iOS

Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) and another iOS hacker known as @themudkip have now managed to port full-resolution iOS applications to a second generation Apple TV.

Yesterday, we told you how the pair had managed to port iOS apps to an Apple TV, and included a video of the hack in-action within our article. However, though this was an incredible achievement, an issue with the hack was that iPhone apps appeared as pop-up windows, and were quite small compared with the HDTV screen.

Siri is one of our favorite new pieces of technology, but sometimes we just wished we could use it for something outside of its Apple widget shell (weather, mail, and the calendar) and Web searching. A group of intrepid hackers are doing just that, starting with setting the thermostat.

In the video (below), Pete (@Plamoni on Twitter) shows off how he can use Siri to set his Wi-Fi thermostat using a proxy server. Using the Siri connected proxy hack, Pete is able use voice commands to pull up information about the current temperature and set a new program for the thermostat.

Computational search engine Wolfram Alpha has released a new app for iOS devices. The Password Generator Reference App churns out secure passwords of any length at the touch of a button.

The app will generate passwords in single or multiple batches, with any amount of characters and a set of rules that you define. You can choose from options like letter case, numbers and special characters, setting each to a “no”,”yes” or “must have” setting.

Apple has announced that it has found specific flaws in iOS 5 that can be patched to address the battery life issues some iPhone users have experienced with the new software, noting that an update is planned to address the problem in the next few weeks.

In a statement published by Ina Fried of the Wall Street Journal AllThingsD blog, Apple noted, "A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” adding, “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

Despite the fact that many consumers were disappointed with the iPhone 4S there is no denying the fact that Siri is quite cool. If you’re not familiar with this new feature it is being touted as a digital assistant capable of recognizing natural speech. This means that instead of using pre-fabricated phrases to get Siri to do what you want all you have to do is speak naturally and, in theory, you will get some results.

Folks have been jailbreaking iOS 5 for almost as long as Apple’s latest mobile operating system has been available. There’s just one catch: the only tools available provide a tethered jailbreak. That means you need to connect your mobile device to a computer and run redsn0w or ultrasn0w every time you reboot — otherwise you won’t be able to get past the boot logo and your device will be unusable until you do perform a tethered boot with a computer.

Apple on Wednesday issued much-anticipated updates for its Mac OS X and iOS mobile operating system, adding support for its new iCloud service and fixing a bevy of security flaws in the process.

The new mobile operating system, iOS 5, contains approximately 98 security fixes, according to the company's  release notes. The iOS update addresses a number of “noteworthy” issues, including flaws that caused users' Apple ID passwords to be logged in a plain text file, readable by applications, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said in a blog post Wednesday.

Planted in your shiny new iPhone 4s and in the iOS 5 are the seeds of tomorrow’s Mac of the future, and indeed the future of all computers. You can find them if you know where to look. (And I’ll tell you where below.)

It’s not supposed to be this way. In the Microsoft world, at least, new technology starts at the top and “trickles down” from bigger and more powerful computers over time to mobile devices and eventually cell phones. If you’re focused on the machines, this makes sense, as larger computers are more capable of handling powerful new features.

Do you happen to be one of those people that really love Mac OS X Lion? Or perhaps, on the other end of the spectrum, you feel Lion's a bit too much like iOS? Well, now it's more than just similar, because if you happen to have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can now make sure that Lion never leaves your side, with a bit of clever hacking.

Apple this afternoon released yet another beta version of its iOS 5 software to developers, the seventh time it's done so since offering a test version of the software in June.