Until recently Apple has been on an unstoppable roll. Apple's iPhones and iPads have been flying off the shelf. But when Apple's latest quarterly results got a thumbs down from Wall Street, from the market, lots of people started wondering if Apple had lost its mojo.

Dan Lyons put it this way here at ReadWrite, “It seems Apple has hit a wall. It’s not just about sales and earnings, but also about innovation. It’s been years since Apple did something truly revolutionary.”

A Delicate Balance Of Innovation

But truly revolutionary can also be truly risky. With 75 million iOS devices sold in Q1 of its 2013 fiscal year, Apple’s success is now increasingly all about iOS. To keep the iOS train moving and churning out profits, Apple needs to innovate - but not so much that it scares away the legions of happy iPhone and iPad users.

Might iOS, the very product that helped put Apple on top, require risk taking beyond what the new Apple can handle? Current users love iOS - but Apple seems to losing the numbers war to Android.

To turn the tide, iOS may need to be re-invented. That often happens to operating systems, but it is not easy to pull off without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Other companies have seen inordinately popular operating systems actually hold them back from getting fully behind new and improved versions.

The Windows XP Comparison

Look at Microsoft. Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001 and it took until August 2012 before Windows 7 had more users. Windows 8 - given its challenging new interface - might have an even tougher time moving the needle.

Windows XP was successful because - as David Johnson, an analyst with Forrester has noted - “It was a very, very good operating system... a superb OS because it removed a lot of pain.” While the Macintosh was often called great, Windows XP was often said to be “good enough” and with inexpensive hardware as a platform, it won the desktop computing war.

Windows XP retains a strong hold on many users, to Microsoft's chagrin. The company would like to see them buying new computers loaded with Windows 8.

Is it conceivable that Apple has achieved that magic “good enough” formula with iOS on its current iPhones? People hang onto to their iPhone because it has been a positive experience for them and it works - will that affect Apple's ability to get the to try something new and presumably better?

The iPhone and iOS revolutionized smartphones and tablets much like the Mac popularized graphical user interfaces. Now, in spite of huge Apple numbers, the smartphone and tablet markets are slipping away to Android much like the computer market went to Windows XP.

Is iOS Falling Behind?

Where does iOS stand today? Erica Ogg at Gigacom argues that while there have lots of releases of iOS, there has been little change.

“While iOS has seen six new releases since its debut in 2007, there have been few major changes. The arrival of the App Store in 2008, and push notifications in 2009 were the last big adjustments in how the software works.”

John Martellaro, a Mac Observer writer who used to work for me at Apple, recently had this to say in his article, We’ve Changed and Grown. Apple’s iOS Hasn’t:

“iOS, now roughly six years old, was designed in an era of much less hardware capability and launched on the small 3.5-inch display of the original iPhone. Now, it's being pressed into service on ever larger iPhone and also iPad displays. One of the big annoyances is the single foreground app/single window design.”

The iPhone is also losing some notable users and influencers, including Steve Wozniak and Robert Scoble. Yet in spite of all this, the number of people who own iPhones and who are planning to switch to another platform remains small. A recent study suggests that the number of iPhone users planning to buy another iPhone has dropped only from 88% to 75%.

Why Change Will Be Hard

If the iPhone and the iPad are no longer the clear technology leaders, big change seems in order. Ironically, Apple's loyal customers who still plan to buy a new iPhone might be a hurdle. How much Apple can change iOS without losing the loyalty of those customers?

In a recent Ars Technica survey - iPhone users: what does Android have that you want? - 8% said they wanted bigger displays - but 10% said they would never switch from their iPhone.

Apple Has Been Here Before

Finding just the right amount of change in that environment won't be easy. But Apple has successfully faced this type of pivotal moment before - sometimes even without the help of Steve Jobs. Apple's history demonstrates a willingness to make technology breaks when needed.

Today's need for innovation while maintaining a satisfied customer base calls for the same boldness that Apple displayed when it moved users from the Apple II line to the Macintosh line, and later from Mac OS9 to Mac OSX and finally to Intel processors. Apple users gave Apple high marks for these difficult transitions.

Can Apple Do It Again?

But this is a different Apple - and a different, arguably less-forgiving market. As Blackberry and Nokia so clearly demonstrate, things happen quickly in the mobile space, with little room for error.

Whether Apple can innovate enough to stem the Android march while keeping current users happy might be the first big test for the new, post-Jobs Apple.

Apple still has one key advantage. Apple owns the whole widget, the hardware and the software. In the past it has made the ecosystem change so compelling that loyal customers followed without hesitation. But Google and Microsoft are starting to copy Apple’s whole-widget strategy - and that could make any iOS transition even harder.

What's Next?

All things point to Apple making significant changes in iOS in 2013. Most Apple iOS users will follow wherever Apple goes - but that is only half the battle.

It all boils down to two things. Does Apple have the vision to make the next version of iOS a true advance? And even if the next iOS is a huge hit among current users, will it be enough to stem the tide toward Android?

If Apple can pull off this difficult transition, it could find itself set for another 5 years. If not, it will face increasing pressure from many sides.

Image by Fredric Paul.

Want to break into someone's new iPhone? It's easy! First you click the emergency call button, hold down the power button, click cancel, tap the numbers 112, begin the call, and then quickly end the call. Got it? Part two: return to the passcode screen and start holding the power button. In the fraction of a second before the 'slide to power off' option appears, tap the emergency call button again.

Presto! You're in. Try it a few dozen times and you'll definitely get it. Maybe.

This iOS 6.1 exploit, which is currently enjoying its 15 minutes on the Web, is obviously a large and puzzling security flaw in Apple's iOS Passcode Lock system. But there are a couple of reasons why iPhone owners who keep their software up-to-date shouldn't worry too much. 

First off, this trick is incredibly hard to pull off. I tried for roughly an hour to break into my own iPhone, but I just couldn't make it happen -- those button presses have to be expertly timed. Unless a would-be iPhone hacker has some serious gaming skills, it likely won't be easy for them to nail this on the first, or even fifth, try.

Check out the YouTube video below to see how it works. If you can master the bypass, you would theoretically be all set to steal someone's phone and perform meaningless actions. 

That leads to the second point, which is that if you do happen to get through the Passcode Lock, all you can do is play around in the phone app itself. That is fortunately far less risky in a personal-information sense than, say, access to other apps such as Notes (which might contain more sensitive info) or Facebook (which could lead to cruel hacking such as like self-deprecating status updates or a rude private message or two). When you really think about it, only so much harm can come from accessing someone's contacts and making some calls. 

Now, if a theoretical hacker does access your contacts, he or she could also get into your photo albums by way of trying to set a new contact photo. But that doesn't pose much more of a risk than accessing the phone app does. (Unless you happen to keep particularly incriminating pictures on your photo roll. But that one's on you.)

The lesson here is simple. While of course Apple should fix this bug, there's no reason to abandon the iPhone over the purported permeability of the Passcode Lock. A smarter move would be to ensure that you have full access to the My Find iPhone service, which would let you locate the device, and wipe it if you so choose, in the 45 minutes it'll take the thief to break in. If he ever does, that is.

Image via Apple

Jailbreaking is suddenly all the rage - again. Despite Apple's best efforts to improve its iOS mobile operating systemand discourage users from hacking its mobile devices, yesterday's launch of the the evasi0n jailbreak tool for iOS 6 is a massive hit. Since yesterday, the Cydia store for jailbreak apps has been installed more than 1.7 million times. 

Demand for evasi0n was so high, in fact, that the Cydia app store has been experiencing performance and availability issues for the last 24 hours. Cydia creator Jay Freeman (known online as @saurik) confirmed the issues on Twitter and via the app store's home screen. Freeman and other developers have been busily rewriting code and fixing bugs. 

"Traffic from evasi0n has caused many errors," Freeman wrote early this morning. "After 19 hours of work… things seem stable."

(See also: How To Jailbreak iOS 6 On Your iPhone, iPad Or iPod Touch)

New jailbreaks are always highly anticipated and it's now pretty much expected that the launch of a new one will cause the site hosting it to slow down or crash. But it's not every time that the release of a new jailbreak causes Cydia itself to grind to a halt. 

As of this afternoon, many Cydia twaks and extensions were still returning error messages instead of downloading. Most of them appear to have been fixed, although some users on Twitter are still reporting issues. 

If Apple was hoping to see jailbreaking's popularity decline, the launch of evasi0n should be sobering news. 

Even though jailbreaking phones and other non-tablet mobile devices is perfectly legal, Apple discourages the practice both with public warnings about the risks and with substantial upgrades to iOS that often steal ideas from the jailbreak community. The Notification Center that arrived in iOS 5, for example, looked very familiar to people who had jailbroken their devices. iOS 6 didn't have quite so many features lifted from the jailbreaking community, but it was still a fairly substantial upgrade with plenty of improvements. 

Why Is Jailbreaking So Popular? 

Of course, the launch of iOS 6 wasn't without its problems. Most notably, the arrival of Apple Maps was an epic debacle big enough to dislodge key executives at the Cupertino giant. It wasn't until Google released its new Maps app for iOS in December that iPhone 5 owners were able to get relief from the disfigured terrain and imperfect data wrought by Apple's first stab at mobile mapmaking. As of Monday, those users have the option to make Google Maps for iOS their default mapping application, if they choose to jailbreak. 

I'm speculating here, but it's easy to see why many iOS 6 users were particularly anxious to free themselves from Apple's control, especially after an imperfection as glaring as Maps bruised their confidence in the company's ecosystem. Another possible lure would be the ability to make Google's Chrome the iPhone's default browser.

That, and jailbreaking's popularity was already on the rise. In a highly detailed history of jailbreaking, Techcrunch's Sarah Perez revealed that Cydia has been downloaded 22.8 million times to date. That number is probably closer to 25 million by now, after the launch of evasi0n. 

Taking Back Control From Apple 

Jailbreaking is all about control. It shifts the balance from Apple to the consumer, allowing users to customize their devices, change the way the OS looks and install tweaks and add-ons to enhance the experience. 

It makes sense that millions of people would want to regain this type of control over their mobile computing experience. After all, we are positively glued to these devices. They play an integral role in our day-to-day lives and as a result, we feel personally attached to them. 

With personal computers, people who wanted it were conditioned to expect control over things like the names under our app icons, our default Web browser and the color scheme of our desktop. The post-PC mobile era has given us many new advantages and added a sleek layer of polish, but has taken away much of that control. Some of us want it back. 

In a lot of ways, Apple's strict control is a good thing. It's the reason the user experience feels so flawless and intuitive. It's why I can hand an iPad to my 70-year-old mother or my 3-year-old-niece and not have to explain anything to them. It's the reason that in the post-PC era, the tech savvy are doing far less tech support for family members. 

But there's a limit to how effective this top-down control can be. It's great that iOS works the way it does out of the box, but annoying that power users can't dig into the settings and start tinkering with things in ways that we've been able to do for decades on PCs. It's infuriating that I can't change my default browser to Chrome without circumventing Apple. It bugs me that I'm forced to use Apple's boring Mail app over something like Gmail or Sparrow, unless I hit the "Jailbreak" button. 

Most of the things you can do with a jailbroken iDevice feel like things we should be able to do anyway. Many of them, as Android devotees are quick to point out, are things you can do on Google's mobile OS without having to do any tinkering.

That's true, but there are more than 500 million iOS devices in the world - and without an officially sanctioned way to customize things, the tinkerers among us will continue to turn to tools like evasi0n. Sometimes, if there's enough of us, we'll even crash servers to get them. 

Lead photo by David Locke. 

At last, the untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 is here. That not only means that the iPhone 5, iPad Mini and fourth generation 10-inch iPad can be freed from Apple's restrictions, but that it's safe for hardcore jail breakers to upgrade older devices to iOS 6 as well. Starting Monday, iOS users can do a lot more with their devices.  

Jailbreaking isn't a difficult or highly technical process, but it does demand some caution. The evasi0n jailbreak tool comes with simple step-by-step instructions in its readme.txt file, but we thought a more thorough walk-through would be worthwhile, lest you accidentally delete your cherished, digitally-captured memories.  

(See Also: Why iOS 6 Jailbreaking Is Popular Enough To Break Cydia)

Note: The screenshots used in this tutorial were made on Mac OS X. For Windows and Linux, use the analogous options within iTunes.

1. Getting Ready: Download Evasi0n And Back Up Your Device

The first thing you'll need to do is download Evasi0n onto your computer. There are versions available for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Once it's downloaded, unpack it, install it and open it.

Before you do anything with Evasi0n, plug your iOS device into the computer via USB, and open iTunes so you can back it up.  When the device appears within iTunes, right-click it and choose "Back Up."  In iTunes, you have the option to back up to your local hard drive or iCloud. For the sake of speed, backing things up locally is probably the better option. Make sure the "Encrypt backup" checkbox is unchecked. 

If you've download apps directly to your device, you'll want to transfer those purchases to iTunes first. Go to File -> Devices -> Transfer Purchases from [whatever your device is called]. 

This way, when you restore the device, you won't lose anything. If any apps go missing, you can always restore them on the device later by going to the "Purchased" tab under "Updates" in the iTunes store. 

2. Back Up Your Photos And Videos

Backing up your device in iTunes does not include your photos and videos. Before proceeding with the jailbreak, import everything using iPhoto, Adobe Bridge or any other photo management software. If you don't back up the photos and videos on your device, you will lose them forever - and be sad.

3. Upgrade to iOS 6.1 (If You Haven't Already)  

If you haven't upgraded to iOS 6.1 yet, this is when you'll want to do so. Once everything is backed up, go to the device's "Summary" tab in iTunes and click the "Update" button under the iOS version number. 

Finally, if you use a passcode to lock your device, go into iOS's Settings and turn it off. It can apparently screw with the jailbreaking process. 

4. Launch Evasi0n And Jailbreak Your Device

 Once everything is backed up and updated, launch evasi0n. Take a deep breath. Click "Jailbreak." 

At this point, you might want to do some leisurely reading or get back to work, because the jailbreak itself may take 15-30 minutes to complete.  

After several minutes, evasi0n will ask you to go to wake up your iPad and tap the "Jailbreak" icon now installed on your home screen (alongside your existing apps). Do that. 

From there, evasi0n will inject the last of the jailbreak files onto your device and it will reboot itself. Unlike the older Absinthe A5 jailbreak, evasi0n will automatically restore your device from its backup, saving you the extra manual step. 

5. Getting Started With Cydia

Cydia is the jailbreak equivalent of Apple's App Store. At first glance, Cydia app store is not quite as polished as Apple's, but it doesn't take long to find your way around. 

You'll want to start by browsing through the "Featured" list and looking at the themes that are available. Cydia does a pretty good job of breaking things down into useful categories, and even provides a list of tools to start out with. 

There are a lot of apps, tweaks and design themes available in Cydia. It's worth taking the time to scroll through each list, check out the descriptions and screen shots, and start installing things you think would be useful for you. When I first jailbroke my iPhone 4, I started small by adding a fifth icon to the dock, enabling app-renaming, making Sparrow my default email client and adding a new theme. There are plenty of Siri-related tweaks, which you can find by searching "Siri" within Cydia. 

Other popular enhancements include additions to Notification Center, Wi-Fi tethering, game emulators and a variety of lock-screen modifications. Most tweaks and apps are free, but a handful of them cost a few bucks. The tethering and hotspot apps tend to run $10-$20, but price tags that large are otherwise pretty rare in Cydia.

Nearly five months after Apple shipped iOS 6, an untethered jailbreak for the operating system is now available. Unlike its predecessor, the Evasi0n iOS 6 jailbreak tool works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux at launch. 

The release of Evasi0n has been highly anticipated for owners of the iPhone 5 and fourth generation iPad, both of which shipped running iOS 6 by default. For others, the release means they can finally upgrade their devices to iOS 6 without losing the ability to download unauthorized apps and customize the look and feel of their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. 

High Jailbreak Demand

As is now standard for iOS jailbreaks, the launch of Evasi0n came with its fair share of technical difficulties. Demand is so high for jailbreaks that they tens to crash servers and cause performance issues on the hosting site - at least at first. In this case, the evaders team that developed it decided to use Google Sites, which apparently has a page view limit. After several failed attempts, I finally managed to get the .dmg file  to download. 

Although it probably felt like an eternity for iPhone 5 users, the release of the iOS 6 jailbreak arrived at roughly the same time as the Absinthe A5 jailbreak tool for iOS 5 last year. In December 2011, Pod2G released a jailbreak for iOS 5, but that didn't include the devices with A5 chips like the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. That tool arrived on January 20 of last year. So the new jailbreaking team was only slightly behind schedule with this one. 

The Evasi0n jailbreak was actually well underway as of last week, but the team didn't want to push it out prior to Apple's release of iOS 6.1, lest the company patch the exploits the team used to jailbreak. 

Why Jailbreak?

Jailbreaking isn't for everybody. While the process is relatively user friendly (so long as the directions are followed with caution and the device is backed up first), the experience is best suited for that subset of users who prefer to have the ability to customize their devices and download apps that wouldn't meet Apple's requirements for inclusion in the App Store. 

This includes things like like tethering your data connection to other devices and running classic video game emulators. For me, it's the little things. I like using Chrome as my default browser, renaming apps, customizing the design of my home screen and using Sparrow as my default mail client.  

To download the iOS 6 jailbreak, head over to evasi0n.com and select your operating system of choice. Depending on how overloaded the server is at the moment, be prepared to hit "refresh" more than a few times. 

Facebook is a mobile company, but stop asking Mark Zuckerberg about the phone thing already.

On its fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the Facebook CEO and founder may have said the word "mobile" 1.59 billion times, but that legendary Facebook phone is just a fairy tale. "People keep on asking if we're going to build a phone," said Zuckerberg. "We're not going to build a phone."

Mobile Is Just Starting To Make Money

And why would it ever need to? Between Instagram and its own apps, Facebook already owns over 25% of the time that users in the U.S. spend on mobile devices. It overtook Google Maps last October as the most popular smartphone app in the U.S. According to Facebook's Q4 earnings numbers, mobile ads on those apps are starting to pay off. 

Facebook Is Already On Your Phone

Facebook is already a massive mobile platform - it doesn't need its own device or operating system to drive its mobile revenue efforts. Its ultra-sticky mobile apps are already in your hands on just about every mobile device possible, Trojan horse style. 

Besides, adding hardware to the mix would be beyond messy. For a cautionary tale, just look at Google's Nexus 4 woes - and that's coming from a company with a much deeper understanding of mobile than Facebook. 

Finally, Facebook says it's plenty happy with its ongoing relationships with Android and iOS. Zuckerberg noted that the mobile team has enjoyed the deep integration that's possible in Android's far more open ecosystem, but that he's been very pleased with the direct rapport between his company and Apple too. As of iOS 6, Facebook has achieved extremely deep iOS integration - for an Apple outsider, anyhow.

Why would Facebook build a phone when it's already infiltrated the lion's share of mobile devices?

It wouldn't - so stop asking. The HTC Status is as close as we're ever gonna get to a Facebook phone... and we all know how that went. 

What app broke through to become one of the most popular in 2012? If you live outside Asia, chances are you've never heard of it: Naver's Line Pop, a matching game that an analyst report this week estimated at 1.75 million downloads in just over 72 hours.

Line Pop's success overshadowed the success of Draw Something, 2012's other most-talked about app. Draw Something reached 1 million users in 9 days early in 2012, and was instrumental in convincing Zynga to spend $180 million to acquire developer Omgpop.

The report this week by Distimo attempted the chart the success of apps residing on the two most popular platforms: Google's Android app store, Google Play, and Apple's iOS App Store. Unfortunately, the year-end look didn't touch on smaller, less popular app platforms such as RIM's BlackBerry Store or Amazon's own powerful rival to Google Play. (Although one can dismiss BlackBerry's waning influence, and the nascent Windows Phone/Windows 8 stores, it would have been interesting to see how Amazon influenced Google Play, and especially how its store affected downloads and revenue for the Android platform.)

But the report does lay out an interesting smorgasbord of data that developers should digest over the holidays, including one worrying trend: Fewer apps are generating more revenue, meaning that the bulk of app store revenues are consolidating within fewer and fewer apps. That's great news if you have one of the few hits, but a real challenge for everyone else.

The report indicates that both Google Play and Apple's iOS are growing strongly, though Apple's iOS platform still generates more revenue. Distimo also showed that some countries heavily skew either toward or away from tablets.

Google Play Still Trails Apple

Both Apple's App Store and Google Play now have about the same number of apps, roughly 700,000, but Android smartphone penetration is much higher: 52.5% of all U.S. smartphones, according to comScore, versus 34.3% for Apple.

Distimo's report also shows that daily revenues from Google Play are on the rise, increasing 43% over the last four months, an impressive figure for any company. During the same period, Apple's App Store grew only 21%. 

But Apple's app-store revenues started from a much stronger base; while the Distimo report doesn't mention specific numbers, Apple claimed in January that revenue from the App Store and its iBookstore business hit $2.03 billion. Since January, Apple's app store revenues alone grew 51%, Distimo said.

On a typical day in November 2012,  Apple App Store revenue exceeded $15 million, Distimo found, while in Google Play the revenues were just below $3.5 million, measured across 20 of the largest countries in both app stores. The U.S., Japan, the UK and Australia generated the most app revenue.

The implication is clear: although Apple's market share is smaller than Android's, app developers still make more money developing for the iOS platform. 

Hit-Driven App Consolidation

That doesn't mean that app developers will find guaranteed success in any one store, however. Distimo found that just seven hit applications earned 10% of the revenues in November 2012 in the Apple App Store for iPhone, which is a "significantly lower number of applications than in January 2012." With the iPad, just six apps were responsible for 10% of the revenues, while in Google Play only four apps generated 10% of the revenue. Clearly, the window to make it big is shrinking - even as the rewards for do so continue to grow.

Before (and presumably after) Apple launched its free iOS Maps service, navigation apps pulled in an average of $11.56 apiece on the iPad, and $7.25 on the iPhone, the most revenue per app any category made. On the iPad, business and productivity apps followed closely behind, while the same categories clustered together on the iPhone, with news and travel apps in the mix. 

Overall, however, games were the clear winner, sucking up a third of the downloads and even more of the revenue across both Google Play and iOS combined. The second-place category, widgets, was far behind at 8%.

Interestingly, Distimo found that the average price for an app was higher on Google Play than on iPhone-specific apps. 

And how did developers make money? Looking at the Apple app store alone, Distimo found that in-app revenue grew from 53% to 69% from January to November. The exceptions were developers that could convince buyers to purchase apps up front: games, for example, like "Minecraft: Pocket Edition." Apple, the most popular publisher of apps on the iOS app store by download, chose this route with apps like GarageBand. 

Russia Loves Tablets, Japan Doesn't

Perhaps reinforcing the stereotype that the Japanese prefer small, dainty objects, Distimo's geographic breakdown of app purchases provides new insight on how various country view tablet apps. The country with the highest tablet proclivity is Russia, where 46% of all iOS downloads were on the iPad, followed by The Netherlands and Finland with 38% and 35%, respectively. Japan is the country with the least tablet proclivity, as only 7% of all iOS downloads are iPad apps, Distimo wrote. But the firm also ranked Japan second in terms of the growth seen in purchasing iPad apps, at 112% over the last four months. 

Some 24% of the apps Americans purchased were for the iPhone, versus the iPad, Distimo found.

How To Make $$$ Developing Apps

For now, Distimo's report suggests this: The odds of striking it rich as a mobile app developer are tiny, and the safest bet is to design either a game or a productivity app for the iPhone. 

There's also one other thing to consider, that Distimo doesn't: Draw Something shot to fame, as customers downloaded it 50 million times in 50 days. But the dropoff was almost as sharp. Today, it's down to about 2 million monthly users. And Line Pop's Google Play page shows the same sharp downward trend. App fame is fleeting, and users are always on to the next big thing.

On a trip to San Francisco last week, I invited technology to bring me to my knees. Choosing to surrender my formerly sharp analog city instincts for the purposes of an experiment, I mapped even the simplest of routes on my smartphone, dialed nary a hotel front desk and never once so much as lifted a hand to hail a cab the good ol' fashioned way. 

That's not to say that I needed any of the myriad apps that alternately had me walking the toward my destination and walking into traffic at any given time, but I was curious if relying wholly on my mobile devices would actually make my life easier or just add a layer of electronic hassle.

Here's how my starter pack of travel apps stacked up - from the essential to the ones that made me want to sacrifice my phone to the third rail. 

1. Getting Around Made Addictively Easy: Uber

As a former Manhattanite and all-around urban power-walker, I don't take cabs often. But in San Francisco, my constant frustration with the public transportation system drove me to it once or twice - and everyone kept telling me I had to try Uber. "You'll feel like a gangster," they said. "You have to order the black car just to see how it feels." So I did. Not only did it subtract every irritating thing that annoys me about getting a cab to begin with (Vying against fellow city-goers! Arguing about using a credit card! Awkward tipping!) but I felt like a mafia wife. Amazing.

2. #Epicfail: Apple Maps In iOS 6

At the moment, I use both an iPhone 4S and a Nexus 4, so I thought I'd put Apple's new Maps to the test. I rarely defend Apple's software choices, but recently I'd even reassured a few friends that iOS 6 maps wasn't that bad. Well, I'd like to formally apologize to anyone who listened to me - Maps in iOS 6 is godforsakenly bad. In San Francisco - the technology capitol of the United States - most of the time the app didn't even properly display the Montgomery, Powell, and Civic Center BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stations in the middle of downtown. Instead, it always showed the Van Ness Muni (local San Francisco mass transit) station... and the Apple Store, of course. Want bus directions? Forget about it. Enjoy the redirect to a third-party app. I imagine Apple execs have quite a few Uber bills showing up on those expense reports.

3. A Lifesaver With Limited Options: Hotel Tonight

In a weird turn of events that involved geophysicists taking over SoMA, I had to basically had to hotel-hop for my four nights in San Francisco. After last-minute-ish Airbnb propositions consummately failed me, I turned to Hotel Tonight, which yes, books same-day hotels at deep discounts. I'm a comparison shopping junkie, so Hotel Tonight's simple, sleek interface and small batch of curated bookings was perfect. The app refreshes with new listings at noon (it sends alterts!), and was perfect for all of my last minute "I'm not sleeping in my rental car" needs. 

4. The Essentialest Essential Travel App: Yelp

Yelp has been one of my top three essential apps since… forever. It's almost a nervoud tic at this point - I can't actually cross the threshold of any kind of establishment without Yelping it, even in my own city. With reliable user ratings, a robust map view and awesome filters, Yelp will never do you wrong.

5. Serendipitous But Superfluous: Field Trip for Android

I've been playing around with this one a bit, and it's pretty neat if you're not in a hurry. The app, built by Niantic Labs within Google, is a handy little virtual tour guide that surfaces cool stuff nearby with contextual info. You can teach it what you're interested in and set up geo-triggered alerts for your stroll through a city. In my case I enabled the Architecture and Historic Places categories and disabled all of the deals and shopping stuff. It's far from essential, but it's a neat way to learn cool facts that will come up later on Jeopardy - and it ties into Ingress, Google's crazy new Augmented Reality game.

6. The Best Maps App, Still: Google Maps For Android

Ah, sweet, native Google Maps. The app has always been superior on its home turf, and with Jelly Bean and Google Now it's better than ever. It's got it all, turn-by-turn directions, support for public transportation (and biking routes!) and starring locations (akin to dropping a pin) is my favorite way to see where I've been and where I'm going.

7. Reality Gamification With Occasional Social Utility: Foursquare

Call me paranoid, but I don't open Foursquare unless I'm out of town - it just creeps me out. Since most of my travel is to tech events, Foursquare is suddenly transformed from stalker-bait to a bustling real-life mini-game that helps me find friends - and cut the signal-to-noise ratio when there are multiple events going on and you can't tell which is the cool one and which is the decoy event for losers. Don't be fooled- there's always a decoy event.

I may have almost walked into traffic more than a few times while triangulating my position when I wasn't particularly lost, but I did learn a few things. Whipping out a smartphone can be disruptive, but with smart notifications, dead-simple interfaces and cooler data, the best apps are getting even better at seamlessly weaving themselves into our worlds. Just look both ways before you cross the street.

Other handy apps that I didn't end up using on this trip: Kayak, Airbnb, Lyft, TripAdvisor.

San Francisco City Center image courtesy of Shutterstock.