While Apple's Continuity feature has certainly impressed me, I can't help but feel like it could be used to create a better connection between my iPhone and Mac. Sure, Handoff allows me to pick up where I left off in certain applications between the two devices, and it lets me pick up calls and send text messages on my Mac, but I want even more functionality.
iTunes Radio, Apple's answer to Pandora, provides endless hours of free music streaming, but like other so-called "free" services, every now and then you're going to hear some ads. While you may not be bombarded with them, they can definitely kill the vibe when you're jamming to your favorite stations.
Google+ doesn't have quite the user base of Facebook or Twitter, but for Android enthusiasts, it's definitely the place to be. All of the major developers—such as Chainfire and Koush—make their social media home on Google+, and the Android app sports one of the nicest interfaces of any comparable platform, chock-full of Google's Material Design.
Notifications are an integral part of our day-to-day smartphone usage. They allow us to easily see and act upon all of the latest information that comes our way. Well, most of the time, that is.
Line breaks signify not only the ending of one line of thinking, but the beginning of another. We use them to emphasize points, to fragment information, to shift tone, and more. They're important in getting our message across properly, which is why I'm always disappointed when I can't insert a line break into my masterful Instagram caption.
With Nexus devices already enjoying Android 5.0 Lollipop, most other manufacturers are scrambling to get their flagships updated to Google's latest operating system. While HTC has promised Lollipop by the end of 2015, OEMs such as Motorola and Sony have already issued updates to their latest models. Then there's Samsung.
How many times do you think you press the Home button on your iPhone? You probably can't place a number on it, but you know it's a lot.
Spotify lets you use Siri commands to play and control music on your iPhone, but it wasn't always like that. It only applies in iOS 13 and later, so if you're on an older iPhone model with an older iOS version, you can use a really complicated workaround in iOS 12 or try a jailbreak tweak on older firmware.
Back in iOS 7, Apple decided that it was actually a good thing to make the volume controls HUD translucent. This, of course, means that whatever you're watching on your screen will be obstructed temporarily whenever you adjust the volume.
Most diehard Mac users have used TinkerTool at some time or another, and if you haven't, it's time to start. Whether it's to change your system's font or to disable UI animations, it seems like anything you could ever think about tweaking in Mac OS X is doable through TinkerTool. And now, developer Marcel Bresink has updated his app to work with Yosemite, so let's see what it can do now.
Aside from being able to change the wallpaper and add shortcuts, the Galaxy S4's lock screen doesn't offer much in the department of personalization. The lock screen is efficient and practical, but it's also a little bland.
Motorola changed the way users interact with their devices when they introduced their "always listening" feature on the Moto X. When I first saw it demoed, I couldn't wait to get the same functionality on one of my handsets, and now that has finally come to fruition.
Since the days of Friendster and MySpace, social media platforms have taken leaps forward, revolutionizing how we live our lives by changing the way we communicate with others. Not only has social media become a catalyst for major uprisings around the world, but on a personal level, it connects people together in ways that were unimaginable even 10 year ago—no one was taking pictures of their brunch to share with the world in 2004.
Placing widgets on your device's home screen is a quick way to gain instant access to shortcuts or to specific aspects of an app, like music controls or weather forecasts. As more and more developers create various types of app drawers and shortcuts, many overlook widgets and what they have to offer.
Without much notice, Spotify launched Desktop Open Beta a few weeks ago, a program that allows anyone to download, test out, and provide feedback on the latest beta version of their desktop application for Mac and Windows.
With all of the top-notch specs that the Galaxy S5 sports, the only minor quibble users have had with its hardware is the speaker situation. A front-facing earpiece is used for phone calls, but all other media is restricted to a single rear-firing speaker.
Trust can be a touchy subject in general, and is often required when sharing personal information—especially so when handing our phones over to others. You may not have a ton of secret or nefarious information on your device, but that doesn't mean you want your mom or snoopy coworker having easy access to your messages or Facebook app.
An uncapitalized proper noun in a message or email is a serious no-go for those skilled in the art of grammar. But trying to make a lowercase letter uppercase (and vice versa) is not a fun task if you're using an iPhone. You've got to point the cursor is just the right spot to change a letter, and that's a skilled art in and of itself.
Google's Android L developer preview has given Android a more refined look, with developers excited to update their apps with the new Material Design UI. While some apps are slowly getting updated, QKSMS (QK for quick) is a 3rd-party text messaging app that was built with Material Design in mind.
While LG G3 users have been patiently waiting, developer the cubed and his Codefire team have been diligently working on a successful unlock method for the heavily locked-down bootloader. Now it's finally here, and the unlocking method is extremely easy to do—and it works for all G3 variants.
Stocked with a 7-inch LCD display and 323 PPI (pixels per inch), the Kindle Fire HDX is one of the best tablets on the market for enjoying some great literature or entertaining streaming services—and I take full advantage of what this device offers.
Fresh herbs can be delicate, and it's not always easy to figure out how to cut, crush, or muddle them to make the most of their flavors. Get too rough, and you have a bunch of bruised and muddy-tasting herbs, which is due to too much chlorophyll being released. Don't do enough prep, and the herbs don't release the essential oils and volatile molecules that are the foundation of their flavor.
Many Android games use large, storage-heavy OBB files to store supplemental data. Generally, games with high-end graphics download these extra files when you install them from the Google Play Store.
Heartbleed, move over. There's a new bug in town, and this time it's also affecting Mac and Linux computers. It's called Shellshock (its original official title is CVE-2014-6271), and it's currently got a 10 out of 10 severity rating over at the National Cyber Awareness System. While some updates have been issued to fix this bug, they were incomplete, and your system is probably still vulnerable, as it has been for the last probably 20 years.
Bluetooth has been a staple on every Android smartphone ever since they began taking over our lives. Despite the fact that every device seems to have the ability to share files with one another, there is a limit to the types of files that can be shared between them.
Chances are that you're living in a city and/or state that's banned using your phone while driving, and because of that, many manufactures have added a "car mode" to their devices. In most instances, this mode is simply an app that simplifies your phone to its basic parts so you can navigate, make calls, and play music, limiting the amount of smartphone distractions.
Rooting is a great way to unleash your device's full potential, but not everyone's comfortable with it. Rooting can void a warranty, cause issues with certain apps, and the process itself can be tricky for older devices. Alas, most of the great apps or mods out there require root access, like the ability to utilize a built-in KitKat feature known as Immersive Mode.
Sharing files has always been one of Android's greatest strengths. A system of "share intents" allow apps to freely exchange data with each other, making it possible to take a picture with your favorite camera app, then send it over to your choice of photo-sharing apps, for instance.
One of the best features of Android is the fact that it's open-source, giving developers the ability to use it on pretty much any device they can think of, like on a Windows PC using Andy. That's what drove the creators behind the Android-x86 project to port over the mobile OS to any computer running an Intel processor.
Normally, it's good to automatically update your apps to the latest version, but sometimes those updates take away features that you've grown to love.
If you're using iOS 10 or lower, there is no built-in way to record an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch screen, and Apple doesn't allow any third-party apps to screen record either. If malicious, an app could theoretically continue recording even after you think it's off, allowing it to capture account and password information that you enter on your device. This changes in iOS 11, which introduces native screen recording, but what do you do if you're still running iOS 10 or lower?
With so many keyboard options available for Android, there's no reason to limit ourselves to the default one, or to just the ones available in the Amazon Appstore. While the Appstore does provide alternatives, such as SwiftKey, it doesn't come close to the selection available in the Google Play Store.
As we near the one-year anniversary of its release (and the inevitable unveiling of its successor), the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 remains a device that packs quite a punch when it comes to hardware. It boasts a 2.3Ghz CPU and was the first mobile phone ever to house 3GBs of RAM. Suffice it to say, it can handle any software you throw at it with no discernible lag. Even Samsung's notoriously bloated TouchWiz ROM seems lightning fast.
When it comes to wallpapers, I'm no monogamist. I have a lot of wallpapers that I'm committed to, but they don't always get their fair share of time with me—and that's where the problem lies. I'm too lazy to go out of my way to make sure they all feel loved. I'd rather them to come to me when it's their turn, and thanks to Wallpaper Changer, they can do just that.
HTC has made it their mission to get updates out to its devices as quickly as possible, with new builds slated for release 90-days after Google finalizes a build—this is dubbed HTC Advantage.
Most alarms just make noise to wake you up, and it can be a bit jarring coming off of a deep sleep to suddenly being woken up by a blaring sound. On the flip side, if you're a heavy sleeper, this might not even be enough stimuli to snap you out of your 8-hour coma.
It seems like every cloud service out there is offering tons of upgrade options and free promotions to give people as much space as they need to store their files online. I personally have over 100GB of Google Drive space which is shared between multiple computers, phones, and tablets, so keeping track of everything can be a huge pain in the ass.
Just when you begin to doubt the future of humanity, advances in ice cream scooping science continue to develop. Yumi showed you some super-cool ice cream hacks just in time for summer, and we've already discussed how to use a knife to slice ice cream when it's too hard to scoop.
Your heart is constantly work for you, yet you think nothing of it—and Samsung wants to change that. They stuck a dedicated heart-rate monitor on the Galaxy S5, they're putting one in the upcoming Note 4, and they're bound to slap one in every Galaxy device thereafter.
Update: August 1, 2014 Earlier today, President Obama signed into law the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, making the act of unlocking your unsubsidized cell phone 100% legal.
