News

Evad3rs member pod2g has confirmed there will be no more jailbreaks for iOS 6. This means iPhone and iPad owners who would like to keep their devices jailbroken are stuck with iOS 6.1.2 until iOS 7 is released. This does not mean jailbreaking is dead like some Apple blogs are leading people to believe. Anyone who has previously jailbroken their device knows they will eventually get stuck using an older version of iOS. This is just how the process works.

Apple is expected to announce iOS 7 at its WWDC event sometime in June. While an official date has yet to be announced, some developers believe the event will be held on June 10-14th, based on a gap in in the Moscone Center calendar. It wouldn't make much sense for the evad3rs to jailbreak iOS 6.1.3 with the next big version looming right around the corner.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 5 are now open at T-Mobile.com. You can purchase a shiny new iPhone 5 with no contract for $99 down and 24 payments of $20. That's $579 over two-years, and $70 less than buying an unlocked model directly from Apple.

The 24 payments of $20 will be added on top of your monthly service charges. T-Mobile's Simple Choice plans start at $50 per month for unlimited talk, text and 500MB of data. Each additional 2GB of data is $10 up to 12.5GB for $110. The T-Mobile iPhone is locked, but you can trade it in for a new device at anytime for "fair market credit". This also means you will need T-Mobile's permission if you decide to switch carriers, and will be required to payoff any remaining balance that you owe for the device.

Facebook today unveiled what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the "next version" of the social networking site. Facebook Home is a new UI for Android devices that transforms a user's smartphone or tablet into a central hub for Facebook. When asked if Home will also be available for iOS devices Zuckerberg replied, “Apple is a very controlled environment". Meaning you will probably never see Home on your iPhone or iPad.

The Home interface is just too invasive for Apple's closed ecosystem. When installed, it takes over a device's lock screen, home screen and even notifications. This is something Apple would never allow. Zuckerberg said, Facebook has "great relationship with Apple", but that doesn't mean they will welcome a UI that overrides iOS. It's just not the way Apple does things.

Vine does a pretty good job of hiding its adult content, but that doesn't mean it's not there. And that's why Apple has decided make the App Store age ratings easier to see. The ratings are now displayed next to an app icon, instead of below the description where they were previously located. This will make it easier for parents to know which apps are not appropriate for children.

The change comes after Apple pulled the popular photo-sharing app 500px, because it was too easy to find nude content. The app eventually returned to the App Store brandishing a 17+ rating. Now several other apps, such as Vine, have been tagged with the adult rating, and an age-restriction warning when you attempt to download them.

T-Mobile not only announced that it was going to officially offer the iPhone 5, but the carrier explained it would fully support Wideband Audio. This marks the first time the feature touted by Apple at the iPhone 5 keynote event would be supported in the US. Now AT&T remarks that it too will roll out support for the feature, also known as HD Voice, later this year.

As AT&T continues to expand its LTE data network, the company plans to start sending voice calls over this network which will provide Wideband Audio capabilities for iPhone 5 owners. When Apple first announced the feature in fall 2012, only 20 carriers worldwide supported the feature. For its part, iPhone carrier Sprint is also planning to offer HD Voice down the line.

T-Mobile did not forget about their customers already using unlocked iPhones on their network. The carrier plans to send out a minor iOS software update that will enable new features like LTE, Visual Voicemail and other "Network/Device optimizations" that are not available at this time. Anyone using an iPhone on the T-Mobile network with iOS 6.1.x or higher will receive the iOS update on April 5.

Previously T-Mobile customers could only use unlocked iPhones on the T-Mobile network, but that has all changed since T-Mobile has now become an official Apple carrier. T-Mobile customers will be able to buy the iPhone 5 (and iPhone 4 and 4S in select markets) starting on April 12. T-Mobile has also stopped subsidizing phones, meaning customers will still have to pay full price for any devices bought directly from the carrier.

Funny or Die has released the trailer for its Steve Jobs biopic parody entitled iSteve. Director Ryan Perez said the film originally started as a trailer, but grew into a 60 minute film. The movie looks at Steve Jobs' life based off his Wikipedia page, according to Perez. iSteve stars Justin Long (the Mac vs PC guy) as Jobs, James Urbaniak as Bill Gates and Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak.

iSteve is the third Steve Jobs movie in the works. Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gadd, was originally slated to be released on April 19, before being pushed back by its distributor Open Road. Sony Pictures is also working on its own biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s best selling biography Steve Jobs.

JED-GO Untouchable from JED GAMES is currently free through the Apple App Store, but so is the classic iOS game Cowboy vs. Zombies. Both games are simplistic shooters where players must defend themselves from waves of zombies. In JED-GO the player is tasked with defending three tiers of artificial brains from various alien created monsters. The game features plenty of upgrades, weapons and 48 different levels through four different scenarios (Desert Encounter, Toxic Sewage, Mutation Plant and Space Invasion). However, you'll probably get bored of the game before you have a chance to buy anything cool (like a pet dragon), or get to the Toxic Sewage stage.

JED-GO Untouchable defiantly tries to be interesting with its various over-the-top upgrades and creatures, but its tedious gameplay will bore older players. The game is more suited for children than gamers looking for a fun and simple zombie shooter to pass the time. Cowboy vs. Zombies may be less creative than JED-GO, but it offers a more challenging gaming experience.

Hard to believe when the iPhone was first released there was no way to send a photo or video using MMS. Now besides the ability to send these types of files, iMessage has expanded the capabilities of iOS devices to communicate. One jailbreak tweak named Doodle Message seeks to expand the capabilities of several messaging apps even further.

With Doodle Message, an MMS or iMessage composition gets the option to draw directly on the screen. Not only can you create a doodle from scratch and send your masterpiece to friends and family, but the tweak makes it possible to draw on a new or existing photo. This can be a neat way to highlight part of the image or write something fun directly on the image.

App badges in iOS are informative but all those big red circles can become annoying. There are ways to quickly remove badges like Clear Badges, but this is a temporary solution. One thing you can do with a jailbroken device is customize the badge appearance to your liking.

The appropriately named tweak, Badge Customizer is a free way to do just that. After the package is added from Cydia, there will be a new area in Settings -> Badge Customizer where all the magic happens. The first thing to notice is a conveniently located Respring button right in the tweak’s settings to apply changes. Like many of these modifications, the effects of the tweak can be fully enabled or disabled with one toggle.