Burnout Crash Promises Vehicular Destruction These Holidays

The Burnout series of videogames are a wonderful bunch of racing games that give you points for carnage, racking up huge scores for smashing the everliving hell out of anything on the track. The most recent entry was the downloadable Burnout Crash, which we’re now hearing is heading to iOS these holidays.

Unfortunately, we don’t know anything more than that.

However, if my experiences with the other Burnout games are any indication, it’ll provide countless hours of maniacal cackling as your opponents cars explode into fiery balls of chaos and death.

Burnout Crash appears to be a major graphical departure from previous entries, going top down rather than in-car, assumedly because it’s less resource intensive.

[via Kotaku]

Apple Reportedly Planning Streaming Movies Over iCloud

According to the WSJ, Apple is in the long and tedious process of getting the rights to stream movies over iCloud.

Apple Inc. is negotiating with Hollywood studios for deals that would let people who buy movies from the iTunes Store watch streaming versions of those movies on Apple devices such as iPads or iPhones without manually transferring them, according to people familiar with the matter.

The way the WSJ is reporting this, it sounds like the studios are pushing for these streaming initiatives, but thinking back to every other time Apple has had to organize rights for their services it has been a long and drawn out process to get them.

While they’re at it, can they put an end to time-limited digital downloads of purchased movies? A copy of Inception on Blu-Ray I picked up was meant to come with a digital download, which had expired before I even bought the damn thing…

Porting Siri to other iOS devices requires piracy, likely won’t be a reality

iPhone Dev-Team member MuscleNerd has gone on the record stating a port of Siri to other iOS devices outside of the new iPhone 4S will require piracy, and likely won’t ever see the light of day as a consequence.

Anyone hoping for a “port” of Siri from iPhone4S: pending a very low-level A5 exploit, it likely can’t be done without piracy

(only way to extract Siri files from iPhone4S filesystem without pirating is to have the main FS keys, requiring low-level exploit)

Essentially, the only way to get Siri working on other iOS devices would be to take the required files from an iPhone 4S and transfer them onto the other device manually. It’s also possible that Apple may flag such devices since Siri talks to Apple’s servers to complete certain tasks.

On the other hand, piracy in the jailbreak community has been running rampant lately, so it’s also possible we could see this come from other, less ethical jailbreak developers.

Source: MuscleNerd

Daily Tip: How to erase all personal data from your old iPhone before upgrading to the iPhone 4S

Interested in selling or giving away your old iPhone to pick up a nice new iPhone 4S but need to know how to make sure you’ve erased all your personal information from the device first? Luckily Apple makes it easy to securely wipe all your data. We’ll show you how after the break.

Although we highly suggest performing a full firmware restore and setting up your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad as “new”, if you’re not near your computer you can still get the job done:

If you have a passcode setup, you’ll have to verify your credentials before being asked one last time that you’re positively sure you want to dispose of everything on your iPhone. The process can also take some time depending on how much music, video, apps, etc. you had stored on the iPhone, as Apple is writing over the data multiple times for security’s sake.

It’s also important to note that if you have a jailbroken iPhone, you’ll want to go through the full iTunes restore process due to permissions issues preventing the data from being fully erased from the device.

Once it’s done you’re good to give away or sell your old iPhone without having to worry about anyone getting into something you may have left behind. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!

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 dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Apple close to bringing movie streaming to iCloud?

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Apple is preparing to deliver movies via its just released iCloud service. According to the report, representatives from Apple have been in meetings with various studios to finalize deals.

Representatives of the iPhone and iPad maker have been meeting with studios to finalize deals that would allow consumers to buy movies through iTunes and access them on any Apple device, according to knowledgeable people who requested anonymity because the discussions are private. The service is expected to launch in late 2011 or early 2012.

This news doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, we heard a while back that Apple was looking to secure agreements with various movie studios. The plans which are getting nearer to fruition would allow a user to stream any movies they buy from iTunes to any iCloud enabled device.

Source: Los Angeles Times

 

 

 

Sprint and Verizon iPhone 4S To Be SIM Unlocked [u]

Since both Sprint and Verizon use CDMA networks, they don’t need that handy little MicroSIM slot that comes in the side of the iPhone, and it appears they’re going to open it up for international travelers to install foreign SIMs. According to MacWorld:

But there’s a new wrinkle that potentially makes the international-roaming experience better on Sprint and Verizon iPhones than it is on AT&T. Sprint plans to sell the iPhone 4S with its micro-SIM slot unlocked; Verizon’s will be initially locked, but if you’ve been a customer in good standing for 60 days, you can call Verizon and ask for an “international unlock.” (A Verizon spokesperson told me that this is Verizon’s standard policy for all world phones—it’s just the first time it’s manifested itself on an iPhone.)

That’s right, both Sprint and Verizon will be offering the iPhone 4S unlocked. For free.

AT&T, you better pick this up, or you’re going to have an extremely pissed off set of international travelers on your hands. The inability to just throw in a new SIM when arriving in a new country has been a major problem with previous iPhone iterations, and jailbreak unlocking is often complicated and precarious. I’m really hoping AT&T sees the positive response to this and also unlocks their version.

UPDATE: Sprint is denying this. Curiouser and curiouser.

iCloud Leaves Beta

In advance of today’s iOS 5 release, the iCloud website has been updated, removing the “beta” modifier from the frontpage. Now comes the confusing part as everyone tries to register, and attempts to figure out which account to use if they had separate MobileMe and iPhone AppleIDs.

My experience was that it would let me login to the iCloud homepage using my normal AppleID with a gmail address, but I couldn’t enable it in any other applications. Maybe iOS 5 will rectify this situation. Most bizarrely it told me to find the iCloud preferences in System Preferences on my Mac, which simply don’t exist for me. I assume Mac OS 10.7.2 will be released soon to fix this.

[via MacRumors]