Phone Hacks | iPhone Tricks and Tips

Apps need to support device displays if people actually want to enjoy them, but sometimes the rollout takes time or leads to more issues. For example, let’s take a look at YouTube. Despite the fact that Apple launched the 11- and 12.9-inch in late 2018, here we are in January of 2019 and YouTube is finally rolling out support for the newest Apple-branded tablets. That’s not the quickest turnaround, but better late than never, right? It’s not all good news, either. It’s been confirmed that the new version of the app has an issue, namely that the Home indicator actually blocks the bottom row of icons: Good news: YouTube's been updated for the new iPad Pros. 🙌 Bad news: They forgot about the home indicator. 👀 pic.twitter.com/BZuD1rxkpK — Ryan Christoffel (@iryantldr) January 14, 2019 That’s certainly not great! Hopefully YouTube has another update planned to address this issue. Meanwhile, the Facebook-owned Instagram has updated its app as well, br...

Facebook’s Stories feature, which was a grasp at trying to steal folks away from the Snapchat platform, might be getting quite a bit more useful in the coming months. As detailed by The Verge , Facebook is planning on testing a brand new feature within Stories that will focus on live events, and making it easier to “meet up with friends IRL”. (Do people say IRL anymore?) The social network will be testing the new Stories feature in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico, and it will be available for iOS and Android users when it goes live. There is no word on a public launch, though, so that may still be a ways out. This new Stories feature will make it easy to share specific details of an incoming live event with your friends and family. Folks will be able to see who wants to go and is planning on showing up. And since this is based in Stories, there are stickers that people will be able to tap and get more information about the event. The stickers will let viewers cho...

The current feed in Instagram is vertical, and it has been that way since day one. But it looks like a change may be coming, so batten down the hatches. We’ve actually seen Instagram working on this sort of thing for awhile now, with hints that the company was working on the ability to tap from one image, and ad, to another, rather than scrolling. And now it looks like the feature, which brings a horizontal feed to users, is rolling out to more people out there in the wild beginning today. This will make Instagram’s standard feed look a bit familiar for folks who use Stories a lot. You’ll see a bar at the top of the screen to show you how far along you are in the new images and posts you need to see from the people you follow. Comments will be more prominent, too, as each individual photo/video collection will take up the whole screen now. At the time of publication it looks like some users are seeing their feeds reverted back to the standard vertical feed, while othe...

This week, Facebook suffered a major breach, which left millions of accounts vulnerable to an outside, malicious attack. On Friday, Facebook officially announced that hackers accessed the Facebook network on Tuesday. According to the post “nearly 50 million” accounts are affected by the illegal intrusion. The company also revealed that the hackers were able to gain access via the platform’s “View As” code. That particular feature allows Facebook users to see how their Facebook profile appears to folks who look at it. The hackers gained Facebook’s access tokens, which are individual codes that allow Facebook users to remain logged in. “On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 25, our engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security. Our investigation is still in it...

Being stalked from one website to another by persistent advertising is a real issue, but some companies, like Apple, have made strides to try and reduce its impact . But targeted advertising isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, especially if Facebook has any say in the matter. The company has recently confirmed that it does indeed go to some pretty great lengths to provide information to advertisers, with this latest effort definitely one of the social networking giant’s worst. A couple of days ago, Gizmodo ran a piece that outlined how Facebook uses the phone number some users added to take advantage of two factor authentication as a way to target those same individuals with ads. This is an extension of how Facebook already handles phone numbers saved to the platform’s profiles. How it works normally is if you add your phone number to your Facebook profile, and then add your phone number to some online retailer’s online presence, those two sources can match and b...

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two technologies that Apple is taking seriously, one of which is a rumored behind-the-scenes effort while the other has already seen a big platform push with ARKit out in the wild. Meanwhile, other companies like the Facebook-owned Oculus have been hard at work in their own VR efforts for quite some time, and now the company has just unveiled its newest headset called the “Quest”. The biggest new feature here is that it’s a standalone unit that manages to match the company’s Rift headset in terms of experience. The Rift headset is a full rig that requires a connection to a PC, while the Quest headset is completely standalone, so no smartphone or PC connection required to work. The new Quest will arrive sometime this spring, and when it does it will cost $399. The headset supports six degrees of freedom, and will support the Oculus Touch controllers. The display resolution per eye is set at 1600×1440, and th...

After WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum left Facebook earlier this year, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are also leaving the social networking giant. Facebook had acquired Instagram for $715 billion back in 2012. Both co-founders have already given their resignation and will be leaving the company in the coming weeks. Mark Zuckerberg has already issued a statement filed with kind words regarding Instagram co-founders leaving the company. “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it.” However, as per TechCrunch  report , tensions between Instagram co-founders and Facebook leadership has only grown in recent times. Kevin Systrom has also had multiple clashes with Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg multiple times over the year, particularly related to sharing data back with Facebook. Systrom...

Instagram started out as an easy way to share photos, but since its inception the photo- and video-sharing platform has evolved quite a bit . Especially when it comes to shopping. According to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, upwards of 90 million people every month tap on posts to reveal shopping-specific tags. The booming business is something that the platform wants to embrace, and, as such, is working in that direction. We heard earlier this month that the company is planning on launching a dedicated app for shopping, creatively called “IG Shopping” , but there isn’t a specific timeframe for when that will arrive. Instagram is building up to that day, though, by introducing a brand new tab in the Explore page. As first outlined by The Verge , the new shopping tab will allow users to see a myriad of content that’s purchasable from various sellers. And, for the first time, those sellers will be able to put dedicated tags in their Instagram Stories, which ...