Buster Hein - page 182

The Flappy Bird saga will not die thanks to one question still on the minds of Flappy Bird fans – how did Flappy Bird’s wild success ruin creator Dong Nguyen’s life?

Nguyen removed the game from the App Store and Google Play on Sunday despite making $50,000 a day off it, saying the game is a success, but it also ruins his simple life.

I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.

— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

Theories are boiling as to how the game ruined Dong’s life. Did Nintendo complain? No. Did he sell it? Nope.

Perhap his pockets are simply running out of room for those fat stacks, but a new theory emerged this morning, maybe Dong Nguyen cheated the App Store with bots.

After enjoying a wild ride as one of the most popular iPhone games ever, Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen removed the game from both the App Store and Google Play yesterday, but if you missed the rise of Flappy Bird without getting to actually play it, there’s now a web game to give you a taste of the addiction.

Getting Apple to dish on secrets is practically impossible, but if you’re looking for an inside line to one of the most powerful CEOs in tech, the house next door to Tim Cook just went on the market.

That’s right, even you could become Tim Cook’s neighbor, as long as you got a cool $2.8 million in the bank to drop on a condo.

The capabilities of today’s are so incredible, a few weeks ago we came across a 20-year old RadioShack ad and everything you could buy  has already been made obsolete by the iPhone. Still, the iPhone’s powers are so much greater than those products it doesn’t do justice to compare it to a $29.99 speed dial phone, so Bret Swanson at Tech Policy Daily decided to find out how much an iPhone would really cost in 1991.

Swanson’s back-of-the-envelope math estimates it would have cost Apple over $3 million to make a machine with comparable powers to the iPhone back in 1991, and that’s only counting some of the hardware.

Even though it feels like the iPhone 5s just came out, the rumor mill is already churning out little bits on the iPhone 6: a supercharged camera, a bigger display and a ton of sapphire crystal glass.

A number of designers have presented both wacky and plausible mockups for what the iPhone 6 might look like, but our concept designer friend Federico Ciccarese just sent us his rendition of what the iPhone 6 might look like. While it doesn’t have any wild design changes, it still has my pockets lusting after a 4.7-inch iPhone 6.

Check it out:

The best winter athletes across the world are descending on Sochi for eternal glory, but while snowboarders have been preparing their Double McTwist 1260s a different kind of competition erupted on social media early this year – competitive selfie taking.

Yes, the Selfie Olympics were a real thing and took social media by storm with entrants posting their pics with the hashtag #SelfieOlympics. What started off with simple mirror selfies quickly evolved into a competition to see who could cram the most random objects in front of their bathroom mirror.

The results of the Selfie Olympics were so hilarious we asked Cult of Mac readers to submit their best selfies for our own smaller contest, but before we reveal our winners, here are the best selfies from the main event.

Tons of competitors used their door for a prop, but this dude nearly snapped his neck trying to capture this ridiculous selfie.

Taking a selfie with your selfie is so meta we love it, even if he is using an Samsung phone.

Weird contortions on the door only lasted so long before competitors started bringing props into play. This little guy’s Flava Flav mock up is great, but the added foot in the sink brings in a whole other element of incredible.

Eventually the competition graduated from simple selfies and props, to a contest to see who could make the most elaborate backdrop in front of the bathroom mirror. 

These guys created an entire Footlocker in their bathroom. And I must say those Kobe 8 “Year or the Snake” shoes are a nice choice.

Even indigenous jungle tribes were getting in on the selfie action.

Flying knives. Fireballs. More seasoning than any cook should have to deal with. The number of things that could have gone wrong in this Habachi selfie are too numerous to count.

King Tut made a late entry into the games, but his treasure trove didn’t disappoint.

The hands down winner for the best Apple-themed selfie. It’s like a selfie, in a selfie, in a selfie, in a selfie. I think we may have been incepted.

Why is a this guy riding a bike through his shower while playing the guitar? Who is he going to blast behind the Christmas tree? Doesn’t he know you’re not supposed to put your Xbox, iron, TV or any other electrical device so close to the shower? Who cares, this guy just won the Selfie Olympics.

 The Cult of Mac Selfie Olympic Winners

Incorporating old camera tech into a modern game of photographic narcissism, Javier Cobas snuck in to grab the Bronze

Silver

This selfie from Namuks comes to us all the way from Kenya. The gorilla pod on top of the head really stands out in contrast to the woman’s niqab.

Gold

I’m 99.7% sure the helicopter in Scott Katz’s photo is fake, but there were no rules against augmenting reality, so for his ingenuity, and the fast that he snapped this at the site where the Legion of Boom just dominated the Super Bowl, he’s this year’s winner of the Cult of Mac Selfie Olympics.

All our winners left the virtual podium with Photoshop Touch for iOS. Thanks for playing!

Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Best Albums

Broken Bells – After the Disco

For their second album as dynamic duo Broken Bells, Danger Mouse and James Mercer of Shins fame combine their arching melodies and sweet vintage synths with groovy bass-lines for a sound that’s a fusion of futuristic disco and rock. The final product, After the Disco, is a kaleidoscope of pop mixed with imagination, in what is surely the duo’s best album to date.

iTunes – $10.99

CEO – Wonderland

CEO’s second LP drifts somewhere between dreams and nightmares. It’s energetic and bouncy. It’s great to work to. In fact, I wrote this whole article while grooving to Wonderland’s other-worldly sounds. That alone deserves a nod in this week’s picks.

iTunes – $9.99

Bombay Bicycle Club – So Long, See You Tomorrow

Bombay Bicycle Club has decided to reinvent itself with each of the albums its released, and while some of the previous efforts were charming, nothing has felt satisfactory. Rather than releasing their fourth album a year after A Different Kind of Fix, it seems like the group benefited from their time off with most the songs being written during Jack Steadman’s travels to Turkey, India, and Netherlands. Beat and loops get more of an emphasis on So Long, See You Tomorrow making it the groups most vibrant disc yet.

iTunes – $9.99

Best Books

All Joy And No Fun – The Paradox of Modern Parenthood
by Jennifer Senior

I don’t have any kids, and a recent trip to Disneyland kind put me off on the idea of having them for a while, but when I do this will be my reading list. Rather than taking a look on the effects of parenting on children, All Joy and No Fun examines the effects of children on their parents and how changes over the last 50 years have dramatically altered the roles of mothers and fathers, making them more complex than ever.

iTunes – $13.99

The UnAmericans: Stories
by Molly Antopol

One of the most promising collection of short stories lands this week from the young Molly Antopol, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Antopol’s stories combine for a stunning exploration of characters shaped by history and the nature of disillusionment as failed dreams crack.

iTunes – $11.99

Extreme Medicine – How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century
by Kevin Fong

All the blank unexplored places on our maps have been filled in over the last 200 years, but as man has pushed the boundaries of his physical limits, we’ve also been pushing the medical boundaries as well. In his book Extreme Medicine, Dr. Kevin Fong explores how medicine has been shape by mankind’s thirst for exploration. Like how the challenges of Arctic exploration created opportunities for breakthroughs in open heart surgery; battlefield doctors pioneering techniques for skin grafts, heart surgery, and trauma care; underwater and outer space exploration have revolutionized our understanding of breathing, gravity, and much more.

iTunes – $14.99

Best Movies

Thor: The Dark World

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first Thor film, but Chris Hemsworth managed to win me over in Thor: The Dark World. There’s less cheesy love drama on Earth this time around, for starters. This time there are higher stakes – all of the Nine Realms are up for grabs. And Loki and Thor team up to take down an enemy even Odin couldn’t destory.

iTunes – $19.99

12 O’Clock Boys

The Wire offered one of the most stunning portraits of life in Baltimore (or any city), but did you know that there is a gang of dirt bike riders who perform death-defying stunts on the street while evading the police? It sounds out of place in the urban landscape of Charm City, but the documentary 12 O’Clock Boys follows Pug, a precocious youngster who will stop at nothing to join the gang.

iTunes – 12.99

Grand Piano

Grand Piano hasn’t even hit theaters stateside yet, but iTunes offers the thriller featuring Elijah Wood as a brilliant concert pianist suffering from stage fright. During a concert the pianist learns a sniper in the audience will shoot him if he plays a wrong note, in one of the most unique action movies this year. Want the complete opposite of an Elijah Wood and John Cusack pairing? Try Escape Plan.

iTunes – $12.99

This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple Store Genius who answers all your questions about working at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.

This week our Genius talks about the oldest and youngest employees at the Apple Store. Then he dishes on Windows 8 as well as whether Apple will ever come out with an iPhone with a bigger screen.

Got a question you want the inside scoop on? Send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.

Q: What’s the youngest Apple Store employee you’ve seen? The oldest?

The ages of Apple Store employees varies a lot. Before I worked at Apple, I would be shocked to see older people working at this high-tech company, but now I think it’s great because we have a wide variety of ages, gender, race and backgrounds to give customers a lot of options to connect with a Specialist.

The youngest Apple Store employees are 18, as for the oldest, I have a female co-worker in her late 60s – I’ve never dared ask her exact age. She retired as an airline stewardess and now works at the Apple Store part time, mostly in the iPod and iPad sections, but she’s phenomenal. If you can put up with pushy airline passengers, the Apple Store is a cake walk.

Q: Are you required to use Macs? What do you think of Windows 8?

At the Apple Store we’re required to use Macs because the tools we use to diagnose and fix problems with Macs, iPods, iPhones, etc. only works on OS X, so using a Windows machine isn’t an option. As far as personal life though, Apple has no say. A few friends at the Apple Store game on PCs but most of them use Boot Camp on Mac.

Windows 8 is interesting. It was a gutsy move to introduce a UI that’s so radically different, but it sounds like its not paying off for Microsoft. I haven’t played with it a ton myself, but when I have, the tile interface has turned me off. I actually like Windows 7. It feels solid and in some ways I like it better than OS X 10.9, but Windows 8 feels like a mistake. I hate that Microsoft is trying to get us away from the keyboard and mouse for a touchscreen desktop. It doesn’t work as well as on a tablet you hold with your hands.

Q: Will Apple ever make an iPhone a bigger screen?

Probably ;)

Apple has already showed that it’s willing to make a bigger iPhone screen with the iPhone 5. I don’t have any inside knowledge, but rumors say they’re moving to a bigger screen this year.

Fragmentation is always a concern, but Apple has changed the resolution on the iPhone every two years since the iPhone 4 and developers have adjusted just fine. Maybe it’ll happen again this year. I wouldn’t mind if they do.

Twitter’s new web design began rolling out to all users yesterday, but if you hate the new white UI there’s already an extension for Safari that darkens the scene.

Apple has released a fifth beta build of iOS 7.1 to developers this morning, two weeks after dropping the last iOS 7.1 beta was seeded.

iOS 7.1 beta 5 is available to developers in the Dev Center or via an OTA update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Like last time, Apple has also released a new beta for Apple TV as well as XCode 5.1.

The release notes only mention the addition of new natural-sounding Siri voice for English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin – China). We’ll update you on any other new changes once we get it downloaded on our devices. Feel free to yell at us on Twitter (@cultofmac) if you come across anything yourself.

Here are the download links:

After rumors swirled that it’s going after Flipboard, Facebook has made its new storytelling/reader app, Paper, available on the App Store starting today.

Paper allows you to explore and share stories with friends the same way you’ve always been doing on Facebook, except the app also brings in news curation on topics of interest, and it features an immersive new design with less distractions and more natural navigation movements.

Whether the app will actually kill Flipboard remains to be seen, but after playing with it a bit this morning there is one app it’s certain to kill, the original Facebook app.

Here are the release notes:

Tyler Fisher is not an Apple employee. In fact, I’m pretty sure the guy doesn’t know the difference between an iPad and an iPod Shuffle, but that didn’t stop him from dressing up as an Apple Specialist, going to work at his local Apple Store, and recording the entire prank as he sprayed customers with misinformation on everything from iPhones having retina scanners, to MacBooks with so much cloud it melted into a puddle that’s perfect for storing your naughty pics.

Not only did Tyler educate Apple Store customers to the “fact” that polio, lyme disease, and syphilis were invented by Apple thanks to the chemical mishmash that goes into MacBooks, but he also offered customers a 75% discount if they knew someone that had the diseases – an apology on Apple’s behalf.

Check out the reactions in the video below:

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson ruffled some fanboys’ feathers earlier this month when he said Google is outpacing Apple on the innovation front. Pointing to the Nest acquisition as evidence, Isaacson says the greatest innovation is coming out of Google.

During an appearance on Bloomberg TV this morning Isaacson stood by his comments but clarified that while innovation is great, the most important trait for tech companies to acquire is the ability to execute, and no one executes better than Apple.

Asked about Apple’s problems coming out with a great low-end device, Isaacson responded that Apple won’t ever be good at low-end because it makes “insanely great products” so it will have to come out with a new disruptive device.

Listen to Walter’s full comments in the video below:

Tim Cook has made a journey over to Ireland this week to visit with staff at the company’s Cork offices. Along with addressing the 4,000 employees responsible for assembling the MacBook Pro, Cook also met up with the country’s prime minister, Taoiseach Enda Kenny today to talk about Apple’s presence in the country, and the Irish tax laws that help it avoid paying billions extra.

The Irish Prime Minister denied claims that the Irish government courts multinational companies like Apple to give them special deals on their corporate tax rate. According to a report from theJournal.ie, Edna Kenny said the tax issue came up during his conversation with Cook and told him they’re in discussions with the OECD about an international response, but the country’s statutory rate of 12.5% applies to all companies.

WordPress is one of the titans of desktop blogging, but when it comes to mobile, the WordPress app has been my least favorite ways of publishing from my iPhone. Since the release of iOS 7 though the company has pushed to revamp their app, including an update today that brings a redesigned post editing experience.

The free update is available in the App Store now but is exclusively for iOS 7, bringing with it an enhanced Reader  section so you can follow your favorite blogs while you blog. They’ve also improved inline commenting, notifications, and stats while throwing in lots of bug fixes into the mix.

Here’s the full list of changes:

Apple holds one of the world’s largest collection of active credit cards in the world thanks to iTunes, yet despite all that purchasing power, it has only recently begun to look into processing payments for physical goods, and PayPal is desperate to play a role in the action.

Payment industry executives say that PayPal is pitching Apple hard to let it in on the company’s rumored payment initiative, according to a report from Re/code. At this point, executives aren’t sure what type of tech Apple wants to use, or even how big a role it wants to play in the industry, but they’re willing to go as far as white-labeling their payments service, just so Apple will use it.

Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Albums

Dum Dum Girls – Too True

At 31 minutes in length, half of the 10 tracks on Dum Dum Girls’ third album, Too True, barely make it past the three-minute mark, which is great in that the songs take you somewhere fast but Dee Dee’s commanding, playful voice leaves you wanting to stay a little longer.

iTunes – $8.99

Actress – Ghettoville

While Darren J. Cunningham announced that Ghettoville, his fourth album as Actress, would be the project’s final album, Ghettoville is supposed to be the sonic sequel to Actress’ first LP that came out five years ago. The sound is dark, tense complex and very obscure. Great for listening at home in the dark to unwind.

iTunes – $9.99

Supreme Cuts – Divine Ecstasy

Before combining forces to form Supreme Cuts, Mike Perry and Austin Kjeultes tried to make it as solo rap producers, so naturally their second album relies heavily on a lot of guest vocal performances to tie the productions together. The end result are 14 tracks you could imagine some of hip-hop’s biggest names rapping on.

iTunes – $9.99

Books:

Call Me Burroughs: A Life
by Barry Miles

Counter-cultural writer and artist William Burroughs one of the most influential characters in the Beat era and definitely the strangest cat in the bunch. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photos, wrote novels but also had an obsession with Scientology, UFO abductions, took tons of drugs, and had weird theories that giant intergalactic insects that control everything, making Barry Miles biography one of the most interesting reads of the month.

iTunes – $16.99

Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West
by Bryce Andrews

Taking off and living on the western edge of civilization is kind of one of my fantasies. Bryce Andrews has actually done it, ditching life as a city kid to becoming a ranch hand in the windswept Sun Ranch in southwest Montana. His memoir describes what it’s like to live in one of the few places where the West still feels wild, building fences, riding, roping, and just plain old getting your hands dirty.

iTunes – $12.99

The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently
by Sunni Brown

If you’ve ever been busted by a teacher for doodling in school, rest assured that your great mind is kin to Einstein, John F. Kennedy, and Henry Ford, all of whom were doodle-crazy. Sunni Brown’s new book Doodle Revolution busts the myths of doodling and reveals how the silly little drawings lining the edges of your notebook is really deep thinking in disguise. So take that with you to detention, kids.

iTunes – $14.99

Movies:

Ender’s Game

The Seabirds and Ponies are set to clash in the Big Game this week, but the stakes of the Lombardi Trophy are nothing compared to the consequences facing Ender and his team of elite young soldiers if they don’t successfully defend earth from a terrifying alien species.
iTunes – $19,99

Schooled: The Price of College Sports

Pro football players will be all over your TV this weekend, but don’t forget about the other professional athletes that will be invading the living room this spring. No not the NBA, or NHL, we’re talking about the huge business of college sports. Sam Rockwell narrates Schooled, which gives a comprehensive look at how money has influenced collegiate basketball and football, and how the rights of student-athletes have been compromised in the process.

iTunes – $9.99

Off The Rez

While phenomenally talented college athletes take the stage in Schooled, Off the Rez follows Shoni Schimmel, a high school basketball star living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon. The documentary reveals the changes in Shoni’s life after her mom takes a job as a Portland  high-school coach. Leaving the rez, provides a host of new challenges for Shoni who’s out to prove Native American woman can be champions off the rez too.

iTunes – $12.99

Fish can swim into some pretty deep dark places, but now they can’t hide from anglers thanks to FishHunter, a floating sonar pod that syncs to your iPhone to tell you where all the big fish are hanging out.

Rather than attaching a sonar sensor to your boat, FishHunter’s sensor can float in the current and sketch the bottom of bodies of water while you’re sitting safely on dry land. Using Bluetooth LE, it transmits data to your iPhone or Android up to 80 ft away, signaling anything it thinks might be a fish.

Its $229.99 price tag is pretty cheap compared to other fish finders, and it’s equipped with extra features like tracking your best fishing spots via GPS and a photo sharing feature so you can let your friends know who’s the best fisherman.

Here’s the product trailer:

Spurred on by the holiday season, Apple sold a record 26 million iPads last quarter, which according to IDC’s latest numbers, was enough to boost the company’s tablet market share up to 33.8% to finish off the year, up from 29.7% the previous quarter.

Wall Street was less than impressed with Apple’s sales numbers though, and according to IDC there’s cause to be concerned as signs point to a tablet market that is growing dramatically slower year-over-year.

Apple TV got an extra shot of adrenaline this morning with the addition of Red Bull TV to the device’s channel listings.

As the first branded-content channel to be added to Apple TV, the channel  offers viewers action-sports videos produced by energy-drink maker, along with live programming, films, shows and other clips that are available on the Red Bull TV website and iPhone app.

Having just crawled out of its smackdown from Google, Rap Genius is back with a new app for iOS that gives you access the site’s breakdowns and explanations on all those pop songs you just don’t understand.

The Genius app lets you swim in the all the annotations for song lyrics, poems, and news articles provided by the Rap Genius community. Once you install the app it scans your iTunes Library to prep all your song lyrics. There’s also a Shazam like function that can find lyrics for any song that’s playing around you.

The app is only available on iPhone with no word on an iPad version or upcoming support for Android, but you can grab it for free on iTunes starting today.

Here are the full release notes:

Last week Steven Troughton-Smith treated us to the first screenshots of iOS in the Car, an upcoming feature that integrates your iPhone with a vehicle’s in-dash system. Now the developer’s digging though iOS 7.0.3 has  resulted in a video of iOS in the Car in use on an iOS Simulator.

According to Steve’s findings, iOS in the Car supports multiple resolutions and touchscreens to allow for different hardware buttons, wheels and touchpad. Right now it only works with certain whitelisted Apple apps as there’s no public API for developers yet, and rather than including an onscreen keyboard the UI only accepts voice recognition input. 

Check out the video below:

Apple just announced the results of its Q1 2014 holiday quarter and while sales records for both iPhone and iPad were demolished, the reaction from Wall Street was less than enthusiastic.

Amid weaker than expected iPhone sales Tim Cook reassured investors that Apple’s objective “has always been to make the best, not the most. And I feel like we’re doing that.” Today’s earnings call was devoid of big spoilers on future products – no surprise there – but there was plenty of valuable information to be gleaned about the future of Apple.

Here are the five of the juiciest tidbits we heard in today’s call:

Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer are set to get on the phones at 2 p.m. Pacific to tell investors all about Apple’s incredible holiday-quarter earnings. We’ll be right here, liveblogging the whole thing.

Rather than busting out a tsunami of posts, Alex Heath and I are going to test out the new Cult of Mac liveblog. Bookmark this page, come back, and grip up for what’s sure to be one of Apple’s best quarters ever. 

We all know someone who is still complaining about the UI changes made in iOS 7, but iOS 7’s growth has remained strong with the latest measurements from the App Store boasting that iOS 7 adoption just reach 80%.