Here’s a huge one, jailbreakers: Synchronicity is a new tweak that has just been released in Cydia which lets you use your iPhone while it’s syncing with iTunes via USB.
Posts in iPhone
Synchronicity Lets You Use Your iPhone Even While It’s Syncing
Apple Showcases Location-based Apps in the App Store
With the recent announcement of Facebook Places, it seems like Apple thought it was about time to showcase location apps in the App Store. So here it is, an “On The Grid” section [iTunes link] that lists apps such as Facebook, Gowalla, Foursquare and Twitter. The only paid app in this new section is GeoFences.
Check out “On the Grid - Location-based Apps” here.
Apple Launches “Hardcore Games” Section in App Store
Another week, another new “App Store Essentials” section for iPhone users. This time around the folks over at the App Store team have collected “the most positively engaging and altogether difficult games available” - the list includes gems such as Chaos Rings, Archetype and Space Invaders Infinity Gene.
You can check out the section in iTunes here.
Meet Trackr, A RSS App Which Lets You Upload Stuff to Dropbox
Lots of review requests show up in my inbox every single day. Some of them are from great developers who produce great apps and deserve coverage. Some of them are just from weird dudes asking for “a post on your website” about their latest Angry Birds clone.
Then there are the strange ones.
You know, those apps the developers present as a “new take on something” but that, actually, they can’t explain either. I read those emails and often ask myself “How the hell did he think of doing this?”. Most of the times I don’t write about those…things. But this one, this one deserves a quick mention.
Trackr is a RSS feed reader which lets you download files and upload them to Dropbox.
Notified Reinvents Notifications on iOS
With iOS 4, hardcore iPhone users and bloggers (including me) expected Apple to dramatically improve Notifications. Notifications (either push or local ones) are those translucent-blue alert boxes that pop up in the middle of the screen when something happens. SMS? Alert box. Twitter DM? Chirpy notification, and so on.
Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Android or WebOS, but notifications on those operating systems are less intrusive and, at the same time, more useful than iOS’ ones. iOS notifications appear once and you have to do something to dismiss them. Once they’re gone, they’re gone: there’s no way to view all your past notifications, or undo a dismissal to get the last alert box back. As I said, they’re intrusive: a notification can get in your way when playing a game or watching a movie, and there are no settings to tweak to make notifications work for you. They’re just alerts going on and off when something happens.
Apple didn’t implement a new notification system in iOS 4, and that won’t happen in 4.1 either. There’s an app available in Cydia, though, called Notified, which is reiventing notifications on iPhones and iPods. Does Notified really bring to iOS the notifications Apple should have made? Read more
The iPhone Floating Forecaster
This is supposed to be some sort of 3d display for weather information, but I’m not really sure how it works. From what I see in the video though, there’s an iPhone running a custom application which lets you control a panel with 30 air guns and ping pong balls on it.
You touch a spot on the grid, the corresponding air gun raises a ping pong ball on the panel. Isn’t this uber-cool?
I know, I know - it’s also pretty useless. Still, we had to post this. [via TUAW]
My Artists: The Ultimate iPod.app Replacement
I posted a preview of My Artists back in June, but the app I have here on my iPhone now is nothing like that. My Artists was already good and promising (as if it wasn0t clear enough), now it’s just great.
It’s more than an iPod companion, it’s a full-featured iPod replacement for iOS devices. Hit the break to find out.
Why Jailbreak Makes The iPhone 4 A Better Device: My Setup
Two months ago I wrote that jailbreak on iOS 4 still had its importance, but when JailbreakMe came out earlier this month I was very disappointed that the iPhone 4 wasn’t really supported. Sure, I could jailbreak my iPhone and install Cydia - but what for? Tweaks and apps weren’t updated for the Retina Display and new device, there was the possbility to break FaceTime and MMS and, overall, it seemed like JailbreakMe for the iPhone 4 was released just for the sake of it.
Fast forward 20 days, and I can’t imagine having a un-jailbroken iPhone 4 anymore. What happened?
World’s Fastest Texting on iPhone 4 [Video]
Can you imagine writing the phrase:
“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human”
on the iPhone 4 virtual keyboard in 20 seconds? That’s Gumball Tech’s blogger Brian Sweet did, becoming the world fastest texter. I’m pretty sure that there’s someone faster than Brian out there, so if you’re reading - you just have to record a video of your performance and tip us.