Apple has hit 50 billion app downloads. Many more if you count all the unofficial apps that can be grabbed from Cydia on a jailbroken iPhone. Some of these are infinitely useful and belong in the realm of official status.

Flux:
The brilliance of Flux is you never notice it working, yet it's becomes impossible to live without. As the sun sets, this app adjust the colour temperature of your display to a warmer hue. It's well known that bright white light in the evening causes eye strain and sleep problems. Flux makes using your iDevice at night a lot less stressful on the old peepers.

iFile:
Have a problem with the 16GB iPad's lack of storage? No problem! Just pay $200 more for the 64GB version. What if that's still not enough? Say you have a huge movie and music collection, or you edit a lot of photos and videos on the go. Tough lucks. The iPad is one of the few high end tablets that doesn't officially support removable storage. Even Microsoft's craptastic Surface has a card slot. Thankfully there's iFile. It's a file browser for the iPad but it also lets you use the camera kit and an SD card to store whatever you want. Apple doesn't trust it's users to deeper into iOS's file system. However, it's hard to deny how useful something like this is.

BossPrefs:
Full control of you phone's settings from the notification menu. That's all you really need to know about BossPrefs. Adjust brightness, turn off cellular data and WiFi, or free up memory with one touch. Go in deeper to see memory and disk usage, and your IP address. It eliminated the kludge involved with adjusting basic settings, without using the settings app. Apple will never put a utility like this in the store, since it gives the user too much unsanctioned power. Though it's something that should be integrated into the next iOS.

Got some more jailbreak apps and tweaks you can't live with out, and want to see go official? Post them in the comments.

Meet the Kitchen family, and their five year old son Danny. Like many families, they have a communal iPad they let their child play with. Dad was kind enough to even download some free games for Danny. He put his password in, grabbed the games, and let his kid go to town. Over the next 15 minutes, the precious little scamp went on a mind boggling shopping spree. To the family's horror, Danny had racked up £1,700  ($2500) on dad's credit card.

Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Apple realized it was a mistake and decided to refund the Kitchens. However, there's a lot of lingering questions. How could this happen, and more importantly, how can you prevent it from happening to you?

The blame obviously lies with the parents themselves. Apple had emailed them an itemized invoice for 70 pounds the next day. They ignored it assuming it was sent in error. In fact it's likely the spree would have continued had the Kitchens' credit card company not called. That's mistake number one. Any charge that you did not make on your credit card should always be cause for alarm. ALWAYS check your receipts. I can't stress this enough.

The second mistake was allowing a five year old unsupervised access to the family computer. Kids are a lot smarter than we adults tend to give them credit for. It's truly amazing how much trouble they can make in such a short time. Especially when you give them the means to buy things when the child has no concept of money.

"Free" games targeted at young children frequently use micro-transactions for in-game items. These items range for $1 all the way up to $100 or more for something as stupid as a "Trunk of Diamonds" in one particular farming simulator. The kid is smart enough to know that more resources make the game easier. What they don't know is these items cost mommy and daddy real, finite money.

Lucky for you, it's very easy to protect yourself from what's happened to the Kitchens and countless others.

1. Never let kids use the computer unsupervised. 
Don't treat it as a babysitting tool. If your child wants to play a game, play it with them. As any parent knows, kids that young can start a world of trouble if you take your eyes off them. For the love of god never share your passwords with your children either. Heck I can remember hacking my dad's user account when I was eight because his password was too obvious.

2. Familiarize yourself with your computer's security and parental controls. 
It's amazing how many people rely on technology to run their lives, but are still technologically illiterate.

In iOS, under the settings tab, go into General and click restrictions  These are your parental controls.  The list labelled "Allowed Content" is what you're interested in. Particularly the two at the bottom. By default, iOS allows in-app purchases and waits 15 minutes before requiring a password to buy and download new content from the App Store. You'll want to set these to OFF and IMMEDIATELY respectively. This will prevent kids from accidentally buying things without your permission.

Turn off "In-App Purchases" and set Require Password to "Immediate" to prevent accidental charges

3. Set up a separate iTunes account for your kids
The biggest problem with iOS is you can't set up separate accounts for different users. HOWEVER, what you can do is set  up multiple iTunes Store accounts which can be used on a single device.

It's very easy and requires about five minutes of your time. Sign out of iTunes on your computer, then hit sign in and select "Create Apple ID". Don't tie a credit card to this account. Just select "none" as your payment method. Now that your kid has their own account, which you will monitor, they cannot download any apps or in-game content that aren't free.

4. Teach your kids the value of money
It's never too early to start teaching your kids the value of a dollar. Get them to do some chores to earn money, or if they like playing games on your iPad, some iTunes gift cards. Let them know that once they spend the value of the card, that money is gone and they'll have to earn another. Not only will this prevent you from financial heartache, it will set them up for a responsible future.

5. When all else fails, don't count on a bailout
The Kitchens got extremely lucky here, in that Apple refunded them. However, they are a business not a charity. Once these incidents start happening too many times, they won't be as forgiving. If you take the above steps to protect yourself, you shouldn't encounter problems. That is unless your kid is Bart Simpson and is smart enough to steal your credit card. But that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Sources:
ArsTechnica
BBC News

You're driving through the Australian outback to a town you've never been to before. You come to a cross roads. The sign says go straight, your iPhone says turn left. So you turn left. You've become so accustomed to blindly trusting technology. Your phone could never make an error, could it? A day later police find you near dead out in the scorching desert. Apple Maps had thought the town was miles away from where it actually was. 

This is a true story about Mildura in Victoria, Australia. It's a typical small town about half way between Melbourne and Adelaide. Mildura is a quaint little place of 30,000, known for its vineyards and wineries.The town is connected to the two cities by a pair of modern, four lane highways.It isn't located off a dirt road in the middle of the outback. Though according to the iPhone, it is. Apple Maps had placed the town inside the Murray Sunset National Park. After six separate incidents of people getting lost in the bush, state police issued a warning to motorists. Apple's mapping software was not to be trusted. 

This topped the laundry list of problems with Apple Maps. Some roads were missing, some roads that didn't exist were there, many things were located miles from where they actually were, 3D rendering looked like a warped Dali painting. As soon as the app launched, the complaints started rolling in. Making matters worse, it was made the default mapping application. The Google Maps app was no longer an option.

Mildura is not in the middle of the outback. Source: Wikipedia

In the end, it forced Apple to do something  unprecedented. They made a sincere apology for their mistake and even pointed people to alternative apps they could use in the interim. Apple has apologized for issues before. However, they usually twist it to somehow blame the user. This time, they knew they had screwed up bad. They released an incomplete product based built using bad data. Not because they thought they could do better than Google, but because they didn't want to deal with Google. The search giant ultimately had the last laugh. The new Google Maps app for iOS broke download records. Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave.

More important than Apple's apology is what the fiasco says about ourselves. As smartphones have become commonplace, we've gotten comfortable with letting them think for us. So much so that common sense takes a ride in the trunk.

I've been told for quite some time now that I'm wrong about mobile gaming. Many fellow gamers have said that smart phones and tablets are not cannibalizing the console and handheld market. A recent study by Neilson proves them wrong. Kids want Santa to bring them tablets, not games.

The study looked at interest in electronics for kids 6-12 and teenagers. Almost half off all children said they wanted an iPad. The Wii U topped second place with 39%. The iPod Touch, iPad Mini, and iPhone rounded out the top five. Only a quarter of all kids wanted an Xbox or PS3. In the case of portables, 29% wanted a 3DS and 18% wanted a PSP. Only 14% wanted a Playstation Vita.

In the case of teenagers, things are a little different. The iPad still topped the list with 21% wanting one. Computers, non-iOS tablets, Wii U, and iPhone rounded out the top five. Only 8% of teens said they wanted a game console, with the PS3 being the most popular. In the case of portable systems, the 3DS and Vita actually come out on top. It's a Pyrrhic victory with only 5% and 4% respectively.

Things aren't full of Christmas cheer for console manufacturers this year. Though we're hardly set for another crash, a lot of what's going on mirrors 1983. There's a strong interest in multi-functional devices over dedicated gaming systems. Interest in portables has taken a nose dive. Still, it's unlikely parents will be willing to spend upwards of $500 for an iPad. Especially for the little ones. If Sony and Microsoft take anything from this, they will need to get their new systems out by Holiday 2013. The current generation has finally run its course.

Source: IGN
Image copyright Bethesda, via Nukapedia

Apple's event yesterday generated excitement as they usually do. Though I sensed it wasn't as much this time around as we've seen in the past. It's been a year since Steve Jobs died and you can already feel the magic starting to disappear. This time around it was a new product announcement that seemed to anger fans more than encourage them to open their wallets. The iPad 4 caps out a growing list of questionable decisions the electronics giant has made in the past few months.

It's been seven months since Apple introduced the iPad 3. We were told it was a revolutionary device with it's revolutionary new retina display and graphics. In reality, it wasn't that special. It also had some major hurdles such as the infamous yellow screens. I still bought one, like many did. I even went for the expensive 64gb model so I could do more photo and video work with it.

I sort of suspected Apple would refresh the iPad at the fall event. Though most of us assumed it would simply remove the dock connector and replace it with lightning. Instead we got a new iPad with a speed bumped processor A6X, said to be twice as fast as the current A5X. Less than a year and the iPad 3 has been rendered obsolete. It's now selling at some stores for less than an iPad 2.

Many people who bought the 3 are justifiably upset. Myself included. It feels like we got conned into a product that Apple pushed out to make quick cash, full well knowing they were going to replace it soon after. If the update cycles are now down to half a year, it's impossible to keep up with. Especially with Apple's notorious reputation of planned obsolescence on the software side.

After the fiasco with maps, the incompatible lightning connector, and the war with Google, Apple has certainly generated a lot of bad blood with their fans. It's time to replace Tim Cook as their CEO and get someone younger in there to take the reins. Trying to copy Jobs' formula isn't working anymore. Until that happens, I can no longer recommend iOS products. Especially after seeing what Jellybean can do, and the potential for Windows RT. Apple is quickly losing their position as the best in the mobile market. It's only a matter of time before their cult status leaves with it, and history repeats itself.

If you haven't upgraded to iOS 6 yet, you probably shouldn't. It's not often you see a mobile OS generate this much controversy. Needless to say, Apple's breakup with Google hasn't gone as swimmingly as the company expected.

After about a week out in the wild the tech clueless are still wondering where their YouTube went. Meanwhile the tech smart are up in arms over how awful Apple Maps is.

Apple has pulled, what I'll refer to as a Sony. They released an update that removed two important features, and replaced one with an inferior version. While Apple Maps isn't that bad, it's just not very good either. GIS (geographic information system) is difficult to develop. Google has had years to build their maps app. While I don't have statistics, Maps is most likely their number two product in both usage and revenue. As a result, it's very good and constantly kept up to date. It has to be.

Apple on the other hand has inherited old data. It points users to roads that don't exist, or simply lacks ones that do. It misplaces major landmarks, lacks the same level of detail, and has sent some users miles off course. The problem with Apple is they're a hardware design company. Google specializes in search, Apple does not.

The switch does make business sense for Apple. They do not want to give royalties and visibility to a company that produces a competing product. Though offering an inferior one hurts the brand. Especially if it's a feature people rely on for their daily lives. Given the choice, I think even the most ardent of Apple fanboys would still pick Google Maps.

Equally foolish is Google dragging their heels on their own Maps app for iOS. However, you can still use the 3D Google Earth app, or the web version.

Second problem on the list is the removal of YouTube. Granted the original iOS app wasn't that great, and has been neglected for years, it worked. Now it's gone.

As soon as Apple released iOS 6, Google came in with their own app, and it sucks. A whole host of users have lined up to complain about speed issues, lack of AirPlay support, no integrated volume control, and ads galore. Thankfully there are some free alternatives made by third parties. The iPhone is not looking like quite the multimedia powerhouse it used to be.

Looking at the big picture, neither of these issues will be fixed anytime soon. It will take Apple years to play catch-up with Google on maps. Google doesn't seem interested in bringing proper support to iOS either. They never have given it much thought. So looks like you're stuck with iOS 5. At least until some ingenious developer in jailbreak community ports both apps over.

Occasionally I like to look back on some of the old blog posts I've written. I came across my scathing first impressions of the original iPad. Needless to say, I didn't like it. Though in my defense, I wasn't the only one.  I chided it as a giant iPod Touch. After all "nobody in their right mind is going to buy a neutered tablet, and nobody is going to buy a super sized iPhone."

The laundry list of things I wanted in an Apple tablet are laughable. 

Full Mac OS X
When the iPad came out, I hated the fact that it ran iOS. In fairness, iOS 3.2 was not exactly ideal. However, putting a desktop OS onto the iPad would have been an abject failure. Look at what Microsoft attempted to do with Windows 7 tablets. Now they're finally releasing their own tablet OS.

Desktop operating systems are just not designed to be used with a touch screen. Would it have increased the functionality ten fold as I originally claimed? Well, my iPad gets used far more than my laptop does so that argument speaks for itself.

Intel Atom Processor
At the time, the Atom was faster than the A4. It also consumed more power and would have required a bigger battery. My main argument behind it was porting x86 applications over to the tablet space. Which in hindsight was stupid. Ever try running a modern non-linear video editor or Photoshop on an Atom or Brazos? They barely run Windows. x86 applications just aren't tuned for mobile. Aside from that, Atom's built in GPU is useless. It can't handle proper HD video decoding. Nobody would want an iPad that couldn't even do video.

External connectivity
This is one thing I was right on and is still a lingering problem to this day. The iPad does not support external storage. However, a wide range of surprising peripherals have come out. Even ones that turn your iDevice into point of sale units, and medical scanners. That and the camera kit was capable of far more than it was advertised. You could run USB keyboards and external microphones through it, or hack the iPad for external storage.

Flash
Adobe and Apple have yet to reconcile their differences. Almost three years later and there's still no Flash on the iPad. Not that it's a big deal. It's implementation on Android tablets was a disaster. Flash just isn't great at hardware acceleration. Nowhere near as good as HTML5 is. It requires more system resources, so is struggles a lot with HD content. Since then only a few holdout sites are incompatible with the iPad. Guess they didn't get the memo that Flash is dead. Long live HTML5!

Better software
The demanded that the iPad get iChat, iLife, and it's own office suite. They did come. iWork was released at launch, chat apps came shortly there after. In fact everything I wanted is pretty much available on the iPad now. Even a professional grade non-linear video editor, Pinnacle Studio. Photoshop, it's there. As Apple relaxed their submission policy, better and more functional apps came. It's gotten to the point where the iPad can replace a laptop. It even has that iSight camera I wanted, two of them.

The iPad wasn't a solution for a problem that didn't exist. It was a solution for a problem you didn't know you had. Now we all work, read, surf, and play on tablets. So I guess it did revolutionize the way we consume media. So much for a dumb idea.

Legendary inventor and Apple founder Steve Jobs, has died. He was only 56. Jobs had been struggling with cancer for several years. The illness forced him to step down as CEO of the electronics giant earlier this year.






News of his death comes just one day after the unveiling of the iPhone 4S. Apple CEO Tim Cook released the following statement.

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates also left his condolences.

I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.

Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

Love or hate Apple, Steve Jobs was a visionary. Much of the technology we use today was influenced by his creations. He was one of the last true visionaries in corporate America, and proved the American dream still lived. Our thoughts go out to his family. He will be missed.


Source: Engadget

Your iPhone knows what you did last summer. Ever since Apple released iOS4, a secret file has been storing your movements. It works by triangulating your cell signal instead of the GPS. It's far from accurate. However, it does show the general vicinity of your travels. The scary part is how easy it is to access this information. Programmer and ex-Apple employee Pete Warden has developed a Mac OS app to access the data. It shows everywhere you've visited as a collection of dots on a map.

For it to work, you need iOS 4 installed on your iPhone or iPad 3G. During the brief three-month period I had it on my iPhone 3G, it shows the general areas I've travelled to. In some cases it's spot on, in others it's miles off.


Regardless of the accuracy, it's a serious privacy concern. Apple doesn't appear to be collecting or using this data in any way. However, they won't say why they're doing it. It's stored only on the phone itself and any computer you synced it to. This kind of information has potential benefits for law enforcement. We've all seen them do it on CSI. This information could be a huge advantage for darker elements too: stalkers, overzealous cops, lawyers, shady government agencies, and private detectives.

A lot of us are digital hoarders. We have to take everything with us. Sadly, the iPad has one serious flaw. Similar devices allow you to expand storage via memory cards. Apple users are stuck with built in storage. They'll sell a 16gb iPad for $500, but they know that's not enough. What if you could skirt this limitation? Thanks to jailbreak app iFile, it's easier than you think.

iFile tickles open the darkest corners of your iPad. It allows you to view the file system, access previously closed off information, and select files like you would on OS X. Once you start thinking outside the box, you can expect big things from this app. Those big things being extra storage space for all your media files.

For it to work, you'll need to buy the Apple Camera Kit and jailbreak your iPad. Load up some media onto an SD card and slot it into the adapter. Fire up iFile and you should see it mounted under devices, labelled "Flash Drive". Click the file you want to play, select the app you want to play it in, and enjoy.

iFile opens up your device to unlimited storage space for media files. It also works with other files, including documents. You can also use third party card readers via the USB camera dock. There are some caveats though. iFile will not work with USB thumb drives due to the iPad's power limitations. The iPad doesn't seem to like powered hubs either. Nor does it support hard drives. If you can get them to work, more power to you. You also cannot store apps on flash media.

With flash cards so cheap these days, iFile is well worth the $4 entry fee. With double the storage or more, you'll have plenty of room for all your music, movies, photos, and documents. Add more cards and capacity becomes limitless. Perfect for those of us who travel, or just like to lug our giant film collections around. Download iFile from Cydia.

Score: 9 out of 10

What works:
-Opens the door to limitless media capacity for your iPad.
-Allows you to choose what apps you want to open the file in
-Works with all file types supported by both first and third party apps
-Mac OS X like interface for easy navigation

What doesn't work:
-No support for USB thumb drives, though this is a hardware issue
-No support for external hard drives
-Price a bit high

Apple loves to mess with their products after launch. Usually for the worse. Hey, it's not a bug, it's a feature! That's what makes the recent story about iPad USB woes so believable. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that iOS 4.2 blocks certain USB devices from being used with the iPad's camera kit. They claim this includes everything from certain cameras, keyboards, and microphones. The story has started making the rounds, with even Engadget reporting it as true.

Here at MMNTech, we never take tech rumours at face value. I tried two things on the list. Both my wireless RF keyboard and headset worked as before. The beef of the story seems to be a drop in power output from the dock connector. 9 to 5 Mac claims it was reduced from 100mA to just 20mA. The RF receiver for my keyboard is rated at 55mA, so that dispels this myth. The claim seem to stem from people who are trying to use plugging ridiculously power hungry USB devices. I wouldn't expect my Blue Snowball microphone to work with my iPad, though apparently one commenter did.

The keyboard hack has always been a little temperamental. Still, the dock connector uses a basic USB standard packaged in a proprietary plug. If they killed third party keyboard support with the camera kit, it's unlikely their own keyboard would work. That along with a whole host of other official devices that use the dock connector. Basically, any device that worked before should work now as long as it's rated below 100mA.

Source: 9 to 5 Mac
Image courtesy of Gotronics

The iPad was supposed to revolutionize the way we consume media. It was the death of the newspaper. Of course papers have been dying for decades. Tablets are in fact breathing new life into the ancient medium.

Enter PressReader for iPad. The app provides access to thousands of papers around the globe. Each organized by country and language. It's not just links to online sites either. It gives you full print editions, laid out exactly as they are on paper.

The free app sorts your news in a virtual book shelf. You can download papers directly from the in-app store and read them at any time. If you subscribe to a paper, the app will download news issues automatically, as soon as they hit newsstands.

Reading a newspaper on the iPad is the same as reading an e-book. Tap the cover to load, then flip through pages to see the articles you want. A quick find bar at the bottom of the screen makes it easy to jump to specific sections.

The papers themselves are high resolution digital scans of the print copies. Same font and all. Want a bigger font? Tap the headline and a text box pops up. From there you can copy and adjust font sizes. That's just for starters. Click the headphone symbol in the text box and PressReader will read the article aloud for you.

The scans are very clean looking, complete with high resolution photos not found on paper. They look exactly as they would on the editor's computer before going to the presses. Reading is easy whether you choose the text box feature or view it directly.

Of course these papers are not free. PressReader offers a free trial that gives you seven free issues. After that, each issue of any paper costs $0.99 US. For a monthly fee of $29.99, you get access to unlimited issues. With this plan, you can read as many different papers as you want. It also allows you to download back issues up to 14 days old.



This price is a bit steep. It's definitely a good deal for news junkies. But if you just read one paper, it's expensive. Digital subscriptions for single papers usually run around $15. The service used to offer a plan to subscribe to a single paper for that price. Unfortunately, they seem to have discontinued it.

The app also has some technical flaws. It can experience slowdowns and will crash occasionally. Not enough to ruin the experience but just enough to be annoying.

Despite the minor flaws, news junkies should definitely check out this app. It's available for free on the iTunes App Store.

Score: 8 out of 10

What works:
-Access to over 1000 newspapers
-High resolution scans of full print issues
-Text box for articles allows you to change fonts
-Direct downloads right in the app
-Monthly fee great deal for news junkies
-Audio feature reads articles aloud

What doesn't
-Occasional crashes and slowdowns
-Monthly free may be steep for light readers

Apple charges a lot for official iPad accessories.

If you plan to do any serious typing on the device, you'll probably want to invest in one of Apple's official iPad keyboards. The dock version isn't exactly portable. It's $69 price tag is also steep.

Here's an easy way to save $40. Buy Apple's official camera kit for the iPad. It contains two dongles. One for SD slots and one for connecting USB cameras. The USB dongle has a hidden function. It supports both USB keyboards and USB headsets.

Simply plug a keyboard you already have into your iPad. It will complain about the device not being supported. Ignore the warning, and type away. I've tried it myself and it works very well. It even supports basic "command - " functions like a normal Mac.

Unfortunately, this trick only works with the iPad and not the iPhone and iPod Touch. Also, it only supports more basic bus powered wired and wireless keyboards. Forget using your LED backlit gaming keyboard.