Cydia Tweak Activates Multitasking Gestures On iPhone

With iOS 4.3, Apple introduced the possibility for developers to activate “multitasking gestures”, a set of multitouch-based four and five-finger gestures that allow you to quickly switch between apps, go back to the homescreen, or invoke the multitasking tray. The gestures didn’t make it into the public version of iOS 4.3 (they were meant for dev test-only since the beginning), but they still can be enabled with a copy of Xcode, also sold in the Mac App Store at $4.99. Personally, I love multitasking gestures on my iPad and I use them all the time. Gestures are the future, and on the iPad they help me do things faster, in a much more intuitive process.

A new Cydia tweak called MT Gestures allows iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4g owners to turn on the multitasking gestures – with the same preference panel seen on the iPad. These settings have been there all the time, but they need to be manually enabled with an hack. This is exactly what MT Gestures does, for free. It’s available in ModMyi’s repository.

We don’t think, however, multitasking gestures are that great on the iPhone. If you want to be reminded why, check out the video below. [via Redmond Pie] Read more

What’s Going On With Apple and Best Buy?

An article published by CrunchGear last night suggested Apple “blacklisted” Best Buy over a misunderstanding between the company and the retailer which, allegedly, had been holding off on selling iPad 2 units they had in stock. Apple didn’t like the strategy, and stopped sending new iPad 2 shipments to Best Buy altogether. CrunchGear also reported it was unclear why Best Buy would keep iPads in stock without selling them (telling customers iPads weren’t available at all), with this information coming from “a reader who works at Best Buy.” The report also went on to claim that – according to the tipster – Tim Cook was involved in negotiations with Best Buy, and the situation was pretty bad for the American retailer.

As it usually happens with rumors involving Apple, the report got picked up by several blogs last night. But since CrunchGear posted the tip they received from a Best Buy employee, it all got more interesting. CrunchGear updated their original report with a purported email from Tim Cook sent to the tipster. Read more

Apple Design Award Winner Star Walk Brings Augmented Reality to iPad 2

We’re huge fans of Vito Technologies’ Star Walk products here at MacStories: winner of an Apple Design Award in June 2010 and released on the Mac under the “Solar Walk” brand a few months ago, Star Walk  is an incredible product that enables you to explore the universe (stars, constellations, planets, satellites) with swipes and taps thanks to iOS multitouch integration.

If you own a copy of Star Walk for the iPad and you recently bought an iPad 2, a brand new update is awaiting in the App Store. Released 2 days ago, Star Walk 5.2 (also available on the iPhone, the app is not universal) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight (completed by Yuri Gagarin in his Vostok spacecraft on April 12, 1961) by adding several features like full Augmented Reality support. Similarly to how the SkyView app we reviewed in March allowed you to point your device to the sky and see the position of stars and constellations in real-time, Star Walk now lets you do the same and it works really well on the iPad 2. Among various bug fixes and enhancements to the control buttons, Star Walk 5.2 also includes a calendar of celestial events to plan your stargazing sessions within the app, and the possibility to search through all categories at once. We feel the Augmented Reality introduction is, however, the biggest and most important addition in this update, and you should consider giving a try to the app if you’ve heard of Star Walk in the past, and you just got an iPad 2. Exploring the universe is way more comfortable and elegant on the tablet’s large screen.

Star Walk for iPad is available at $4.99 in the App Store. The iPhone version is available at $0.99 here.

Apple Releases Boot Camp Update for MacBook Pro 2011 Owners

Boot Camp, the utility OS X users rely on to natively install Windows on their hard drives, was updated late last night to address several issues with the MacBook Pro 2011 models released in February. The update, available here, fixes some issues with unexpected shutdowns and Japanese / Korean keyboards, and it’s highly recommended for owners of the new MacBook Pros.

For more information about Boot Camp, visit Apple’s dedicated webpage.

Plex Releases Major 1.1 Update: The King Of iOS Media Players

If you’re serious about your media library, you’ve probably heard of Plex: dubbed as the “solution for local and online media”, Plex is a fantastic multi-platform media center that runs on Macs and Windows PCs and has great iOS and Android clients. Once installed on your desktop machine (which becomes a “server”) Plex can fetch music, movies and TV shows stored on your computer or anywhere else on an external hard drive, organize them properly into categories by adding the correct metadata, and handle streaming to the clients (such as the iPhone or iPad apps) with live conversion of unsupported video formats. All your media can also be played locally on a computer without the need of a mobile client thanks to the desktop Plex app, which is highly customizable: you can add your own themes, install plugins (like Spotify) and connect to online content providers such as the CNN, Vimeo, Cnet TV, Youtube, Apple Movie Trailers and many others. If that’s not enough for you, Plex can also enable you to connect to your media library remotely via WiFi or 3G with a global hostname, through the iOS apps. Read more

iBooks Can Now Open EPUB Files Directly→

iBooks Can Now Open EPUB Files Directly

Adam Engst at TidBITS details an important change in how iBooks handles .EPUB files opened directly on iOS:

The practical upshot of this fix is that you can now transfer EPUB files into iBooks far more easily than before, when the only way was to drop them into iTunes and do a USB sync. For individual users, that means you can send yourself an EPUB via email and transfer the attachment to iBooks, and you can also copy EPUB files into Dropbox and use the iOS Dropbox app to send them to iBooks.

Basically, forwarding books bought / downloaded in Mobile Safari to iBooks got a lot easier thanks to the “Open In…” menu. Project Gutenberg books work great with this method.

Permalink

PhotoSync 1.1 Lets You Upload to Dropbox, AirPlay Videos

PhotoSync is a universal iOS application I reviewed a couple of months ago which allows you to share photos and videos shot on an iOS device in a completely new way: thanks to its powerful feature set, PhotoSync can send media from iOS to iOS, and from iOS to a Windows PC or Mac. Unlike several other iOS apps that usually launch a WebDAV server locally to share photos with a computer, or only enable you to send files over to another machine through a standalone utility running on the desktop, PhotoSync can do an actual iOS-to-iOS communication as well as standard desktop sharing. It requires a companion app if you want to send items to your computer, but configuration is painless if you just want to share photos and videos between iPhones and iPads using WiFi or Bluetooth.

The latest update to PhotoSync, released a few hours ago in the App Store, adds the possibility of uploading files to Dropbox or FTP servers directly from the app – a highly requested feature I’m sure will come in handy for those large photo collections that need to go into Dropbox. Uploads in original size (and even RAW) are also supported. Multiple files at once can now be uploaded from the app’s web interface, and videos can be streamed to an Apple TV thanks to AirPlay integration (iOS 4.3 is required).

PhotoSync 1.1 is available at $1.99 in the App Store. Full changelog below. Read more

Hamachi: A Powerful, Free Alternative to Apple’s Back to My Mac

I love iTunes Home Sharing. Introduced almost two years ago with iTunes 9, Home Sharing allows you to share your music and movies, TV shows, podcasts and playlists with friends and family on a local network. With an active Internet connection and an Apple ID configured with the iTunes Store, you’ll be able to easily share your entire iTunes library and enable other users to connect to your iTunes installation to stream songs, video files, and so forth. It is a great feature of iTunes, and with the latest iOS 4.3 update for iPhone and iPad it also works exceptionally well with mobile devices: once activated on the desktop, your entire iTunes library will be sent to the iOS iPod app without the need of syncing or manually copying anything. Just make sure you’re on the same WiFi network, and you’re all set. Read more

Witness Remotely Locks Your Mac, Detects Motion, Sends You Mugshots

Developed by Orbicule, the creators of computer-tracking utility Undercover, Witness is a new application that’s aimed at remotely locking your Mac, and detecting motion in front of your computer’s camera. Let’s face it: every time we’re away from our Macs, we think about what could ever happen if someone broke into our house or office and stole them. Whilst data protection is essential and there many things you can do to hide critical information stored on your machine (such as disabling automatic login, choose a strong system password or keep everything safe into 1Password, possibly synced with Dropbox), knowing the identity of the person that actually took possession of your computer – or entered your office without authorization – is a whole different story. Unless you’re planning on setting up a relatively expensive home monitoring security system (even with DIY sets, you’re still going to spend a couple of hundred bucks + software to monitor everything) or just carrying your MacBook away with you all the time, there’s no easy to know what’s happening in front of your computer’s screen, and take action at the same time. Orbicule wants to provide an easy and powerful solution to remotely lock a Mac from virtually anywhere, detect motion and be notified with photos and video of who’s doing what in your house.

There are many tweaks and hacks available online to turn your iSight into a security system, as well as utilities to lock your Mac from an iPhone or iPad while on the go. I bet many of you have heard of these methods or at least tried to follow one of those tutorials once. Witness, however, does exactly what a great app has to do: it combines multiple functionalities into a beautiful, easy to use and full-featured package that requires minimal setup and just works. Witness can lock and unlock your Mac from an iPhone, an iPad or the web browser thanks to a system that’s based on an account you’ll have to create on Orbicule’s website. Once authenticated with the account on your Mac, iOS devices and browser, you’ll be ready to start using Witness and be alerted of activity in front of your Mac’s iSight. Witness also requires a desktop companion app that comes as an installer and will restart your computer upon successful installation. The Mac app handles the location of your computer, your account’s credentials, and also lets you decide whether Witness itself or the screensaver should be used to lock OS X. If you choose Witness, a panel will come in the foreground asking for your system’s password. If you don’t want to use the iSight and you have configured other cameras with your Mac, you can choose a different capturing device from the Preferences.

On the iOS side of things, Witness comes with a free remote app that runs universally on iPhones and iPads. The UI is gorgeous, and the app provides a set of functionalities to lock a Mac with a simple swipe, monitor your various machines associated with a Witness account, and browse the history of alerts you’ve received. Being heavily based on the cloud, Witness for iOS will constantly check for updates, pulling images and videos from the Internet if they’re available (meaning: you’ve locked your Mac and something’s going on). If an alert comes in via push notification, you’ll be able to see pictures and videos recorded by your iSight (audio is supported, too). You can email photos directly within the app, and delete alerts you’re no longer interested in. All these features are available on the web counterpart as well.

In my tests, Witness has been very reliable and quite fast both on WiFi and 3G. I was able to lock / unlock my iMac in seconds, receive push notifications moments after motion was detected and download full sets of photos and videos shot through my iSight. A Witness account will cost you $39 as a one-time fee (student licenses available) and gives you access to OS X, iOS and web tools. I highly recommend Witness not only because of the beautiful interface approach and usability – it’s the “just works” factor that combines a utility to lock a computer and turn it into a home alarm system that truly impressed me. You can create a Witness account here, and check out more screenshots below. Read more