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Forget Swipe To Unlock! Fold To Unlock Concept Brings A Smart Cover To Your iPhone’s Lock Screen

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Like a virtual Smart Cover for your iPhone.

There’s nothing that really needs changing about Apple’s patented “Slide to Unlock” functionality, but ever since Apple introduced the Smart Cover for the iPad 2, there’s been a conceptual disconnect between how you unlock an iPhone — by sliding — and how you unlock an iPad — by unfolding an origami-like cover off of the display.

It’s not really anything Apple needs to fix, but short of releasing a tiny little iPhone-sized smart cover, I think this “Fold To Unlock” design created by Anton Kudin is just an excellent conceptual bridge between the lockscreen and the smart cover.

Check out the concept in its full, high-res glory below.

Picture This! The Phenom Photo Album Bundle [Deals]

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Don’t have fun and beautiful pictures on your company’s website? Tired of the dull album your using for your blog? Don’t even have a website?

The latest Cult of Mac Deals offer has got you covered.

For only $59, The Phenom Photo Bundle will grant you unlimited access to hundreds of ad-free skins with the jAlbum Pro license, and you’ll also get you up to 20 GB of photo storage with jAlbum’s Power Storage. That’s enough space for 40,000 photos — so even the biggest photo snappers can take advantage of this special offer.

President Obama In The Oval Office Getting Briefed On An iPad 2 [Image]

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According to this official White House picture, “President Barack Obama receives the Presidential Daily Briefing from Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration, in the Oval Office, Jan. 31, 2012. Part of the briefing was done using a tablet computer.”

Oh really? I assert that President Obama isn’t using a “tablet computer” in this picture at all. A tablet computer is a vague term for some crummy, half-baked Android thingie like the Motorola Xoom or Transformer Prime. No, what President Obama is using quite openly and proudly here is an iPad 2.

Hey, Android fans! Does your president use an Android device? Ha, just kidding, obviously the answer is no.

[Thanks, Tim!]

Rejected: The Mountain Lions Apple Left Behind [Humor]

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With all the news about OS X Mountain Lion, one can only wonder which felines didn’t make the cut for Apple’s next-gen operating system. Luckily, iPhoneSavior managed to get its hands on exclusively leaked images of all the rejected cats. As you can see, there were several great candidates.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen this great image in every copy of Mountain Lion:

Ferocious.

Take Panoramic Photos On Your iOS Device With 360 Panorama [iOS Tip]

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One of the easiest and most effective ways of taking panoramic photos on your iOS device is with 360 Panorama. Unlike other apps that have you moving your device an inch at a time and snapping a number of photos, this one allows you to simply pan around while it snaps the images automatically.

Once complete, 360 Panorama stitches everything together to provide a fantastic 360° image which you can share with the world on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.

Here’s how to take panoramic photos with 360 Panorama.

OS X Mountain Lion Vs. Real-Life Mountain Lion: Fight! [Humor]

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Which would win in a fight? OS X Mountain Lion or a real Mountain Lion? Over at DealMac, Jeff Somogyi put together this absolutely hysterical chart, delving into the question.

The cheeky result? If the criterion on which you are judging Mountain Lions includes messaging, productivity, note taking, notifications, sharing, gaming or Twitter support, OS X has the edge. If, however, you are judging mountain lions based upon their ability to leap 18 feet straight in the air, run at land speeds of up to 45 miles per hour and urinate upon things to mark their territory, the real-life Mountain Lion will eat your face off.

Go on over to DealMac to check out the full post, it’s priceless.

The MacBook Air Is So Thin The Sun Can Shine Right Through it [Image]

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No one would ever argue that the MacBook Air is a fatty. At just 0.68 inches at its thickest point, the MacBook Air is thinner all-around than most axe blades, which will surely come in handy in a zombie apocalypse to come.

But how thin is 0.68 inches, really? Here’s a test you can show your friends to wow them. Open up your MacBook Air, then hold it up to the sun. The MacBook Air is so thin you can actually see sunlight shining through the screen through the Apple logo in back.

Try it for yourself, it really works (and it’s quite eerie). Thanks to Redditor Flemming Madsen for the great image and tip!

Side By Side: Samsung’s 5.3-Inch Galaxy Note Megaphone & The iPhone 4S [Humor]

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Over at The Loop, Jim Dalrymple posted a picture of what Samsung’s new 5.3-inch smartphone, the Galaxy Note, looks like next to the iPhone 4S.

While we were over there, guffawing with the rest of you, we happened to note this comment from Joel Glovier, who claims:

Everybody knows this is trick photography, right? The hand on the right is a bit closer to the camera than the hand on the left, as evidenced by the larger shadow of the right hand, and it’s distance away from the hand.

We thought we could put this defense to rest, because at CES, we here at Cult of Mac did a side-by-side comparison shot of the Galaxy Note compared to the iPhone 4S, and — nope — this isn’t trick photography. It really is that big. In fact, we quipped it was an Apple Newton rip-off!

Or as Han Solo might say, “That’s no moon…” But it’s the size of one!

What Phones Looked Like Before And After The iPhone Transformed The Industry [Image]

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Ask a lot of people who don’t use iPhones like to dismiss Apple’s impact on the smartphone industry. Hey, we had PDA-like smartphones with touchscreens before the iPhone, so what’s the big deal?

Such logic is patently absurd, but as it often does, a picture says a thousand words about how a thousand shitty devices did things before the iPhone came around, and how the makers of these crappy phones do things now that the iPhone is the gold standard of smartphone design.

Think that’s pathetic? Check out how tablets changed after the iPad too. Unreal!

[image by Josh Heifferich, via AppAdvice]

HP’s Not Even Pretending Not To Be Shamelessly Copying Apple Anymore [Image]

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Meet the HP Envy 15, a laptop that Engadget says “unapologetically copies the MacBook Pro” but “stumbles in several critical areas” including being heavier than the MacBook Pro and having a worse display, touchpad (pictured), keyboard and battery life.

Completely shameless, no? It’s the tech equivalent of The Third Man’s Harry Lime selling counterfeit penicillin on the post-war Viennese black market. Accept no substitutions.

[via Reddit]

Directly Upload Images You Take On Your iOS Devices To Dropbox With QuickShot [iOS Tip]

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If you’re a Dropbox user, uploading images to your Dropbox account directly from your iOS devices can be incredibly handy. And with QuickShot ($1.99), it couldn’t easier. Simply link the app to your Dropbox account and images are automatically uploaded as you snap them.

This is great if you often use public computers and you need to upload multiple images, but you don’t want to send them all via email. You can also use the app as alternative to Photo Stream. Sure, Photo Stream’s great, but until Apple allows us to delete our photos individually, it’s not ideal for everyone.

By uploading your images to Dropbox instead, you have access to them on pretty much all of your internet-connected devices. Here’s how to get setup with QuickShot!

Check Out The Radical Tattoo This Young Apple Fan Got In Tribute To Her Uncle [Image]

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We’ve got an affinity for great Apple tattoos here at Cult of Mac, but let’s face facts: most of them are pretty bad. But the Apple-themed tattoo we’ve fallen in love with today is a lot better than another hipster giving him or herself a “Think Different” tramp stamp.

Reader Karissa B. wrote us to show off her new Apple tattoo. We already liked it a lot: not only is the retro-style Apple logo nursing a mean mouthful of fangs, but the Pac Man like motif of Cupertino trying to gobble up its Clyde in a fleeing Microsoft logo was funny and whimsical. But it’s the story about what the tattoo means and why Karissa got it that really makes this tattoo shine.

Images Surface of iPod Touch with Capacitive Home Button, 128GB Storage

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Images have surfaced of an iPod touch equipped with a capacitive home screen button and 128GB of storage space. The device is marked with a “DVT-1” badge previously found on an iPod touch discovered back in 2010, and thought to be the code Apple uses to identify prototype devices.

Other than the capacitive home button and the increased storage, it doesn’t look like anything else is different in these pictures with regards to hardware. However, what’s interesting is that it looks like the device is running version 4.2.1 of iOS, suggesting that it may have been in testing for some time.

The quality of the pictures is poor, and it looks as though the build quality of the device is just as bad – indicating that the device featured is rather a fake than a next-generation iPod prototype.

100 Tips #48: How To Zoom In On Images In QuickLook

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Back in Tip #27, we showed you how to use QuickLook, an extremely handy way of previewing all sorts of different files on your Mac.

QuickLook is particularly handy for checking out image files, especially when you have a folder’s worth, all with identical generic icons rather than thumbnail icons, and you’re not sure exactly which one you want.

It also has a hidden secret feature: you can zoom in to images while in QuickLook mode. Here’s how.

50 Mac Essentials #28: Picasa

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If iPhoto leaves you cold, or perhaps doesn’t run so well on your older Mac, there aren’t many options for a similar application that combines photo editing and photo library management. Not many, except for Picasa.

Google’s free photo app is a great alternative to iPhoto, generously packed with features and a good choice for people who want to quickly upload photos to the web.

In most respects, it compares very well to iPhoto, including features like face recognition and geolocation data. It comes with a selection of quick edit presets, and easy (but basic) slider controls for detailed editing.

What’s particularly nice about Picasa, though, is its speed. It roars through photo libraries that leave rival photo managers struggling to catch up. On first run, it will zip through your iPhoto library – not copying any files (so don’t worry about disk space) – but indexing all your data there and building up its own copy of the iPhoto library.

Picasa is one of those things it makes sense to have around. It’s free, it’s packed with useful stuff, and even if you don’t put it to immediate use, there might yet come a day when you’ll be glad you have it to hand.

(You’re reading the 28th post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications: a list of the great Mac apps the team at Cult of Mac value most. Read more, or grab the RSS feed.)