Ever been in a situation where an Apple online service—like iMessage, Facetime, or iCloud—wasn’t working as expected and you weren’t sure if the problem was on your end or Apple’s? Well, there’s a handy web page you can check on Apple.com that will tell you what the status is of every online service they support, including the various web stores and iCloud.

Most of you probably already know by now, but we’re going to let you know again; iOS 6.0 and above has recieved an untethered jailbreak for all devices today courtesy of the relatively new jailbreak team the Evaders. Evasi0n will work on any device running iOS 6 or above (yes, that includes the latest iOS 6.1) including the new iPhone 5 and iPad Mini.

Just like you, every day for the past 4 years with my various iterations of iPhone, I have been forced to look at an ugly carrier logo in the upper left corner of my screen. I’ve read for years that we can change this icon by jailbreaking our devices, but thanks to coder uhelios, we now have Carrier Editor for Mac which can change our iOS carrier’s logo in four simple steps.

Got yourself an iTunes gift card for Christmas? Sweet! Apple doesn’t do a great job of explaining how to redeem an iTunes gift card with the App Store app, but it’s very simple. Here’s how you do it. Remember, though, that gift cards have to be redeemed in the iTunes store of the country in which the card was purchased.

The ability to “gift” apps has been available for quite some time now. And although the ability was dropped in the original release of iOS 6, it returned with a neat new feature…you can set the date on which the gifted app is actually delivered. If you plan to give an app for Christmas and don’t want to risk forgetting on Christmas day, here’s how to do it.

Are you amongst the many New iPad owners who were shocked after Apple announced a 4th gen iPad just seven months after the third-generation device was released? If you’re feeling angry or just a bit envious, you can always turn that “obsolete” third-gen iPad into real cash.

If you (like me) were a dedicated fan of Apple’s cloud services long before cloud services ever became a thing (iTools, anyone?), you may be bumping up against the new 5 GB storage limit in iCloud. Former MobileMe users got a one year free upgrade to 25GB of storage, but now that year is up and Apple has notified those users that their iCloud accounts are set to downgrade to the default storage limit on September 30th.

I’m not a Facebook hater; I use the service every day to connect with friends and family members, share photos and links, and keep track of events. I do, however, maintain a very close eye on my privacy settings and am deeply suspicious of Facebook’s handling of my private data. This is why I viewed the idea of Facebook being integrated into iOS 6 with deep pessimism.

The App Store button at the bottom of the window is supposed to take you to Passbook compatible apps, but it’s been having trouble connecting all day. So, to actually see Passbook in action, you’re going to need to do one of two things: wait for Apple’s servers to quit getting hammered with iOS 6 downloads, or try this…

If you were among the millions of iPhone owners who immediately pre-ordered the new iPhone 5 on the day it was available, you don’t have to worry at all about upgrading your new Apple device; iOS 6 comes already installed. However, if you have an older iOS device like an iPhone 4S or the new iPad, you will have to upgrade your device.