Jailbreaking

The new iOS 7 App Switcher leaves a lot of room for improvement and there are several tweaks out there that let you customize it a bit. SlideForUsage gives you information on each app's usage, while SwipeDown lets you close apps by, you guessed it, swiping down. If you prefer the iOS 6 App Switcher, you can download ClassicSwitcher.

You can download SlideForUsage for free from Cydia's modmyi repository. Once you have it installed you can go to Settings->SlideForUsage. Your only option is to change the color of the text that the information is displayed with. With this tweak installed you can now go to the App Switcher and slide an app preview card down to

The biggest news for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and its shareholders last week was the debut of the iPhone in China. On Friday, China Mobile, the world's largest carrier with over 750 million subscribers, began selling the iPhone 5c and 5s. Pre-orders for the devices began in December and reached 1 million. Analysts expect China Mobile to sell anywhere from 10 million to 15 million iPhones this year. You can read more about this here.

The 2013 Q4 numbers also came in last week and, according to market research company NPD Group, Apple saw significant gains. Apple's market share grew from 35% in Q4 2012 to 42% in Q4 2013. NPD also found that smart phone ownership is growing, claiming six out of ten phones, up from 52% last year. As would be

Messages Customiser (it's officially spelled with an s rather than a z) is a must have jailbreak tweak for those of you who like full control of your device's aesthetics. This tweak lets you change virtually every aspect of the message screen's appearance. You can download it for free from Cydia's modmyi repository.

Once you have it installed, go to Settings -> Messages Customiser. Now you can fiddle with the various settings:

A few days ago we had a writeup on CCControls, a jailbreak tweak that allows you to add and remove toggles from your iOS 7 Control Center. However, if you are a minimalist and want only the bare essentials in your iPhone's Control Center, then CCHide is the tweak you're looking for.

CCHide, like its name suggests, allows you to remove the various sections that make up the Control Center. Once you have it installed, head to Settings -> CCHide.

Jailbroken iPhones are protected by Substrate Safe Mode, which can prevent time consuming iOS restores when a tweak or app causes problems. Sometimes when a problem occurs, the device is automatically put into safe mode. This can give the iOS user time to uninstall the offending package with Cydia.

Other times, safe mode must be entered manually. If the iPhone reboots constantly or suffers other issues safe mode can be entered by holding the up volume button while booting. Substrate Safe Mode has been around for a couple of years, but with the recent updates to iOS 7 and the move to 64-bit hardware in the iPhone 5s, the package was ready for a refresh.