Buster Hein - page 217

It’s not often that Tim Cook speaks at a non-Apple event, but for the second year in a row, Tim is heading to New York City to speak at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference.

Last year, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook presented at the Goldman Sachs tech conference where he spoke about working conditions in China, why Apple TV is just a hobby, the popularity of the iPad, and much more.

Even though we have yet to see some truly credible evidence to support the countless claims that Apple will release a cheaper iPhone sometime in 2013, that’s not stopping another analyst from jumping on the cheap-iPhone train.

Analyst Brian White, at Topeka Capital, released a report this morning claiming that his research supports the claim that Apple will sell a cheaper version of the iPhone in order to attract new growth opportunities in China and elsewhere around the world.

Apple’s retail operations were mocked by everyone on the planet when the first Apple Store was opened. But now that the Apple Store is the most profitable retail store in the world, everyone wants to copy what Apple’s doing.

Thanks to some inspiration from the Apple Store, BMW has decided that starting in 2014 they will require all dealers to hire young tech-savvy employees to handle questions from customers about the vehicles on the showroom floor. They’ll even be equipped with iPads and be called Geniuses.

We’ve been hoping for a quick and painful death to Flash for a while now. It’s been slowly coming, but we’re getting closer to the day of no longer needing the crash crazy, disease injecting plugin.

Flash is still everywhere though even if you don’t want it to be, and it’s still causing problems. Adobe announced yesterday that they’re releasing an emergency patch for Patch player to fix vulnerabilities that are being exploited to install malware on Apple’s Macintosh platform.

Apple makes some really great software and hardware. We love it. But sometimes there are certain little things you want out of your computer that Apple can’t or won’t provide. That’s why we have jailbreaking and modding.

We love it when someone takes an Apple product and morphs it into something completely different. There have been a lot of Apple hardware mods that have crossed our desks over the last few years. Some have been simple, while others have required over a hundred hours of work. Here are the five greatest Apple hardware mods we’ve ever seen.

The evasion jailbreak took longer than any other iOS jailbreak to come out, but it appears that the wait was worth it for millions of iOS users.

After only four days of being available to the public, nearly 7 million iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch owners have bulldozed through Apple’s walled garden and jailbroken their devices so they can customize each and every facet of their experience.

After facing a lot of scrutiny for the past few years over working conditions at factories in China, Apple has made a lot of progress on cleaning up their manufacturing partners’ facilities. Pay has been increased. Forced overtime and child labor aren’t as frequent. And we haven’t heard of any massive brawls in a while.

Following Apple’s lead, HP has decided to get its act together in China as well by reducing the number of underage student laborers at its facilities in China.

Using Skype to subvert your monthly voice minutes is great when the service. Every now and then you get a dropped call because of crappy Wifi or cellular reception though and then you have to go back in and make the call all over.

A new update for Skype just hit the App Store today, and it makes calls a lot better. Rather than having to redial a number when a call is dropped, Skype 4.5 for iPhone will automatically reconnect your call regardless of whether you’re on Wifi or cellular data.

Earlier this morning Apple announced that someone had downloaded the 25 billionth song off of iTunes. The person who purchased the 25 billionth song, Phillip Lüpke, received a €10,000 iTunes Gift Card from Apple, which not only makes him pretty damn lucky, but now he can buy a music album for everyone he’s ever met.

We got a chance to talk to Phillip this afternoon to find out what it was like to win some fat stacks of iTunes cash from Apple, and he said he thought it was all a scam at first.

When it comes to smartphone manufacturers, right now there are really only two companies that really matter – Apple and Samsung. Not only do they both have the most marketshare, but they’re making a ton of profit. In fact, they’re making so much money that the two companies combined account for 103% of the total cellphone profits of 2012.

Wait, isn’t it impossible to account for 103% of the profit? Well, no. Because operators like BlackBerry, Motorola, and Nokia operated at a loss last year, Apple and Samsung were able to make more than 100% of the profit, which is pretty insane.

Find the perfect volume level on your Mac can be tricky sometimes when you’re listening to music or watching a movie. Sometimes it’s like you move your volume one tick up things get too loud, one tick down and it’s too soft.

Until today I never knew that you can actually adjust your Mac’s volume in 1/4 increments by pressing Shift + Option (Alt) + the volume key on your keyboard. It’ll raise your volume at smaller increments so you can find the perfect level. Try it out. You’ll probably never just use the old buttons again.

Source: Little Big Details

Via: BI

My weak arms could never hold my iPhone inches from my face long enough to make it through an entire viewing of Titanic. It’s the number one reason why I don’t watch movies on my iPhone. That and the fact that watching a movie on a 4-inch screen might make my retinas bleed.

For those that love watching movies on your iPhone though, this weird accessory called Vyne is probably perfect for you. It’s got a clip that attaches to your iPhone, and then a long maleable arm that you can drape around your neck, making it perfect for movies or more sinister activities.

iOS 6.1 has only been available to the public for a couple of days, but Apple’s wasting no time getting some new bug fixes tested. Apple just seeded iOS 6.1.1 to developers. The update can be downloaded from Apple’s iOS Dev Center.

Right now it doesn’t look like there are many surprises in the iOS 6.1.1 beta for U.S. users as it mostly contains some improvements to Maps for Japan.

Here’s the notes on what’s changed:

I could get lost in Reddit for days. It’s beautiful. It’s horrible. If it weren’t for Alien Blue my Reddit binging would be confined to my desktop, but alas, they make a hell of an app that feeds my addiction on the iPhone too.

To make things even better (or worse), Alien Blue just received a major update this week that makes browsing Reddit from your iPhone more alluring than ever. They’ve added a crapload of UI improvements, some new moderator tools, better navigation, and a ton of other stuff all for free.

Here are the release notes on everything new in version 2.7:

Even though she can barely understand me, Siri can do some pretty cool stuff. She can find the answers to movie trivia and tell me if it’s raining, but she still can’t do really useful things yet, like turning off the lights or adjust my thermostat, even though home automation is going to be Apple’s next big thing.

A YouTube user by the name of Elvis Impersonator decided it’s time to take Siri to the next level, and make her a truly great personal assistant. So thanks to a Raspberry Pi, Siri can now open and close his garage door, turn off his house alarm, change his TV channel and so much more.

Here’s a video of this awesome Siri home automation hack in action:

My iPhone is magical. It can do all kinds of crazy stuff to help me with dates, like finding the best sushi place, directions to a park, and nearby events.

The problem with my iPhone being so damn fantastic is that a lot of times on dates I’m too engrossed with what’s happening in the digital world, that it distracts me from the real life gorgeous woman sitting across the table from me.

I don’t know how many times it’s happened that I’ll be sitting in a restaurant and take out my iPhone because I’m bored. It’s become a nervous tick. I’ll chuckle at something and say, “Holy shit, did you see this hilarious Vine that Matt just posted?” And then she rolls her eyes at me, and I apologize, and the mood is destroyed with no hope of me ever getting any action or advancing the relationship further.

I’m not alone, right? I’m sure a lot of our readers have some amazing horror stories of using their iPhones on dates, and we’d love to hear them. Come over to the Cult of Mac Forums and tell us all about the worst, or best, experiences you’ve had when your iPhone has gotten mixed up in your love life.

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac Forums and post your story.

If you took the plunge and jailbroke your iPhone yesterday, you may have noticed that the Weather app in iOS doesn’t really work anymore. Like, at all. When you try to open the app on iPhone it just crashes, and then crashes some more.

Evad3rs figured out that the jailbreak screws up some files like com.apple.mobile.installation.plist. It’s not a big deal, and every jailbreak has its little quirks, but if you can’t wait for evad3rs to push their fix to Cydia you can fix the problem on your own manually.

Here’s how to do it:

You probably made a lot of New Years resolutions to get off your butt and work out. You probably said you were gonna work out five times a day. Maybe more. Maybe you said you’re going to do one of those cool juice diet cleanses with a side of anorexia.

For those of us who made all these exercise goals, but are still binging on cheeseburgers, there’s an amazing — if not extreme — FitBit hack that can help. With just a FitBit activity tracker and a Belkin WeMo internet-controlled power outlet, you can set your daily activity goal, and if you don’t reach it, the system cuts power to everything plugged into your Belkin Wemo to give you some extra motivation to go jogging.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Moscone West has been packed with exhibitors for the last three days as they peddle their latest wares to the Apple faithful. We combed through all the booths, and while there were a ton of underwhelming products, Macworld 2013 did feature some really cool stuff.

After some fierce debate among the Cult of Mac editors, we’ve settled on five things at Macworld 2013 that are truly deserving of a “Best of Macworld 2013” title. Without further adieu, here are our picks for the give best things at Macworld.

  SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – There are tons of cases here at   Macworld. Millions. Billions even. You can find cases for every sort of purpose. Want a case that can open your beer. Yep, it’s here. One that doubles as a mouse for your Mac. Sure thing.

Any case you can dream up for your iPhone, you will probably be able to find it here. But in one corner of Macworld there’s a booth that’s trying to sell Samsung smartphone cases to the hordes of Apple fanboys.

 SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – When you walk onto the Macworld Expo floor you’re immediately assaulted by a cacophony of iPad cases and stands. Everyone thinks they have the perfect solution for you to rest your iPad on.

Honestly, a lot of the iPad accessories here are pure crap, but I roamed around the floor all day and this is the best one I could find. It’s called the Desktop Chair from Moku Woodware, and it’s the only iPad stand from Macworld I might consider buying.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – If you’ve ever watched an episode of Portlandia then you probably have the feeling that its two stars, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, are huge fans of Apple products.

A lot of Portlandia’s comedy sketches revolve around society’s obsession for technology. They’re brilliant. Many of the sketches feature Apple products, but it’s very rare to see a PC or Android phone on the show. At Macworld this morning, Armisen said that they only put PCs in the show at places where it’s appropriate – like the DMV.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – The Age of Scantly Clad Booth Babes might be at an end.

There  are no booth babes at Macworld.

We walked onto the expo floor expecting our retinas to be attacked by skin, cleavage, thighs, and a thick aroma of sleaze, but there’s none to be found.

The only “booth babe” we could find is this cardboard cutout of some blonde advertising an iPhone necklace/case thingy. Surely this can’t be the only booth babe at Macworld, but after some heavy duty searching, we’re happy to report that it is.

 SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Will.i.am showed up at Macworld today, and yep, he was wearing his stupidly expensive iPhone camera case that you will never want to own.

During his Futurehunting keynote, Will.i.am sat down with Intel’s futurist, Brian Johnson, to talk about where they think the next big changes in tech are going to come from. I came into the keynote thinking Will.i.am would just talk about his camera accessory, but the Black Eyed Peas star actually has some big plans for the world, and he’s enlisted Steve Jobs’ widow to help him out.

    SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Whether you’re excited for Ashton Kutcher’s upcoming film JOBS or not, there’s no denying that Kutcher poured his heart into this role.

Throughout his keynote this morning, Ashton waxed philosophic on the things that he learned as he tried to become Steve Jobs. At one point he was even on the brink of tears. At the end of the interview, Ashton was asked what he want he wants people to get out of seeing the movie, and he shared these three things.