Guides

With the amount of emails and spam received these days, it's tempting to just turn off notifications and deal with them later, en masse, rather than listen to your iPhone buzz or chime every two minutes. That's not really an option though, if you are waiting for an important email. A handy new feature in iOS 8 Mail allows you to set a notification for specific email threads, so while the unimportant stuff comes in quietly, you'll be notified when that email from your spouse, boss, Nobel Committee, etc. arrives. Here's how to set it up:

1. First off, this is all for nothing if you don't change your notification settings - there's no point if you have your email accounts' alerts set to the same thing as your thread notifications' alerts. So head to Settings -> Notifications -> Mail.

2. You want to allow notifications, so keep that on. Tap on your individual email accounts to change their notifications. You can change the notification sound, turn off badges, allow on lock screen and more. The important thing is just to have it different from your Thread Notifications settings. I have mine set to only badges.

If you don't want your iPhone incessantly beeping and buzzing all day long from unsolicited or unimportant emails, you may consider turning off Mail notifications. But then you will miss the ones that might be important from, say, your significant other, kids, parents, boss, etc. iOS 8 allows you to assign VIP status to your contacts, which lets you set notifications just for them. Here's how to do it:

1. To designate a contact as a VIP, go to your Mail app and tap on the VIP mail box.

2. Select "Add VIP," which will allow you to choose from your contacts (Note: their contact info must contain an email address).

A new breed of malware has been found infecting Macs and iOS devices, spread primarily by compromised apps found in the Chinese Maiyadi App Store. Researchers at Palo Alto Networks have reported that hundreds of thousands of users could be affected. Named WireLurker, the malware also has a Windows variant and could be the largest scale infection of its type.

WireLurker lurks on a computer and when an iOS device is connected via USB, it attacks the mobile device. Private data such as messages and contacts can be compromised. iOS devices do not need to be jailbroken to be vulnerable. While WireLurker may not be a concern for those who never use third-party app stores, checking for infection is relatively simple. Apple has already taken steps to combat the malware by blocking the affected apps.

Pangu has taken the iOS 8 world by storm, with a stable release heralded by saurik himself, the creator of Cydia. Now jailbreaking any iOS device running iOS 8 through iOS 8.1 is possible in a few easy steps. Users looking to install tweaks and software from Cydia must act quickly, as the iOS 8.1.1 beta has been discovered to kill Pangu.

This means when iOS 8.1.1 is released to the general public, the window to jailbreak iOS 8.1 will close forever. In any case, the Pangu Team recently launched a Windows version of the Pangu jailbreak tool. The wait is over for Mac users, as Pangu for OS X has officially arrived. Follow the instructions below to jailbreak iOS 8 with Pangu on Mac OS X.

Screenshots of your iOS device can come in handy, and not just for those of us that write about such devices. They are useful for demonstrations and obviously for advertising, just look up any app on the App Store and you'll see plenty of screenshots. Screenshot videos are even more useful, allowing developers to give virtual tutorials of their apps. They are especially popular with the gaming community for showing tips and tricks, how to beat levels, et cetera, and just to show off their prowess.

You used to need a third party app to record screen capture video of your iPhone, but with iOS 8 and Yosemite it is fairly simple to do. Here's how:

1. Connect your iPhone to your Mac with the lightning cable.

2. Launch QuickTime Player

3. From the QuickTime File menu, select "New Movie Recording."