iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

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.

Tired of your current Siri voice? Let's learn how to change it. Now in iOS 14.5, Apple has recorded actors’ voices and run them through its neural text-to-speech engine in an effort to make Siri sound more natural, so you have more options than ever for how Siri's voice should sound.

You know you want to eat out tonight and you know what time you want to eat. The problem is deciding where to eat. Siri can help you with that.

Documents 5 (free) allows users to read, listen, view, download, and annotate almost any content they desire on their iPad. the app is more than just a tool that will help you stay organized; it combines a document viewer with a file manager and a media player. The app is super-fast and looks good with clean graphics. There are plenty of options to use and everything is easy to locate on the app. 

Fat Tuesday is March 4 and the Mardi Gras celebrations are already in full swing. Whether you're traveling to the celebrations in New Orleans or enjoying festivities at home, these three apps will help make the experience even more fun.

The success of the freemium model is impossible to deny. Taking a look at the top grossing games in the App Store paints a clear picture. In 2013 all ten of the overall top grossing games were freemium titles. The highest grossing paid game, Minecraft ($6.99) only ranked 18th in overall top grossing games.

If you migrated to iOS gaming from a dedicated gaming device like XBox, Playstation, or even PCs then the freemium game model is most likely not that appealing. Likewise, if you came into iOS gaming as a veteran gamer of the 90s or early aughts, then overall the freemium game system is very likely viewed by you as a travesty.

And yet, this hotly debated new gaming modality is undeniably bringing in the big bucks, at least for certain developers and gaming houses. Enough game developers are making money exploiting the freemium model that the trend continues much to the dismay of what seems like the majority of dedicated gamers.

In a previous post, I reported on the story from Bloomberg that Apple was closing in on a deal with Time Warner and was hoping to introduce a new Apple TV device by April. That's starting to look unlikely. An article in the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that one source familiar with Apple's plans said Apple hopes to release a new device by June, and another said it may not be ready until several months after that. The WSJ article also helps to clarify the earlier reports of Apple's possible deal with Time Warner. The question was whether Apple was still trying to make a deal that would allow it to offer its own cable channels or if it's simply hoping to offer the cable companies a better set-top box. Apple had earlier wanted to offer full seasons of TV shows along with live programming. However, the article says Apple has given up on that idea, given the resistance of the cable providers. Most recently Apple is asking just for the five most recent episodes of TV shows. It's also possible, the article says, that Apple would simply sell the new Apple TV devices to the cable companies, who would then rent them as set-top boxes to subscribers, rather than Apple selling the device directly to consumers.