Jason Cipriani/CNET One of the biggest complaints echoed by many iOS users since the introduction of iMessage and FaceTime with iOS 5 has been the inability to block people. All it would take was one person getting your iMessage or FaceTime phone number or e-mail address, and you were an open target to constant messages …

We’ve all seen the Samsung commercials wherein iOS users are constantly made fun of for buying into Apple products. One of the features often shown off in those commercials has been NFC sharing of documents and photos when two users bump the backs of the their latest Galaxy devices — something everyone knows iOS devices can’t do. Apple took note …

Jason Cipriani/CNET One of the most annoying things about messaging on iOS is the lack of true time stamps for messages. It felt as if iOS would randomly place a time stamp throughout a conversation, but there was no obvious pattern. Because the time stamp was so random, it was very difficult to go back and view when a message …

Jason Cipriani/CNET When Apple announced that the iPhone 5S was going to come with the ability to capture slow-motion video, I was excited. Slowing down films of my kids has always been something I enjoyed doing, but I had to use various third-party apps or import the clips into iMovie in order to accomplish it. Now, with the iPhone 5S …

Jason Cipriani/CNET When Apple unveiled iOS 7 during its annual World Wide Developers Conference back in June, one of the first features shown off was a background that moves as you move your phone. The feature, called Parallax, shifts the point of view of your background image and icons to match how you’re holding the phone. Instead of being a …

Jason Cipriani/CNET Spotlight is a universal search box on iOS devices that makes it possible to quickly search for and find an app, contact, or e-mail directly from the home screen. In previous versions of iOS, users would swipe to the left of the main home screen to access the search box. In iOS 7, as you may have already …

Jason Cipriani/CNET The simple act of enabling Bluetooth, or disabling Wi-Fi on an iOS device has never been truly simple. The process required way too many taps to navigate to a switch buried deep within the Settings app. With iOS 7 the process to control things such as Wi-Fi, orientation lock, music, brightness, airplane mode, and Do Not Disturb has …

Jason Cipriani/CNET When Apple first introduced Do Not Disturb (DND) in iOS 6, it was welcomed as a solution for not interrupting meetings or waking you up all night from alerts. While DND succeeds at those two claims, immediately after the release of iOS 6 users realized it needed more. You see, on iOS 6 users who had DND turned …

Jason Cipriani/CNET Spotting an app in the App Store you want to purchase, but not being sure if you’re ready to pull the trigger, or wanting to wait until it goes on sale is common. Same goes for a movie, book, or album in the iTunes Store. In the past, iOS left you to remember what content it was you …

Jason Cipriani/CNET For the first time since the introduction of the first iPhone and iOS, apps can run in the background, carrying out whatever tasks are requested. Until now, location services, music playback, and VoIP calls were the only types of apps that could run in the background on iOS. The biggest factor that kept Apple from opening up background …