Filed under: iPhone Missing FieldTest? It was a “secret” iPhone application that used to report all kinds of basic signal and connectivity details for your phone. You could access it by typing a special sequence (*3001#12345#*) into the Phone app. Field Test would list your local cell towers, their ids, relative strengths, and so forth. Apple ditched Field Test in iOS…  Read More →

Filed under: iPhone The possible, yet highly unlikely event of a full iPhone 4 recall would cost Apple dearly, according to Tony Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research . He has issued a report with a US$1.5 billion price tag as his best guess. However, that’s not what Sacconaghi believes will happen. Instead, he suspects Apple will relent and issue free Bumper cases to those who want them. With an estimated production cost of $1 each, the cost... 

Filed under: iPhone , App Store taptaptap, Tapbots, and Macheist have released a very well-designed calculator app for the iPhone and iPad called Calcbot — it’s available for 99 cents right now on the App Store. I would say that I don’t know why we need another calculator app on the store, but this one’s designed by Tapbots, so it’s basically a clinic in UI design for the iPhone: clean and beautiful Retina Display-enabled... 

Filed under: Friday Favorite BetterZip is a utility I might not use every day, but I’m very thankful for it when I need it. It’s an archive/compression utility which handles a broad array of archive formats, including ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, and some that you rarely see on a Mac, such as 7-Zip and RAR formats. While the unarchiver built in to OS X can handle quite a few of these formats — and is what I use on a day-to-day basis... 

Filed under: iPad When I was at the Apple Store on Tuesday test driving an iPad, the girl next to me with her parents was asking about drawing programs she could use. I immediately suggested Layers to them, which we initially reviewed last summer. There are several excellent drawing programs for the iPhone, but Layers was always my favorite and I’m glad to see that it’s now on the iPad. Layers for iPad was released on April 5, and... 

Filed under: iPad M E M O R A N D U M From: Ima Bettar Thanayou Vice President, People for the Ethical Treatment of iPads (PETi) To: YouTube user THISisCaSpEr Dear Mr. THISisCaSpEr, We received an anonymous tip from a friend of iPads about the horrendous treatment that you gave to a poor, defenseless iPad yesterday. He sent pictures and a video, so there’s no way that you’re going to weasel out of this one, buster! These young iPads…  Read More →

Filed under: Macworld , Peripherals If you’re an amateur or professional videographer and you’ll be attending Macworld Expo 2010 in San Francisco this week, Data Robotics has a contest just for you. Come up with an original video (less than 60 seconds in length) that best captures the spirit of Macworld 2010, submit it to a special Drobo Flickr group by February 19, and you’ll have an opportunity to win one of two Drobo S five-drive... 

Filed under: How-tos , iTunes , iPhone , iPod touch By default, movies and TV shows in the iPod portion of the iPhone and iPod touch play in landscape view. The biggest change with respect to video orientation came about with iPhone OS 2.0, which provided the option for landscape-right viewing (that is, with the volume and silent/vibrate buttons facing up). While most videos could, and should , be viewed in landscape, there are times that call...