On Gear Live: Apple slashes price on refurbished iPad and iPad 2 units, starting at $299

Latest Gear Live Videos

Unboxing Live 085: Third Rail Slim Case and Smart Battery for iPhone 4, iPhone 4S

We show you the awesome Third Rail Slim Case and Smart Battery for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S in this episode. The design of the Third Rail system is brilliant. The case itself protects the iPhone, but is super slim because of the fact that the battery is removable. When you need power, you just slide a Smart Battery into place, and your phone is charging. Even cooler, the Smart Battery can charge other USB devices on its own, not just iPhones. So if you have an Android device, a Kindle, or anything else, you can use the Smart Battery to charge it. The batteries are also stackable, and you can have up to 6 Smart Batteries giving power to a device, or being recharged, all at once. You can pick up a Third Rail Slim Case on Amazon for $74.

Big thank you to GoToMeeting and JackThreads for sponsoring the show - be sure to check them out! GoToMeeting with HDFaces provides rich, super-simple collaborative virtual meetings. As for JackThreads, we've got exclusive invite codes that give you $5 to use towards anything you'd like on the site.


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Install Siri on any jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Spire

Posted by John Ball Categories: Apple, Handhelds, Mods / Hacks, Software

Siri Jailbreak

The first legal Siri port has been developed and released for jailbroken iPhone 4, iPhone 3G and 3GS, iPod touch 3rd and 4th generations, and both iPads, and it's called Spire. The way the tweak works is by using an external proxy server to mimic Apple’s own Siri servers, which are used exclusively for the iPhone 4S. Spire has a quick install and a simple setup that takes no time at all to get up and running. There are some minor issues with the method however, namely that for every iDevice connected to a proxy server, Apple is losing money. The problems don’t stop there though. This also leaves the "official" iPhone 4S Siri possibly open to vulnerability for use with these proxy servers, which can potentially lead to unreliability within the phone itself and possible personal information being leaked from all the connected devices.

Moving away from the negatives to the positive, looking at the Spire, it functions exactly like its older sibling for the iPhone 4S as you are not running it on the iPod Touch 3rd generation (the tweak takes full advantage of the external microphone.) Have you got Siri up and running on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch?

Click to continue reading Install Siri on any jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with Spire


Download iOS 5.1 beta 3 9B5141a now!

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Handhelds, Software

ios 5.1 beta 2 9b5127c

Apple has just added another iOS 5 beta update to its Dev Center, and today developers can go and grab iOS 5.1 beta 3. If you are already running iOS 5.1 beta, you can just do an OTA update and be done with it. If not, you'll need to download the update and connect to iTunes to install the beta. You can now grab iOS 5.1 beta 9B5141a for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, alongside Xcode 4.3 Developer Preview 7 for Lion (4E71d.)


Top 10 Gear Live stories of 2011

iPad 2 giveaway

We've come to the end of another year, and as we wave goodbye to 2011, we figured it was only fitting that we share the most popular stories published on Gear Live this year, as determined by our readers (we've also got the top ten most read stories regardless of publish date, as well as the ten most popular Gear Live videos of 2011!) These are the ten stories that were read the most, and when you consider that fact, it's pretty surprising to see what made the list. Let's kick it off with our most read story of the year:

Giveaway: Apple iPad 2 32 GB!:
The iPad 2 certainly got a lot of attention this year, and our iPad 2 giveaway served as our most popular post out of them all for 2011.

Click to continue reading Top 10 Gear Live stories of 2011


Just got a new Apple device? Get AppleCare!

AppleCareWe know a ton of you got some new  gear over the past few days, and we want to make sure you protect those items appropriately. Whether it's a new iPad 2, iPhone 4, MacBook Air, or even an old-school iPhone 3GS, we thought it would be prudent of us to recommend you get AppleCare for the devices you’ve acquired. Here’s the trick though—don’t buy AppleCare from Apple. If you buy it from Amazon, you can get up to 30% off of the price that Apple will charge you for the same 3-year warranty. Even better, when you go to resell your Apple hardware, if you have an AppleCare Protection Plan attached to it, you get a higher resale value. We’ve compiled a list of the different AppleCare Protection Plans available for the entire line of Apple hardware, check it out:

Apple Mobile Devices:

Apple Mac Computers:


Put Siri on your iPad, iPhone 4, iPod touch with Spire jailbreak hack

Siri Spire

One of the key differences between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S is the availability of Siri on the newer smartphone. There have been a few hacks and allegedly legal options that put Siri on older versions of the iPhone, but nothing officially sanctioned by Apple.

The latest Siri workaround comes from iOS hackers Grant Paul, known as chpwn, and Ryan Petrich. In a recent blog post, the duo unveiled Spire, which is a "new tool for installing Siri on previously unsupported, but jailbroken, devices," Paul said. As you might recall, an iOS 5 jailbreak was just released.

The 100MB download is available via Cydia and it will add Siri to any device running iOS 5.

If that sounds a bit too good to be true, though, it is. Actually getting Siri to work on a device other than the iPhone 4S will require some technical know-how.

Click to continue reading Put Siri on your iPad, iPhone 4, iPod touch with Spire jailbreak hack


iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak has been released

iOS 5.0.1 jailbreak

If you're running iOS 5.0.1 and have been waiting for the ability to jailbreak your device without being tethered to a computer, today is your lucky day (as long as you aren't hoping to jailbreak the iPhone 4S or iPad 2!) The Chronic Dev Team and iPhone Dev Team have jointly released a new version of redsn0w that will jailbreak the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch running iOS 5.0.1. Users who are already running the tethered version of the jailbreak can download Corona from Cydia to get in on the untethered action. An untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is still being worked on, with no set timetable for arrival.

In other iOS 5 jailbreak news, a new "Spire" hack now allows you to install Siri on jailbroken iOS devices as well!

Read More | pod2g

Download iOS 5.1 beta 2 9B5127c now!

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Handhelds, Software

ios 5.1 beta 2 9b5127c

Apple has been busy updating their Dev Center with another iOS 5 beta update, and today developers can go and grab iOS 5.1 beta 2. If you are already running iOS 5.1 beta, you can just do an OTA update and be done with it. If not, you'll need to download the update and connect to iTunes to install the beta. You can now grab iOS 5.1 beta 9B5127c for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, alongside Xcode 4.3 Developer Preview 7 for Lion (4E57a)


Download iOS 5.1 beta 9B5117b now!

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Handhelds, Software

ios 5.1 beta 9b5117b

Apple has been busy updating their Dev Center with another iOS 5 beta update, and today developers can go and grab iOS 5.1 beta. Even if you are already running iOS 5 or later, you'll still need to connect to iTunes to install the beta. You can now grab iOS 5.1 beta 9B5117b for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, alongside Xcode 4.3 Developer Preview 7 for Lion (4D1002)


Apple releases iOS 5.0.1, fixes iPhone battery life issues

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Handhelds, Software

iOS 5.0.1 download

Apple has just released iOS 5.0.1, which is aimed primarily at fixing the battery drain bug introduced in iOS 5. Many iPhone 4S owners have been complaining of extremely poor battery life (here we were seeing the battery drain as much as 10% per hour,) and we can confirm that 5.0.1 fixes that right up. Here are the rest of the release notes:

iOS 5.0.1 Software Update

This update contains improvements and other bug fixes including:

  • Fixes bugs affecting battery life
  • Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
  • Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
  • Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation

Click to continue reading Apple releases iOS 5.0.1, fixes iPhone battery life issues


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