iPhone Atlas

Though the official 2013 hurricane season is from June 1 to November 30, the news earlier this week out of Moore, Okla., is a sobering reminder that dangerous weather comes in many forms, and you often don't know where the next disaster may strike. Even now, many states are being pounded by heavy storms as the cleanup from the tornado in Moore is still under way.

Recently, I collected a few weather apps that are great for a quick glance at the weather, but those apps won't help you much in severe weather conditions. For more-serious weather activity, … Read more

With high-quality digital cameras on every smartphone and apps that make your pictures even better, just about anyone can be an accomplished photographer. Sure, you may not be an accomplished photographer in any serious sense, but you can certainly upload your images to photo-sharing sites to get them out to the public and receive feedback to make your shots even better.

As most people know, there are a number of popular services already out there that let you take your shot, add effects and other enhancements, then upload it for all to see. But the other thing that's great … Read more

The next major update of Apple's iOS software is almost upon us! But which features does Apple's grid-based operating system desperately need to add, and which ones will Tim Cook and pals probably ignore completely?

That's what we're asking in this video, so hit play on the clip above as we rattle through the apps and tweaks that we want to see in iOS 7, as well as the things we probably won't. A fresh, "flat" redesign? How about some kind of "kids" mode' to stop pesky kids spending your cash … Read more

Good assistants -- the kind you can't live without -- are hard to come by. For starters, they should always be on time; any lag simply won't do. They should also get things right the first time, because who has time for inaccuracies? And, last of all, the assistant should be so good, they're always a few steps ahead of their boss.

Those are pretty high expectations, but Google and Apple both think they've got the magic to meet all those requirements and more. The secret, it turns out, is to hand off the work to … Read more

Android scooped up more than half of all ad impressions seen by Millennial Media last quarter, according to the ad network's new MobileMix report.

For the first quarter, Android won 52 percent of all impressions (the number of times a mobile ad is displayed), up from 49 percent in the year-ago quarter.

In second place, iOS accounted for 39 percent of all impressions, up from 33 percent. That left the third spot to the BlackBerry OS, which saw its slice of ad impressions cut in half to 7 percent from 14 percent. Microsoft's Windows Phone also witnessed a … Read more

It wasn't very long ago that for a developer to make a successful weather app, it had to have the most information possible. This meant developers would compete to pack tons of graphs, maps, diagrams, written forecasts -- and even forums where people could talk about weather -- into busy, confusing apps that tried to cover it all. But what you ended up with were long, listlike menus when the only information you probably wanted was what the weather might be like for the weekend.

Don't get me wrong, the feature-packed weather apps have their place, particularly when … Read more

Android may be the smartphone champ, but Apple's iOS is tops in mobile Web traffic, at least according to a report out today from analyst Gene Munster.

For the second month in a row, iOS held the lead over its rival as a source of mobile traffic, meaning that more iOS devices were tracked on the Web sites examined in the report. For April, iOS captured 69 percent of all the traffic analyzed by Piper Jaffray, leaving Android in second place with 26.5 percent.

Those numbers showed an increase from March when iOS accounted for 66.4 percent … Read more

Last week, Apple announced that its App Store is approaching 50 billion app downloads. In celebration of the milestone, Apple is giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky person who initiates the 50 billionth download.

As part of the celebration, Apple listed the top 25 apps -- both free and paid -- for iPhone and iPad. None of the apps listed is particularly surprising (especially to someone who studies the most-popular list every day), but one thing that did strike me is that a lot of the all-time best sellers still sit near the top … Read more

Dish Network on Thursday launched its Blockbuster On Demand app for iOS devices with pre-purchase movie rentals from its online library.

The app had already been available since January for desktop computers, Samsung Smart TVs, and Android devices, but today the movie watching app is finally available for iOS.

Like its desktop counterpart, Blockbuster On Demand lets iPhone and iPad users browse, rent, and stream movies from its On Demand catalog, featuring almost 5,500 movies that include new releases as well as titles across several genres. The app also provides movie ratings courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes, and lets you … Read more