This week: iOS 7.1 Changes, CarPlay for Older Vehicles, iPhone 6 Rumors, iOS 8 Icons, Master Silhouette Pics, Apps Change Shopping, March Madness Apps, Keep Teenager Safe

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iOS 7.1 Brings Changes to Siri, CarPlay Support, iBeacon Improvements, Apple TV Upgrade By Jim Karpen One of the big changes with the arrival of iOS 7 is the way Siri works. In the past, you'd hold the Home button, wait until Siri responded with "What can I help you with?", release the button, and then speak. Siri would automatically detect when you stopped speaking, and respond. The problem was that sometimes Siri would respond because you'd made a slight inadvertent pause in your speech, even though you weren't done talking. Now with iOS 7, you hold have the option of manually letting Siri know when you're done talking by holding down the Home button while you talk. Siri keeps listening until you release the button. In addition, Siri also has new, more natural-sounding male and female voices for Mandarin Chinese, UK English, Australian English, and Japanese. READ MORE » Apple's New CarPlay To Be Available for Some Older-Model Vehicles By Jim Karpen With the launch of Apple's new CarPlay last week at the automobile trade show in Geneva, many were left wondering if you had to buy a new Ferrari or Mercedes or Volvo in order to get it. Apparently, the answer is no. 9To5Mac has reported that at least some automakers will be offering aftermarket CarPlay installation for older models. They've confirmed that Mercedes will be doing this, and expect others to do so as well. This is good news, and it will be really interesting to see how it develops. Apple has made a fortune giving us better interfaces for our technology: first personal computers, then MP3 players, then smartphones, then tablets—and now the automobile. READ MORE » Rumor: iPhone 6 to Have Blazing Fast Quad-Core A8 Processor By Jim Karpen Recent rumors have suggested that the iPhone 6, expected in September or earlier, will have a new A8 chip designed by Apple and manufactured by chipmaker TSMC rather than Samsung, which makes the A7 used in the latest iOS devices. Then this last week a rumor passed along by Laptop and other websites said that the A8 will be a quad-core chip with quad core graphics. By comparison, the A7 has a dual-core CPU. Combine quad core with the 64-bit architecture Apple switched to in the A7 chip, and you get blazing speed. READ MORE » Screenshots of Icons for New Apps Coming in iOS 8; Other Expected Features By Jim Karpen For months we've been getting rumors about iPhone 6, and now we're starting to get some rumors about iOS 8. It's fun to see what's coming down the pike. 9To5Mac has posted screenshots of iOS 8 that reveal the icons for several new apps from Apple that will be part of this new version of iOS, expected to be available along with the new iPhone, likely in September. The apps appear to confirm earlier rumors that iOS 8 will have a greater focus on health monitoring and will include a new Healthbook app. In addition, there are icons for a Preview app, which has long been a Macintosh app for viewing and editing image files, and TextEdit, which has long been a Macintosh app used as a simple text editor. 9To5Mac says that it has confirmed that the leaked screenshots are legitimate. READ MORE »  How to Master "Silhouettes" with Your iPhone By Jamie Rhoades Hello friends and fellow iphoneographers. In this post I will be teaching you tips and tricks for capturing fantastic silhouette shots. For starters, you can use many different subjects for your silhouette shots. This includes people, birds, trees, or any object that would form a great silhouette. You always want to make sure your subject is in front of the lighting you choose to use. I find the best silhouettes are captured using natural light in the background. Sunrises and sunsets are my personal favorite backgrounds for capturing fantastic silhouette shots. I believe you can never go wrong using one of these as your backdrop READ MORE » How Are Mobile Apps Changing the Way You Shop? By Vishal Gumber Everybody loves shopping, and shopping online from the comfort of your home has its own perks. But over the past couple of years, the focus has been moving beyond e-commerce and into m-commerce. There are over a billion smartphone and tablet users all over the world, with new users jumping on the bandwagon every single day. According to InMobi's 2014 Mobile Media Consumption Report, at least 83 percent of shoppers with mobile devices plant to make a purchase on their device this year. In addition, 48 percent of the respondents listed media consumed on their mobile devices as having the most influence on their purchase decisions. Moreover, the app culture is increasingly influencing the shopping culture. Let's have a look at how mobile apps are changing shopping habits. READ MORE » 5 Free Apps for Fans of March Madness Basketball By Jim Karpen It's that time of year again, when basketball fans work themselves into a frenzy over the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. The action begins March 18, and you'll want to be sure to have these free apps on your iPhone or iPad. march madness live app iconNCAA March Madness Live, the official NCAA app, lets you stream every game live to you iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. In order to view the games that stream from TBS, TNT, and truTV, you have to already be a cable subscriber and log into your account. But they do offer a three-hour temporary preview before requiring that you log in. And all the games being broadcast by CBS are available free without your needing to be a cable subscriber. READ MORE » How to Keep Your Teenagers Safe on Their iPhone By Eva Ozawa Children are getting cell phones at younger and younger ages, and even the cheapest smartphones on the market are capable of browsing the Internet. With the web as vast and accessible as it's ever been, monitoring teenagers' iPhone use can be as challenging as dealing with their hormone-driven attitudes. This is why it is good to know what easy, go-to options are available to parents to protect those inquisitive eyes from at least some of the Internet's unsavory side. Lay Down the Law First, preferably before an iPhone is placed in your teenager's eager hands, you should have a family-wide discussion about Internet safety. Figure out what acceptable internet usage means to your family and then lay out the rules clearly. Make it clear what types of websites are okay and are not okay, cover protecting your privacy online, and establish time limits for internet access. READ MORE »

March 24th Biweekly Giveaway! This is the official announcement of the iPhone life Biweekly Giveaway! Be sure to enter the giveaway at iphoneLife.com/giveaways to win prizes, which we'll announce March 24th! We are raffling off tons of great accessories for FREE. Here's how it works: Every other Friday we will announce the prizes we're giving away through iphonelife.com, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. To enter the giveaway, go to iphoneLife.com/giveaways. On the following Monday morning, we will randomly select the winners. If you win an app, we will email you the promo code to redeem the app for free. If you win an accessory, send us your address and we will mail it to you. The next contest's featured items are: 1. Whoosh! Screen Shine Pocket: Retail Price $5.99 2. Spudz:: Retail Price $3.49 - $10.99 3. PerfectFit iPhone 5 Screen Protector: Retail Price $19.95 Questions or comments? Email Brian@iphonelife.com. Good luck and remember to visit iphonelife.com/giveaways to enter! Also check out our other contests at iphonelife.com/contests. The next contest drawing is March 24th! Click the READ MORE link below to enter. READ MORE »

5 Likely iPhone 6 Features on Release Date Based on Freshly-Leaked iOS 8 Details The iPhone 6 on release date is rumoured to run on a brand new iOS 8, replacing the current iOS 7.1 and some details of which have started leaking out in the past few weeks. View Full Image Screenshot from YouTube Video iPhone 6 in Sam Beckett's concept video Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac has provided a peek of how Apple's new mobile platform would be, which in turn points to some of the actual specs and features that the next iPhone will showcase later in the year. Five of them are offered in quick snapshots below: Smooth, fast and stable From its current build, the next iOS, according to Mark Gurman of 9to5Mac, will respond quicker than before and user navigation will be a lot easier. In iOS 7, Apple has introduced 64-bit computing that company said will take on a forward-looking implementation with the iPhone 5S. It is expected that in the iPhone 6 and iOS 8, the 64-bit standard will be in full-swing for the entire iPhone ecosystem, including third-party providers. The system is also expected to achieve better stability from the previous model, Gurman wrote. READ MORE » Apple's iPhone Takes 80 percent of China's Booming Premium Phone Market Countering the idea that China's smartphone market is only interested in cheap phones, Umeng, the nation's largest analytics firm, has issued a report for 2013 outlining that 27 percent of China's smartphones cost over $500, and that 80 percent of those are iPhones. Umeng China Highlighted by analyst Benedict Evans, Umeng's report (embedded below) details that China's market for smartphones and tablets exploded in 2013, nearly doubling from 380 million devices at the beginning of the year to more than 700 million by year end. Apple currently markets three iPhone models on its Chinese website: iPhone 5s priced between $860 and $1120; iPhone 5c priced between $730 and $860; iPhone 4S priced at $535. The company originally continued to sell iPhone 4 in China priced at $435, but no longer lists that model for sale on its public website.kely it is to work. Keep in mind that this feature is also not officially supported by Apple. READ MORE »

Tales Of the Sanctuary: Chapter 1 Globsis LLC; $0.99 by Eric Pankoke With G5 and Big Fish Games on the iOS scene there is certainly no shortage of quality hidden-object and adventure games for your Apple-centric gadgets. With all the AAA titles available, though, it does make it a lot harder for the small developer to compete. Tales Of the Sanctuary: Chapter 1 ($0.99) makes an admirable attempt at doing something different, and I will admit to gleaning an odd sense of enjoyment from the game. In the end though, the game felt a bit too piecemeal for me. A bit more coherence would have gone a long way with this tale.Tales of the Sanctuary The game actually starts off with a cool if slightly clichéd intro, but the story quickly becomes secondary to everything else. Occasionally there is a panel with a paragraph of text attempting to guide you along, and from time to time you'll wonder "why does this seem familiar?" but there's really nothing to tie any of the sequences together. In what is the first of possibly a few spoilers this game is a "to be continued," so maybe we'll get more answers in part two, but at this point I'm not really sure what I even want answers to. Tales is a typical mix of object-based puzzles and hidden object scenes, with a couple of mini games (for lack of a better word) thrown in. I would have liked to see some more complicated object puzzles, because most of them simply involved manipulating one or two items to find a key. The hidden object scenes provided you with plenty to find, but they were either so dark or so cluttered or both that it became a chore after a while. There were a couple of times that I used the hint feature (in one scene I even used it twice for the same object) and I still couldn't tell what I was looking for. The first mini game was actually kind of interesting and made good use of a timer to intensify things, but the rest of the mini games seemed kind of pointless and in a couple cases provided no good explanation of what to do. I was particularly disappointed with the instance where I got bitten by a spider and was supposed to get something out of a medicine cabinet to take care of it, because even though I don't think I got what I needed, I still survived and moved on to the next scene. To select items or move to new areas you simply tap. To use an item from inventory you just drag it onto the scene where you want to use it. It's not always obvious where there are things to do, and even when you're sure you're tapping the right spot it often feels like it takes two or three taps for the game to respond. You can pinch to zoom in and out and drag to slide the view around, but it regularly seemed like the screen was getting stuck trying to slide it, particularly when I was zoomed in. Sanctuary has no bonuses of any kind to unlock and no Game Center integration for achievements; so unless you want to play through again for the sake of finding different items in the hidden object scenes, once you've reached the end it's over. The visuals are actually really good from a technical perspective. Everything is nicely detailed and well drawn, and in a couple of scenes that I'm guessing are supposed to be like dream worlds, the images actually look like watercolors. Sadly things are often marred by dark palettes or lots of clutter which might be good for setting a mood but are not so useful when actually trying to play the game. The sound effects are okay, but the voiceover work reminds me of S.A.M., the text to speech program that came with my Commodore 64 30 years ago. At least the music was pretty decent. As it stands Tales of the Sanctuary could use quite a bit of touch up work. The interface feels clumsy, the disconnected story is hard to take an interest in, and the mini games just didn't work for me. However, I do think this is a good start for Jarbull, and after one or two more tries they should be cranking out some pretty solid adventure games. You could certainly do worse than this, but you might want to hold out for their next release. Overall Score: 2.5/5

Choose from New Siri Voice Options Although I suspect most people still use the original female Siri voice, you've had the option for a while now of changing the gender or the accent. And now the latest update to iOS 7.1 offers more natural-sounding UK and Australian English voices in both genders, so if you haven't played around with Siri's voice, this might be a fun time to try it. To change Siri's accent or gender go to Settings>General>Siri. Tap Language and choose the version of English you prefer to give Siri an accent. Tap Voice Gender and select Male or Female to choose whether you prefer Siri to have a male or a female voice.

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