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Posts in iPhone

#MacStoriesDeals

Another new feature here at MacStories! Last week we started our 2010 App Roundup here at MacStories, and today we’re starting another new feature, this one being a daily occurance. We’re calling it #MacStoriesDeals.

In this new series, we will recommend great deals every weekday on iOS apps, Mac apps and gadgets that are on sale for a limited time. We will be scouring our resources and providing you direct links to what we think are deals you shouldn’t miss out on. Whether it be games, health, lifestyle, music, weather, etc. - we’ve got you covered. So expect some choice picks starting later today!

Angry Birds iPhone Cases Now At Apple Stores

First came the games, then the movie rumors, plush toys, more games…and now Angry Birds are sold at Apple Stores. As iPhone and iPod touch cases. As reported by TechCrunch last week, Gear4 announced a series of Angry Birds-themed cases for the iPhone and iPod touch – available on the official website at $24.99 – which feature red and yellow Angry Birds and the green Pig King. They’re made out of hard plastic.

I went to the Apple Store (Roma Est) yesterday, and it looks like the official Angry Birds cases are sold there, too. Actually, tons of them were available on the shelves and Apple even managed to put them in a very visible position. As you can guess, many people were checking them out and laughing at them. Not in a bad way – they’re awesome.

Another photo after the break. Read more

Google Latitude App Back In The App Store, You Can Download It This Time

Well, that didn’t take long for Google. After last week’s mysterious appearance in some international App Store and a rapid removal minutes after that, the official Google Latitude app is here and it’s available in the US, too.

The Google Latitude app allows you to automatically share your location in the background using iOS 4, or tweak the privacy settings in-app and decide to manually your location, and share it only with some people. The app features Retina Display-ready graphics and it even comes with pull-to-refresh in the main screen to update your friends’ location. Guess Loren Brichter’s gesture gained a few fans over time. Google Latitude also enables you to add friends via email address, from your iPhone or Google Address Book and browse “suggested friends”.

Google Latitude is free and available here. If the app doesn’t show up in iTunes yet, download it via the App Store on your device.

How The iPhone Springboard Becomes An Endless Spiral

Of all the neat Cydia tweaks we’ve covered on MacStories so far, this has to be the craziest. Still in development and released in Cydia as early alpha, IconSpiral will turn your iPhone Springboard into a spiral of icons. Yes, a spiral.

What’s the purpose? I don’t know. I guess it’s pretty useless. Yet, from what we can see in the video below, it looks cool.

If you want to go ahead and enable the tweak, make sure to uninstall any other tweak that modifies your Springboard, such as Barrel, Iconoclasm, Parallax or Infiniboard. If you don’t, your iPhone will likely enter an infinite loop state. Not that infinite loop, but you get it. The repo you have to add in Cydia to find IconSpiral is: http://www.aaron.ms/repo.

Backgrounder Now iOS 4.2.1 Compatible | Cydia

Backgrounder, the popular hack that brought multitasking to iOS 3.x devices and now allows you to take control of how apps run in the background on iOS 4, has been updated to support iOS 4.2.1.

Compatibility with the latest OS aside, version svn.r558-1, adds bug fixes and comes with a new installation method for iOS versions that don’t support Backgrounder.

Backgrounder is available for free in BigBoss’ repository.

Angry Birds Developers Launching Their Own Pig-Based Payment System

Rovio, the crazy folks who developed Angry Birds, are planning to launch their own mobile payment system.

Wait, what?

Not only did they sell more than 12 million copies on their iOS and Android game, now they want more money, too? Easy, nerds. The system they have set up, properly named “Bad Piggy Bank”, will be initially rolled out in Finland (Rovio is based in Helsinki) through the nation’s biggest mobile carrier, Elisa. The Angry Birds-themed system will let you easily pay for Rovio’s apps, games and bonus stuff by taking money from your monthly cellular bill. Sounds simple. Read more

Cobra iRadar for iPhone Will Let You Avoid Speed Traps

Driving too fast for the law? You shouldn’t, seriously. But if you just like to test your car’s performances every once in a while and you want to get caught by a speed trap, we may have an app for that. The Cobra iRadar, an iPhone app you have to pair via Bluetooth with a tiny black handset, will identify commonly known speed traps, cameras and intersections for you.

The app [iTunes link] comes with a good number of control settings and, truth be told, it also looks beautiful – although we wouldn’t recommend to look at the sexy pixels while driving.

Retail price is $170, but we heard it’s available at $100 if you know where to look. Check out all the details on Cobra’s website. [via]

Instagram Update Brings New Sharing Features, Posterous Integration

The Instagram developers have been pretty busy recently. The service – which is actually “only” an iPhone app for now – skyrocketed to 100,000 users in its first week and rumor has it 1 million people signed up in the first month. That’s quite an achievement, right? There’s more: the developers quickly released updates to improve the performances of the app and fix bugs and also got Twitter to officially support pictures shared through Instagram on Twitter.com inline media viewer.

Put simply: Instagram is doing great. And with today’s update, we bet it’ll be doing even better. Read more