One of the latest packages to land in Cydia is Virtual Home; an extensions that uses the iPhone 5s Touch ID sensor for more than just authentication and device unlocking.
Jay Freeman, the creator and maintainer of the alternative App Store for jailbroken devices, has updated Cydia Substrate (formerly Mobile Substrate) to version 0.9.5000. The recently released Evasi0n7 jailbreak managed to take everyone by surprise, including Freeman himself, but today’s news means that the final piece of the jailbreak puzzle is in place, leaving developers free to update their packages and extensions for Apple’s latest 64-bit devices such as the iPhone 5s and iPad Air.
Now that Evad3rs has launched an iOS 7 jailbreak, we're all sat impatiently waiting for what has to be the most obvious tweak that anyone could wish for on an iPhone 5s. In fact, it's something that we've been asking Apple to add in subsequent releases of iOS 7, but it doesn't look like it's going to be forthcoming. At least, it's not in iOS 7.1 as yet.
Apple has announced that it has reached a deal with Chinese carrier China Mobile to make the iPhone officially available on the network starting January 17, 2014. Consumer demand for the iPhone has historically been extremely high in the Chinese market, but has dwindled in recent times thanks to the availability of affordable devices from rivals Samsung and local Chinese manufacturers. The official tie-in with China Mobile will see the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c officially made available for sale through the world's largest network starting January 14, 2014.
It's a title that almost invites allegations of casual sexism, but stay with us a little while and hopefully all will make a little more sense. See, you know how Facebook tracks usage of its service to the nth degree and then shares that with its advertisers in order to help target ads? Well, that same information can be used to try and extrapolate usage data for specific devices across specific demographics, which is where we get the information that leads to that title. Intrigued?
Apple has today released a new iPhone 5s commercial that is guaranteed to pull the heart’s strings. The perfectly timed video ad follows the company's annual trend of releasing a product commercial at this time of year, this time featuring the flagship iPhone 5s smartphone capturing high-definition video of the family Christmas festivities. The iPhone is then used in conjunction with an Apple TV and Apple's AirPlay protocol to allow the 'Harris' family to watch the video together on a big screen TV.
China may be the location in which most Apple products are manufactured, but the iPhone has yet to make a huge mark on the country. With the iPhone 5c outlined as the first step towards making an impact on this developing market, the The Wall Street Journal suggests that China Mobile, the nation's foremost carrier by some distance, will begin taking iPhone pre-orders from 12th December. Although China's 4G network doesn't officially launch until next week on the 18th of December, it looks as though China Mobile wishes to get interested parties to commit early, and if all runs smoothly, this could be the first significant step for Apple in its quest to expand its mobile reach.
With the news late last week that the iPhone 5s was shipping within 1-3 days for the UK and many other markets across the world, the signs were there that Apple was finally getting on top of supplies. Now, it has emerged that - in the U.S., at least - the Cupertino giant has achieved 100 percent stock rate in all of its Retail Stores, with each variant of the iPhone 5s available in every single outlet.
The new Touch ID fingerprint sensor mightn't have reached the new iPad Air and Retina iPad mini as some had predicted and hoped, but iPhone 5s users are still getting to grips with what is an exciting implementation. Being a new implementation and all, this learning curve is proving difficult to some, and considering the feature itself is rather unrefined, it's only natural that users should experience a few failed attempts when trying to pass their lock screen using Touch ID. If you're growing a little frustrated by the sensor's inability to read your fingerprint in a timely manner, neat little trick published over at the Huff Post could help make Touch ID just that little bit more efficient. Details, as ever, can be found after the fold.
Mobile devices have come a long way since the iPhone took the market by storm back in 2007, and as well as offering powerful apps, better games and enhanced overall functionality, point-and-shoot photography has also benefited from improved camera capabilities.

