iOS

With Apple’s Special Event being live tomorrow, and with iOS 9.3 most likely being released shortly after, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the feature-packed update. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This tutorial is going to walk you through backing up your iOS device and how to perform a software update when available.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Scanner Pro for iOS has today received a hefty update. The latest update brings the app to version 7 and includes a host of new features, including text recognition, quality improvements, workflows, and much more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

ProtonMail has announced the official launch of their mobile apps for iOS and Android today. ProtonMail brings seamless PGP end-to-end encryption to emailing, making it significantly more secure for those looking for an extra layer of privacy.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple CEO Tim Cook has gotten his first solo appearance on the cover of TIME magazine today, with the publication printing a lengthy interview with Cook about Apple’s fight with the FBI over iPhone encryption backdoors. The full transcript of the interview is available on TIME’s website.

Cook says he is uncomfortable fighting the government, but Apple is fighting willingly for what it believes are civil liberties. Although interesting, the piece largely repeats the same arguments Apple has been touting for the last few weeks on the right to privacy, freedom of speech in iOS code and more.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Non-jailbroken iPhones are usually close to immune from malware thanks to Apple vetting every app before it’s made available in the App Store. So far, malware has relied on abusing enterprise certificates designed to allow companies to distribute apps to their own phones. But security company Palo Alto Networks has discovered a new piece of malware that can infect iPhones by exploiting a vulnerability in Apple’s DRM mechanism.

AceDeceiver is the first iOS malware we’ve seen that abuses certain design flaws in Apple’s DRM protection mechanism — namely FairPlay — to install malicious apps on iOS devices regardless of whether they are jailbroken.

AceDeceiver currently uses a geotag so that it is only activated when a user is located in China, but a simple switch could allow it to infect iPhones elsewhere …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Ahead of Apple’s media press event on Monday, Apple has added a new Apple Events app for the fourth-generation Apple TV. The Apple Events channel lets Apple TV users watch the livestream of Apple’s announcements from their television. Unlike previous generations of Apple TV, the Apple Events app does not appear automatically on the Home Screen. Instead, users must find the app in the tvOS App Store and download it to their device.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple has launched yet another iPhone 6s advert, this time featuring a special celebrity guest: the Cookie Monster. In the ad, named Timer, the blue monster uses hands-free Siri on his iPhone 6s to time (you guessed it) the baking of his cookies.

Although hands-free Siri exists on all iPhones, the ability to say ‘Hey Siri’ out loud without having the phone being plugged in to power is exclusive to Apple’s latest handsets: the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Watch the minute-long commercial after the break …

Expand
Expanding
Close

Uber is beginning to test a new feature that will make it easier for family and other close-knit groups to share an Uber account. That means that your family could use a single credit card for Uber across several devices, making it easy for parents to pay for their kids or other family members, for example.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Security-minded individuals looking to simplify their two-factor authentication logins may want to take a look at LastPass’s new app today, LastPass Authenticator. The iOS App Store currently has a few different apps that can already handle two-factor authentication logins, like Google Authenticator and 1Password. Most of them come with the minor annoyance that once the app is launched, a user has to find the site’s login, and then type the OTP into the site before it expires. LastPass Authenticator looks to improve that experience by allowing users to quickly approve the new login requests directly from their devices.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The man responsible for leaking explicit photos of dozens of celebrities back in 2014 has been formally charged today. According to a post on the Department of Justice website, a man from Pennsylvania has been charged with felony computer hacking after obtaining access to Gmail and iCloud accounts of more than 100 different people, the majority of whom were celebrities.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple is finally rolling out its Apple News Format to all publishers, after an initial announcement at WWDC 2015. The format lets anyone, big or small, create rich multimedia stories within the Apple News app, featuring panoramas, videos, animations and more.

Until today, Apple News Format was limited to exclusive launch partners (like Wired) whilst everyone else had to resort to basic RSS import. Publishers interested in using the format should check out the documentation on Apple’s website.

Expand
Expanding
Close

There’s a new display and brightness feature in iOS 9.3 called Night Shift which “automatically shifts the colors of your display to the warm end of the color spectrum after dark.” Apple even says that Night Shift “may help you get a better night’s sleep” which is mainly why I’ve been using (and enjoying) the feature during the iOS 9.3 betas. Who doesn’t want a better night’s sleep, right?

But Night Shift has me thinking about other ways iOS could be optimized to make our iPhones and iPads less distracting at night. The foundation for what I have in mind is already there: Do Not Disturb and VIP. But both of these features are currently short of where I’d like them to be to work best for me. Here’s what I’d love to see DND and VIP offer:

Expand
Expanding
Close