It’s never been easier (or as cheap) to translate words and phrases between over 60 languages than it is with the free Google Translate app for iOS. Simply select the language you require, type or speak your phrase, then wait while Google does the hard work. Here’s how to get started.
Update: We have selected our winners and would like to CONGRATULATE Selena Gannon (@SeleneGannon) and Teodora Yodar (@TeodoraYoder). Please email us at [email protected] to get your goods — and thanks to everyone for entering!
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The iPhone App Game Plan Bundle offers one of those rare opportunities to save a ton of cash and also gain the opportunity to make a ton of cash with the results of following through with what’s being offered. How’s that? Well, you get a killer training program that allows you to plan, launch and market an app that you’ve worked hard at making – and the training you’ll receive has stellar odds to pay you back over and over again. It’s a real win-win!
Speaking of “win”, we’re about to up the ante on this Cult of Mac Deal even more.
Are you interested in making iPhone and iPad apps for the App Store? If you’d like to get your feet wet, or at least see what’s involved, Apple has posted a new walkthrough called “Start Developing iOS Apps Today.”
The simple guide takes you through the initial setup and teaches you about basic tools, frameworks, Apple’s design policies, and more. The goal is that you will be able to create an app from scratch and have it ready to debut in the App Store.
One of the easiest and most effective ways of taking panoramic photos on your iOS device is with 360 Panorama. Unlike other apps that have you moving your device an inch at a time and snapping a number of photos, this one allows you to simply pan around while it snaps the images automatically.
Once complete, 360 Panorama stitches everything together to provide a fantastic 360° image which you can share with the world on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
Here’s how to take panoramic photos with 360 Panorama.
One of the big new Mountain Lion features is AirPlay Mirroring. This will let you beam your Mac’s desktop, videos and Keynote presentations to any screen connected to the Apple TV. This feature alone will probably sell zillions of Apple TVs into conference rooms the world over. But who wants to wait until OS X 10.8’s summer launch? With a couple of apps, you can use AirPlay on your Mac right now.
Way back in the mists of 1991, in the dark days when Kevin Costner somehow beat Martin Scorsese for the Best Director Oscar (Dances with Wolves vs. Goodfellas. Seriously?), WinZip was first launched. The frustrating, hard-to-use piece of shareware is still going today, and has just elbowed its way into the iOS App Store. That’s right: WinZip is now available for the iPhone and iPad.
Osfoora, a popular Twitter client that made its debut on the iPhone, has made the leap from iOS to the Mac. It is now contending with the likes of Echofon, Twitterific, and Twitter in the Mac App Store, but is it worth its $4.99 price tag?
It’s amazing what you see when you look closely at numbers, and super-analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco looks closer than most. Parsing some of Tim Cook’s keynote speech at Goldman Sachs earlier this week, he did some digging came up with the incredible graph you see above.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEH1H-4Siw
Following our handy video roundup of new OS X Mountain Lion features, InsanelyGreatMac has published a video walkthrough of AirPlay, which allows you to mirror your Mac’s display on a television hooked up to the Apple TV.
As you can see, the feature works in much the same way as AirPlay on an iOS device, sending both video and audio from your Mac to your TV over a wireless network.
While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.
This is Pinwheel, a new iOS app for leaving and finding virtual notes anywhere in the real world.
It’s in private beta right now, but you can join in if you ask nicely and leave your email address in the box of the Pinwheel home page.
A new jailbreak app called MultiTunes lets you sync with multiple iTunes libraries on your iOS device. Apple limits you to one iTunes library at a time by default, and while iCloud and iTunes Match make it easier to access your music from anywhere, some would still like to sync with different libraries without deleting all locally stored music first. That’s where MultiTunes saves the day.
If you grew up during the 1980s, many of its style tropes will have been burned indelibly into your brain. Shoulder pads, snow-washed jeans, pleated pants, and tacky, tacky poster art, exemplified by selective-colored black and white photos. If you can imagine a monochrome image of a rose, with the petals colored lipstick red, then congratulations: your mind just traveled back to 1985. Now, with Paint FX, your iPad can do the same.
Apple has included a more subtle, yet very important, change in OS X Mountain Lion that points to the company’s focus moving forward. If you open the “About This Mac” window in the Mountain Lion developer preview, you’ll notice that “Mac” has been dropped for a simpler “OS X.” The prefix has also been dropped from promotional materials on Apple.com and the Mac App Store.
Why the change to just “OS X Mountain Lion?” Apple is continuing to blur the line between hardware and software. It’s about the unification of iOS and the desktop experience.
In case you hadn’t already noticed, Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion earlier today, its latest operating system for the Mac which will make its public debut this summer. Mountain Lion will further increase the iOS influence on Apple’s desktop operating system, with the arrival of features like Notification Center, Messages, and Notes.
But for gamers, undoubtedly the most exiting new feature will be Game Center’s arrival on the Mac. With promises of cross-platform multiplayer and the ability to rack up achievements on both your Mac and iOS devices, this is set to create a new bridge between mobile and desktop gaming that will revolutionize cross-platform play.
AirPlay Mirroring is one of the iOS features that Apple is bringing to the Mac in Mountain Lion. It’s a feature that offers a lot of potential for mobile professionals and educators in addition to being a great supplement to a family’s living room.
AirPlay Mirroring works the second generation Apple TV. The Apple TV itself as a small and easy to carry device that can plug into any HDTV or modern projector. That simple setup combined with a Mac running Mountain Lion makes for a perfect portable presentation solution.
Earlier this week, Centrify launched an open beta of the company’s DirectControl for Mobile service. The service, which supports managing iPhones, iPads, and Android devices in business and enterprise settings, currently includes a subset of the features typical in other mobile device management (MDM) systems. Centrify, which is known for providing enterprise integration technologies for OS X as well as various Unix and Linux distributions, plans to maintain the current selection of controls as a free solution when the product emerges from beta while adding further management capabilities to a commercially licensed version.
Most MDM solutions are of the bolted-on variety – they run on a dedicated server or cloud offering that can pull information from enterprise systems like Microsoft’s Active Directory but use a separate management interface and data store for management profiles and other information. Centrify’s DirectControl does offer a cloud management system, but it uses Active Directory itself as the primary interface and data store, an approach that has several advantages including a very minimal learning curve for experienced systems administrators.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogBm9DVtu5Y
No, Clear isn’t the only App Store release that is worth getting excited about today. League of Evil 2 from Ravenous Games is also on the list. This is the sequel to the popular platformer that became a huge success on iOS last year, and it’s on sale for launch at just $0.99.
Apple’s iAd hasn’t received much in the way of attention since it’s announcement as part of iOS 4 almost two years ago. The platform was designed as a way for advertisers to create powerful interactive mobile ads and to make it easy for app developers to integrate those ads into their products. Of course, it was also intended to help Apple take a big slice of mobile ad spending.
Despite a big introduction in 2010, iAd quickly fell off almost everyone’s radar. Apple initially set a high barrier of entry by requiring iAd campaigns to commit $1 million. The company later cut that in half and this week lowered the required initial investment to $100,000 – one tenth of its original requirement – something that speaks volumes about the company’s mojo when it comes to selling ads.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that unauthorized iOS apps obtained from the likes of Cydia aren’t as careful with your personal data as those approved by Apple for sale in the App Store. In fact, the opposite is true. Jailbroken iOS apps respect your privacy more than those obtained from the App Store.
Beyond the sheer number of devices sold, one of the biggest ways to Apple and Google try to position themselves as having the top mobile platform is by comparing the number of third-party apps available for users to download. Apple usually takes the number of apps available one step further when comparing iOS to Android by pointing out how many apps take advantage of the iPad’s tablet features such as screen size.
This is one of the reasons that an active and developer community is crucial a mobile platform’s success. Although Android entered the app race after Apple had begun to establish a successful developer community, the platform began to catch up quickly. All that seems to have changed over the past year, with a new report showing iOS developers are now creating three apps for every single new Android app.
Ever wondered how come iOS titles make it into the App Store’s top 25 list? Some iOS developers have been using download bots to purchase their own apps and manipulate the App Store’s top 25 list, according to a new report from Inside Mobile Apps. The software has been in use for over 12 months to fraudulently promote iOS titles, and some marketing firms charge up to $15,000 a time for the service.
Makego is a cool new app that makes your kids’ real world creations come to life.
The two-dollar app comes with three virtual vehicles – a racing car, an ice cream truck, and a river boat. All you have to do is make one (out of Lego, paper, or anything else you can think of), plop your device inside, and run the app.
It has taken me a couple of weeks to refresh and recharge from my first Macworld experience (now known as Macworld | iWorld, of course). But during that time of getting clear I had the opportunity to give the latest offering by RealMac Software (Rapidweaver, LittleSnapper) in collaboration with Milen and Impending, Inc. a thorough “beta” test drive. Coincidentally, the iOS app is called Clear, and it is one of the more compelling list-makers/task managers I’ve seen for the iPhone.
The innovative thing about Clear is that it is entirely gesture-based in execution. There are no visible buttons or sliders; you use a series of gestures to interact with it, and that is what makes it stand apart from other iPhone list apps and task managers.
Readability is a nice little app that turns virtually any web page into a clean, comfortable reading view, with syncing to allow for the reading of articles at a later date. While the web app has been available for some time now, the iOS app has been sitting in limbo for 4 month awaiting approval. In the meantime, Readability has managed to develop an Android app which is now almost ready for launch. As you can see from a tweet from a Readability developer, they’re simply waiting for Apple’s approval so they can go ahead and launch the apps: