iPhone Life - Best Apps, Top Tips, Great Gear

How to Organize Your Calendar in 2025

(Sponsored Post) By Amy Spitzfaden Both on Thu, 05/08/2025

Apple is pretty good about updating its products, but it seems to have forgotten about the Calendar app and its many downsides. The makers of Informant 5, on the other hand, do not forget to regularly improve their app based on user experience. The latest updates to this calendar and task-management app are a productivity game-changer.

How to Sort Notifications

By Conner Carey

With iOS 9, you have the option to sort pull-down notifications. This allows you to group or ungroup apps and view notifications sorted manually or by most recent. When you group apps, they’re sorted into blocks under notifications with the most recent app appearing at the top. When apps are ungrouped, notifications will sort intermixed by most recent unless sorted manually.

Proactive Assistant was one of the new features introduced with iOS 9. Since then, I’ve noticed a lot of misunderstanding as to just what Proactive Assistant does, how to utilize it, and how to turn it off. Proactive Assistant pays attention to what you do and where you use your phone. Proactive Assistant works with Siri to give you Spotlight Suggestions but the habit learning program has it’s own set of suggestions to help you out.

"Nailed it!" That's what I imagine it sounds like to work at Twelve South. The folks there seem to repeatedly and reliably come up with accessory after accessory that makes the Apple experience better. I use a MacBook stand from the company, and used to have an iPad BookBook case for my original iPad and a BookBook case for my new iPhone 6s. In fact, the BookBook is probably Twelve South's most notable product. It is an iPad or iPhone case disguised as a leather-bound book, and the iPhone versions have slots for credit cards and ID. You get the best of both worlds: handmade, old-world-book style and modern e-books and apps!  It's very charming and functional, and could protect your iOS devices from unwitting thieves.

In 2011, Steve Jobs envisioned a second Apple Campus like that of a “spaceship landed.” Jobs imagined the structure as circular with a courtyard at its center and constucted without a “single piece of straight glass.” In Cupertino, California the envisioned structure is currently under construction with plans to be completed by end of next year.

Easily installed to existing windows, AXIS Gear allows you to control or automate your window shades with your iPhone. The Indiegogo project is looking to fundraise the manufacturing of its product. You can set scheduling to open the morning blinds and lower them at sunset. Control your curtains with or without iPhone via the AXIS gear motor; it's also fully compatible with other smart home systems.

I was at New York City Comic Con a while ago, and the kind folks from Yogibo had a variety of their comfortable "un-beanbag" chairs available for weary convention goers to try. They are extremely comfortable, in part due to their "zero friction" modules which are less restrictive than traditional beanbag chairs. But I noticed they had smaller, pillow-sized items.

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