The Best Task Manager for iOS, 2Do, is Now Available for Your Mac [Exclusive]

We don’t hand out five stars here at Cult of Mac just for any old thing. In fact, out of hundreds of reviews, I can count on my fingers the number of gadgets and apps that have received a five-star rating. But the 2Do iOS app was handed five stars, and it was well-deserved. Now Guided Ways Technologies has released a Mac version of its superb task manager — are you excited yet?

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Stunning Content Optimizer InboundWriter Coming Soon To An iPad Near You [Exclusive]

Image courtesy of InboundWriter.

InboundWriter is one of those stunning, trick applications you’re surprised even exists. It’s a web-based text editor that allows you to see — via a big speedometer-like gauge — how well you’ve tuned your document to be search-engine friendly (otherwise known as search-engine optimization, or SEO), and then gives you the tools to tweak your document’s SEO to perfection. And yes, it’s free — so long as you don’t go over eight documents per month.

But since its launch early this year in May of last year, InboundWriter has been running on Flash, making it annoyingly unavailable on the iPad. But that’s about to change; it’s been re-worked from the ground up to run on HTML5, and has even had its aspect ratio optimized for the iPad.

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Marvel Inks Deal To Exclusively Distribute Digital Comics Worldwide With comiXology

We have some great news for those of you who aren’t ashamed of purchasing digital comics. Marvel has signed a multi-year deal with comiXology, the largest digital comics platform, to exclusively distribute single issue English-language digital comics worldwide. Marvel fans will have a plethora of sources to obtain these digital comics, including the Marvel apps available for Android and iOS .

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Coming Soon: Snacksss, The First iOS Game By Dev Behind Everquest And Unreal Tournament

I’m expecting some really cool iOS/Android stuff to pop out of indy dev First Post. The year-and-a-half-old startup is run by Jacob Robinson, the former art director at Sony Online Entertainment (who had a hand in forming legendary titles like the EverQuest series, DC Universe, Star Wars Galaxies and Unreal Tournament). It’s also completely self-funded, “which is not an easy thing to do at all,” says Robinson.

First Post’s debut game, Snacksss, may not exactly be the stellar breakthrough title one might have hoped for; the cartoony, Sonoran Desert-themed iPhone game has lots of pretty artwork but needs help in the gameplay department, which has the player listlessly flicking a hungry snake at rabbits ad nauseam.

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Why Apple CEO Tim Cook Met With Valve [Updated]

Apple and Valve may be partnering with each other on a revolutionary video game console.

An unconfirmed report surfaced yesterday saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted at Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. Whenever Cook is spotted out and about, people take notice. The CEO of the world’s most valuable company doesn’t personally visit other tech companies to simply have a chat.

Many speculated as to why Cook would be visiting Valve, maker of popular game series like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal. Valve also boasts an incredibly robust online PC gaming platform called Steam that operates similarly to Apple’s App Store.

We’ve gotten word that Cook was indeed at Valve yesterday, and what’s more, Apple is planning a full-on assault to take over the living room. This assault won’t just be limited to the long-rumored Apple HDTV set, but will also include a revolutionary home console as well.

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The OS X HackStore Aims To Bring The Cydia Experience To The Mac [Exclusive]

Introducing the HackStore, where Cydia meets the Mac App Store (design in progress)

When the App Store first launched on iOS, the need for an alternative marketplace quickly arose. Jailbreakers and power-users wanted a way to download and install apps that gave them more control over their devices than what Apple would allow.

That was how Cydia was born. Created by Jay ‘saurik‘ Freeman, the Cydia app store allows users with jailbroken devices to not only install apps that bypass a number of iOS’s built-in restrictions, but to more easily discover them.

On the Mac, there’s obviously no jailbreaking, but given the sandboxing restrictions placed upon App Store developers, there’s still a need for a Cydia-like alternative: an easy-to-use, curated catalog for apps that give power-users too much control over their systems for Apple’s comfort.

Enter the HackStore, which hopes one day to be as synonymous with user-empowered Macs as Cydia is with jailbroken iOS devices.

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‘Girls Around Me’ Dev: Our App’s Not For Stalking Women, It’s For Avoiding The Ugly Ones [Exclusive Interview]

Cult of Mac interviews Girls Around Me developer i-Free about the controversy surrounding their app.

Last week, we stirred up a maelstrom of controversy when we posted about Girls Around Me, an iOS app that allowed you to locate and view publicly available information on women in any area.

Since we posted the story, over half a million people have come to our site to read about the app, over 65,000 people have shared it on Facebook, and leading publications at home and abroad have followed our lead in reporting on the app, which we described as not just as a potential tool for rapists and stalkers that was putting thousands of women at risk without their knowledge, but a wake-up called about privacy.

Girls Around Me has since been pulled from the iTunes App Store, but considering we were the ones who stirred up so much trouble for the app’s Russian-based developer, i-Free, I thought we would reach out and give them the opportunity to set the record straight. What was i-Free thinking when they released this app? What do they make of the controversy surrounding it? Do they have any regrets? And will Girls Around Me come back?

i-Free’s responses to these questions might prove to be just as controversial as the app itself. The company denies having done anything wrong. They say it is “impossible” to stalk or track someone with their app. They say that the point of the app is just as much about avoiding ugly women on a night out as it is about looking for love. And they’re not sorry.

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Apple Hates Stifler: American Pie App Rejected By App Store [Exclusive]

The new American Pie film American Reunion is set to open in theaters this Friday, April 6th. To help promote the movie, Universal Pictures thought it’d be a great idea to release an app called Stifler’s App Suite featuring a soundboard of all the various raunchy sayings of  the series’ infamous support character, Stifler.

Looks like Stifler was too hot for the App Store to handle, though. An anonymous source has exclusively told Cult of Mac that Apple’s App Store review team has rejected the app due to foul language. The rejection has forced the Universal team to resubmit a watered-down version of the app. Stifler’s hardly even himself anymore.

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Verizon Installing LTE Equipment In Apple Stores Ahead Of iPad 3 Launch

The rumor mill has been saying that Apple’s third-gen iPad will come equipped with LTE 4G networking. The feature is speculated to be U.S.-only on AT&T and Verizon, with international and other carrier details remaining scare.

We’ve gotten word that the nation’s largest wireless provider, Verizon, has been installing LTE equipment in U.S. Apple retail stores ahead of the iPad 3 launch.

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Exclusive: Retina Display iPad 3 To Be Even Thinner Than iPad 2 [CES 2012]

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – The forthcoming iPad 3 will be thinner than the iPad 2, Cult of Mac has exclusively learned at the Consumer Electronics Show from a well-placed source.

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