John Browett

Along with Jonathan Ive the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design it looks like Apple have picked up another Brit to head their retail devision.

John Browett the former CEO for 5 years of UK retailer Dixons will be heading for Cuperinto this April to become Senior Vice President of Retail. John Browett has taken this title from Ron Johnson who left Apple 6 months ago.

Browett has an impressive career in retail and like we mentioned was the CEO of the giant UK retailer Dixons. He has also held executive positions at Tescos.

Tim Cook Apple CEO said that Browett has “incredible retail experience” and commitment to customer service.

Now, 2012, instead of Installer.app we had a new king of the hill, Cydia: a native iOS APT client used for finding and installing software for jailbroken iOS devices. The main reason people jailbreak is because doing so allows them to expand the feature set which has been limited by Apple and it’s App Store. Cydia has become very popular over the years with developers working hard to release new stuff into the jailbreak world such as themes, tweaks, and things that you would not imagine your iDevice was capable of otherwise.

Over the years we have had lots of jailbreak tools to grant us root access our iOS devices such as redsn0w, sn0wbreeze, PwnageTool, blacksn0w, purplera1n, and those are only the ‘popular‘ ones. There are two diffident types of jailbreak: 1) a tethered jailbreak, which requires that the device be connected to a computer each time it needs to be booted, and; 2) an untethered jailbreak, which allows the device to be powered on or rebooted without computer assistance.

Above, was a bit of history about jailbreaking your iOS device. Back on July 26th of 2010, the US government made the act of jailbreaking electronic devices legal by federal law.

Over the years we’ve been enjoying this freedom, tweaks, themes, and just putting the device in your hands and not Apple’s. But according to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), we could lose that freedom this year if we don’t act now.

The EFF writes:

“Smartphones, tablets, and video game consoles are powerful computers with lots of untapped potential. Yet many of these devices are set up to run only software that’s been approved by the manufacturer. Modifying a device to run independent software – known as jailbreaking – is important to programmers, enthusiasts, and users. But jailbreaking creates legal uncertainty. Some device manufacturers claim that jailbreaking violates Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which carries stiff penalties.”

The ruling handed down by the Copyright Office in 2010 is due to expire this year and the EFF is looking to convince the Office to renew the exemption. Otherwise jailbreaking falls back into a murky semi-illegal state giving device manufacturers the power to pursue legal action against jailbreakers at will.

The EFF provides this link to the Copyright Office’s comment board. The Office needs to hear why folks think that jailbreaking is so important. The EFF wants to hear you and here are a few thing you can say to let the jailbreaking world keep running as it is:

• Which jailbreaking exemption are you supporting—smartphones/tablets, video game consoles, or both?
• What’s your background (are you a developer, hobbyist, user, independent researcher, etc.)?
• What device do you want to ensure you have the legal authority to jailbreak?
• What limitations would you face if you weren’t able to jailbreak?

Comments should be marked as class “5″ and are due by 5 PM ET on February 10. MyGreatiPhone will keep you notified on the EFF’s progress, so keep checking back. Give us your thoughts below? We’d love to hear.

The Dev-Team state that just in the last few days that just shy of 1 million devices got the Absinthe treatment.

Here is the breakdown:

● 491,325 new iPhone4,1 devices
● 308,967 new iPad2 devices
● 152,940 previously jailbroken (at 4.x) iPad2 devices

This totals 953,226 now Jailbroken A5 devices.

If you add to this super impressive numbers then check out our Absinthe Jailbreak Vid below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For all asking: windows vers WILL have GUI just like OSX vers already released, & “SOON” means i’m working my @$$ off, i hope a few hrs max

— Joshua Hill (@p0sixninja) January 21, 2012

So there you go, Windows users you will soon also be able to get your hands on Absinthe.

If you can’t wait however you can already Jailbreak if your on a Windows machine using the Dev-Teams Command line tool (CLI), just head here for the info.

This may seem to be a bit odd and I have to say I have thought to myself how strange it would be to own a mobile phone without a camera but the Singapore carriers have good reason to be offering this.

Following a year-long review, Mindef recently issued guidelines to its servicemen on the use of such smartphones.

It is understood that servicemen with these phones must show a certificate to prove that their handsets were modified by any one of the local telcos.

Last September, Mindef spokesman Desmond Tan told The Straits Times that Mindef and the SAF were ‘exploring ways to allow our personnel to use smartphones while maintaining our current security policy on disallowing personal image-capturing devices to be used on Mindef/SAF premises’

Now there is a catch to this however. These iPhone’s will not come with any Apple warranty as they have not been sanctioned by Apple themselves, it will be the work of the carriers in Singapore that will be stripping the cameras straight out of the devices.

Grooveshark has made it’s way back on to the iPhone and iPad, thanks to an all new mobile-friendly HTML5 Web App that the company has built from scratch, this means that there will be no Adobe flash required, it is just HTML5 and lets you stream music across various platforms.

The mobile-friendly HTML5 Web App supports these platforms, iOS (both iPad and iPhone including iPod touch as well), Android 2.3+, Blackberry Playbook, and the HP TouchPad.

Grooveshark was released into the Apple AppStore back in August 2010, but it didn’t last long, because a few hours later on the same day the Grooveshark team had received a letter from Apple basically saying that they had received a complaint from the Universal Music Group UK, due to that the company decided to remove the app from the ITunes AppStore.

After that, the Grooveshark team decided to release the free-service app into the Jailbreak world without being under Apple’s command and you could have the app on your iPhone by going in to Cydia and downloading it (and you still can) but if you haven’t got a Jailbroken device there was no way you could get it, until now.

Grooveshark is a music streaming service that allows users to search for, stream, and upload music you like that will be played instantly on your device or you could add it in to a playlist, which brings all the music you want to listen to and puts it in to a group of music for you to listen anytime and anywhere. For unlimited access and no ads on mobile, you can get Grooveshark Anywhere for $9 per month.

Grooveshark is one of the many streaming services, like Spotify and Pandora (US only) that allow you to stream music instantly without the need to download it first.

If you check out MyGreatPhone and MyGreatTablet everyday you know that recently Amazon had launched a HTML5 web app for the iPad that allows customers to purchase Kindle ebooks, Apple didn’t let Amazon offer purchase links for ebooks in its native iOS app because it violated the App Store’s guidelines.

You can have access to the HTML5 web app at http://html5.grooveshark.com/ on your mobile device.

Apple has been offering its Recycling programme in the US for iPads and iPhone since August 2011, and now they have opened it up to other countries including the UK, France and Germany.

The programme works by entering the details about your device such as the make, model and the condition and then Apple gives you a price for it.

 Unlike the US programme though where Apple send you a gift card, in the UK, France and Germany once your device has been inspected to make sure its all good and in the condition you said it was they will deposit the money into your bank account.

The programme has 2 different parts to it the first is one is one to recycle your Computer, iPad to iPhone. This is the one that will get money paid into your account, the other option is for Apple to recycle your old iPod or mobile phone.

Recycling your old mobile or iPod can be done in 2 ways: either post it to Apple for them to sort out, or if your heading to the Apple Store anyhow take them with you. Taking your old device to the Apple store will get you 10% off a new iPod.

Now this is one way to get rid of your old tech to make way for the new stuff.

One of the features that Android users where raving about is the Face Unlock feature found in Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

Well now it seems that some good people have decide to bring the feature to iOS devices.

The feature named ‘FaceUnlock” is said to be taken from Android, but it has been designed and built from the ground up.

FaceUnlock has 2 elements, the pattern to unlock mode and the face recognition mode. By simply placing your face inside the circle, the device will detect if your the correct person to be using the device or not.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interestingly the video states that it is “Coming soon to the AppStore”. This seems very unlikely to us here at MyGreatiPhone as adding things to the lockscreen is a big NO NO when it comes to Apple. The only way that we can see this being allowed in the Appstore is as some kind of secondary unlock app, but that makes me wonder what is the point.

What do you think of this possible app, would you use it or not.

Thanks to RazorianFly

]]> http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/ios-to-get-faceunlock/feed/ 0 http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/enable-3g-returns-in-ios-5-1-beta-3/ http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/enable-3g-returns-in-ios-5-1-beta-3/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:13:58 +0000 d900man http://www.mygreatiphone.com/?p=16329 Since iOS 5 came out there has been 1 setting that has disappeared from the Settings.app that many people are not every happy about.

Now with the release of iOS 5.1 beta 3 to developers this setting has reappeared. The setting in which we talk about is Enable 3G

Enable 3G is a switch that either turns on or off 3G signal. Now being able to turn this on or off  can be good for a few reasons, but the main one is to preserve your battery while still being able to receive email and likewise. Turning 3G off with make your data speeds much slower however.

To turn 3G on/off head into Settings – General – Network.

I for one am happy that this setting is back with us and I’m sure many more are too.

Thanks Ravenatic for the tip

Detailed on their service’s blog, Instagram made by Burbn. Inc, has teamed up with Facebook – the most popular social networking site in the world, with over 800 million users on Facebook, 400 million of which sign in every single day – to bring you support for deeply integrated photo sharing. So now, not only can you share your beautiful pictures with your followers on Instagram, but you can have the option to send it over to your Facebook account for your friends and family to see.

That’s right, as stated above, when you share with Facebook, photos you have taken in Instagram from this point onwards which you wish to share to Facebook will be automatically added to a folder named “Instagram Photos“. If for some reason you don’t want or like   that name you can always change it by following these simple steps;

1) click the photo album of the title that you want to change, 2) then click “organize album“, 3)  click “edit info“, and finally; 4) change the name of the album as you wish. After you’re done, make sure to click “save changes“.

When you share your pictures from Instagram to Facebook, not only will your Instagrams appear full size on your Timeline, but every picture is consolidated into one helpful photo album for quick, easy reference. Instagram will now also allow you to share already taken photos to your Facebook account — simply by following these instructions to get started.

Download Instagram for your iPhone via the App Store for Free.

It turns out that even if Apple does own the ‘likeness’ of the late Apple founder that many states do not recognise the rights after a persons death.

Infact there are only a handful of states that do and these are the ones that could land Inicons in hot water:

Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, California, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, New Jersey, Nevada, Nebraska, Kentucky, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Since that many of these states do not recognise the rights after a persons death Apples claim is in the most a false one.

Shortly after the article was posted the Steve Jobs figure started to hit eBay from various different sellers with a buy it now price of around $135.

Earlier today, Apple announced that their latest smartphone, the iPhone 4[s], will be available in China and 21 additional countries on Friday, January 13th. After the rollout, the iPhone 4[s] will be available in a total of 90 countries making this Apple’s fastest iPhone rollout ever. For more information, hit us after the jump below.

“Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. “With the launch in China next week, iPhone 4S will be available in over 90 countries making this our fastest iPhone rollout ever.”

Beginning Friday, January 13, iPhone 4[s] will be available in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

It seems as if Apple is having a great run at releasing their newest iDevice in as many possible countries as they can reach. What do you think about the speed of this rollout? Was it as fast as you would have liked, or do you feel as if it is taking too much time? Feel free to leave any comments or questions below, or contact us via Twitter.

So if the announcement is not the iPad or HDTV what could it be, well sources are saying that this could be some kind of advertising or publishing event given both that it is held in New York and that SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is said to be involved.

Cue is heading up the majority of Apple’s media units including the iTunes Store, AppStore, iBookstore, iCloud and iAd.

As soon as more details are announced about the event we will let you know.

Sir Ive has been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) for Services to Design and Enterprise.

Ive is the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple answering straight to Tim Cook and before him Steve Jobs.

Ives was born in the UK in 1967 and went on to become a Bachelor of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Newcastle Polytechnic. He started work for Apple in 1992 after his own design agency called Tangerine started doing work for Apple.

Ive bought us some of the best and well known Apple products such as the iMac, iPod and the iPhone.

Sir Ive sad about the Knighthood that is was ”absolutely thrilling” and said he was “both humbled and sincerely grateful”

After obtaining the network entry permit from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT), the iPhone 4S received China Compulsory Certification (3C) for electronic products on Dec. 22, meaning that it has met all the requirements for coming into markets of China.

According to latest information from iPhone distributors, the iPhone 4S is expected to hit the market at the beginning of January 2012.

If this rumour is true, the iPhone 4S will be available in the country before Chinese new year.

(Source)

The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator app was surprisingly spotted on the AppStore a couple of days ago but has since sadly been removed by Apple.  Given the nature of iMAME and that it allows you to play multiple games for free, we figured it’d only be a short amount of time before Apple pulled it from the AppStore.

Even so, this does lead to questions about Apple’s application process for the AppStore and why the app was approved in the first place?  iMAME isn’t the first ‘contraversial’ app to have been approved lately, as iTether was approved earlier this week and that allows unlimited tethering for iPhones.  The question is how did these apps pass Apple’s strict process?

Earlier today, @Pod2g handed over his iOS 5 untethered jailbreak for A4 devices to the Chronic-Dev Team. In doing so, he hopes to focus on the A5 jailbreak.

This will allow @pod2g to get the iPhone 4S jailbreak back up to speed. This is very good news for owners of both A4 and A5 devices, because that means that both are being heavily worked on.

Just to be clear, the A5 devices are as follows;

Apple iPad 2 — March 2011

Apple iPhone 4S — October 2011

These are the ones that @pod2G is focusing on, And the A4 Devices are the ones that the Chronic Dev Team are focusing on and these are;

Apple iPad — April 2010

Apple iPhone 4 — June 2010 (Black; GSM), February 2011 (Black; CDMA), April 2011 (White; GSM & CDMA)

Apple iPod Touch 4th gen — September 2010 (Black model), October 2011 (White model)

From pod2g’s blog;

I read the comments on the blog, and I know that a lot of people are waiting for the A5 jailbreak.

Also, I know there are tons of people out there with A4 or even earlier devices who wants the untether now and don’t care about it could be interesting to wait A5 is finished to release or even 5.1, so that we don’t waste an exploit that took me months to find and develop.

I need to focus on A5 and hope I can find a path quick, and I have the feeling that chronic-dev could help me.

So, here is what I did:
- I gave all the details to the chronic dev team so that they can finish, test, integrate and release the A4 jb ASAP.
- I’ll put all my energy from now on on the A5

Hope I don’t disappoint.

See you.

As usual you can get notified of new articles on MyGreatiPhone by following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook, or subscribing to our RSS feed.

A few weeks back, we reported that @Pod2g had uploaded a video on YouTube showing off his jailbreak project and in that video he showed of an iPod Touch 3rd Generation running on iOS5 and since then he hasn’t posted another video, until now.

Earlier today, @Pod2g posted/uploaded a video demonstrating an untethered jailbreak of iOS 5.0.1 on the iPhone 4. In the Jailbreak video he shows off the following actions:

1. Open Cydia and let it load
2. Reboots device
3. Open Cydia and let it load again

Click here to view the embedded video.

From pod2g’s blog post:

Hello,

Here is a new video demo of the current status of the 5.0.1 jailbreak running on an iPhone 4.

This is meant to reassure people that were thinking it only works on older iPods.

The jailbreak is nearly ready for prime time (excluding 4S and iPad 2).

Patches are the same as redsn0w’s. Expect the same level of stability.

Some more days to wait. Be patient, we’re doing our best.

We will update you as and when it is released publicly, so keep your eyes peeled. Fingers crossed we will see an untethered jailbreak soon. We will soon find out, but for now let @Pod2g get on with his life and stop asking him on twitter.

As usual you can get notified of new articles on MyGreatiPhone by following us on Twitter, liking us on Facebook, or subscribing to our RSS feed.

They’ve confirmed to their followers that their app will be available on Cydia in January, so not long to wait now!

For those that don’t know, the iTether app allows you to connect to the internet anywhere and at faster speeds than before. The app was previously available in the AppStore until it was pulled by Apple. Therefore the news from the iTether team that the app will be available on Cydia is great news.

]]> http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/itether-to-release-their-app-pulled-from-the-appstore-on-cydia-in-january-2012/feed/ 0 http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/apple-completes-deal-on-israeli-flash-memory-firm-anobit/ http://www.mygreatiphone.com/news/apple-completes-deal-on-israeli-flash-memory-firm-anobit/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:27:48 +0000 d900man http://www.mygreatiphone.com/?p=15644

It is being reported that Apple has put the finishing touches to the acquisition of the Israeli flash-based memory firm Anobit. The deal has been calculated to be worth anywhere between $400 – $500 million dollars making it the biggest acquisition that Apple has ever completed. The next biggest acquisition by Apple is that of NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs started when he was pushed out of Apple.

Apple seems to have bought the flash-based company because Anobit has developed a better and faster version of flash-based memory than is available in other products today.

This is a big thing for Apple as it is the storage facility that is used in devices such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad and more recently newer Macs such as the Macbook Air.

What’s happened is the United States International Trade Commission have ruled that HTC were infringing on an Apple patent in a number of their handsets running Android 1.6 to 2.2 – so the handsets effected include the Droid Incredible, Evo 4G, Nexus One and many others.

The reason Apple have sued HTC is all over clickable links in messages, such as SMS/TXT, and/or e-Mail. Basically when you receive a text message that contains a phone number, address, URL or any piece of usable data, it is automatically highlighted, underlined and turns tapable in that message. The Apple patent not only covers this idea but also the interaction you can have, for example by tapping on the selection allows you to activate it. Therefore, by having this feature on a number of their smartphones HTC was engaging in infringement, and as expected, Apple is not too happy about it.

However, there are ways for HTC to resolve this, and still be able to sell their handsets – by either removing the infringing technology, or implementing it in a different manner – the second option being the most likely, as usable links in messages are a pretty important feature to most smartphone users.

What’s concerning though, is that this could really set off the war between Apple and Google/Android, and I don’t think Apple needs any more trouble, especially as they’re already engaged in a bitter blood-battle with Samsung over their tablets which Apple claim are almost direct rip-offs of the iPad. Keep checking back here, as we will continue to cover how this goes down.

The analysis comes as Apple’s market cap is $354 billion. They figure that the AppStore is 2% of that market cap comes from the AppStore equaling $7.08 billion. RIM in its entirety is worth $7.04 billion.

RIM is not having the time at the moment with sales of the Playbook being only 150,000 last quarter and the iPad selling over 11 million units. RIM also revealed that the Blackberry 10, the next gen OS for the Blackberry device will be delayed until the 2nd half of 2012.

If talk is to be believed then Apple’s Senior VP Eddy Cue has been meeting with top Media and TV Executives to discuss the company’s vision of Siri-powered HDTV and the future of Apple TV.  It’s thought that Siri-Powered HDTV will be pretty similar to the current Apple TV set top box in that it allows you to stream content, like movies and music over a wireless network; but the main difference is that Siri-Powered HDTV is likely to be voice or motion controlled.

The Apple TV device is also likely to use a version of Air-Play (Apple’s wireless-streaming technology), so that it can be controlled through your Apple devices; therefore doing what Apple does best in integrating all it’s devices for complete compatibility.

Steve Jobs was thought to have been working on a prototype of Siri-Powered HDTV before he passed away last year, however it is thought that the product will be available in mid 2012 with the display being provided by Sharp.

Apple isn’t the only company to be trying to re-imagine the way we use out TV’s, Google are getting users to access apps and video through Google TV software and Microsoft Xbox users can stream an array of videos over the console, even having the ability to stream Sky TV.

So with other interactive and cross platform TV options already available, would you buy a Siri-Powered Apple HDTV?

Apple have gotten right into the holiday spirit with their new iPhone 4S advert, in which it shows Siri helping with his Christmas schedule.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The advert shows Santa asking Siri directions to somebodies house so he can deliver presents, Siri reading out a text, Santa checking the weather and his schedule and also finding an email.

As noted by one of our Facebook fans, Santa better ready his sat nav while in the UK, until Siri is updated at least.

The Facebook App has just seen an update to version 4.1 and with it brings the new Facebook timeline that shows your status updates, check-ins, photos and other things that come with Facebook in more of a scrolling diary style in which people that your friends with can scroll down and see everything in date order.

Within the update there are more new features than just the timeline, here is the complete changelog

• Access to Mobile Timeline on iPhone (if you already have Timeline). iPad support coming soon.
• Access to friend lists, subscribers and subscriptions.
• Faster, better performance.
• Photos are easier to view, upload and comment on.

From the new version you can change not just your profile picture but the picture that Facebook are calling the “Cover Photo”.

Previous versions of the Facebook App have seen more bugs than bug fixes so lets hope that in this release Facebook have pulled their fingers out and sorted the issues.

According to a find by Mark Gurman over at 9to5Mac, Apple will refresh the stock iPad wallpapers when it eventually gets around to releasing iOS 5.1 to the public.

Many news sites are reporting that these four wallpapers could be for the iPad 3 which is set to be released next year (2012). The four new wallpaper are currently 1024 x 768 and not the retina size we are expecting with the next generation iPad, so Apple is not revealing anything in that regard yet.

What do you think? Do you like them? Dislike them? Leave a comment below, or let us know via Twitter @MyGreatiPhone.

Originally released for the PS2 (remember that?), Grand Theft Auto is celebrating it’s 10th birthday this year, so releasing the game on iPhone and iPad seems like a fitting way to celebrate.

In the description Rockstar games say:

Rockstar Games celebrates the 10th anniversary of one of the most influential games of all time. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III comes to mobile devices, bringing to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips.

With stellar voice acting, a darkly comic storyline, a stunning soundtrack and revolutionary open-world gameplay, Grand Theft Auto III is the game that defined the open world genre for a generation.

GTA 3 is available on the app store now costing£2.99.  Let us know what you think of it!

Well its not just us in the iCommunity that thought that Jan-Michael Cart’s work was good, it seems that Apple thought so to.

In a recent blog entry by Jan-Michael Cart on his website he writes…

Welcome to the new blog section of my website. Soon I will be embarking to California, where I will be interning at a fruit company for seven months. I will be updating this to chronicle my adventures and misadventures in the Bay Area for my family, friends, and followers online. Stay tuned, I leave in less than a month!

Its great that Apple have taken on this excellent graphic designer that has brought us iOS concepts such as these..

iOS 5 Assistant

Click here to view the embedded video.

iOS 5 Concept Dynamic Icons

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m sure its safe to say that Apple will definitely be using some of Jan-Michael’s ideas and I’m sure that we will see some of them in future iOS releases.

Last week, we reported that @Pod2g had been testing an iOS 5 untethered jailbreak and he showed off a video of an iPod Touch 3rd generation jailbroken, running iOS 5.0 (Click here to see the full article). @Pod2g did not announce anything about it working on 5.0.1 until recently on Twitter. He stated that he has successfully jailbroken his iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1. If however you rely on a soft unlock then you should still hang fire on updating. This is exactly what he tweeted;

Got an untethered iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1. Feel free to update.

— pod2g (@pod2g) December 12, 2011

So will we see a jailbreak coming soon? We will soon find out, but for now let @Pod2g get on with his life and stop asking him on twitter. He made sure not to give out an ETA for a reason. We will update you as soon as it is released publicly, so keep your eyes peeled.

Today there have been 2 listing to help take Siri (the key feature of the iPhone 4S) from beta to finished product.

The first job for an iOS Software Engineer is listed as follows:

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the content that appears within the conversational view. This is a broad-ranging task – we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application’s UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

The 2nd Jobs is for a Sr. iOS Software Engineer

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the conversation view and its many different actions. This includes defining a system that enables a dialog to appear intuitive, a task that involves many subtle UI behaviors in a dynamic, complex system. You will have several clients of your code, so the ability to formulate and support a clear API is needed.

This job also asks:

Want to make the next big thing even bigger?

Both job descriptions talk about the UI that Siri uses and also the API so it may be possible that we see a different look and feel to Siri when it comes out of beta.

On nice thing to think about also it is not mentioned in either job listing is that Siri could be used within 3rd party apps. It would make sense for Apple to allow this and it is not impossible for this to happen.

This about that Steve Jobs was never going to allow Apps on the iOS platform and now the Appstore is on of the biggest things going for iOS. It would be great is Siri would update for social networking sites.

I guess we will have to wait till next year to find out what exactly the Finished version of Siri will bring.

Well the developer himself pulled the tweak, allegedly because after all the publicity that “Siri0us” received from various blogs, the servers used to host the tweak had repeatedly crashed  in the last 48 hours due to immensely high traffic.

This is not the only reason that the tweak seems to have been pulled though, as it is also believed that Nuance refused to sell the developer rights to use their tech in his tweak. From a technical and financial standpoint, this is technology that Apple had most likely spent millions, if not billions in order to obtain rights to use. While Nuance never actually sold their company to Apple, they did reach an agreement that allowed them to use their technology in their iDevice. And while I have no intentions of putting down the developer, I would be rather shocked if he has the same size bank accounts as Apple does in order to be able to afford to use this technology legally.

In fact we mentioned, if you read through the article we had previously written on the wildly popular tweak, we mentioned that “Siri0us” was illegal when we first broke the news.

But he also put advertisements in the software he is illegally distributing. He is literally profiting from technology he does not have rights to.

While the tweak may be working for the time being for those who have managed to get it from Cydia, there is no telling how long that will last. Eric Day (the developer of “Siri0us”) has tweeted that he will be looking at other free speech-to-text alternatives. As that may not be ideal, it should also be mentioned that one of the reasons that Siri is so popular is because it “just works“. It’s dictation is almost flawless when you acclimate yourself to speaking correctly in regards to dictation. And, after trying other “Siri Alternatives” myself, such as “iriS” for the Android, and watching videos of Zypr, I have to say it: Anything else Eric Day chooses to use just wouldn’t be on Siri’s level.

As stated in the previous article, which can be viewed here, you can still find the ad-free, “pirated” version of “Siri0us” by simply googling “SiriForYou“. Feel free to leave your comments below, or contact us directly on Twitter!

A short while ago on Twitter @Musclenerd (public speaker for iPhone Dev-Team) tweeted that they may have promising unlock for the iPhone 4S.

Crazy Thanksgiving weekend! Very promising 4S unlock (http://twitpic.com/7kku4t) is in the works (Not i4, just 4S..that’s crazy part)

Below is the picture that was included in the tweet..

As noted in the tweet this unlock will be for the iPhone 4S and not the iPhone 4 which has not seen an unlock since baseband 01.59.00.

This find should give some hope to unlockers all over the world. We will update on more info as soon as it comes available.

The first way is to use Jeff Broderick’s icons – He’s created 11 beautiful and sleek icons for some of the most used features of our iPhones like; Bluetooth, Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Brightness and a few others. To access these icons all you need is your iPhone and it’s really simple.

All you have to do is visit http://brdrck.me/settings/ on your phone, tap on the settings shortcut you want to save and it adds them to your home screen. Unlike IconProject, this method uses profiles to create webclips and is much simpler to do. It’s rumoured that Jeff has more icons in the works as he’s had over 250,000 hits in under 24 hours!

Here’s what Jeff’s icons look like:

The second way to get new icons on your iPhone is through using Mobile Config’s method. This one has 40 icons to choose from as it includes icons for FaceTime, Keyboard, Ringtone, Wallpaper and many other features which you’ve probably never thought about getting an icon for before. You have two options with Mobile Config, you can either download all 40 or you individually download the icons you’d like.

To install the Mobile Config files you have to be a bit patient as it takes quite a while to download all of them, but it’s very simple to do – you just select which file you wish to download and that’s it! Links to the downloads can be found here.

It’d be great to hear which icon packs you guys prefer or if you’ve found any more that we’ve missed!

Luckily for Apple users this means that they’re more likely to attract the best developers in the world than Android, making iOS a better platform to use than Android.

It’s believed that Android have generated only $330 million for their developers, whereas Apple have generated $4.9 billion.  That’s a pretty big difference which only backs up the rumours that Apple have a bigger app market share than Android.  Piper Jaffray help to prove this rumour further by stating that Apple have 8-90% of app market share; with a total of 14% of apps being paid for, whereas only 1% of Android apps are paid for.  Therefore it’s no surprise that Apple Devs receive a higher pay packet.

Even though the popularity of Android has and is still increasing, it’s still believed that Apple will have 70% of the app market share in the next four years – so if I was a Dev I’d be giving Apple a call!

RazorianFly.com

In fact they didn’t just do wallpapers, they also did unique skins to match their designs (iSKINZA) but unfortunately in October 2010 they had to stop making them. Well, after a lot of pestering from many people on Twitter, eMail and their website, RazorianFly.com are pleased to announce that they are bringing back their unique skins but under a new name.

Click here to view the embedded video.

RAZORIA is to be the new name for these skins that will once again match the unique designs of the wallpapers they produce.

The RAZORIA skins will be produced for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 3G, iPod touch 4G, iPad and iPad 2. The skins will be made from 3M material that offers quick and easy application and removal and the ability to use the skins over and over again.

Here are just some of the comments made about RazorianFly.com skins…

“RazorianFly’s wallpapers, now on an iDevice as a skin? Heck yeah”

If Lady Gaga has an iPad, [she] would use one of these for sure.

“I don’t know, I just happen to like these skins – and you know I’m not a skins type. I like my Apple devices naked and cold, but this stuff is cool.“

These RAZORIA skins are not yet available but are set for release on the 1st January 2012. No pricing has yet been established for the skins but as soon as we know more we will let you know.

As a celebration for the RAZORIA skins returning, RazorianFly are giving 10 of these unique skins away when they are released. To enter just head over to RazorianFly.com here and follow the instructions.

Last quarter, Apple sold 11.2 million iPad units, a record amount for the company, which has had a sales increase of 166% over the last year!   However, according to DigiTimes the company ordered enough iPad components to make between 15 and 16 million iPads, so they have a stockpile of between 4 and 5 million units.

It’s believed that the orders affected by the stockpile are from Samsung, LG and Chimei Innolux, so all companies have seen a decline in the amoutn of stcok Apple has bought from them.  A source said:

“Due to inventory adjustments at Apple, LG Display saw its shipments of 9.7-inch panels to Apple decline from three million units in September to 2.5 million units in October.  Samsung managed to keep its shipments of 9.7-inch panels flat at two million units in October, while CMI slashed its shipments from 700,000 units to 350,000 units during the same month.”

This component draw back has once again started the rumour mill swirling about the potential of an iPad 3 being released early next year.  If rumour is to be believed then Samsung and Sharp are already shipping panels for the iPad 3, while TPK Holding and Wintek are also believed to be shipping panels but at a later date.  Another rumour claims that Apple are planning on having 2 million iPad 3′s built by the end of 2011.

With record sales of Apple products already this year, you’d think that topping off a record year with a new product would be a good idea!  Nobody knows for sure what Apple’s plans are in regards to the iPad 3 yet, but I’m sure they’ll be big.

Roughly a month ago, Google released a native gMail app for iOS users, and with that came a very public and major bug involving the notifications. There were obviously numerous issues with the app as it was incomplete, but the notifications bug was the most notable. As you can remember, when you opened the app for the first time, it would show an error message, and once you clicked “OK” it wouldn’t allow you to have a single email pushed to your iDevice. It somewhat defeats the purpose of the app in the first place, don’t you think?

Google took it on the head and removed the Gmail app in the AppStore almost immediately, and since then we haven’t had any word from them until now.

Well, Apple has pushed the Gmail app through to the AppStore and Google, with this revision, has fixed a ton of bugs, including the notification bug. Those who kept the previous release on their iDevice will need to uninstall it in order to install the new one. They have also improved handling of HTML images in messages, as they are now sized to fit the iDevice’s screen and you can now pinch-zoom them.

Google says it will add many more cool features in the near feature in their post; Click here to see it all.

In the short time the app was public we received a lot of helpful feedback and feature requests. This included requests for everything from bigger features like multiple account support to customizations like improved notifications and mobile specific signatures. We’re just getting started with the Gmail app for iOS and will be iterating rapidly to bring you more features, including all the ones listed above plus many more.

You can install the Gmail app for free here.

Other than knowing how to write applications the only other things that you need are the tools from Applidium and a UDID from an iPhone 4S.

Now Apple could blacklist the UDID that you could use and that would also stop it from being used on the iPhone 4S that its assigned to.

The iPhone 4S sends identifiers everywhere. So if you want to use Siri on another device, you still need the identfier of at least one iPhone 4S. Of course we’re not publishing ours, but it’s very easy to retrieve one using the tools we’ve written. Of course Apple could blacklist an identifier, but as long as you’re keeping it for personal use, that should be all right!

This again brings up the question is this right? Should Siri be ported to other devices?

Let us know in the comments below what you think about the possibility of Siri being used on lets say an Android device!

Following the release of iTunes 10.5.1 and iOS5.0.1, Apple have also confirmed the availability of iTunes Match in the States.  iTunes Match is a service which allows users to sync their music to iCloud for $24.99 a year.  The number of songs you can sync is unlimited and it doesn’t affect your allocated iCloud storage, however only songs which are available on iTunes can be synced.  The service is a great idea and really makes full use of iCloud – fingers crossed it won’t be long before it’s released in the UK and worldwide too!

Apple announced iTunes Match on their iTunes page – check it out below……

The service is still being classed as a beta product even though it’s available to the public, so this means that any developers who tested it will still receive a free three months when a years subscription is bought.

If you’re lucky enough to have access to iTunes Match let us know what you think of it!

A number of reports and comments are stating that upgrading to iOS5.0.1 hasn’t helped to fix the bugs which are plaguing our iPhone batteries at all; instead it seems that we still have to disable location services in order to get a full days worth of juice out of our batteries. We talked about this issue when iOS5 was first released and wrote our own list of battery saving tips, so if you are having battery issues check those out.

Also remember that if you have jailbroken your handset it’s not advised to upgrade to iOS5.0.1!

If you’ve got any other battery saving tips or have any battery horror stories then let us know in the comments

It’s a great feature to have on your phone and even better you can do it without jailbreaking your handset!

So here’s how to enable the ‘Autocorrect Keyboard Bar’

1. Plug your iPhone in and launch iTunes
2. Backup your device
3. Download iBackupBot from here  Windows/Mac [Official Website], install it and launch it.
4. On iBackupBot select your latest backup (the one you did minutes ago) and load it up.
5. Go to Library, then Preferences then com.apple.keyboard.plist and open the file
6. Click cancel after opening the file if your copy of iBackupBot is unregistered (it more than likely isn’t)
7.  Add this code to the file:  <key>KeyboardAutocorrectionLists</key><string><YES</string>
8. Save the file
9. Restore your modified backup by clicking Restore

Your handset will now restart and the next time you go to send a message you’ll have an Android style autocorrect keyboard just waiting to be used – it’ll look a bit like this:

This trick has been proven to work on the iPhone 4S, but hasn’t been tested on an iPad yet – it’s be great to hear if it does work on them!

Our G+ page will bring you all the latest news straight from our site just like our Facebook page does. You will also be able to watch our latest YouTube vids straight from our G+ page.

So if Google+ is your thing, you are now able to keep up with our latest content.

Make sure you head over to our G+ Page here and add us to your circle.

Siri on 3G S courtesy of chpwn and stroughtonsmith :http://rpetri.ch/siri3gs (working on Activator integration)

and also just to confirm it, @stroughtonsmith says the following

“RT @rpetrich Siri on 3G S courtesy of @chpwn and @stroughtonsmith: rpetri.ch/siri3gs (working on Activator integration) <- this is legit”

Still no official release date planned or confirmed. But Stroughtonsmith did confirm this on Twitter;

To confirm: all details will be revealed once I confirm it works, doesn’t break other things, and is safe. Likely after 4S JB release (reqd)

You can watch a demonstration video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Digitimes states:

With the next-generation iPads expected to adopt LCD panels with resolutions higher than 2048 by 1536, the current single LED light bar designed for the iPad 2 has to be modify in order to maintain or strengthen the brightness of the panels, the sources explained.

The first new LED light bar design on offer keeps the light bar in a one bar form but has two LED chips inside, with the second design sporting dual-LED light bars.  It’s being claimed that Apple will adopt the second option of dual-bars as issues have already being resolved with the design, relating to battery usage and heat dissipation.

In a tweet this morning from iPhone hacker @pod2g, he announced that he has found a bug that allows for an untethered Jailbreak for iOS 5.

Hey jailbreaking friends, I’ve found a bug that can untether iOS 5. Don’t expect a release soon, but I’m gonna work hard in it

He has not yet said if this Jailbreak is for iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S or just for older devices.

Please as @pod2g says, there will not be a release soon, so don’t bother him for an ETA!

Battery life has always been an issue for iPhone users and it seems that Apple are planning on doing something about it for future devices.  Earlier this week a new patent application filed by Apple was found, titled ‘Power Efficient Organic Light Emitting Diode Display‘.  This patent sounds a little confusing but outlines ways in which battery life could be improved, for example using the colour white in the display.

OLED technology is great for consuming less power than traditional displays.  The only time it fails to do so is when large amounts of white are displayed, as OLED panels have to utilize a range of colour channels for every pixel created – therefore it takes more channels to create white.  This means that it’ll be pretty ineffective for a number of popular apps and programmes like word processing which has a white background and only a small amount of colour, which comes from the characters which are entered onto the screen.

As usual though, Apple have a plan up their sleeves to help resolve the white display issue.  They’ve proposed to use a transparent OLED display panel in front of a solid white background layer.  This display would also feature an opacity switchable layer between the OLED panel and background layer.  What this means is that producing a white colour is easier and less power consuming than on a standard OLED display, therefore saving battery power.

The work for this hack has been done by tmm1….

The nickname for this hack is “hubotsiri” which is taken from the github hubot.

The hack at the moment is said to be “tacky and complex” as you have to be on a network that will allow you to redirect Siri “traffic” through a proxy.

It is said that when a Jailbreak for the iPhone 4S is released then being able to do this hack will become a lot easier.

Pictures below show what the hack has allowed tmm1 to do.

Personal because of this I can’t wait for a Jailbreak for the 4S to come about just so I can see what type of things can be implemented.

The first reason is down to our old friend Mr Copyright.  Copyright laws state that just because a bit of data is available quite freely on the internet, it doesn’t mean that you have the right to distribute it, without the correct licence.  So this means that all the files, images and codes associated with Siri cannot legally be freely shared.  The only way you can legally install Siri is on an iPhone 4S which already has the programme, so is a little redundant.   The guys at Chpwn Blog explain the copyright issues in more detail:

In the context of Siri, this means that the resource files, images, and code that makes up Siri cannot be freely shared. These frameworks and plugins that work together to build Siri are not included on other iOS builds besides the ones running on the iPhone 4S. Therefore, these files must be copied from a running iPhone 4S, or from the iPhone 4S’s firmware (.ipsw) file. The first method requires you to own an iPhone 4S to copy the files from, so it is not useful for most people: if you already own an iPhone 4S, you already have Siri. The issue with the second method is more technical: the firmware files are distributed encrypted, and we do not yet have the decryption key to access the Siri files inside of the iPhone 4S firmware file.

The second reason why Siri isn’t currently available on the iPhone 4 is down to jailbreaking.  To successfully port Siri to an iPhone 4 you need a jailbroken iPhone 4S to access all the information and files of Siri. As we all know the jailbreak for iPhone 4s isn’t publicly available yet (and we’re not too sure when it will be), so being able to find the information needed is pretty tough.

However, on the plus side it’s highly likely that Siri will be available to port to the iPhone 4 once a jailbreak for the 4S is publicly available and any copyright issues are sorted.  For now we can just wet our appetites with a video of Siri in all it’s glory on the iPod Touch.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The iPhone 4S is already available in  29 countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Today by a Press release Apple announced that the iPhone 4S will be available as of November 11th. These countries are Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania and South Korea.

This will bring the total availability to 44 countries. If you live in one of the counties that Apple will be releasing the new iPhone in then you can head over to the Apple Online Store and select your country to pre-order.

The main new feature in the iPhone 4S is Siri but unless you speak English, English US, English AUS, German or French then Siri will not understand you, remember to keep this in mind if you live in one of the countries that the iPhone 4S is coming to in the next few days.