Apple - Tans Computer News

If you are fed up watching your Android-toting mates stick whatever they fancy on their phones while you're locked down to Apple-approved software, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The iPhone Dev Team has announced that its Corona A5 tool, for jailbreaking the latest Apple devices, will be released soon, with the team just finishing off and streamlining the user experience.

Making a break for it

The iPhone 4S and iPad 2 have proved more of an issue to jailbreak, as Apple changed its approach when constructing the latest models, in an attempt to make them resistant to hacking attempts.

Novices usually shy away from such technical complexities, but the Dev Team report that Corona A5 will provide guidance to virgin jailbreakers, via both a simple GUI for PCs and Macs and a command-line interface, while also providing suitable access for the battled hardened expert.

If you are new to this whole jailbreaking lark you may be wondering, what's in it for you? Jailbreaking your iDevice will allow you to access a whole host of additional apps which were not allowed through the App Store's strict entry rules.

You will also be able to customize your visual experience, changing the appearance of icons, wallpapers, themes, keyboard and lots more.

10 best iOS apps for keeping in touch

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 18:19

In Depth: 10 best iOS apps for keeping in touch

10 best iOS apps for keeping in touch

It's more or less inevitable that, sooner or later, you'll spend a holiday season apart from someone special to you.

Whether it's a sibling freshly emigrated to sunnier climes or a close friend who has moved cities to take up a new job, we all know the dull ache that comes from missing someone during an important time.

Fortunately, as technology has got cleverer and cleverer, it has also become easier and cheaper to stay in touch. With broadband near-ubiquitous in the first world, and gaining a substantial foothold elsewhere, it's become the norm to fire up Skype in an evening or early morning to chat with a far-flung friend or relative via a video call, all without spending a penny – something that was firmly the preserve of science fiction books and films until recently.

The myriad of ways to stay in touch with people – phoning, chatting via text or sending physical reminders through the post – have also made it to your iOS device, and sometimes in spectacular ways. You might find yourself sending your gran a postcard while you're on your way home from work, or calling a friend in New York for free over your iPhone's 3G connection, for instance.

Best iPad and iPhone 2D shoot 'em ups

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 18:19

Buying Guide: Best iPad and iPhone 2D shoot 'em ups

Best iPad and iPhone 2D shoot 'em ups

2D shoot 'em ups aren't as in vogue as they once were, having mostly been replaced by games where you roam around dim 3D corridors before getting shot.

But in recent years, simple shooty thrills have found a new lease of life on handheld consoles, and with gamers yearning for old-school twitch-based arcade excitement.

Gaming veterans will happily reel off lists of classic games of this type, until you force them to stop (possibly by swinging a 1980s joystick in front of their eyes, thus hypnotising them), but the genre really started with Space Invaders – that's the important one.

And like all true classics, Space Invaders is still fun to play today, with the act of defeating the hordes of aliens using just your lonely ship still feeling heroic. (One might also argue that the game showcases some seriously poor army funding on the part of both humans and aliens.

Our guys fend off worldwide enslavement with a single cannon that only fires one shot at a time. Meanwhile, the aliens are lumbered with ships that hang in the air, waiting to be shot, rather than swooping down in an instant, so the occupants can declare themselves our lords and masters. But anyway…)

Apple releases iTunes 10.5.3

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 18:19

Screen Shot 2012-01-19 at 11.25.21 AM .

Along with today’s Education updates, Apple released a new version of iTunes today to allow the syncing of interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad and to presumably add new features for the “iBooks 2.0″ app and the updated iTunes U program. On my install, the 107MB download took an additional 257MB of storage space. Get downloading folks.

iBooks Author end-user license agreement sparks controversy

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 18:19

iBooks Author EULA

When we covered everything you need to know about publishing and distribution for Apple’s new iBooks Author platform, we told you that Apple would require books created with the tool to be sold through the iBookstore. Publishers can, however, make books available for free on their websites or elsewhere. Now, Daring Fireball pointed us to a report from Dan Wineman who likens Apple’s end user license agreement for iBooks Author to “Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents.” Wineman explained:

It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented. I’m sure it’s commonplace with enterprise software, but the difference is that those contracts are negotiated by corporate legal departments and signed the old-fashioned way, with pen and ink and penalties and termination clauses. A by-using-you-agree-to license that oh by the way asserts rights over a file format? Unheard of, in my experience.

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More iPad Retina images found in iTunes U, iBooks 2 files

Wednesday, 22 February 2012 18:19

iTunes U (Click to enlarge):

iBooks 2:

Thanks @sonnydickson for the images

We have been finding references to 2X iPad images for well over a year (including iBooks 1.2), but with the next iPad expected soon, these images found in the iBooks 2 file have some importance: