Ken Segall, who named the iMac and worked on the “Think Different” campaign, has some choice takeaways from working with Steve Jobs that he’s finally sharing in book form with Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success.
The cleanly-designed cover in Apple’s signature Myriad typeface looks almost like it should be unboxed; inside you’ll find choice insider tales of the flops, false starts and history made with Apple over the 12 years he worked with the Cupertino company. (You can read an exclusive excerpt from Insanely Simple and our review of the book here.)
Segall tells Cult of Mac about the reasoning behind that lowercase “i,” winning Jobs over and what happened when ads flopped. You can catch up with him through his blog or Facebook page, where you’ll also find details about his upcoming book tour.
In the five years since the iPhone Photography Awards (IPPA) launched, the iPhone camera has gone from disappointing to out-snapping Nikon as the most popular camera on Flickr.
As the March 31 deadline for this year’s award approaches, IPPA founder Kenan Aktulun talks to Cult of Mac about his favorite pics, the distinction between good and great iPhone photos and why apps may not help you create them.
Carol Gerber wants to help reconcile lawyers who bring in their own iPads to work with the IT department.
Gerber is an former bankruptcy attorney who has been imparting tech training to lawyers for a decade. On the front lines of the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) movement, she’s created an iPad class approved by the New York State Continuing Legal Education Board.
TidyTilt is a nifty earbud cord wrap, multi-position kickstand and mount for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that looks a lot like Apple’s iPad Smartcover.
The brainchild of Zahra Tashakorinia and Derek Tarnow, students at the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, TidyTilt was so popular that its massive overfunding on Kickstarter turned their little project into a business.
Like many of us, Travis Jensen spends his lunch hour taking iPhone pics.
Unlike most of us, however, his moody urban landscapes and punchy black-and-white portraits have been the object of two photo books, shot with fellow street photography veteran Brad Evans, Tenderloin U.S.A. and the #iSnapSF Field Journal.
You might have suspected that the right music – whether it’s thrash metal or Mozart – keeps you more focused or relaxed.
Now a trio of brain researchers have studied the effects of playlists on the brain, resulting in a nifty little book called Your Playlist Can Change Your Life. In the book’s 200-or so pages, they explain how to use specific playlists to alleviate anxiety, promote concentration, get happy or move into a flow state thanks to Brain Music Treatment or BMT.
If you can’t make it to New York for BMT therapy, for $9.99, you can also download a Common BMT File. Created from more than 2,000 people’s brain waves with the help of evidence-based BMT tech, they say it acts as a kind of aural “first-aid” before you get your own playlists together.
Intrigued (my current nightstand read is Mark Changizi’s excellent Harnessed about music and the brain), I talked to author Dr. Galina Mindlin about what playlists have the most impact, cleaning up your music collection and her current heavy rotations.
The jailbreak community is full of talented developers and innovative ideas that have kept Apple on its toes for the past several years. The time and effort that goes into creating a quality tweak is often unappreciated by the average jailbreaker.
A free tool called iOSOpenDev was recently released for developers. Those with basic programming knowledge can use Xcode templates for creating jailbreak-style apps and tweaks that can be easily published to Cydia, the jailbreak version of the App Store. While iOSOpenDev is attempting to make it easier for developers to code tweaks, apps and plugins, we sat down with a prominent jailbreak developer to ask if iOSOpenDev is really a good thing for the jailbreak community.
Known developer Steven Troughton-Smith has been able to run iOS App Store apps on the Apple TV fullscreen at the device’s full, 720p resolution. Troughton-Smith also worked on the Siri port that was demoed months ago and made available for jailbroken iOS devices last week.
With the help of another developer by the name of TheMudKip and Grant Paul’s MobileLaunchpad launcher, Troughton-Smith has been able to run iOS apps natively on the Apple TV without using AirPlay.
Father Paolo Padrini is the Italian priest who developed iBrevary, an app that puts morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayers on the iPhone. It was the first iPhone application sanctioned by the Holy Roman Church, Padrini also works with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. Cult of Mac talked to him about what’s next app-wise and what place religious apps have in iTunes.
Last week, one of the most interesting Mac programs to come out in years hit the App Store in Sparrow for Mac, an elegant and attractive e-mail client that looks and acts a lot like Twitter.
I loved it, comparing it to more full-featured clients like Postbox 2 by saying Sparrow was “the equivalent of skipping stones, not piloting a submarine.”
I decided to reach out to Sparrow for Mac team member Dom Leca and ask him a few questions about the origins, inspiration and future of the e-mail program that treats your Gmail as if it were Twitter.
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