It sounds like a plot line straight out of Hollywood: washed-up cell maker teams with down-on-its-luck software giant to overtake a Silicon Valley tech behemoth. But researchers believe 2015 will be the comeback year for Nokia with Microsoft Windows Phone replacing Apple’s iOS as the No. 2 smartphone operating system.
Two of the reasons Apple’s iPhone is yet to adopt LTE connectivity is that existing LTE chips are just too large for the iPhone’s slender form factor, and they eat up so much power your new iPhone 4S wouldn’t even last the six hours that you currently get if it was hooked up to an LTE network.
However, a new Apple patent application reveals that the Cupertino company has already set about revolutionizing its batteries to make them thinner and more efficient — possibly making way for LTE connectivity in the iPhone 5.
Have you ever arrived at the office and realized that report you need for the meeting today is still on your Mac at home? I’m sure that at some point we have all needed access to our home computer while we’re away from home, and it’s actually a lot easier than you might think thanks to the free LogMeIn app for iOS.
Apple’s education event in New York City this morning may see the launch of a new version of the company’s Pages word processor which will feature support for iBooks publishing, and an iBooks application that will allow us to read our favorite titles on our Macs. Furthermore, we could also see the launch of textbook rentals.
While the feature is currently still in beta, Apple is yet to extend Siri support to apps that aren’t already baked into the iOS operating system. But did you know that the company’s own Find My Friends app, which debuted alongside iOS 5 last summer, does include Siri support, allowing you to locate your pals using only your voice?
Remember the images of Android as unstoppable? Uh, it’s slowing down. Seems someone threw an iPhone 4S on the tracks and derailed the growth of the Google mobile operating system among new smartphone buyers. After the iPhone 4S’ October release, Android’s popularity with new phone buyers dropped from 61.1 percent to 46.9 percent.
I’m lucky: the real Stonehenge is only about 40 minutes’ drive from my front door, so I can go and visit whenever I like. For students of prehistoric monuments who live further afield, the Stonehenge Experience app for iPad offers a tiny glimpse of what this ancient English stone circle is all about.
The anti-SOPA forces banner; you might be seeing this quite a bit tomorrow.
If you need information from Wikipedia, you’d best get it very quickly; in just a few hours, at 9 P.M. PST (5:00 UTC for our European readers), a coalition of sites across the web — including Wikipedia’s English site, Boing Boing and Reddit — will go dark for a day, displaying this page instead of their usual home pages.
Those who are trawling through the source code of Apple’s latest iOS 5.1 beta have discovered references to the company’s upcoming iPad 3, and more interestingly, hints that Facebook integration could be making its way to iOS to accompany Twitter.
Have you ever wondered what kind of data speeds you get on your iPhone with a full 3G signal, or how fast your internet is on your home Wi-Fi network? With the free iOS app from Speedtest.net, you can perform a quick and simple test that will tell you your download and your upload speeds on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
SoulCalibur finally allows you to compete with friends over Bluetooth.
Namco’s classic arcade fighter SoulCalibur is finally making its way to the App Store this week. Having been announced way back in October, we’ve been itching to get our hands on it for three months now, and we’ll be one of the first to grab it when it arrives on Thursday, January 19.
Fed up of seeing updates in the App Store for apps that you do not want to update? Unfortunately most of us just have to put up with them, but if you’ve got a jailbroken device, you can use the Update Hider for iOS 5 tweak to hide them away.
The music streaming service Grooveshark, which was pulled from the App Store a while ago after it upset a number of major record labels, has returned to the iPhone — and other mobile devices — with a new HTML5 web app. The app can’t be pulled by Apple this time, but how long will it last?
We’re all fans of Mario Kart and many of Nintendo’s classic titles. But as much as we’d love to see them arrive on iOS, we don’t care much for shameless clones. We’ve seen countless Super Mario clones in the App Store, but Mole Kart is a Mario Kart ripoff that shares more than just a few similarities.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Remember the days before you had an iPhone and played games outside? Using sticks for swords and your hand as a gun? I bet you spent hours outdoors pretending you were some movie superhero trying to rescue Julia Roberts from a a plague of mutant zombie pandas. Then you got into video game consoles and iPhone games and your imagination just went in the toilet. Well, AppGear is here to bring back the nostalgia for your youth and make alien invasions a (virtual) reality.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Yes, it’s true, we’ve joined the masses on Instagram in order to give you more behind the scenes photos of what life is like for the Cult of Mac staff as they pound the streets of Vegas in search of gadgets galore. The team is currently rockin’ the party at CES, and we’ll be sending all our cute little followers photos from the showroom floor and behind the scenes looks at what goes into covering an event like CES. It’ll be like you’re here with us, even though you’re totally not but we wish you were. If you don’t already have Instagram, go download the app right now and add @CultofMac.
And if you’re hungry for even more info, here’s who’ll be on the ground, along with their Twitter handles. Follow us for on-the-floor updates, or if you’re at CES and see one of us, make sure to say hi.
**Update** The iOS Foundations Course bundle is expiring tonight. This is an excellent iOS app development course that will teach you the building blocks for C Programming and Objective-C. There are other courses out there, but these are built with beginners in mind.
Mobile is the future of technology and apps are the driving force of the mobile economy. Those who can build and design apps will be the most sought after talent. Anyone can come up with an idea for an app; it’s the getting it built that’s the tough part. So, if you’ve ever had a killer idea for an iPhone app, then the iOS Foundations bundle could be your chance to learn the one-two punch of iOS app programing from one of the best, Mark Lassoff.
After getting feedback from our customers, we found that the most effective way for a beginner to learn how to build iOS apps is to offer a combo of 2 courses: C Programming: iOS Development Starts Here!and the Objective C for Beginners. And, we’re including both courses for the price of one – just $79.
Apple’s vice president of worldwide iPod, iPhone, and iOS product marketing, Greg Joswiak, was spotted roaming the show floor at CES in Las Vegas yesterday, despite no official appearance from the Cupertino company. Joswiak admitted he was there “scouting the competition,” but it seems he’s not the only one. According to one report, more than 250 Apple employees altogether are in attendance this year.
World of Goo has been a huge success since it hit the iPhone back in April 2010, and its developers have just announced the title has now attracted over one million downloads in the App Store and the Mac App Store.
If you’re listening to music in the background while you use other apps on your iOS device, it’s quick and easy to control your Music app by using the buttons in the multitasking tray. If you have a faulty home button, however — which is a common problem on Apple’s iOS devices — you may have an issue.
Thankfully, SpringPod offers an alternative solution by adding music controls to your home screen.
Nuance, a speech recognition company that powers Apple’s Siri service, has launched a new voice-controlled platform for television sets called Dragon TV. The service allows you to navigate your way around different content by “speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names” using natural language.
It’s everything you’d expect a Siri-powered Apple TV to be.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — Over the past year, Nokia has been making steady incremental improvements to reshape the company’s image by showing the world that greatness doesn’t come to those who merely copy what the best company is doing. Greatness is achieved by setting yourself apart from the competition by taking a radically different path than everyone else. Apple has known this fact for decades and have used it become the most admired company in the world, and during Nokia’s press conference today it was readily apparent that the only company that should be viewed as a truly worthy adversary to Apple in the mobile market is Nokia.
The same company that brought top-shelf game titles to the Mac is soon planning to bring many of those same games to the iPad. Today, though, OnLive has announced an app that lets you view and use Windows 7 applications on your iPad. It’s free, and it’ll hit the App Store this Thursday.
The Looxcie camera is a neat little gadget by itself, able to clip onto an ear and record 30-second video bursts of your life. Now it has a fantastic little streaming app that you can use to stream those clips and even allows two-way voice communication. Hello, ultra-portable broadcast team.