How to create “blank” icons on the Home screen without jailbreaking

The fact that we’ve been unable to jailbreak the iPhone 5 thus far means that it’s difficult to customize the iPhone like we want to, but that doesn’t mean that it’s totally impossible.

As we’ve seen over the past few months, a new category of tweak has emerged — the non-jailbreak tweak. These are tweaks and hacks that one can use to customize their iPhone without a jailbreak. No, it’s not nearly as good as actually having root access to iOS, but it’s a nice holdover until some enterprising group or individual blesses us with a proper iPhone 5 jailbreak.

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Samsung’s Galaxy S IV seen building iPhone-like hype

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article today by Evan Ramstad entitled “Hype Builds for Smartphone, but It Isn’t an Apple Device.” Essentially, the whole piece is about how the commotion surrounding Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S IV handset is reaching iPhone-like proportions.

I didn’t agree at first — I’ve seen leaked photos of Android handsets before, and heard rumors and speculation. But as I started to dig in a little bit I realized that Ramstad was right, there’s something different this time around. A lot of people are talking about Samsung’s next flagship handset

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Lock Screen Drawer is another iOS 7 toggle concept

One of the annoying quirks of iOS is there’s no way to quickly toggle battery-draining and data-thirsty features and services we like to use selectively. Of course, that’s without jailbreaking. Considering BossPrefs (the precursor to SBSettings) was released in 2007, it’s about time Apple caught up with the demand for an official quick toggle panel. But how would Apple approach the problem?

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Create, add, and share beautiful filters for your photos with Digiback

There is an embarrassment of photography and filter apps on iTunes. If you’re not keeping track, Hipstamatic allows users to play with swappable filters disguised as virtual camera equipment, Instagram shares retro-filtered photos to a community, while Snapseed gives mobile users fine control of photo editing on the go. That barely scratches the surface of iPhoneography. In a flooded marketplace, what else can an iOS photography app allow users to do?

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Former Color employee gives behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s Lala acquisition

This is probably one of the more interesting Steve Jobs-Apple anecdotes I’ve heard in a while. It comes from Aubrey Johnson, a former Color employee, who gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Apple’s acquisitions of two startups: Lala and Color.

Apple purchased Lala, a streaming music company, back in late 2009, and it just completed its buyout of Color. And outside of the fact that both startups were founded by Bill Nguyen, not much else was really known about the two deals. Until now

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AAPL tanks below $500 on ‘weaker than expected’ iPhone 5 demand rumor

AAPL fell briefly below $500 this morning following The Wall Street Journal and the Nikkei newswire reports of the iPhone 5 part orders halved amid what’s being claimed a ‘weaker-than-expected’ global demand for the handset. Specifically, shares briefly sank to $497 in pre-market trading Monday as investors reacted to the news.

It’s the first time since February 2012 that AAPL tanked below $500 a share. AAPL lost nearly 26 percent since a September 2012 all-time high of $705.07 a share. In the last three months alone, the Apple stock lost seventeen percent of its value. Rival Samsung seized its opportunity, having released this morning official numbers proving flourishing sales of its Galaxy S smartphone series, which surpassed the accumulated sales record of 100 million units (from the supply side) since its launch in May 2010

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Samsung Galaxy S device sales surpass 100M mark

Hot on the heels of reports that Apple has had to cut iPhone 5 part orders due to weaker-than-expected demand, Samsung has announced that its handset sales are still flourishing.

It appears that the Korean company’s popular line of Galaxy S smartphones has recently reached a major milestone, crossing the 100 million unit mark in less than three years

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Apple seen cutting iPhone 5 part orders due to weak demand

The Wall Street Journal issued a report late last night, claiming that it had it on good authority that Apple has been telling its suppliers to cut their iPhone 5 part orders due to, what is believed to be, weak demand.

The publication’s sources, who — you guessed it, are familiar with the situation — say that Apple has cut orders for multiple iPhone 5 components, but say screen orders specifically have been cut by nearly 50 percent

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DismissMyKeyboard allows you to quickly hide the iPhone’s keyboard

DismissMyKeyboard is a recently released jailbreak tweak for jailbroken iPhones that allows you to easily dismiss the software keyboard. While the iPad already benefits from such a feature due to the device’s larger area of real estate, the iPhone’s keyboard has no room for a dedicated dismiss keyboard button like you see on its larger brethren.

DismissMyKeyboard solves this issue by allowing you to perform a swipe gesture right on the keyboard in order to dismiss it. Take a look at our video walkthrough inside to see how it functions.

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‘TorchNC’ and ‘InstaSnap’ spice up Notification Center on jailbroken iPhones

Two new jailbreak tweaks have recently appeared in Cydia by the same developer, and they both happen to focus on Notification Center. Specifically, these tweaks aim to add handy shortcuts to the Notification Center pull-down pane.

The first tweak on the docket, TorchNC, adds a shortcut to activate the iPhone’s LED flash. There are other tweaks and apps that perform flashlight functions, but I always find it useful to have it within Notification Center, or directly on the Lock screen.

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