Now, it’s arguable that there’s not much difference between these and just having the icons on the first page of your homescreen where you can access them easily, but from what I understand they launch right into the new message composer (or equivalent) for each app, rather than its main page.
[via RedmondPie]
Dog Training Academy for iPhone and iPad is a newly released app that helps you train your dog. It provides step-by-stepy instructions and videos on how to train everything from the basics, to breaking bad habits, to fancy tricks such as “high five”.
If you pick this one up, let us know what you think! Check out the trailer and screenshots after the break.
[$4.99 - iTunes link]
If you can’t get enough of your Angry Birds, a new update will soon be now available for the Angry Birds Seasons game. The summer update is called Summer Pignic! and is available on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Take a look at the short video after the break. Is Angry Birds still as popular as ever or is it beginning to wear a bit thin? Let us know in the comments!
UPDATE: It’s out!
It’s available now in the App Store. If you grab it, let us know what you think. How does this update compare to previous ones?
[Angry Birds Seasons for iPhone - iTunes link]
[Angry Birds Seasons for iPad - iTunes link]
[YouTube]
Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!
Agenda: The best of your old desktop calendar to iOS. It includes a badge with today’s date, many gestures, tappable fields, and more! [$1.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]
Great Snail Race: A Story about Little Tilly Two. Enjoy listening to this lively children’s story featuring a beautiful narrative performance. [$1.99 for iPhone and iPad - iTunes link]
Roadshow: Collect your favorite web videos, and play them back anytime, anywhere — even offline! [Free for iPad - iTunes link]
Lemming Hero: One after another these poor, defenseless creatures sprint to the cliff’s edge and leap without remorse. Only you can save them. Won’t you please do your part and… wait a second… that one’s got a bomb! [$0.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]
Wedding Row: The ultimate wedding tool for gathering and organizing all of you wedding inspirations. Categorize, create inspiration boards, save and share all of the details of your wedding planning. [$1.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]
Any other big apps or game releases or updates today? If you pick any of these up, let us know what you think!
Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.
Bloomberg has jumped into the iPhone 5 rumor game, saying that the next generation iPhone will launch in September with the same form factor as the current iPhone 4.
This is in stark contrast to yesterday’s rumors from BGR, which claimed an August release for a redesigned iPhone 5.
Bloomberg also claim its sources confirmed a few other rumors that we have heard before. It claims Apple is working on a new iPad with a resolution of a third higher than the iPad 2; with a more responsive touchscreen. This one is a bit sketchy due to the problems this would cause developers. It also resurrected the rumor of a cheaper iPhone for developing countries, which could be the basis for the long standing iPhone nano rumors. This, it says, will use the current chip and screen of the iPhone 4. Sounds like the iPhone 4 will more likely just become the cheaper option for carriers just as the iPhone 3GS is now.
TiPb keeps hearing a September/October release timeframe for iPhone 5, along with the possibility of another iPad this year, and the “iPhone nano” device, in whatever form it takes, so there may well be something to this. What do you think?
Would you buy an Apple television? DailyTech is resurrecting that old rumor again this week with a claim that a former Apple exec spilled the beans on the project:
Apple plans to “blow Netflix and all those other guys away” by bundling Apple TV + iTunes inside physical television sets. According to the source Apple is teaming up with a major supplier (our guess would be Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEO:005930)), to provide the physical televisions, which will be rebranded as Apple television sets.
They’re also claiming a fall launch date to coincide with iPhone 5 and potentially iPad 3, and alongside the usual new iPods and probably an Apple TV with an A5 processor.
The last time rumors of an Apple television hit their peak, we got a 27-inch iMac, so who knows what Apple is really brewing up in the Cupertino labs. A 32-inch iMac? Anything is possible so we’ll go back to the question at the top of the post — if Apple ever did release a television set, would you buy it? Or are you happy with the $100 Apple TV option?
Vote in the poll and tell us how you really feel in the comments below!
Jailbroken iOS 5 and curious how to get custom Notification Center widgets up and running? Right now, Apple has only included weather and stocks widgets and hasn’t shown any signs of extending an API to 3rd party developers for building their own. However, as soon as iOS 5 was jailbroken a few developers started tinkering around and found it was rather easy to build their own custom widgets, and we’re already starting to see some interesting things come out of developers. We’ll show you how to add them to your custom Notification Center… after the jump!
To get started, first check out our iOS 5 jailbreak how to and then fire up Cydia. Note: these widgets are fairly new athere are still some bugs that need to be worked out, but for the most part they’re interesting and useful.
The widgets we’ll go over are developed by @qwertyoruiop, so you’ll have to add his beta repo to get access. Just follow these quick steps to add the correct Cydia repository before getting started.
The first widget is one I’d definitely suggest getting…
UISettings is a great widget that offers most of your settings toggles right from within Notification Center. Much akin to SBSettings, UISettings lets you toggle WiFi or Bluetooth, respring, reboot, adjust brightness/volume and more. You swipe to reveal more toggles, and turning your WiFi or Bluetooth radios on/off is very fast.
The developer is actively working on improving UISettings and we’re betting he’ll keep up with Apple’s iOS 5 betas as they roll out. The only issue (if you can even call it an “issue”) is the icons used aren’t the best looking, but they’re currently a big step up from the initial release last week. We’re also looking into the possibility of manually changing the icons via SSH and we’ll have a guide up if we determine it’s possible.
MusicCenter offers now playing information in the Notification Center with playback options available by swiping to the left. It’s great if you need more track identifier data over what’s shown in the native app switcher when swiping left, and also comes with a Twitter option to tweet what’s playing from the official Twitter for iPhone app.
I found the playback controls to be quite buggy, but I think it was more due to the button design than anything else. The playback control buttons are too small, making it difficult for those with larger thumbs to get the button press exact. Additional bugs were noticed after my iPhone crashed into safe mode when I tried to disable the widget, and in one case I had to completely reboot my iPhone after disabling it.
This one needs a little more work, but the concept is great for quickly getting to track information on what’s currently playing without going into the Music app.
BetteryCenter is a very simple widget to display your current battery percentage. BatteryCenter shows a battery icon on the left and the percentage on the right. It will also tell you whether the device is charging or unplugged.
For most, this widget might seem useless since the information it displays is also included in the status bar. But for some, it serves a purpose if you don’t want the percentage displayed on the status bar, as some status bar icons tend to get “pushed” out of the way when too many icons are being displayed (including the percentage indicator). I personally use BatteryCenter for this very reason, and have since disabled the battery percentage in the status bar since it’s no longer needed. I also ran into zero bugs with this widget.
RSSWidget is a simple RSS reader for Notification Center that displays a single RSS feed, letting you swipe between recent articles with the post’s title and first few lines displayed. Tapping an article takes you straight into Mobile Safari to read the full post.
I noticed a few small bugs with this one as well, in that some RSS feeds with links in the first few lines get displayed as HTML code, making it difficult to read without going into Safari to view the full post. This is very noticeable on blog posts that start with a photo (see above image). I also had occasional crashes to safe mode when enabling or disabling the widget, similar to buggy behavior in MusicCenter.
This is a great widget for getting news at-a-glance or keeping up with your favorite RSS feed, but it also needs a little work. Follow these quick steps in order to change the RSS feed displayed.
It would be nice if there was a shortcut setting to change the RSS feed a little quicker, but for now you’ll have to do it through iFile or via SSH.
That’s it! These new Notification Center widgets are looking good, and there’s more to come from other great jailbreak developers. If we left anything out, or if you know of other cool Notification Center widgets for iOS 5 then let us know in the comments!
Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)
