It’s Labor Day in the U.S.A. which means you’re probably all hanging out by the pool, barbecuing, drinking, and doing stupid stuff as a way to celebrate the economic and social contributions of workers in the past. It doesn’t really make sense, but who cares.
When you get back to work tomorrow though, break time is over. To help you get back into the swing off things, we’ve rounded up the 10 best productivity apps for iOS.
You’ve most likely seen the image of Steve Jobs sitting in the lotus position with his Mac in his lap. It was in Rolling Stone back in 1984 and has become one of the most iconic images of Jobs.
Norman Seeff was the photographer behind that picture, and he just released a couple of unseen photos of Steve Jobs that he took for Jobs’ Rolling Stone feature. The images feature a more candid and subdued version of Jobs in his office and back at home. Take a look:
Upgrading to a new iPhone every year is expensive, and it’s silly to do it just so you have the latest and greatest iPhone when your iPhone 4S still works really well.
If you can’t wait, but don’t have the money and want to walk around pretending that Tim Cook personally sent you an iPhone 5 before it came out, then you can spend $5 and buy one of these great looking mockups.
Bruce Willis loves battles, and fights, and blowing crap up while trying to escape from bad guys. Bruce Willis ain’t afraid of no one, even Apple. And so when Bruce Willis heard that he can’t leave his massive iTunes music library to someone in his will, he decided he wants to fight Apple, in the courtroom.
Fearing the fury of your boss after a really crappy performance isn’t unique to any profession. No one wants to make the big kahuna angry, and see them go nuts. Samsung’s executives tried to take the “maybe the chairman won’t be so mad if we wait a few days to tell him the bad news” approach. It didn’t work.
Last Friday, Samsung received the verdict that Apple won the patent lawsuit in the U.S., but top executives at the company waited four days before telling the company chairman Lee Kun-hee the bad news because they were afraid how he might react. Apparently, he freaked out a bit.
Josh Begley had a great idea on how to get people talking about the U.S. Military’s controversial use of attack drones. He created an iOS app called Drones+ that sends users a push notification every time a US drone strikes a target.
All those notification will probably get you thinking about whether drones are good or bad. The aim of Drones+ was to create a conversation using barebones information. It doesn’t contain nasty images of corpses, or a death toll meter. All the data comes from publicly available sources. It’s family friendly. But for some reason, Apple really doesn’t want iPhone owners to use it, so they’ve rejected it three times.
When rumors hit that Apple was going to make the display of the iPhone 5 taller, but not wider, people were kind of upset that their iPhone was going to be a lot longer. However, some new images of the iPhone 5 front panel show that even though the display will be larger, the device itself won’t be that much taller than the iPhone 4S because Apple is reducing the size of the bezel around the display.
Chinese parts distributor SINOCET published these images of the new display, as well as the video at the bottom of this post, that compare the size of the iPhone 5 display with that of an iPhone 4S.
Samsung is still fuming that they got their trash handed to them in court last week. The legal beat down they received in court was just raw and powerful and awesome, and they totally deserved it.
Samsung is understandably mad, and probably a little embarrassed and majorly vindictive, so they went out this morning and declared that if Apple even thinks about releasing an iPhone 5 with LTE they will sue them immediately, and they may have the patents to win. Maybe.
Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, launched just over a month ago, but its usage is spreading like a raging forest fire. 48 hours after its release the OS was already running on 3.2% of all Macs, but new data is showing that 10% of all Mac users are now running Mountain Lion on their machines.
Chitika has been tracking the adoption of Mountain Lion via their ad network, and says that the usage of Mountain Lion has been increasing steadily with no sign of letting up. The new OS is on track to outpace OS X Lion, which took three months to gain 14% use on all Macs.
The most important thing I learned while watching the Republican National Convention last night, is this: Don’t let Paul Ryan use your iPod, ever! Because he will totally make fun of your music library at the biggest political rally of the year. Even if you’re his running mate for el Presidente.
During his speech last night, Paul Ryan mentioned how he and Governor Mitt Romney are a full generation apart. To expound on their age difference, Ryan took a few digs at Romney’s iPod, while boasting about his own. Check out the video below to hear Ryan’s diss (it starts at the 12:54 mark)
You guys carry some odd things aro und in your gadget bags. Like, rubiks cubes, otoscopes, or electronic dog tags? Hey, whatever works for you, that’s fine. Who are we to judge. Even though the Cult of Mac Show Us What’s In Your Gadget Bag sweepstakes is over, we couldn’t get over how fascinating a lot of the gadget bags were. Each told a unique story about that individual, which was really interesting to see. So to celebrate you guys, we compiled this gallery of the 10 most interesting gadget bags we saw last week.
The success of the iPhone hasn’t been a huge money maker for just Apple. Component manufacturers make a killing off it as well because it means they’re able to sell millions of units for each iPhone launch as Apple gogbles up all available supply.
While Apple’s relationship with Samsung as a components supplier has become strained, other companies are ready to join the fight and invest some serious moolah to help Apple and secure better contracts themselves. Sharp, seeing a big opportunity, says they may invest $1 Billion into their plant to boost capacity for Apple’s iPhone displays.
The Apple I was the first computer built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs back in 1976. They only made 200 units, and sold them for $666.66, but if you happen to own one, you’re sitting on a small fortune.
An Apple I computer is set to be auctioned off at Christie’s on October 9th, and even though it’s inoperable, because it’s missing the required DRAM, the owner of the machine might get $126,000 for it.
What would happen if you took a beautiful, brand new iMac and “accidentally” dropped it in front of a bunch of strangers? Would they weep with you, or would they just laugh on by while calling you a bumbling idiot?
One guy thought it’d be a great prank to walk around the mall with an iMac box, and drop it in front of crowds, just to see what the reaction would be. He didn’t just drop it, though. He flung it down escalators. Tossed it into the trunk of his car. And knocked it off the top of a roof, and then tried to take the iMac box back to the Apple Store.
Check out the video below to see people’s reactions when the most beautiful computer in the universe gets clumsily destroyed.
As iPhone 5 repair parts have slowly leaked in over the past few weeks, a few people have quietly gathered and assembled them to see what the finished product might look like when Apple announces it on September 12.
iResQ just posted a gallery of all the parts they have so far, and how they look when assembled, so that we can get a good idea of what the iPhone 5 is going to look like. Take a look.
Google Wallet has been out for almost a year now, and it allows you to store your credit cards on your Android phone and make payments via NFC, but because of limited partnerships during its launch, it hasn’t really taken off yet.
Now that Google’s seen some of the features Apple plans to bring to the iPhone with the Passbook app, Google has decided to double down on Wallet and bring in new features so it functions more like Passbook.
Information about the fabled iTV has been bouncing around the rumor-mill for a few years now. Supposedly, Apple is going to build an HDTV that has a ton of cool features, such as Siri, FaceTime, iTunes Streaming, iCloud and the works. It’s a dream device. Like a big ass iPad you can mount on your wall to watch the series finale of Breaking Bad on.
The iTV was supposed to launch at some point this year, but we haven’t seen any hardware leaks for it, and now the rumor is that Apple won’t launch it until 2013. But does Apple really need to make an HDTV? Would a really awesome Apple TV style set-top box for cable companies be a better, cheaper, option than trying to get an iTV into every home? We can see the benefits on both side of the coin, but we’re really curious to hear what you guys think. Should Apple just come out with an improved Apple TV instead of an iTV? Or do something else entirely?
Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and share your thoughts on the rumored Apple HDTV
While Samsung has been battling with Apple in the U.S., Motorola has been trying to win a few court cases of their own against Apple over in Germany. The two sides have mostly been arguing over some standard-essential patents that Apple needs for the iPhone to work.
Until now, Motorola has refused to license the patents to Apple at a fair price, but a recent court filing shows that Motorola has declared a ceasefire and will now license some, if not all, of their standard-essential patents to Apple.
I don’t use iCloud too intensively, mostly because I’d have to pay for extra storage and I already got 50GB on Dropbox. But if I were an Apple employee I’d probably use it until the wheels fall off because now Apple is giving all of their employees a free 50GB upgrade for their iCloud strorage accounts.
What does it take to become an Apple Genius? You’d think the biggest requirement would be a lot of technical knowledge, but really it’s empathy and knowing how to talk to people. Geniuses are the face of the company when customers are the most pissed off at Apple, so great customer service skills are key.
Gizmodo just unearthed Apple’s official Genius Training Student Workbook and it’s oozing with secrets, like words a Genius can’t use to describe a problem.
When I was a kid, baseball cards pretty much only featured athletes. I don’t even think the President of the United States could get a baseball card unless he also had a stint in the minor leagues before taking office.
Apparently, times have changed, and Upper Deck — the biggest baseball company in the world — now creates cards for famous people who had an impact on society. Like Steve Wozniak, who is now featured in the 2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions set.
Samsung just doesn’t get it. They just got brutally dominated in the Apple vs Samsung trial for copying a ton of Apple UI elements, so what do they do? Go out and copy OS X for their Windows 8 machines.
Samsung has a cool new feature for Windows 8 called the “S Launcher” that looks and functions just like the Dock in OS X. They copied it so well, it even has a 3D semi-opaque tray that reflects the icons contained therein.
Apple just won their trial against Samsung on Friday, but they aren’t wasting any time listing the Samsung products that they will seek to have banned in the US. It looks like Apple is only going after eight phones, including the popular Galaxy S II.
Here are all the phones currently on the list:
Apple just laid a royal beat down on Samsung in the U.S. court system over patent infringement. You’d easily think that the two companies are huge enemies that would gladly rip out each other’s hearts and drive over them with a steamroller.
Truth is, even though they’re enemies in the smartphone market, Apple needs Samsung’s components to build iPhones and iPads, and Samsung needs Apple to keep buying their parts to make money. Samsung products comprise 26 percent of the component cost of the iPhone, so to keep their smartphone and component manufacturing businesses separate, Samsung has created a strict ‘Internal Firewall’ to try to avoid conflicts.
We’ve seen lots of leaked parts for the upcoming iPhone, and even some cases for the rumored iPad Mini, but not a peep has been heard about a redesigned iPod Touch, until now. Pictures of new cases claiming to be designed for the new iPod Touch hit the web this morning, and they reveal that the fifth-generation might undergo some serious design changes when it hits the market later this year.
The cases show that the body of the 5th-gen iPod Touch might be less tapered than the current version, and it also features a mysterious hole on the back of the device that we’re not sure about.