NPR’s Music app has been updated with iPad support and introduces live concert streaming. The first show will be an in-app exclusive on March 7 with the Shins, who will perform songs from the anticipated new album Port of Morrow. If you have an Apple TV, you can beam these concerts to your television to enjoy on a large screen from the comfort of your couch.

Additional features include the ability to explore articles, music and videos and listen to exclusive NPR programs such as All Songs Considered and World Cafe. You can also read stories and reviews, stream live music and create playlists for offline listening.

If you’re not interested in every article that the NPR Music has to offer, you can enable a feature that recommends stories based on the artists present in your iTunes Library — filter by what matter’s most to you.

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“I’m a big fan of Localmind because, unlike a lot of location-based apps, this one actually has a pretty solid userbase, even in my relatively tiny hometown.”

Localmind 2.0 uses your iPhone’s GPS to help you zero-in on local experts so you can chat with them live and ask them questions about the things that are important to you in your area. If you’re familiar with Foursquare and Quora, it’s almost a hybrid of those services where you can questions like, “are there any good bars around this restaurant you just suggested?”

Previously, LocalMind functioned like a helpful bulletin board where folks could leave questions for knowledgeable locals to answer. Now it’s much more precise and meaningful. Questions in LocalMind 2.0 are fed into different categories, enabling others to easily find existing answers for nearby restaurants, pubs, shopping, travel, services, arts, and outdoors. Right now, my only qualm is that those filters are by default applied to your current location, as are any search results. I’d love to be able to do some advance scouting for Barcelona when I head over there for Mobile World Congress at the end of the month, but the only way you can hop between cities is to pinch-zoom out on the embedded Google Map a million times, then hunt around for your destination. Even then, one wayward tap, and you’re zipped back to your current location. At least there’s the browser companion which is more full-bodied.

Why would local experts want to help? Not simply out of the goodness of their hearts, of course. They get points. Once earning expert status at a particular venue, you earn karma points for answering questions, and as you hit certain milestones, you earn tiered titles. Think of it as Foursquare Mayorships, only with granularity and legitimacy.  If you don’t want people harassing you with questions about your favourite haunts, you can always opt out of venue expertise. On top of Foursquare, Localmind can recognize Facebook Places check-ins, and also lets you share questions on Twitter.

I’m a big fan of Localmind because, unlike a lot of location-based apps that piggyback on Foursquare, this one actually has a pretty solid userbase, even in my relatively tiny hometown of Ottawa, Ontario. Generally, these sorts of apps have a decent amount of activity in the big cities, like New York and San Francisco, but those of us outside of gargantuan metropolises don’t have much use for them. Beyond that, it finally feels like check-ins are actually worth something to someone now, and that I’m not just grasping for stupid virtual badges or stickers.

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We’ve been covering the AT&T unlimited data plan throttling debacle from the beginning, including early reports, egregious 2G speed drops, and the recent 2GB “trigger” they seem to be using as the enforcement point. We’ve also been keeping closer track of things in our AT&T Forum. And after weeks and weeks of complaints, from loyal, longtime AT&T customers, we’ve yet to hear word one back from AT&T. There’s no end in sight.

We’ve created a poll in the forums and asked you exactly how much data you’ve used in your previous billing cycle, regardless of your carrier of choice. The results to date are as follows.

• 36% used 1GB or less
• 25% used between 1GB-2GB
• 10% used 2GB-3GB
• 27% used 3GB plus

We’re obviously an enthusiast community, and not the average user base, so the results aren’t surprising. They do show what AT&T is dealing with, however, among a segment of their customers.

To address it, AT&T could try using a carrot as well as a stick. Offer grandfathered AT&T unlimited plan users some incentive to move to a new, tiered plan. Free tethering (within the data limit), or a small discount on the plan. Anything, as a sign they’re willing to return the good faith of their customers.

Or they could just be honest and cancel the unlimited plans, and force everyone to move to a tiered plan, take the consequences and be done with it. They way it is now, since the first time that I was throttled at 2GB, I’ve felt like one of those settlers in the movies, with an evildoer cutting off food and water, and sending thugs to harass me, trying to slowly break my will and drive me out.

Great way to treat your customers, isn’t it? Especially with Verizon offering better LTE deployment, which will be important come iPhone 5, and Sprint still offering unlimited data, which could be important to some customers now.

AT&T needs to get out in front of this. Hiding behind passive aggressive warnings and deliberately trying to ruin the experience of their customers is shameful. Let unlimited customers use the unlimited data they signed up for, offer us a fair incentive to move to a tiered plan, or just force the move already.

Right now, the situation is intolerable.

Looking at an Apple commercial for an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, with the device so completely in focus, you might at first mistake it for a 3D rendering. It turns out it’s real photography, however, incredibly painstaking photography. And it produces utterly fantastic results.

The most challenging aspect of shooting store panels for Apple is the balance between the size of the file and the depth of field. Often the products small enough that our depth of field is very narrow. In order for the product to appear entirely in focus, we have to shoot a number of focus zones, which are stitched together in post. This video is a stop motion video made from all of the focus zones that were shot for this iPod Touch. The number in the corner is the number of the focus zone. In the video you can see the progression of the focus march from front to back. For this left iPod Touch, it took 54 frames just to get the product to appear completely in focus.

Just one of many examples of the effort Apple puts into not only making and packaging their products, but producing everything that surrounds their products. It might sound crazy, almost perfectionistic, but if they put this much into the photography, imagine what they put into the device?

We won’t be covering these kinds of techniques anytime soon in our iPhoneography series, but if it’s something you want to play around with — even to a much smaller degree — then jump into our iPhone Photography Forum and have at it

Check out the video example via the link below.

Source: Dwight Eschliman Photography via @duncanwilcox, @sdw

Georgia, Rene, and Seth talk Contacts controversy, Noteshelf, Tweetbot and Twitter app showdown, iPhone gun accessories, HoverBar, Devium Dash, and iPad 3 cases. This is Apps and Accessories Live!

• Subscription information coming soon! Right now you can enjoy Apps & Accessories Live in the iPhone & iPad Live fees!

Meta

• Mobile Nations fitness month: Week 2! [iPad 3 + Xbox Kinect giveaway]
• iMore Picks of the Week for February 11, 2012

App News

• Apple reportedly urging developers to get Retina display iPad 3 apps ready for announcement event
• Apple warns developers to stop scamming the App Store with third-party marketing services
• On Path, apps accessing your Contacts, and a better permissions system for iOS
• Best handwriting notes app for iPad: Noteshelf review
• Dropbox review: Best cloud storage app for iPhone
• Mass Effect: Infiltrator coming to iPad and iPhone, will offer unlockable content for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Jailbreak Apps

• Mail Enhancer for jailbreak review

Tweebot

• Tweetbot for iPad review
• Tweetbot vs. Twitterrific vs. Twitter: iPad twitter app shootout!
• Tweetbot 2.0 for iPhone adds new timeline, image thumbnails, and more

Accessory News

• Hasbro's new Lazer Tag guns use your iPhone or iPod touch for augmented reality and heads up display
• VooMoteZapper turns your iPhone or iPad into universal remote, leaves all your old infrareds to collect dust
• HoverBar mounts your iPad next to your iMac, makes you feel like you're Iron Man
• Devium Dash looks to replace your car audio system with your iPhone

iPad 3 cases

• iPad 3 cases and covers

Hosts

• Georgia (@GeorgiaTiPb)
• Seth Clifford (@sethclifford)
• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie)

Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter [@iMore](http://twitter.com/imore), or you can email us at , or leave a comment on the website when the show goes live.

We’re here every Sunday night at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, 2am GMT, and our companion show — iPhone and iPad Live! — is at the same time, on the same channel, on Wednesday nights — www.iMore.com/live

For all our podcasts — audio and video — including iPhone and iPad Live, ZENandTECH and Superfunctional, Iterate and Girls Gone Gadget and more… see MobileNations.com/shows

If you haven’t already please subscribe to all our shows in iTunes and leave a rating. It helps people find the show and means a lot to us!

Thanks to the iMore Accessory Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

After the whole mess with social networking app, Path, uploading Contact data from iPhone users without asking, the U.S. Congress has started to get involved. Energy and Commerce Committee member Henry Waxman and Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee member G. K. Butterfield issued an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking some probing questions regarding the iOS developer agreement.  Most of them center around the agreement’s reference to transmitting “data about a user”. Some of the juicier questions include:

• “Do you consider the contents of the address book to be ‘data about a user’?”
• “Do you consider the contents of the address book to be data of the contact?  If not, please explain why not.  Please explain how you protect the privacy and security interests of that contact in his or her information.”
• “How many iOS apps in the U.S. iTunes Store transmit information from the address book?  How many of those ask for the user's consent before transmitting their contacts' information?”

In response, Apple’s Tom Neumayr said in a statement that they intend on requiring explicit permission to access address book data in a future release, much like how location data is handled now.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user's contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We're working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

There’s no mention of whether or not that will be in iOS 5.1, which Apple has been testing for some time, and may release alongside the iPad 3 in March.

The letter from Congress sought a formal reply by the end of the month, though I doubt we’ll get to read that response. Apple has had some hiccups with location privacy in the past, but their corporate line has consistently been to treat private data with the utmost respect. While it’s tricky holding Apple accountable for the snakey stuff that developers do in the App Store, it is their job to curate and approve submissions, and if a bad app slip through the cracks and reaches the public, it’s the iPhone’s reputation on the line.

At first glance, Android seems to have a better privacy system in place, as it ensures that you provide explicit permission for an app to access different types of data, but I definitely worry that the folks at Google don’t look as closely at submissions as Apple does.

iMore put up a concept piece on how we’d like to see contacts, and permissions in general, handled in iOS 6. Would a popup make you feel more secure about your iPhone’s personal data? Will it legitimately change a user’s behaviour, or will they approve it as absent-mindedly as they do location permission now?

Source: Congressional letter, via The Next Web, AllThingsD

Apple has always been known to heavily curate their App Store, like Walmart, while the jailbroken alternative, Cydia, has always been looked at as more open, like a market. It turns out, however, official App Store apps may leak your data far more than their unapproved, jailbreak counterparts.

An on-going study by the International Security Systems Lab and the University of California at Santa Barbara reveals some startling information about apps that leak your private data to their developers. The most surprising part of this survey for many may be the fact that jailbroken apps actually leak your personal data far less often than their Apple-approved counterparts.

Using a tool named PiOS, USCB took a sample of 825 free apps from the official App Store and 526 free apps from the Cydia repository, Big Boss, the largest and most popular of all the repositories available. What they discovered may make people rethink their bad connotation about jailbreaking.

• 21% of official App Store apps leaked some kind of personal data to their developers
• Only 4% of jailbroken apps sent personal data to developers

The most common form of data leaked was the user’s device UDID. This is not something I’d say users should be specifically concerned with. Your UDID number identifies your individual device. It’s most likely what Apple uses to build user profiles and gauge your interests in order to offer you more relevant iAd information or App Store recommendations.

Further, official apps leaked location and address book information more often. One official app also revealed your actual phone number to the developer. No jailbreak apps gave developers access to your phone number and only one gave access to your address book and location data.

In the past jailbreak developers have developed patches for security exploits before Apple addressed the issue. Cydia also plays host to several apps that actually provide jailbreakers more control and protection over their private data than what iOS offers stock.

Jailbreak apps such as PrivaCY, developed by Cydia creator Jay Freeman, actually gives user a toggle that will block apps from uploading private data and usage statistics to remote servers. After it was discovered that Path was transmitting user’s address books, Ryan Petrich created a jailbreak apps called ContactPrivacy which warns users when an app is trying to access data.

Jay Freeman thinks jailbreakers are concerned with their data and privacy even more so than stock users (that’s probably true) –

"If you care about this kind of thing, you should jailbreak your phone,”

“Instead of Apple making decisions about what's good and bad, you decide. People think jailbreaking is about deciding that things Apple doesn't like are good. But it also allows you to decide that things Apple likes are bad. We provide you the tools to block the functionality you don't believe apps should have on your phone."

The difference may simply lie in the user base. Anyone who decides to jailbreak is pretty much classifying themselves as a power user. These users don’t want Apple to make decisions for them. Beyond that, they greatly care about their data and security.

Over 10 million users are currently running jailbroken iOS devices. They have more options when it comes to protecting their privacy and user data than the millions of devices that aren’t jailbroken. Many users have a negative connotation when it comes to jailbreak. Yes a jailbreak uses an exploit in the device to inject code that Apple doesn’t let you run by default. But keep in mind these security holes are already present, stock or not.

What you decide to download from unofficial sources like Cydia after jailbreaking lies strictly with you. Could jailbreak leave your device open to malware attacks? Sure. But only if you’re downloading packages that contain malware. Reading release notes and making sure you know what you’re downloading eliminates 99% of these problems.

And again, most users that seek jailbreak are a bit more technologically inclined. They know what they’re downloading and what they should stay away from.

Whether you are #TeamJailbreak or #TeamPure, does it surprise you that official apps leak more data than their unauthorized counterparts? Has any of it made you rethink any negative opinions you have about jailbreaking?

Source: Forbes via UCSB

Apple recently requested that the Fair Labor Association conduct audits of its assembly suppliers, with Foxconn being a focus due to recent media attention surrounding the working conditions there. The FLA has now indicated that general conditions within Foxconn’s iPad and iPhone production facilities have better overall ratings than most other assembly vendors in the business.

"The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm," said FLA president Auret van Heerden. He spent the past several days visiting Foxconn plants to prepare for the study. "I was very surprised when I walked onto the floor at Foxconn, how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory. So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."

Additional FLA staff members plan to visit more of these factories run by other Apple suppliers, like Pegatron. Whether you’re of the opinion that Apple is taking the brunt of the negativity here when many other technology companies use the same vendors for their own products, or that Apple’s position in the industry comes with added responsibility, it’s at least good to know the FLA is taking quick action in their investigation and seeing mostly positive results thus far.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously gone on record stating that Apple “cares about every worker in their worldwide supply chain”, and added emphasis on the matter during a speech held at a Goldman Sachs conference yesterday saying they will be a leader in improving working conditions regardless of the investigation’s outcome.

Source: Reuters

Folks, this is not a joke — your Windows 98 experience on iOS is now complete! WinZip for iPhone and iPad is here. Sure, there are plenty of other apps out there that include zip functionality, including more encompassing apps like Readdle Docs and Good Reader, but come on — WinZip is a classic. A novelty.

WinZip doen’t offer anything more than the ability to decompress and view zipped files, but it does it well, and it does it fast. Think of it as Quick Look for the Mac — it offers a quick method of viewing your zip files and nothing more. Nothing. Not even the ability to open these files in other apps that offer more functionality. Nadda.

Despite this, I’m still drawn to WinZip because it’s, well, WinZip. And it’s free. Seeing its icon on my iPhone and iPad brings back many memories of our first family computer and dial-up internet. Ah, the good ol’ days.

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“I'm in the camp that believes Apple will become the world's first trillion dollar company.”

Yesterday we had the pleasure of listening to Tim Cook deliver a superb presentation to a group of institutional investors at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference in San Francisco.

I guess when you're Goldman and you host your conference an easy drive from Cupertino, there's a pretty good chance you can snag an appearance from Apple's CEO.

If you didn't catch the whole presentation already, you can catch a replay at Apple's website. The first several minutes are focused on the issue of underage labor at factories from Apple's suppliers. Cook was convincing that Apple is on top of the situation, but it honestly doesn't spark my interest too much as a tech geek and shareholder.

Before I dive into the bits I found most interesting, I need to say that Apple is obviously a well oiled machine when it comes to everything PR. And speaking to investors, while technically an IR (investor relations) role, is still just another form of PR. After all, these events are publicly broadcast due to regulation FD.

Tim Cook knew exactly what he wanted to say to the audience. I'm quite sure that the Goldman analyst's questions were vetted by Apple ahead of time. It's all about controlling the message. Apple did this with the precision of a trained sniper.

So let's move onto the stuff that got me jazzed as a shareholder.

The Huge Opportunity Facing the iPhone

Yeah, Apple shipped 37 million iPhones last quarter. But Cook points out that this still only means Apple sold 1 out of 4 smartphones. And they sold only 1 out of 10 mobile phones.

Consider Cook's comments that the smartphone market will expand to one billion units by 2015. That's no so far away. If Apple hangs onto even 20% of this market, that's 200 million units, or an average of 50 million per quarter. This is substantially more than the record 37 million unit quarter Apple just delivered.

Emerging markets are playing a huge roll. Cook talked about how China generated Apple only a few hundred millions of dollars in revenue a few years ago. But last year? 13 billion bucks! Kinda makes it all clear as to why Apple is so focused on China.

Cook also gave a great example of how Apple keeps operating along its "think different" mantra. The company believes that no matter where you are, people want the best products. So they convinced China Unicom to try a post-paid (contract) plan for the iPhone. The result? It worked in spades. Who knows if Apple can swing this with more carriers in more markets, but for all of us (me included) who thought the market was moving more towards pre-paid, maybe Apple is changing the game again?

Oh, and Cook believes that 25% of smartphone demand will come from China and Brazil by 2015. Apple has said before that it has started to focus more on the Brazilian market over the last year.

Will the Tablet Market Exceed the PC Market

One year ago, I wrote this blog post about how the tablet market would grow to be 400 million units, matching the then-size of the smartphone market.

Cook said that he thinks the tablet market will exceed the size of the PC market. His reasons for stating this line up really well with what I published last February. And just for comparison, by 2015 the PC market is expected to be somewhere north of 500 million units. His prediction exceeds mine. Nice.

Apple only holds a single digit percentage of the PC market. But with tablets? They invented the space. They dominate the industry. Even with the momentum of Android, I'm going to throw out a broad range and say that Apple could hang onto 30-60% of the overall tablet market. That's 150 to 300 million units if the market demand reaches 500 million.

For comparison, last quarter Apple sold 15 million units. Run rate that number and you get 60 million (and remember last quarter was a peak holiday quarter, so run rating it isn't exactly fair to do quite yet).

If you believe the tablet market is growing like crazy and that Apple can keep up a reasonable market share, revenue is bound to go up, up, up.

Even with reasonable ASP (average selling price) declines on the product line, the future is looking very bright for Apple. With that kind of growth opportunity, I'm more than happy to see the iPad cannibalize some Mac sales.

More Hints about the TV Market

Tim's comments here were very interesting. He said Apple doesn't do hobbies. So why is Apple still calling the Apple TV a hobby? Well, Tim doesn't think that it has the same kind of potential as the other legs of Apple's stool (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad).

But he did tell us that Apple believed something would come of this market if they kept "pulling the string" and "following our intuition".

Then he left us hanging, and they shifted the conversation to Siri and iCloud. Kind of interesting when you realize that these are two features that would make an entirely-Apple TV set a killer product. And let's not forget that in the Steve Jobs biography, he said he felt they finally cracked the problem.

The TV is becoming a smart, connected device. Why shouldn't Apple extend its dominance to this market? It's just another device to interact with and connect to the iCloud.

If I were running Samsung's TV business, I'd be crapping my pants in fearful anticipation of what Apple's got planned.

Returning Cash to Shareholders

Cook came right out and said that Apple has more cash than it needs to run its business. It's an extremely obvious statement, but when a CEO publicly admits this it all but guarantees they'll be doing something about it.

Wall Street is expecting a buyback or dividend this year. I think we'll see it. I hope we'll see it. I don't think Apple is getting the credit for its cash hoard in its stock price. But we have to wait and see. Cook is asking for investors to be patient so they can "do this in a very deliberate way and make the best decision for shareholders".

Heading to a Trillion Dollar Market Cap?

Overall, I thought Tim Cook did an amazing job at the Goldman Sachs conference. His message was clear, strong, and believable.

I'm in the camp that believes Apple will become the world's first trillion dollar company (by market capitalization).

Who's with me?

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“Clear is a task list app for those who don’t like task list apps — a new, gesture-based approach that’s manages to be simple without being simplistic.”

Clear seeks to apply new sensibilities to one of the oldest stalwarts of personal information management, the to do app. Clear does so by eschewing the user interface “chrome” of a typical iPone app — lots of buttons and columns, and endless amounts of tiny text to tap through — for large lists that you swipe and push around. It also sheds a lot of features found in more expensive, more complicated apps, and instead focuses just on creating and managing lists. No more, no less.

It took Apple 5 generations of iOS to introduce their own, built-in task-management app, Reminders, which means the App Store has been trying to fill that particular void for years. In typical Apple fashion, Reminders offers only basic functionality compared to the full blown “getting things done” apps on the market, but it also manages to be remarkably cumbersome to actually use as an app. (Siri‘s voice controls rescue it for simple tasks.)

That leaves a gap below the high-end, feature filled task managers, for something elegant and easy to use, and it’s one Clear seems intent on filling.

The key to Clear’s approach is a big, bold design centered around a completely gesture-based interface.The challenge with any gesture-based interfaces like Clear’s is one of discoverability. Humans are good at “see button, read label, tap button” but not so good at “see nothing, poke around, figure out a pinch collapses the lists”. The first is almost instant, and the mental overhead all but unnoticeable anymore. The second is hit and miss, and can be frustrating or fruitless.

Clear mitigates a lot of the problems with gesture discovery by walking the user through them right when the app launches for the first time. It’s an admission, much like a modern touch-controlled video game, that therein lies complexity, but it’s also hopeful that once the first few moments of awkwardness pass, instinct takes over.

That it will quickly become like finger painting with productivity.

There are three layered views in Clear: Items at the bottom, lists in the middle, and the menu on top. You start at the bottom, in items. By default they’re heat mapped with red at the top — defcon 1 — fading through orange and yellow towards the bottom. (If that scheme is too hot for you, you can change the theme in settings.)

Screenshots alone won’t properly convey gestures, so if you haven’t already, watch the video above before continuing on. Done? Okay. To move up to lists, you can either touch the screen and pull down — past item creation, we’ll come back to that in a moment — until the items fall off the bottom of the screen and the lists take center stage. To move to the menu, you can do the same.

Another, funner way to do it is to touch two fingers to the screen and pinch them together vertically, like you’re trying to fold the items together. Items fold into lists, lists fold into the menu.

To go back to a previous, lower layer, like to go from the menu back to the lists, just touch the screen and push up. Sadly, you can’t pinch your way back out (that creates new items or new lists, between the others, or does nothing in the menu.)

To create a new item or list below the others, just tap the screen below the items or list. To create a new item or list above the others, just touch and pull down, though not too far or you’ll switch to lists or the menu, as described above.

Once a new item or list is created, you get to label it, but the label can only take up that one, single, large-type line. I like that. It forces you to be concise and disciplined in your thinking.

To move an item or list, tap and hold it, and slide it to its new location. To mark an item as completed, swipe right. It’ll turn gray and drop to the bottom. Swipe right on it again to un-mark it as complete (you’ll have to manually move it back to its former position).

To delete an item or list, swipe left. It’ll vanish. I haven’t found a way to undelete them yet, so be careful.

There are many more quick, gesture based controls. The menu has a whole section on them, including ways to rapidly create many new items in a row. Which is interesting. There are levels of usability that appear. But there are also levels of complexity and collision. For example, in iOS 5 Notification Center is activated by swiping downward from the top of the screen. If you’re not careful in Clear, you can partially activate it — make the little gripper handle appear – quite frequently. (Having just the gripper handle appear is smart, however, it prevents Notification Center from being triggered by a single, perhaps unintentional downward swipe, requiring a more precise, purposeful grab and pull to reveal it.)

Once you learn to pull down lower to avoid Notification Center and create a new top-level item, you still have to be somewhat exacting. Pull too much and you switch to list view (or if you’re in list view, to the menu view). Likewise if you’re trying to switch to list view, pull too little and you’ve created a new item and have to cancel out and start over.

Since you can also get to lists by pinching vertically (or to the menu if you’re already in lists), it can be a safer navigation choice to rely on. Likewise, being able to swipe through the layers in both directions, but being able to pinch through them in only one direction takes a little getting used to.

There’s both a price to be paid and compromises to be made for gesture-based user interfaces. Clear balances both well and tops it off with several, delightful touches.

Empty lists are ghosted with famous quotes from the likes of Bruce Lee, William Shakespeare, Buddha, and others. Themes let you change color schemes from the default, aggressive red to more soothing green or unobtrusive gray, and if you have other apps installed, Clear will detect it and “reward” you with bonus themes (no stitched-leather popup for Find my Friends, though, I’m happy to report). There are also very distinctive sounds that accompany a lot of the actions. They’re amusing at first, but you can easily silence them in settings if their charm or utility fades for you over time. (Likewise vibration.)

Once mastered — and it doesn’t take exceptionally long — you can move very quickly through Clear. It doesn’t have the power (or price tag) of something like OmniFocus or the features of Appigo Todo or the ability to quickly add tasks via Siri like the built-in iOS 5 Reminders app.

There are no dates or alarms, no location alerts or calendar integration, and no push notifications (though you can have Clear badge the app icon.)

There’s also no iPad or Mac or Windows version, and no way to sync between devices, services, or platforms, which may be a deal-breaker for those who already have systems in place.

But then Clear doesn’t seem intended for power users anyway. It’s intended for everyone else; those for whom existing apps are far too much or far too difficult.

With Clear, once you get into the flow, you can fly through simple to dos, and triage your tasks, like nobody’s business.

The good

• Simple, highly focused design
• Well thought out gesture-based interface
• Fast, fun controls

The bad

• Not as feature-rich as typical GTD-style task apps
• Gestures take longer to discover and can collide at times
• No iPad or PC versions, no way to sync cross-device/platform

The conclusion

Clear is a task list app for those who don’t like task list apps — a new, gesture-based approach that’s manages to be simple without being simplistic. It takes an almost Windows Phone Metro-style approach. It’s not a task app for those who want power features or a more traditional interface. But for anyone new to to dos, who wants something fresh and fun, who just has a few lists of a few items and finds Reminders far too much of a chore, Clear might be the perfect place to start.

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Jailbreak apps and tweaks have to updated just like apps you buy from the official App Store. While the process is a bit different, Cydia, the jailbreak app store, makes it pretty simple.

Much like the App Store, Cydia will let you know when you’ve got updates available for any apps installed on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. If you see a little red badge on your Cydia icon, it probably means you’ve got updates waiting to install.

To install jailbreak app updates:

1. Launch Cydia
2. Tap on the Changes tab.

3. Look for Available Upgrades to see what’s pending.
4. Tap on the Upgrade button at the top right to begin.
5. Restart your springboard, if needed, or return to Cydia

All of your apps and utilities should now be up to date and ready to go.

Note: If developers provide them, always check out the change logs before doing an update. There have been certain situations where an update may only be recommended for a certain device or firmware version. It doesn’t happen often but it’s always a good practice to read any release notes that come with any update a jailbreak utility may have.

That’s it! You’ve updated your jailbreak content to the most current versions and you’re good to go! If you run into any issues or have any questions, be sure to check out our other jailbreak resources below.

Additional jailbreak resources:

• Jailbreak news, how to’s, and guides
• Genreal jailbreak help and discussion forums

The iPad currently has a 9.7-inch screen because it was made for a very specific user for whom thats screen size was absolutely perfect — Steve Jobs. The man brought the Apple II, Mac, iPod, iTunes, and iPhone to market, so he may have known a thing or two about how to create the best mainstream devices. Apple tested other sizes, of course, and have said as much, but Steve Jobs didn’t believe smaller tablets allowed for the kind of software experience he wanted — more than just upscaled smartphone apps — and bigger tablets likely cut down portability and ease of use.

But rumors have persisted of smaller iPads, and many professional users, especially drafters and designers, have yearned for bigger iPads. Samsung, Apple’s distinguished manufacturing-partner-come-competitor offers almost every size variant imaginable, from the 5.3-inch Galaxy Note to the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab, almost in quarter-inch increments. Both the Kindle Fire and BlackBerry PlayBook clocked in at the smaller, 7-inch form factor.

We assume the iPad 3 will stick with the 9.7-inch screen size. After all, too many options are the same as no options, and consumer choice often becomes confusion and indecision. But if Apple were to expand the iPad family, if they were to offer a single additional screen size for the iPad, if they answered all questions about software compatibility, even if it meant a third scale for apps (between iPhone and iPad, or larger than iPad), what size would you want?

If you could get a 5, 7, 8, or 12-inch iPad, which would it be and why?

What do some popular iOS apps to with your Contact data? Do they grab it without permission, transmit it without protection, and store it without regard to privacy? Or do they treat it right, with respect and responsibility? That’s the question both Dieter Bohn of The Verge and Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web sought to answer today.

The reason for the sudden interest — in a years old problem — is because a popular app, Path, was discovered taking users Contact data without asking, and uploading it in an insecure way to their servers. It wasn’t nefarious; as with other apps that do likewise, they were trying to provide a service — match users with friends who are also users. They just coded first, asked questions never.

For more background, and the solution iMore would like Apple to implement, see our recent editorial: iOS 6 and privacy: How Apple should draw inspiration from Android for better app permissions

The Verge spent the day packet sniffing popular apps, basically running their own man-in-the-middle attack, to see if any Contact data was being transmitted and if so, how it was being handled. The Next Web received an assist from Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad, who ran his own, similar tests.

Of the apps found to be on the naughty list, or in the gray-zone, it sounds like the publicity will be causing swift updates.

Hit the links below to see the results.

Source: The Verge, The Next web