Hidden 'radio' buttons discovered in Apple's iOS 6.1
Code tucked away deep within Apple's latest version of iOS provide some of the first hints that a radio service is on the way.
There's a hint that Apple has something new in the pipeline, and the company appears to have tucked it away inside the latest version of its iOS software.
Discovered last night within a freshly jailbroken iPad: a set of buttons and code references for "radio," a feature found in iTunes on Macs and PCs, but not on the iPad or iPhone. Making things more interesting is another button suggesting you can make purchases via the radio feature, presumably from iTunes.
The buttons, which were spotted by 9to5Mac, hint at Apple's much-rumored radio service, a product that will let people stream music much like they do on the popular Pandora service, but with deep ties to Apple's iTunes library. Rumors that Apple has been working on such a service have floated for years, but heated up last year as talks with labels advanced.
The discovery follows a high-profile jailbreak of iOS 6.1, the updated system software Apple releasedjust last week. A team of developers came up with a tool that gives users deep system-level access to do things like install applications from third-party app stores, change the look and feel of iOS, and add new software features.