Buster Hein - page 233

Every time a company or artist decides to make a Steve Jobs figuirine, Apple’s lawyers rush in with their sledgehammers to stop its production. It happened with the M.I.C. Gadget Steve Jobs action figure in 2010, and to toy maker In Icon in 2012.

Most people have gotten the message and just stay clear from Steve Jobs’ likeness, but one artist is hoping that his controversial Steve Jobs sculpture will prompt Apple to think different. How controversial is it? Well it’s made out of Steve Jobs’ trash the artist collected over a year ago, and limited number of black sculptures are being produced to represent each Foxconn suicide.

Samsung is hell bent on telling iPhone users that they are all a bunch of hipster sheep that missed the cool wave, by showing them that Samsung Galaxy S3 users are a bunch of hipster sheep that switched their loyalties from Apple to Samsung.

It’s probably not going to work, but they just made two more commercials to try to convert us. What do you think of Samsung’s marketing strategy? Will it ever work or influence you? Let us know in the comments.

Last night Dropbox announced the release of their new beta, Dropbox 1.5 for Mac. The update will bring a few new features and UI changes to the popular cloud storage service. Users of the desktop client will discover a redesigned menu system  that combines all the functionality of the older tray menu with a new view of Dropbox’s event stream that allows you to see your latest changes.

The iPhone 5’s new camera is supposed to be incredibly amazing with improved low-light performance and a fancy crystal sapphire lens that is less prone to scratching, but for many users though, the new camera is having a weird issue where a purple halo or flare splashes across a photo when a bright light source is just outside the frame, and there’s no way to get rid of it.

Lens flair is a common occurrence with all camera lenses, but it’s generally not purple and this issue never happened with the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s which is why many iPhone 5 users have been upset by the purple halo discovery.

You can never have too many wallpapers to choose from for your new iPhone 5. Even though there are a cacophony of options out there, we always enjoy a nice currated collection of wallpapers so we don’t have to spend hours trying to find the best thing out there.

Here are 12 more amazing wallpapers for you iPhone 5. A few of them are geometric iPad wallpapers that we featured earlier this year, but they’ve since been converted to iPhone 5 wallpapers. Check them out, download them, and make your iPhone 5 look fabulous.

Earlier this year Apple acquired Chomp – a startup app-search service – presumably to help it improve app-search in iOS. The move seemed brilliant at the time because finding apps in the iOS App Store was more painful and tedious than hiking through the jungles of the Amazon.

App Store searching has improved a bit with iOS 6, but it’s still not great. We probably wont experience the full fruits of the Chomp acquisition for many more months, but if you look at the picture above, Apple’s already implemented Chomp’s search UI into the App Store. Do you think Apple plans to do more with Chomp and their app-search technology? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments.

Source: Reddit

Thieves love iPhones and Apple products. But the theives in New York City? Those dudes have a fiery lustful passion for Apple products. So much so that Apple product theft now accounts for 14 percent of all crime in New York City according to the NYPD. Even though NYC’s crime rate only rose four percent this year compared to 2011, Apple product theft rose a whopping 40 percent.

The iPhone 5 is packed with all sorts of neat new hardware internals that Apple has poured their energy and R&D dollars into. Its camera is ridiculously thin, and the processor has been custom designed and manually layed out for maximum efficiency, but there’s another new hardware feature no one’s talking about.

One secret of the iPhone 5 is that it contains a chip that may have been included just so it will work on the world’s largest mobile carrier – China Mobile – giving Apple access to 700 million new potential customers.

Apple’s Find My iPhone feature is great for whenever you lose your iPhone or MacBook, but what about when you lose other stuff, like a wallet, dog, luggage, camera, keys, or anything else? There are a few GPS solutions that you can attach to everything you prize most in life, but that’s kind of costly.

FinderCodes is a new service that is trying to make QR codes actually useful by allowing people to attach one to everything they love so it can be traced back to them through the FinderCodes database. It’s simple, but more elegant than writing your name, address, and phone number on everything.

Apple’s new Lightning connector is freaking teeny tiny and incredibly awesome. Apple managed to shrink the connector down to just eight contact pins and give it the ability to insert it in either orientation. While some users may have wished for Apple to use micro-USB, the Lightning connector is full of amazing little pieces of tech that make it a lot better than other options.

Rainer Brockerhoff has been doing an autopsy on the Lightning connector all weekend and has discovered some really cool features. For instance, did you know that the Lightning connector has the ability to detect which types of devices it’s connected to and re-assign pin functionalities for each situation?

 If you ever lose your iPhone 5 and have to track it down using iCloud.com’s Find My iPhone web app, you can at least rest assured that you’ll have the best mapping data available to track it down, because iCloud.com is still using Google Maps.

Even though Apple has switched the Find My iPhone iOS app to use Apple Maps, their website is still using Google Maps to provide location information on lost devices. Users can log in to iCloud.com and go to Find My iPhone to see where their devices are located on a Google Maps app rather than Apple’s new map app that users have complained about.

We already know a few details about the A6 chip thanks to iFixit’s immaculate teardown, but there’s still a lot to learn about how much hard work Apple put into custom designing their A6 chip.

iFixit teamed up with Chipworks to dive into Apple’s A6 processor to find out what makes Apple’s new chip so special. To their surprise, the team found out that Apple manually laid out each of the Dual Arm Corse, making it the first manual layout chip to hit the market in several years.

We’ve had scrollbars nearly since the invention of graphical user interfaces. At first they were bulky, ugly, eyesores that took up precious screen real estate. But now they’re elegant and simple. The image above shows some of the major scrollbar changes throughout UI design, and sure does make us glad we’re not stuck with the Apple Lisa scrollbars anymore.

Source: Reddit

Apple just released a new software update for the second and third generation Apple TV. The 5.1 update doesn’t include any major changes, but it does add support for Shared Photo Streams, search movie trailers, multiple iTunes account support, the ability to send audio from the Apple TV to AirPlay enabled speakers, and a few other minor improvements.

Here are the full release details from Apple:

Earlier this morning reports surfaced that a riot broke out at a Foxconn factory. Sadly, 10 people were killed in the riot while many more have been injured and taken to the hospital. The riot involved 2,000 Foxconn employees who were finally brought under control by 5,000 police officers after a few hours.

The amount of damage done during the riot was massive. Store windows were smashed. Cars were flipped over. We now have some pictures of the vast destruction caused by the rioters. Take a look:

The iPhone 5 has already come under fire for scratch complaints from customers, but that’s not the only problem new iPhone 5 owners are seeing so far. Some owners of the white iPhone 5 have taken to forums to complain about light leaking from the edges of their new iPhone.

Humans have progressed a long way since the days of “Will It Blend?” Rather than just tossing an iPhone into a blender, we now have dozens of ways we like to watch the iPhone get destroyed on YouTube. After the iPhone 5 was released on Friday the internet went to work on different ways to destroy it – like having an NBA player dunk it, blowing it up in a microwave, or shooting it with a .50 caliber rifle.

Here are  the best iPhone 5 destruction videos:

Even though the iPhone 5 has only been in most owners’ pockets for four days, a lot of people have complained that the back plate on their iPhone 5 has a ton of scratches. Apple says the back of iPhone 5 is made of anodized 6000 series aluminum — the same material used in Apple notebooks — so it shouldn’t scratch that much, but if you’ve seen this picture, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

How’s the back of your iPhone 5 holding up? Does it have a few scars already, or has it been just fine? Are you going to get a case, or does a little wear and tear give your device some integrity? We want to know how your iPhone 5 has been doing so far so come chat with us about it in the Cult of Mac Forums.

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and talk about whether your iPhone 5 is prone to scratches.

Your iPhone 5 is gorgeous and thin and you love the hell out of it, right? New wallpaper selection for the iPhone 5 is a little bit lacking right now while everyone gets used to the taller resolution, but we went out and dug up 15 amazing wallpapers that perfectly fit the iPhone 5’s taller screen. Check ’em out.

Everybody has been totally nerdgasming all over themselves this morning about the thinness of the iPhone 5.  It’s been kind of annoying to be honest, but then once you actually get to caress its skinny little body, you realize no one is overreacting.

The iPhone 5 has a serious eating disorder, and it’s freaking beautiful. The iPhone 5 isn’t supermodel thin, it’s subatomic thin. Like, this iPhone 5 is so crazy gaunt that I’m actually having a hard time texting on it, but I love it.

The iPhone 5 looks pretty, but how does it fare when it’s actually used in the real world? If you accidentally drop it from 5 feet, will it shatter? Android Authority is already on the case and did a drop test comparison with the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S3, which you can watch in the video above.

The iPhone 5 dominated the competition. It picked up a few scratches and dings, but the screen never shattered after being dropped 4 times, whereas the S3 screen cracked multiple times and its back casing flew off.

Source: Android Authority

iPhone launch days, like today, are freaking insane. Rabid fans across the globe line up for hours or even days just to make sure they get Apple’s newest iPhone. It’s always been that way and it gets weirder every year.

Even though this is only the sixth iPhone launch day in the history of the world, iPhone launch days have a rich history of being a little bit odd, with people wearing funny costumes, crazy attention, Apple retail staff cheering like crazy, and just straight up weirdness surrounding the launch of a new electronic device.

Here’s a look at each iPhone launch day in history:

FedEx is gearing up to deliver a whole mess of iPhone 5s today, and they are almost literally swimming in a sea of iPhone 5 boxes at their distribution center. I can only spot about three boxes that aren’t iPhones making their way through the processing belt, and it looks like one iPhone 5 fell off. I hope that one’s not yours.

Source: Reddit

When it comes to home furniture, computer desks are pretty much the least exciting thing on the market. Even coffee tables are more exciting. That’s kind of all changed over the last 12 months as standing desks have become a sort of fad with studies showing that switching to a standing desk can improve your health tremendously.

Half of our time as humans is spent sitting down at work, watching TV, or driving a car. Something needs to change, so I sought out to find the best standing desk on the market that abides by Apple’s design principles, and the NextDesk Terra was the winner.

Since iOS 6 came out yesterday, everyone has been dog piling on the new Maps app, talking about how terrible it is (us included). There’s even an entire Tumlr dedicated to how badly it sucks. Is everyone being too hard on Apple for trying to build their own Maps platform? Or should Apple have kept Google Maps around?

What do you think? It seems like iOS Maps might be an understandable first step that will pay off for Apple big time in a couple of years, but do we really want to wait and have to use an inferior app for a few years while they try to get it right?

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and let us know what you think about Apple’s decision to make their own Maps app