iOS 6

iPhone 5 support is “coming soon” to Sparrow

According to co-founder and developer Dominique Leca, the Sparrow team (now part of Google's Gmail team) is working on a minor update that will enable support for the iPhone 5 and its taller screen. "iPhone 5 support is coming soon to Sparrow", Dominique wrote on Twitter.

Still a big fan and regular user of Sparrow on both the Mac and iOS platform, I sure am pleased that they are continuing to provide at least basic level of support to ensure the program runs smoothly on refreshed devices...

Keyboard shortcuts not working on iOS? Here is a quick fix

If there is one jailbreak tweak I particularly miss, it's Xpandr, a tweak that let's you create keyboard shortcuts, just like TextExpander does on your Mac. To me, it's an invaluable tool that has saved be hours of typing.

Keyboard shortcuts aren't a jailbreak-only feature though, as they were introduced with iOS 5 a few years ago. Though not as powerful as Xpandr, they're my fallback solution when there is no jailbreak available for my device.

So one of the first thing I did when I got my new iPhone last Friday was setting up a bunch of shortcuts (Apple calls them Text Replacement) that I use on a daily basis. Everything worked fine for a day, and then, they magically stopped working. Though I was worried I'd have to restore my iPhone to fix the issue, it turns out the solution was much simpler than I thought.

That didn’t take long: Passbook for Android lands

The brand new Passbook app in iOS 6 is garnering traction in both tech press and the real world with the likes of Starbucks, Target, theme park Accesso, airlines Delta, American Airlines, Virgin Australia and others all announcing they have or are implementing Passbook support.

As Passbook simply organizes digital coupons, tickets, loyalty cards and other items wrapped inside Apple’s new .pkpass file type, developer Attido Mobile was able to create a handy Passbook client for Android devices. It has been available for some time, is called PassWallet, does pretty much everything Apple's app is capable of and could easily be gone if Apple has any say over it...

Swiss Federal Railways to meet with Apple to talk iPad clock design

That beautiful clock design in Apple's new iPad Clock app in iOS 6 has evidently been copied from the Swiss Federal Railway service as they are the sole owner of the trademark and copyright of the railway clock. The Swiss firm, as previously reported, got in contact with Apple to talk the trademark dispute. According to a new report, its lawyers might be looking to eventually strike a licensing agreement of sorts with the Cupertino-based iPhone maker...

Apple announces 5 million iPhone 5 sales during launch weekend

Apple has announced that it sold a record-breaking 5 million iPhone 5s during its three day launch weekend, besting its previous record set by the iPhone 4S last year by more than a million.

The numbers shouldn't surprise anyone, considering the amount of demand we've seen for the device thus far. Apple said last week that it sold more than 2 million units in its first 24 hours...

Ryan Petrich gets Google Maps working on iOS 6

Apple's new Maps application, which replaces Google Maps in iOS 6, has caused quite a stir in the tech community over the past few days. It's been described as "inaccurate," and "glitchy," and many feel that it's extremely inferior to its predecessor.

But the good news is, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. At least for jailbreakers anyway. Well-known jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich announced earlier today the he was able to get Google Maps working on iOS 6. And here's the video...

Motorola spotlights iOS 6 Map flaws in new “iLost” ad

Apple has been taking a lot of heat over the past few days regarding its new Maps application. The company released iOS 6, the latest update to its mobile OS, to the public on Wednesday, which features the new Google Maps replacement.

Inaccuracies and missing features in the app have spawned a parody Tumblr and Twitter account, in addition to quite the uproar in the tech world. And it looks like Motorola is looking to capitalize on the criticism, with its new "iLost" ad...

iOS 6 adoption rate twice as fast as iOS 5 after two days

Despite claims by some that iOS 6 is less than a stellar update, it seems Apple's latest release of its mobile operating system is being adopted quickly by users of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches.

New figures released to Techcrunch by analytics firm Apsalar, show that iOS 6 is proving more and more popular as time progresses, with the adoption rate after two full days of availability being a healthy 20%. That's up 5 points from after day one.

Perhaps more telling is the fact that iOS 6 sees an adoption rate of double that seen by iOS 5 after the same period...

The iPhone 5 lets you put 16 apps inside a folder

We knew ahead of the iPhone 5 keynote that iOS 6 would take advantage of extra pixels on the iPhone 5 (640-by-1136) in order to render an additional, fifth row of icons. What we didn't know (but kinda expected) back then was that the per-folder app limit in iOS 6 running on the iPhone 5 would be raised from twelve to sixteen apps.

Strangely enough, even though Forstall and Schiller made a passing mention of this improvement during the unveiling, Apple's iPhone/iOS pages and the official 155-page iPhone 5 User Guide never detail it.

Now, I'm sure there are better ways to take advantage of those 176 extra lines, but if you're managing the home screen madness by organizing apps into folders, you'll quickly learn to appreciate this little nice-to-have which helps reduce the home screen clutter on your device...

And here comes Mapgate

Here, in case you've been wondering why Apple shipped buggy iOS Maps... Come on, you knew this was coming. I'd bet my shirt that Conan O'Brien will be next to diss Apple's crappy maps. Can you say Mapgate?

Starbucks to update its iOS app for Passbook by month’s end

Been wondering when you would be able to take your shiny new iPhone into a Starbucks and use Passbook to pay for your grande skinny vanilla latte? Well, wonder no more.

We've just spied a Twitter update from the company itself in which we learn that an iOS 6 compatible version of the app, complete with Passbook support, will be with us by the end of the month!

What's more, Starbucks even added a little bit of geekery to proceedings by signing off with a spot of binary code, just for the lolz...

Limited manpower blamed for crappy Apple Maps

In case you haven't already known this yet, the Apple-designed iOS 6 Maps app is off to a slow start amid reports of inaccurate data sets, missing or incorrect places, lack of built-in transit data and lacking navigational features in general. Simply put, Apple Maps have a long way to go before taking Google Maps head on.

According to one cartography expert, much of the woes with Apple Maps could be traced back to Apple's lack of qualified engineers and spatial data teams. The company should also look into acquiring major mapping data providers and be more active in crowdsourcing via a dedicated service to allow people to more easily improve the quality of data, akin to TomTom's MapShare service...