iPhone - page 213

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

I drive a 10-year-old Nissan Xterra. When I see new vehicles with technology like Ford Sync and Siri Eyes Free, I get jealous of the ability to send texts and answer phone calls without touching my iPhone. The most advanced thing my car can do is play audio from my iPhone through a stereo jack in the radio console.

Combine the lack of cool tech in my whip and my obsession with the latest gadgets and I was immediately intrigued back in March when I heard about Automatic, a hardware/software startup based in San Francisco that’s pitched as a smart driving assistant. Unlike an expensive add-on that has to be installed by a dealer, the Automatic Link is a $100 dongle (Amazon link) that can plug into the car’s data port found somewhere under the steering wheel. It communicates over low-energy Bluetooth to an iPhone app that records your driving, analyzes your mileage, reads your check engine light, helps you find your parked car and more.

The feature that sold me was the ability to see what was causing my engine light to come on—a problem that has ruthlessly followed me with every vehicle I’ve owned so far. I immediately preordered and my Automatic arrived mid-October.

After using Automatic for about a month now, it’s real usefulness is starting to show. There are features about it I love, and it’s shown me how everyday technology, like an iPhone, can enhance the car experience. The Jetsons-like future of transportation isn’t here yet, but Automatic is a precursor of what’s to come. It gets me excited about how our personal computers will interface with cars in 10 years.

How many of you (or, more specifically, the general public) will be using an iPhone when the smartphone market is fully saturated? Analyst Horace Dediu is saying the answer will be 68 percent.

Budding musicians out there in the Cult of Macosphere may be interested to check out new app, Caustic, which promises to offer an impressive rack-mount synthesizer for iOS, featuring a total of 14 different machines and multiple effects.

Your Apple products are pinnacles of modern design and technology, so why waste your time with Apple accessories that aren’t up to snuff? Saving precious dollars, you say?Well with this Cult of Mac Deals offer you’ll get huge savings plus top quality products – and this sleek, high-quality MacStand Bundle is another example of such a promotion.

Included in thsi bundle are the Mtable™, a multi-purpose desktop stand, and the Xtand Go™, a flexible in-car gadget mount. And you’ll get this bundle for just $79.99 – a savings of 38%!

Tired of the way your smartphone, tablet, computer, or other tech gadgets are looking these days? Now you can change it up with a stylish skin from Slickwraps.

Slickwraps makes amazing skins for these big name brands and more! They literally make hundreds of sweet skins for just about every tech gadget out there including your iPhone and/or Android phone. This Cult of Mac Deals offer will get you $40 Slickwraps credit for only $20 – credit you can apply to any product (or products) they have for sale on their website. This deal gives you the freedom to shop around and get exactly what you want.

Car makers next year will begin selling vehicles that support Apple’s new system for connecting iPhones to the in-car entertainment systems built into the dash.

Nice, but it doesn’t go far enough. Here’s why Apple should start building the in-car entertainment systems themselves.

Finally, a Bluetooth® speaker made for on-the-go lifestyles. With an integrated omnidirectional microphone, The PULSE combines music-playing and conference-calling capabilities in a palm-sized package.

Weighing in at only 2.3 ounces, it attaches almost anywhere with the included clip – backpacks, seatbelts, pockets – so it’s always available, but never in the way. And for a limited time you can get it for just $79.99 – a savings of 19% – courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals!

Apple seeded the second beta of iOS 7.1 to developers nearly a month after 7.1 beta 1 was released. Once again, Apple’s beta doesn’t contain any major new features but there are a couple useful tweaks that you’ll enjoy hidden among all the bug fixes, performance improvements and speedier animations.

Here are the five biggest changes Apple made to iOS 7.1 today: 

Looking to capitalize on the surge of Bitcoin’s popularity, some mischievous pranksters from 4chan’s random image board are trying to convince Mac users to trash their computers.

The hoax claims that Apple has included Bitcoin mining software on all Macs since 2009, but you just need to enter a simple terminal command to unlock it. Of course, there is no secret Bitcoin mining app hidden in OS X, so what does the terminal command sudo rm -rf/* in the picture actually do? Oh, it just basically reformats your hard drive.

This is one of the best resource deals we offer all year, and at a 90% discount this bundle is at a price you can’t say no to.

The Annual Adobe Holiday Season Bundle offers 147 lectures and over 6 hours of valuable content, you’ll earn a Certificate of Completion at the end of the course. We’re throwing in some holiday-specific walk-throughs so you can get those newsletters and holiday cards done. And you’ll get all of this for only $49.

Here’s a funny idea with a high potential to go wrong: bake a batch of cookies in the shape of iPhones, drive around pretending to talk on them, and then when you inevitably get pulled over, take a bite, look the law enforcement official straight in the eye, and say, “Are cookies against the law, officer?”

This bold (although possibly ill-advised) plan was the recent brainchild of Los Angeles comedian Randy Liedtke. Thanks to Twitter, followers were able to see how the dicey scenario played out in more-or-less real time. Here’s what happened:

Everything Thing Is A Remix Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson just released a new case study for his popular series that tackles whether the iPhone is a truly original idea, or just a hodgepodge of copying and improvements like pretty much everything else.  The case study starts by contesting Steve Jobs’ claim that Apple invented Multi-Touch – when really the technology was being developed for years by many companies – before strolling through some of Apple’s other inspirations.

The video does give Apple credit for creating a device that the entire mobile industry copied, while also providing a great survey of the real world objects Apple used as inspiration in Apple’s UI designs  that helped make the iPhone and iOS so revolutionary. Ultimately the film turns to iOS 7 and the ideas Apple borrowed copied remixed from Windows Phone and Android.

Watch the video below and tell us in the comments whether you think the iPhone got a fair treatment:

There are tons of solutions to get iOS photos from your device to some sort of backup system, from Dropbox to iPhoto. Backing up your photos is imperative, especially on iOS, as the iCloud backup system doesn’t back up photos, and PhotoStream only keeps the last 1,000 photos on your phone synced to all your enabled devices.

Backing up to cloud services is extremely convenient, but what happens when you no longer want to pay for the storage, or would rather hang on to your digital memories on your own computer? Sure, you can connect to your Mac with a cable, but then you’ve got to do the hard work of figuring out which photos you’ve already backed up.

Sync Photos To Storage, a new app from developer Simplex Solutions, aims to make this process much, much easier.

There’s nothing better than capturing moments as they happen during the holidays season. While your phone’s camera will do a pretty good job of that, wouldn’t it be better if you had a choice of lenses to add some depth and variety to your photos? This Cult of Mac Deals offer bundles three lenses into one package so you cant broaden your artistic range.

The Universal Lens Kit really is the lens trifecta you need to do just that – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $23.99. That’s a savings of 65%!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGzY54bt1rE

In the words of Family Guy, are iPhone-controlled model planes “a thing” now?

It was only September when we reported on the PowerUp 3.0 iPhone-Controlled Paper Airplane — speculating that it may well be “the coolest toy ever“.

Well, what a difference a few months make, since our wannabe-pilot hearts have now gone out to another: in this case to the SmartPlane, a Bluetooth-controlled miniature plane which promises to stand out from the growing pack of iPhone-oriented RC copters and the like.

Ever feel like the fact that using a tablet during takeoff and landing was banned for passengers — while allowable to pilots — was a bit of a safety double-standard?

Ages ago, my Cult of Mac brother in arms John Brownlee argued as much — and now it seems that European safety watchdogs are on his side, too.

Nothing makes a better gift than an iPhone, but if money’s an issue this Christmas, consider going to T-Mobile. Just in time for the holidays, T-Mobile is dropping the upfront price of an iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c to just $0. You can afford that, right?

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent, describing a means of manufacturing curved touchscreens.

The patent, which was filed back in November 2010, may lend credibility to the rumors that Apple is working on an iWatch with curved glass display to fit users’ wrists, as reported earlier this year.

During the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial, Apple industrial designers revealed that the company had a “strong interest” in featuring a curved glass display for its iPhone as far back as the first generation model — although it abandoned the idea at the time for reasons of cost.

Here’s something you don’t see often: It’s an Android phone sporting a 30-pin connector. Blasphemy! Heretical! Nonsense. PhotoFast’s i-FlashDrive, which allows fast transfer of files between Android and iOS, is here to promote peace and understanding between all — even the heathenish Windows.

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Pinning, posting or tweeting one’s way through a wilderness adventure always seemed a little antithetical to me; isn’t one of the reasons for going out into nature to get away from all this artificial electronic junk anyway? Yes, of course, I too am guilty of the odd flirt with Facebook from the bush — but I always feel so dirty afterward.

Yonder, a free app that creates a social circle for outdoor enthusiasts, won’t change how I feel about Tweeting from the trail — but at least it might push me closer to an equilibrium by turning the tables by inspiring me to get out there (boy, are those pictures gorgeous), and putting the outdoors in my social media instead of the other way around.

I’m a horrible driver. Each time a passenger gets behind the wheel with me they’re assaulted by a swirling barrage of sudden lane changes, quick breaking, faster acceleration and more near misses than I care to admit.

I’ve been driving since I was 13 which means I’ve probably picked up a slew of bad driving habits, but a new iPhone accessory, the Automatic Link, promises to help drivers make small changes to their driving habits by providing real-time feedback that can help you increase your fuel efficiency and make you a better driver. Bad habits die hard, so I put the Automatic Link to the test for 3-months to see if it would help improve my driving skills, here’s what I found:

Michael Pallad, former VP of sales at Cumulus Media, has left the radio giant to oversee Apple’s ad sales for iTunes Radio internationally according to a report from AdAge.

Pallad joined Apple on December 2nd and has spent the last week  getting oriented at the Cupertino Headquarters, but he’ll be pressed to get up to speed ASAP as Apple’s initial iTunes Radio ad deals are set to expire at the end of the year.

Be honest…the first time you saw a cassette or Nintendo-style retro case, you wanted it. But quality-wise, these style of cases just hasn’t been up to snuff. Until now. Rocketcases did the right thing, and made the cases we all wanted the way they should have been made the first time.

Now you can choose two cases from a variety of options. Whether you pick the classic black or white GameBoy, multi-colored cassette tapes, or the black or grey “Ghetto Blaster” boombox, you’ll get them for an incredible deal – just $25 – during this limited time Cult of Mac Deals offer.

As Black Friday approaches, Cult of Mac Deals continues to deliver the goods at a fraction of the regular price. This offer is, once again, no excpetion.

This hand-picked Mac bundle includes 8 top apps valued at $401 – and for a very limited time, you can get all of them for only $39!

The latest game in the Adventure Time series of mobile games will go live on Google Play, the Amazon App Store, and in Apple’s own iTunes App Store this Thursday, according to Cartoon Network.

You’ll get to play as main characters Finn and Jake, along with several other supporting cast members, evading the crazy Ice King while skiing down an epic mountain. Mathematical!

Of course, you won’t use skis, but rather slide down the slope on your butt, true to the wacky television show on which the game is based.