While last year's revelation that Apple slows down iPhones with aging batteries left a bad taste in users' mouths, the company's $29 battery replacement program was a step in the right direction. However, all good things must come to an end; Apple will soon shut down the program, leaving users to pay the full $79 to replace their faulty batteries.
While iOS 11 was famous for its instability, performance issues weren't the only factor holding it back. The OS overhauled the notification system on iPhone, but not necessarily for the better. iOS 12, however, improves upon these changes, bringing critical features that make viewing and interacting with notifications on your iPhone on par with Android.
The next big event Apple is holding is WWDC 2018, its Worldwide Developers Conference, is about to happen. If you want to see the first glimpse of iOS 12 for yourself, as well ARKit improvements, Apple Watch news, and maybe even some macOS announcements, here's how you can tune into the event right at home from your computer or mobile device.
Ads can detract from your mobile browsing experience, especially if they appear out of nowhere as popups or large annoying banners that take up almost all of your screen. If those weren't bad enough, some ads appear as extremely loud videos that can even disrupt others around you. In fact, ads have gotten so obnoxious that even Google itself was forced to act.
In an effort to help its advertising partners close sales with its sponsored augmented reality camera effects, Snapchat has launched a set of e-commerce tools designed to encourage users to buy products directly in the app.
While Instagram users can attach links to images, they can only do so in stories, and only if they meet the special requirements that most users cannot obtain. Snapchat, on the other hand, lets anyone add a link, and it can be done in regular snaps and in your story. This feature has only been around since July 2017, so you may have missed it and not even realized it was a possibility.
For the longest time, the only clickable link you could throw up on Instagram was in your profile's bio, and that's still true for a lot of users. The only way to add a clickable link aside from the aforementioned one is in an Instagram story, where users checking out your story would swipe up to load the webpage before going back to finish your story.
The latest cosmetics brand to launch its own augmented reality try-on tool is Cover Girl, which introduced its browser-based experience this week.
The internet is full of fun, cool, and interesting websites. Bookmarks and favorites can help keep your favorite pages on hand, but they aren't the most convenient method. In iOS, Apple lets you save whatever webpages that you want to the home screen, so you'll have as easy access to them just as you do apps on your iPhone.
Whether you've stumbled upon an interesting location you want to bookmark for later, need to remember where you park your bicycle or vehicle, or want to keep track of your favorite food truck locations, Apple Maps makes it easy.
If you're following the classic Halloween playbook closely, you've already got a costume or three picked out, you've binged-watched your favorite horror movies, and you've likely visited a haunted house. But it's 2017, so how about trying something new, like a haunted house that's not actually there?
A Russian augmented reality startup wants the next frontier in real estate to be augmented reality estate.
Much like Xposed or Cydia, Magisk has an official repository that makes it easy to download root-level tweaks. These tweaks are called modules, and they can do anything from changing your emojis to installing high-level audio mods. But as it stands, a large number of Magisk modules are not hosted on the official repo just yet, so there are two primary ways to install them.
You can send self-destructing messages in Secret Chats, but that's not the only thing that can destroy itself in Telegram after a specified amount of time. Your whole account can disappear after a certain amount of inactivity, so it's important to adjust these settings to give you more time or to kill your account even quicker.
If you want to find out the linear distance between your hotel and a landmark or restaurant you want to visit, Google Maps has a great feature that lets you quickly measure the distance between two or more points. It's perfect for getting an idea of how far places are in relation to each other, which can help you plan trips more efficiently.
Life is all about spending time together with loved ones, experiencing new places together to enjoy and create memorable moments. Luckily, Google has made it easier for us to rendezvous with friends and family at specific places by letting us broadcast our locations using Google Maps.
This may not matter to you if you only FaceTime from your iPhone occasionally, but if you're FaceTiming every day on a limited data plan from your cellular provider, you're going to want to conserve as much data as possible by making sure that you're connected to Wi-Fi only — especially if they are video calls.
Perhaps in tribute to the season premiere of Game of Thrones, Google Glass is demonstrating that what is dead may never die, as Alphabet's X (formerly Googlex) has revealed that the Enterprise Edition of the smart glasses are now available to businesses.
SoundCloud is a really interesting alternative to Spotify and Pandora in that it will never really give you the exact mainstream song that you want. If you're looking for new up-and-coming artists that are making some wonderful alternative remixes to mainstream music, then SoundCloud is the right music streaming app for you.
In late June, the biggest measles outbreak to strike Minnesota since 1990 seemed to be winding down. Today, public health officials announced a new confirmed measles case in the area.
A new case of the still-mysterious Bourbon virus was confirmed in Missouri, likely originating within the state, local authorities said in a June 30 press release.
I thought eventually that my ex's Instagram account would magically clear from my "Suggested" search history. It's been six months now, and I'm sorry, babe, but enough is enough. It's time to clear out your very cute face. (On Instagram, of course.)
The latest video game developer to hit the scene is a hotel chain, and they're offering big prizes for high-scorers.
Well, get ready to have your battery depleted if you use Google Photos. The backup app has just removed the "Backup While Charging" feature in their app.
Despite what you may have heard, sleep is NOT for the weak. It's essential, not to mention it makes us feel a hell of a lot better in general. But for some, getting to sleep is easier said than done. In fact, about 50 million to 70 million people in the US have a sleep or wakefulness disorder, according to the CDC.
Apple introduced their new mobile operating system for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch at WWDC on June 5, 2017, and there are a lot of great new features to try out. While the official version of iOS 11 was released to the public on Sept. 19, you can still sign up either as a developer or with the iOS Beta Program to get new versions of iOS 11 before anyone else does.
This week's Brief Reality is led by a pair of stories with an eye to the future of the augmented reality industry, first in terms of standards for the industry, then with regards to its future applications in the automotive realm. Finally, one company looks to boost its future sales with an executive hire.
Beginning in November, National Football League (NFL) fans visiting New York's Times Square can come as close as any civilian can to stepping onto a professional football field. All for less than the price of a pair of cleats.
After a brief reprieve, Zika fear is back with a vengeance as the US mosquito population booms. And we're just now seeing the true impact of this devastating virus, as babies of mothers infected with the virus are being born.
Uber's driverless cabs began picking people up in Arizona in February, after its attempt at a pilot test in San Francisco. Now, one of these cars has been in an accident, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
There has been an outbreak of syphilis in Oklahoma County with 75 confirmed cases connected by a social network driven by drug use and sex.
Bats are an important part of the US economy. They devour metric tons of bugs every night that would otherwise ravage crops and also be generally disgusting-looking and make you itchy. But they're in danger from a nasty fungal infection called white-nose syndrome, which has just popped up in Texas and has been spreading across the country.
Rabbits have been a persistent problem in Australia for over 150 years. Now the Peel Harvey Catchment Council (PHCC) and Peel-Harvey Biosecurity Group have released a strain of the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), called RHDV1 K5, to reduce the number of pests in the Murray region of New South Wales.
Dirty, malformed, and outright mischievous text strings have long been the enemy of interactive website developers. Strings contain any combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation, and are entered into text boxes on websites by users. These strings in particular can do everything from highlighting XSS vulnerabilities to soliciting 404 error pages.
Yes, bubonic plague—the Black Death that killed millions in the Middle Ages— is still out there. It even infects and kills people in the United States. Without treatment, half the people infected die, but the Food and Drug Administration approved ciprofloxacin in 2015 to treat plague, and it has just successfully been used to stop the infection in five people.
No one can dispute the evolutionary success of bugs. The oldest insect fossils were found encased in crystallized mineral silica in Scotland in 1926, and they're between 396 and 407 million years old.
If you're an Android user, Google probably has almost your entire digital life stored on its servers. Family pictures are backed up on Google Photos, your e-book library resides with Google Play Books, videos are on YouTube, chat logs in Gmail and Hangouts, starred places and location history in Google Maps, and so much more.
With the recent news that New York County's District Attorney's office is trying to get into over 400 locked iPhones for use in criminal investigations, you can see why it's important to keep other people away from your personal data. The fact that it can and will be used against you in a court of law is just one reason to protect your phone, because even if you make sure to stay above the fray, identity theft and bank fraud are still very real threats.
A new hack has reopened an 8-year-old iPhone security loophole that Apple thought it had fixed back with iPhone OS 2.2. This is not one of those times when a theoretical attack gets identified and blocked quickly by Apple. On the contrary, it's a hack that actually exists right now, and it can have some serious real-world repercussions, so this is something all iPhone users need to be aware of.
This morning, Google opened a pop-up showroom where anybody can visit to get a hands-on look at the new Made by Google hardware lineup. At 10 am the line at 96 Spring st, in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, was growing but still manageable. As we waited to be ushered in, Google representatives came by to offer us coffee drinks prepared by a pair of baristas in the Peddler Coffee cart parked on the curb. "Now that's latte art," said the guy in line next to me when he saw that the foam-t...