John C Dvorak, Leo Laporte, and a couple of other folks involved in This Week in Tech (TwiT) had a meeting together at the Apple campus at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino this past Monday, and they ended up having an informal battle of the navigation apps in the three cars they were each driving. TWiT CEO Lisa Kentzell and marketing guy Glenn Rubenstein were in one car, using Apple Maps, while [Read More...]
Which? –the UK consumer site/organization/magazine — has put tablet battery life to the test. Tablets were split into two size groups, has their screens set to the exact same brightness (using an external calibration tool) and were used to browse the web until they died.
And surprise! The iPad not only won in each category, but won by a landslide.
The Retina iPad came tops in the full-sized tablet category, scoring 811 minutes (yeah, minutes are [Read More...]
The iPad does not like being dropped on its face.
Now that the iPad mini’s been on sale a few hours, it’s time to address the issue you’re all itching to know about. I’m talking, of course, about the drop test. Apple’s new tablets have been put to the test against Google’s $ 199 Nexus 7, and the iPad mini does surprisingly well, only sustaining any real damage when dropped on its [Read More...]
If you want to completely peg CPU to stress test a Mac, turn no further than the Terminal. Using the command line you can easily max out all CPU cores and induce huge load on a Mac, making it easy to determine things like what temperature the processor reaches under heavy load, if fans are working properly, how loud fans get, what battery life is [Read More...]
The iPhone 5 looks pretty, but how does it fair when it’s actually used in the real world? If you accidentally drop it from 5-feet will it shatter? Android Authority is already on the case and did a drop test comparison with the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S3.
The iPhone 5 dominated the competition. It picked up a few scratches and dings, but the screen never shattered, whereas the S3 screen cracked multiple times, and it’s back casing flew [Read More...]
Field Test Mode is a hidden feature on the iPhone which allows you to see technical details of the device, the most useful of which is the true signal strength displayed as a number rather than the traditional signal bars.
Entering Field Test Mode on iPhone
This will work on any iPhone model except the original:
From the [Read More...]
Ever wondered just how fast a 3G, 4G LTE, or Edge network is on your iPhone or Android? Using a free app called Speed Test you can easily test and compare the mobile broadband speed of your smartphone (or cell equipped iPad) with others, whether they’re on AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, or any other network.
If you’ve been thinking about switching carriers when the new iPhone arrives, this [Read More...]
Scientific instruments usually look crazy weird and aren’t designed to be user-friendly for the every day, non-scientist man. Lapka is looking to change that with their beautifully designed, semi-affordable Personal Environmental Monitor.
Lapka allows iPhone users to attach four different measuring instruments which can test for radiation, nitrates, humidity, and electromagnetic frequency, so you can create a perfect climate in your home, make sure your food is truly organic, find the perfect spot for [Read More...]
Mac OS X includes a great built-in utility that helps you test existing password strength, and also generate new strong passwords. If you’re wondering if your password is secure this is a great safe way to test the quality of it, and it’s also a safe way to create new strong passwords that you know will be considered secure.
Accessing OS X’s [Read More...]
Have you ever wondered how an iOS developer tests for application compatibility with the myriad of devices and versions of iOS out there? This picture from developer David Smith gives us an idea, as you can see it takes a lot of hardware. Four iPads, four iPod Touchs, four iPhones, each with a different version of Apple’s mobile OS running (there are even a few [Read More...]
