News

The Japanese website Macotakara (translated) reported that Foxconn has recruited more than 18,000 people to begin production on the iPhone 5. In March, the China Morning News (translated) also reported that Foxconn was in need of approximately 20,000 workers to help produce the next generation iPhone.

Macotakara said a Foxconn personnel recruiter told TV Tokyo’s World Business Satellite that Foxconn is preparing to produce Apple's next generation device which will be ready in June. This lines up with a previous iLounge report that claimed the iPhone 5 would receive a summer launch. However, it contradicts a previous iMore rumor that claims the new device will be launched this fall. I would take all these early release date rumors with a grain of salt since no one has accurately predicted anything about the iPhone 5.

Customizing the colors of your iPhone lockscreen time and date is simple, provided you have already jailbroken your device. A new tweak available on Cydia makes it possible to choose any color for the display, instead of the default white.

ColorClock can be found in Cydia under Sections -> Tweaks or by using the Search function. The tweak comes to us from developer Rudolph Lichtner for free. You can choose custom colors for the time and date separately using Settings.

According to Anandtech, Apple has an internal program to develop physical controller accessories for gaming on iOS devices. Although it's not clear whether or not Apple's mystery product will see release, this isn't the first time we've heard the news.

A patent revealed by Patently Apple on April 1, 2010 was not an April Fool's joke. Apple filed the patent in September 2008, including several different gaming accessories that could be used with a mobile device.

The Transparency tweak from Cydia allows you to change your app icons by adding a new control panel in the Settings app. As you can see from the example below, the tweak's primary function is to turn your icons invisible. There is also a shadow option and a way to turn off the icon labels. I guess this will be a great tweak if they ever invent that transparent iPhone, otherwise this is just a fun and simple way for people to mess around with their icons.

Transparency is free from Cydia’s BigBoss repo. The tweak will automatically turn your icons invisible after it's downloaded and installed. Just open your Settings app and locate the Transparency panel to play around with the different looks, or to turn your icons back to normal.

Last Year's April Fool's joke reappeared in Cydia today, thanks to code that checked for the date and displayed a Twitter-inspired Quick Bar. Saurik explained that the prank was intended to emulate the discontinued Twitter iPhone app feature, which received poor reviews. The Quick Bar automatically displayed promoted tweets.

The feature was renamed the "dickbar" by some frustrated users before it was eventually removed by Twitter. Saurik realized that some people might get confused by the feature reappearing every April 1st, so he removed the code once and for all. Cydia 1.1.6 incorporates this change and can be updated using the Cydia app.