that Google's powerful Maps app is no longer part of Apple's plans, with the latest iteration of the company's mobile operating system shipping with their own mapping solution in place of it. It doesn't really matter what your personal opinions are on the subject and whether you love or hate the Apple’s very own Maps app, the fact remains that competition always breeds innovation and having an official Google Maps app on the App Store can only be a good thing for iOS users.
Apple has been busy over the last few weeks with the introduction of new iPods, launching the all-new iPhone 5 and the accompanying iOS 6 software. The hardware and software that has come out of Cupertino’s doors recently would normally be enough for any other company but it looks like Apple aren't finished yet with the introduction of a miniature iPad on the cards as well as the possible announcement surrounding a much welcome refresh to their iMac computers.
Now that the wait is finally over and Apple have officially started shipping out the iPod touch fifth-generation to consumers, we can truly get an insight into what the new portable media player is like from an aesthetic and technical aspect and how it actually stacks up against its predecessor as well as the sixth-generation iPhone.
iPhone Dev-Team have just updated Redsn0w, adding full support for final public release of iOS 6 on select devices with official version of Cydia, along with tons of new features which are detailed after the jump.
An understandably disillusioned Microsoft have confirmed that they are aware of the possible leak of the Halo 4 Xbox console game and are currently in the process of working in an attempt to get to the bottom of how the slip occurred. The latest iteration of the phenomenally popular Halo franchise is slated for a worldwide release during the first week of November but it seems that the Redmond based company couldn't keep a tight lock on the game any longer.
There have been a number of packages landing in the Cydia store that offer alternative ways to handle the banner notifications that were introduced by Apple as part of iOS 5. There was a definite need for the notifications system to be changed and the introduction of banner notifications is a step forward but some users feel they need to be made bigger to display the full text or have some additional customization options applied to them. If having the alert of the title read out to you in a Siri voice was on your wish list then the TitleSpeak package is probably right up your street.
We've seen plenty of photo based applications on the App Store as well as a boatload of social networking variants, some of which are worldwide successes like Instagram and Facebook while others are more niche and used by only a select few. The Blurtopia iPhone and iPod touch app that recently landed in the App Store seems to be an amalgamation of a few genres but prefers to differentiate itself by being the application that can help us answer life's questions with the help of an active and engaged community.
