Apple unveils iOS 7

Apple has unveiled iOS 7 after months of speculation.

"iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone," said CEO Tim Cook, introducing iOS 7 . "It's packed with amazing new features, and a stunning new user interface."

The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system represented the biggest change to the look and feel of iOS since the first iPhone launched in 2007.

As anticipated,  iOS 7 sports a flat-design, with the skudeomorpism of the previous design done away with.

"We wanted to take an experience that people know very well and add to it," Ive explains in a video shown during the keynote event. "We see  iOS 7 as defining an important new direction ... and in many ways, a beginning."

The redesign of iOS has reportedly been underway for the last six months since Craig Federighi took over software development for the mobile platform.

Very little of the new operating system resembles the old version of the software. Almost every part of the software has been redesigned.

Among the new features are multiple pages within folders and the introduction of a today view for notification centre.

Apple also showed off its new Control Centre, which offers a quicker and simpler way to control many of the most used settings.

Another major change includes the introduction of a revamped multitasking interface, which is part of the Control Centre. Instead of icons,  iOS 7 displays a preview of the screen. It is also smart enough to recognise when you use an app a lot during the day – such as Facebook – and devote more power and processing time to it to keep you updated.

iOS also introduces a raft of small, but all the same useful features, such as a Flashlight built into the device, and AirDrop, allowing you to share files and photos without needing to send them via email or text.

Other small features introduced in the latest version include FaceTime audio, per app VPN and perhaps long overdue, the ability to block people from calling you on the phone and via FaceTime, and sending texts via Message.

Siri sounds more human like in iOS 7. It's also smarter and faster – very much needed with the superior processing available via Google Now. Siri also now has Twitter, Wikipedia, and most interestingly, Bing support.

Apple has also beefed up security on the device, enabling enterprise single sign on support for those of you who used your iPhone in the workplace, and a revamp of find my iPhone that locks the device until you sign in with your Apple ID and password.

Apple has said that the software is still under development at the moment and will be released later on in the year.

Take a look at our full iOS 7 rundown features in our video below:

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Apple Scores $30M iPad Deal With L.A. Schools

Apple announced Wednesday that it has landed a major deal to sell iPad tablets to the second-largest public school district in the United States.

The Los Angeles School Board of Education has approved a $30 million deal to roll out iPads to students in its district beginning this fall. Each iPad tablet will include the "Pearson Common Core System of Courses delivered via a new app," Apple said in a statement. The iPads will also be equipped with iWork, iLife, iTunes and some educational third-party apps.

The school district is paying $678 for each iPad, since it includes the pre-loaded educational software, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The battle for market share in the education space is competitive. A Microsoft spokesperson commented generally on tablets in schools, in a statement to Mashable on Wednesday: "Why would a school choose a device that prepares students to play games and watch videos? Why wouldn’t a school pick a device that prepares them for the workforce?"

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) said it chose the iPad for quality ratings, high scores from its student and teacher review panel, and for being its least expensive option.

“The vote is another step forward in the District’s plan to equip every one of its students with a device by 2014," Jaime Aquino, district deputy superintendent of instruction, said. "When completed, the LAUSD will become the largest district in the nation to provide each of its students with the technology.”

The district's purchase will join the "nearly 10 million iPads already in schools today,” according to Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

But Apple isn't the only tech giant getting a slice of the education market pie. In the past few months, Dell has scored deals with at least six school districts across the country to distribute its Windows 8-powered Latitude 10 tablets. Also, Southern Illinois University will be giving all incoming freshman a Latitude 10 tablet.

Earlier this year, Amplify — the education division of News Corp. focused on creating digital products for classrooms — showed off its 10-inch Android tablet targeted toward teachers and students.

Samsung is developing its own solution for the classroom that combines tablets, e-boards and other technology, a company spokesperson told Mashable. The Samsung School solution, which incorporates Android-based Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets, has been piloted with students in Tennessee's Memphis City Schools.

What do you think about tablets in schools? Is it an effective educational tool or an unwanted distraction? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Lytro announces iOS app, unlocks hidden WiFi feature in camera

Today's news brings a pleasant surprise for Lytro camera owners. It turns out the that each one of the small light-field cameras has had a hidden WiFi chip inside, waiting to be turned on. Well, the time for activation has come with the release of a new firmware update which activates the WiFi. And just in time for the release of Lytro's new iOS app.

The app, called Lytro Mobile, connects to your iPhone via the WiFi transmitter and allows you to view camera images from your iOS device. Once you activate the app simply click the Camera feature and you will be told to select WiFi from the Lytro's menu screen. Once you tap the WiFi option on your Lytro screen you will be able to wirelessly upload images directly to Lytro.com.

The mobile app has other tricks up its sleeve. You can use the app to refocus a picture via Perspective Shift, add captions and geotagging, and share your live pictures via your favorite social network, message service or SMS. The app also allows you to use the Lytro to make GIF images from pictures you've taken. The firmware update and app are available now fromLytro and the App Store respectively.

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Hazel 3.1 update adds powerful date-matching feature

Noodlesoft's Hazel is a file-organization tool for Mac OS X that uses a set of customizable rules to automatically move and sort your information. It can be set to automatically move your new music or movies to your Music and Movies folders, or sort files by name, email address, the website they came from and much more. For people who'd rather keep working than sort files, it can be a great time-saving tool for keeping your desktop and downloads folder clear.

Today Hazel released version 3.1, which adds a powerful new date-matching feature to the software. The feature allows you to search the contents of a document for text formatted as a date, so if you need to quickly find a digital copy of an insurance report from June 19, 2013 you simply need to set Hazel to look for that date. Hazel knows to look for different kinds of date formatting, converting slashes to dashes when the moment needs it.

You can see video of the feature being used below made by blogger David Sparks. Hazel 3.1 is currently available for download from Noodlesoft as a free 14-day trial. If you'd like to purchase the program at the end of your trial it will set you back US$28.

Hazel 3.1 from David Sparks on Vimeo.

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Decode and NativeQR Bring QR Reading To Stock Camera App

Both released in one day by separate developers, Decode Camera and NativeQR are the first two Cydia tweaks to bring QR reading to the stock camera app. With these new tweaks, you don't have to grab a QR reader from the AppStore just to read a code on a billboard, advertisement or magazine.

Decode Camera is developed by ioshack with a price tag of $1.50. It is compatible with iPad and supports the front and rear facing cameras. iOS 5 and 6 are supported as well.

NativeQR is similar, but features a $1.99 price tag. It lacks iOS 5 and iPad compatibility, but iPad support will be soon released. Developed by Evan Swick, NativeQR is also integrated with your contacts -- allowing you to quickly share your information via a QR code.

You can find both tweaks in the Cydia store. Let us know which you one prefer!

Decode Camera [$1.50]



NativeQR [$1.99]

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Apple testing deep LinkedIn integration for iOS 7

Further bolstering the presence of third-party social networks in iOS, Apple is testing deep LinkedIn integration for the upcoming release of iOS 7, according to code-based references found inside of the first beta of iOS 7. The code points to a single-sign-on system, similar to how iOS integrates Facebook and Twitter, for LinkedIn accounts. The references also indicate that users will be able to easily post content, such as Web links, to LinkedIn via a share-sheet or through iOS applications…

According to Hamza Sood, who discovered and sent us the LinkedIn code and text strings, certain pieces of code are missing for the LinkedIn functionality to become active. Perhaps this is why LinkedIn integration is not present in the user-facing version of the first iOS 7 beta.

It is currently uncertain if Apple plans to continue to develop LinkedIn integration for iOS 7, or if it will be a feature that simply vanishes after internal testing. Apple has cut social networks from iOS in the past. For example, back in 2010, Apple tested versions of iOS 4 that included Facebook integration, but the two companies did not agree to a deal until 2012 with iOS 6.

Apple added Vimeo, Flickr, and Tencent Weibo integration with iOS 7.

iOS 7 integration with LinkedIn would not be unprecedented. At the WWDC 2013 keynote, Apple and LinkedIn announced ties for the upcoming release of OS X Mavericks. Linkedin integration in Mavericks allows for single-sign-on app access, sharing from Safari, Notification Center-based alerts, and a presence inside of Safari for Mac’s Shared Links view. Twitter is noticeably alone in iOS 7′s Shared Links panel, so adding LinkedIn integration to iOS 7 would seem logical.

Screenshots of the aforementioned code and text strings:

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Review: Is Chatology the solution for Messages search?

Messages for Mac is buggy. There’s no denying that fact. At some point, all of us have tried to search for a specific message in the app only to be confronted by everyone’s favorite multi-colored symbol of despair.

Several weeks ago, Flexibits, developers of Fantastical for Mac and iPhone, announced a new project called Chatology that would finally solve this issue once and for all. Today, they unveiled the app to the world. So what exactly is Chatology? Does it solve the problem it sets out to solve? Keep reading to get answers to those questions and more.

What is it?

The biggest question that most people had when Chatology was first teased was simple: what does the app actually do? Some assumed that it would be a full-blown messaging suite with improved search features. Others hypothesized that it would be some kind of tweak or plugin for Messages that solved the search problem right in the same app.

The real answer is somewhere in between those two. Chatology is a separate app, not a plugin. However, it doesn’t actually feature any messaging capability. You still have to use the Messages app to send or receive iMessages and IMs on other platforms.

In short, Chatology is a chat log viewer. Messages for Mac saves every conversation you have to a file on your hard drive by default. These chat logs are then used to keep track of threads and conversations in the Messages app. If you delete those files (or disable saving them), your Messages app won’t be able to store the seemingly infinite chat history that you normally see.

It’s these chat logs that Chatology reads. Upon first run, Chatology imports all of these messages (tens of thousands in my case, and probably more for many other users) and catalogs them so that you can easily search them. Chatology also provides some extra search parameters, making it easy to find links or images in a conversation.

Chatology also has the ability to integrate with Messages. When this option is enabled, pressing Command-F in the Messages app brings up Chatology instead of the usual Messages search bar. This feature is very handy if you frequently search your messages but prefer Chatology’s search interface over Apple’s.

Does it work?

Now that we know what Chatology does, let’s address how well it does that. For starters, the design of Chatology makes it somewhat impractical for anything other than searching. If you just want to read a series of messages from yesterday or a few days ago, you’re probably better off scrolling backwards in the Messages app.

Due to the way Chatology separates logs by date, if you don’t know the exact date of the message you’re looking for, it can quickly become a pain to find what you need.

Another factor that can cause some trouble searching Chatology is the sheer number of messages that it stores. Because Chatology stores all of your logs from the Messages app, all of your AIM or Yahoo! messages are also logged, along with those from any services you might use, such as the Amy plugin. In my case, all of my App.net private messages, AIM conversations, and iMessages were imported. That’s a lot of conversations to go through. Even though Chatology searches through them all with no problem, narrowing down the results to the exact message you need can take some time because there’s no way to separate chat logs by the chat service that created them (this is OS X’s fault, not Chatology’s, however).

Yes, Chatology works, and works well. It searches all of the chat logs on your computer with incredible speed. It can separate group chats from individual chats and separate those individual chats by sender, although it currently doesn’t combine multiple addresses into one contact, like Messages for Mac does, so you’ll have multiple entries for the same person if you chat with them on different services or using different iMessage addresses.

What problem?

When Apple finally released OS X 10.8.4 after what seemed like an eternal beta process, the update included fixes for searching in Messages that left the app running smoothly for almost everyone.

This left Flexibits in an odd predicament. They had already positioned themselves as the incoming saviors of chat search, but now Apple had fixed the entire problem they set out to solve. They had been beaten to the punch.

The bottom line

The idea behind Chatology is great, but the execution is flawed. The interface, while simple and lightning fast, makes finding the right message difficult in many cases. The problem it was designed to mitigate no longer exists.

Users who need the ability to search for links or images within conversations will enjoy the ability to do so, but the need to select a specific time and date that the image or link in question was sent essentially negates the usefulness of the feature.

Unfortunately, I’m not sold enough on Chatology to recommend it to most users over the built-in search in Messages. Since the search issue has been resolved in OS X 10.8.4 (and Mavericks), I can’t see much of a need for a separate app to search chat logs, especially one that, in my opinion, makes searching no more efficient than it already is.

A free trial of Chatology is available on the Flexibits website, and the full version can be purchased on the Flexibits web store for $19.99.

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