Rob LeFebvre - page 100

Let’s face it: the Mac App Store, and the iTunes App Store that it’s modeled on, just isn’t made for comparing apps. Let’s say you want to find the best note taking app for your Mac. You can launch the Mac App Store, search for note taking apps, and see one at a time. If you want to look at more than one, you end up clicking the back button endlessly.

Sometimes it’s just better to be able to flip through a bunch of apps at once. If only the App Stores had tabbed browsing. Luckily, you can browse more than one app at once with a bit of a workaround and your web browser.

We told you last week about the Humble Indie Bundle, now in its sixth iteration. Today, four new games were added, bringing the total to ten games on offer with a pay-what-you-want model that sends the purchase price along to independent developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Child’s Play, a charity that provides game consoles to children in hospitals.

While Google Maps may no longer be available as either the default iOS map app or as a standalone app of its own, the search giant’s other flagship software has been quietly updated for iPhone 5,iOS 6, and an unspecified number of “Stability and security improvements,” according to the App Store description page for the alternate iOS browser.

Apparently, Apple made the decision to dump Google maps for iOS 6 was made more than a year before the contract with Google for their map system expired, says a new post at The Verge that cites “independent sources familiar with the matter.” Further, the choice may have caused Google to start development on it’s own iOS Google Maps app before it was ready to. These same sources say the potential app won’t be ready for several months.

The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 have brought a new, more powerful Siri into the limelight. We thought it might be time to start looking for ways to best query the spunky digital assistant for a variety of tasks, like checking the weather, for example.

Being able to use your voice to find out the forecast for the next several days is a fantastic feature that more folks might use, if only they knew the right way to ask. While Siri definitely handles natural-language questions with aplomb, you can help her understand your intent better by using the following types of questions.

While I was researching an OS X Tips column for later this week, I came across a .sit file. Now, if you’ve been working with Macs as long as I have (my first Mac was a Performa 638 CD, just before PowerMacs showed up), you’ll know all about .sit files and how to open them.

For those of you new to Macs, especially Mountain Lion, which only seems to handle .zip file archives, you might be a bit stumped as to how to open a .sit file. Well, luckily this old guy is here to tell you how.

Having a tough time remembering your iCloud password? Do you rely on iForgot a bit too much? Well, according to a new post at MacRumors, you may be in for a world of hurt should you try and call Apple to get your iCloud credentials reset.

In the wake of the Mat Honan hack last month, Apple responded with both temporary and more permanent security rules to make sure users aren’t taken advantage of in a similar way again. However, according to some Apple customer support representatives who spoke to MacRumors, this is making it hard on legit users, too.

Valve’s continued support for Mac games is laudable. Including Mac gaming in their offerings continues to prove to naysayers that Macs are a viable gaming machine, and deserve to be treated well, with support for games, developers and, of course, publishers of Mac games.

Steam Greenlight is a new initiative from Bellevue-based Valve Software aimed at allowing the growing Steam membership a say in the process of choosing what games to produce for the popular multiplayer and online digital distribution system, Steam.

In a research note from KGI, a financial analytics group out of China, oft-cited analyst Ming-Chi Kuo places the responsibility for the shortages in new iPhone 5 connectors squarely on the shoulders of a shift in the specific supplier of the connector from Foxconn (Hon Hai) to Foxlink (Cheng Uei), due to lower yield rates of the new unit type from Foxconn.

AppleInsider also reports sources saying that Apple has requested Foxlink pick up the slack and dedicate more workers and production lines to the Lightning cable production line.

As a new owner of an iPhone 5 that can take dictation, I’m still playing around with Siri and the various places and times that it makes sense to use my voice instead of the keyboard. Obviously, a crowded, quiet room is not the best place to speak to my iPhone, but in the car certainly is. It’s even better that I’m not texting with my fingers in the car, either, since that’s just plain dangerous. For a quick message, now, I’m gonna use the iOS 6 dictation feature.

Apple’s got an entire Knowledge Base article on how to best use dictation on your iOS 6 iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S, and as I read through it, it struck me how much easier it will be to respond to text messages should they come in while I’m not in a place to easily type a reply. One thing that surprised me was the recommendation to speak punctuation aloud.

Do you find yourself getting lost in activities on your computer, forgetting to check the time, missing appointments, even? If you get lost in a video game or Facebook surfing session often, you might consider having your Mac announce the time out loud, like a town crier in the days of old.

All it takes is a quick trip into the System Preferences. That, and the ability to have the sound up on your Mac while you’re working at it. Otherwise, if a Mac speaks the time in a speaker-off situation, does it really exist? Wait. Scratch that.

Galaxy on Fire 2 is perhaps the best-looking space game on iOS. With astronomical scenes that call to mind a portable Eve Online, Galaxy on Fire 2 is an action space shooter with RPG elements, such as upgraded ships and weaponry, questing systems, and the like. It’s even made the move to Mac OS X.

It’s been a couple of months since FishLabs, the developers behind the title, released a teaser trailer and a vague September timeline for a release date for the upcoming downloadable content (DLC) expansion, Supernova. Well, that date is actually here, as Supernova is available on both the iTunes and Mac App Stores, for iOS and Mac OS X, respectively.

There have been quite a few worries out there on the web today, with new owners of the iPhone 5 comparing the screen to the older iPhone 4 and 4S. I was one of these early adopters, and I also set the phones next to each other to see the differences. When I turned them both on to look at the difference in screen ratio, I noticed that the new iPhone 5 screen had a markedly yellow tint.

I did what anyone might do upon seeing a possible defect in a brand new gadget device: I panicked.

Then I spent a little time on some other sites on the internet, and found out that I might have overreacted.

I had just taped the pre-signed authorization for UPS to the door of my house, when the brown UPS truck pulled up in front. I ran downstairs, signed breathlessly, and took possession of an absurdly small package. Apparently, Apple’s not happy enough with a small phone; they need to make the box it’s shipped in super small as well.

I ran upstairs, sliced the packing tape open, and pulled out an even smaller iPhone 5 box, all shrink-wrapped and beautiful. The exterior retail box is quite a bit smaller than the last iPhone I purchased, the iPhone 4. The iPhone 5 itself? Stunningly small and light, yet fits almost perfectly in my hand, as has been said a bajillion times already.

I pulled off the sticky, protective plastic, held down the Wake button, and let the device do its start up thing. Then came the moment of truth: setup. How long was I going to be stuck at my desk?

The Mac App store provides a nice, simple, graphical way to keep your Mac updated with the latest software, letting you know when system updates as well as Apple and third-party apps have a new update to be downloaded and installed.

If you don’t want to use the Mac App store, though, you can use the Terminal app along with some Terminal commands to do the same thing. When would you use this? Well, maybe when the Mac App store gets wonky, or if you’re not at the current Mac, and want to securely and remotely administer the Mac in question, that’s when.

It’s fairly simple. Here’s how.

Apple’s new Maps app has gotten a ton of complaints since iOS 6 officially released this week, and with good reason. Heck, right here at Cult of Mac, we have a feature on how to fix the iOS 6 Maps experience, as well as a gallery on some of the worst imagery from the Maps app itself.

Apple spoke out today about the issue in a statement to AllThingsD, saying, essentially, that people need to be more patient.

iFixit rips into new technology like a ten-year-old with a stack of birthday presents. Co-founder Luke Soules flew down to Melbourne, Australia to be one of the first people to own the magical device, with the sole purpose of taking it apart at the MacFixit offices in Australia.

The process itself is well underway, as you can see in the gallery of images below.

The iPhone 5 went on sale in Australia today, and hundreds of folks lined up for the privilege of being some of the first in the country to purchase and own Apple’s latest cultural and technical marvel. Some waited as long as 68 hours for the iPhone 5, competing to be the first person in the world to own an iPhone 5.

So, there you are, sitting on the bus, and inspiration strikes. You really want to fire off a quick tweet or status update to Facebook, but your stop is coming up fairly quick, and you really can’t miss it again. Opening up the Facebook or Twitter app will take precious seconds, ones you don’t have to spare! What’s an iOS 6-enabled person to do?

Now that Facebook is integrated along with Twitter in iOS 6, you don’t need to open either specific app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to get out that short message of genius.

It used to be that in order to see images sent along to you in iChat, you’d open up the File Transfers window, click on the graphic, and hit the spacebar on your keyboard to see the image full size, just like you can in the Finder or Open/Save dialogs.

If you’ve migrated to Mountain Lion, however, you’ll know that iChat is no longer, and the replacement app, Messages, has a File Transfers window, but Quick Look won’t work in it any more. How do you see your images full size within the Messages app, then? Lucky you, we’re here to tell you.

Holy high-fantasy MMORPG gameplay, Batman, but the strangest thing happened today. NCSoft, developer of Guild Wars, announced that the Mac beta for Guild Wars 2, still a hot Windows gaming title, has been released. They created it along with TransGaming, using the Cider Portability Engine, which may explain why it happened so fast.

Typically, Mac gamers have to wait months, even years, to have their favorite Windows-based games ported over to their favorite Mac-based operating system. Guild Wars 2 came out at the end of August, just a couple of weeks ago. To have it on the Mac, even in beta form, is something of a big deal.

AT&T sent out a press release today announcing that they’ve flipped the switch on their super fast LTE networks in five new cities: Detroit, Honolulu, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Portland. Cult of Android has another three cities to add to that list, including Birmingham, Memphis, and Sacramento. I will add Anchorage, AK.

With the latest iOS 6 update, all your iPhone using buddies around the world are going to start syncing their Contacts to their Facebook account, hoping to automate what can be a fairly tedious process. Unfortunately, if you haven’t set your Facebook account settings to get your real email address into the sync information, your friends are going to just get a useless @facebook.com email address attached to your contact on their iPhone, and no one wants that.

Fortunately, there’s a way to fix this problem, and make sure Facebook’s secret switch to their own branded email addresses in your Facebook contact information doesn’t go any farther than it already has.

iOS 6 comes with a host of new and improved features for us all to play with. We’ll be messing about in there over the next several weeks, helping you find the hidden tips, tricks, and features of iOS 6. Today, however, we’d like to show you the ten killer tricks we’ve found in iOS 6 to date.

Some of these tips may seem simple, while others may not be applicable to your own personal situation. Regardless, we hope that we can show you the coolest tips and tricks for your new iOS device, whether it’s a new iPhone 5, a new iPad, or anything that comae out before; iOS 6 will support the iPhone 3GS and up, the iPad and up, and the iPod touch third generation and up, so have at it!

The Humble Indie Bundle has always been a fantastic source of solid Mac games for a very reasonable price. How much, you might ask? Well, the five initial offerings in this year’s bundle would run you almost $90 retail, but the price you’ll pay for them here is totally up to you.

Yes, you could pay no money at all for games like Rochard or Torchlight, both solidly great games that have been released on other platforms. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? The Humble Indie Bundle gives the money you decide to pay to the developers, to EFF, and to Child’s Play, a charity that raises money for games and consoles for sick kids in hospitals. See? I told you that you wouldn’t pay nothing.