Tired of welcoming our Google overlords? Have a free Gmail account, and just lose your contact sync via Exchange? Well, why not put your contacts over on iCloud for easy synchronization across all your Apple products? Makes sense to me.
Here’s how to do it.
Although the iSpy Tank may not end up in James Bond’s gadget collection, it’s more than ideal for amateur espionage missions. The device is controlled by your iPhone and has a built-in camera relays real-time video directly to your iPhone’s display, so you can see exactly where it’s going even if you’re in another room.
Penny Arcade The Game: Gamers vs. Evil and other iOS games from Playdek have been reduced to just $0.99 this weekend. The popular card game only hit the App Store a month ago, and this reduction sees $4 off its regular price tag. Check out our list of other titles in the sale below.
If you believe recent reports and predictions from analysts, Apple must make its iPhone cheaper or introduce a low-cost model if it wants to compete with Samsung going forward. The Korean company currently boasts the largest smartphone market share in the United States, and its lead is expected to increase throughout 2013. But did you know that Apple has actually sold more devices? 88 million more, in fact.
Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt has been comparing Apple’s cumulative smartphone sales with Samsung’s, and it appears the Cupertino company’s iPhone outsold the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lines 219 million to 131 million.
Team Cult is back from Vegas, baby! Yes, we’re still a little, um, foggy minded, but with plenty of new Apple news to discuss, the show must go on.
On this episode of The CultCast, we discuss rumors of iPhone 5S, and ponder how some recent Apple acquisitions means the mystery phone could have some very radical new features.
Then, has Apple lost its mojo? And what about all those rampant rumors that iPhone 5 just isn’t selling? Bollocks! On our newest episode, we sort it all out for you.
Eager to listen but not sure how? Easy! Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Click on through for the full show notes.
iOS contact aggregation app, Brewster, updated today and added a feature that might make you wonder why it wasn’t there in the first place: the contacts on your iPhone itself. While Brewster already pulled contact info from your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn profile, Gmail account, and Foursquare contacts, this is the first time its connected directly to the native iPhone contacts you carry around with you every day.
For a game that’s been downloaded over 170 million times and spawned countless ripoffs, the sequel to Temple Run came as a complete shock. The smash-hit endless runner started sneaking into App Stores around the world yesterday, and it went live in the U.S. late last night. Imangi Studios, the small company behind Temple Run, had no promotional material or teasers leading up to the release.
But now that Temple Run 2 is here, fans of the original can sprint, jump, slide, and fall through a new and improved world. With zip lines, new power-ups, characters, and a mine cart, Temple Run is better than ever.
Steve Jobs used to like Larry Page and the guys at Google, until they went and made their own smartphone operating system by copying iOS. Steve Jobs was livid. He threatened “to go thermonuclear war” on Google over Android, and the relationship obviously soured.
Now that Larry Page is the CEO of Google, he’s got a lot to worry about, but Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear threats haven’t seemed to bother him. In an interview with Wired’s Steven Levy, Page was asked about competition, and Jobs’ threats of war, but rather than going on an anti-Apple rant, Page’s answer was pretty calm, cool, and collected.
I’m guessing you take a lot of photos with your iPhone or iPad, right? I know I do. After taking them all, or saving them from web pages or text messages, they tend to add up. But how do you know how much space they’re taking up, specifically, on your iOS device?
Here’s the short and simple way to figure that out, plus an extra tip to boot.
If you don’t like to pay for games on your iPhone or iPad then you’ll want to hurry up and take advantage of the promo Rovio is having on their Angry Birds Rio game. You can download Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Rio HD from the App Store for free right now.
Even though it doesn’t have all the crazy new action of Angry Birds Star Wars, or Angry Birds In Space, there’s still a lot of fun to be had in Angry Birds Rio. The app has been made the “Free App of the Week,” so you have a few days to take advantage of the special before it goes back to costing $0.99 and $2.99.
Source: iTunes
Even though we’ve seen some positive news over the past few months regarding Apple’s smartphone marketshare, there’s no denying that Android is the most dominant mobile platform in the world right now.
Apple may continue to grow its marketshare of the world smartphone market for another year or so, but according to one analyst, Apple’s marketshare will peak sometime in 2013 unless Samsung does something really stupid.
After investing billions into the iPhone, Sprint is trying to play catch with Verizon and AT&T and deliver 4G LTE data across the U.S. They already have 4G LTE in nearly 200 cities, or are in the process of delivering it, but they’ll need to add a lot more coverage if they really want to compete with AT&T and Verizon.
Yesterday, Sprint announced that they are going to bring 4G LTE to 28 additional cities in the U.S. within the next few months. If you’re in one of the new cities, Sprint says that you can actually uses the 4G LTE network during the pre-launch phase as soon as you get a signal.
Here’s a list of all the new places that will get some juicy LTE later this year:
Apple stock took a battering this week when it was reported that the iPhone 5 wasn’t selling as well as the Cupertino company had expected it to, and it appears analysts aren’t going to let it recover just yet. JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz is now reporting that iPad sales won’t meet expectations due to supply constraints during the fourth quarter of 2012.
Buying an iPhone without getting AppleCare+ or your provider’s insurance plan is a bad move. You’re going to break that screen eventually trust us.
If you don’t live near an Apple Store, then you might want to go with your carrier’s own insurance protection plan on your iPhone. AT&T & Verizon already offer insurance for iPhone customers, and Sprint is finally joining the mix too.
Amazon has today launched a new web app for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to purchase more than 22 million tracks directly from the retail giant’s MP3 store. Amazon says the HTML5 app has been optimized to work seamlessly inside Apple’s mobile Safari browser, and any music you purchase will be transferred instantly to your Cloud Player library.
As we reported a couple of days ago, the iOS game from the National Rifle Association (NRA), NRA: Practice Range, has been coming under fire from various media outlets and political organizations for being a shooting game that is rated for anyone four years of age and up.
Apparently, Apple heard some of the outcry, and revised the rating in the App Store, which now says the shooting game is “Rated 12+ for the following: Frequent/Intense Realistic Violence.”
So, here’s an interesting new idea. Take a little bit of Instagram, with it’s ability to snap quick pictures and apply fun visual filters, and combine that with a push-to-record feature that lets you add audio commentary, music, whatever you like, to the picture itself. Digisocial aims to be the next big social thing, obviously, with a well-designed, free app that’s easy and fun to use.
The problem is, of course, a matter of scale.
We know that Apple’s product roadmap for 2013 will consist of new iPads, iPhones and Macs. That’s nothing new. Apple is always working on new stuff, and if 2012 is anything to go by, we’re about to see an onslaught of new products.
Martin Hajek is a successful designer, and his work has been featured multiple times here on Cult of Mac. His iPad mini and iPhone 5 concepts from last year were spot on, and Hajek has published renderings for the less-expensive ‘iPhone mini’ that Apple reportedly has planned for later in 2013. Some think the seventh-gen iPhone (‘iPhone 5S’) could come in multiple colors, and it will probably look a lot like the 5.
Hajek also has some great renderings of what the iPad 5 may look like should Apple tweak the design to look more like the iPad mini.
Facebook promised that their updated Facebook Messenger app would allow iPhone users to call one another for free thanks to the magic of VOIP calls. The feature has been rolled out to other countries, but Facebook just rolled it out to the U.S. today.
The Free Call feature allows you to call any of your Facebook friends who are also using the Facebook Messenger app. Rather than using the minutes on your cellular plan, the calls are made using your data connection so you’re not using up any minutes.
Write is yet another Dropbox-friendly text editor for the iPhone, but even in its present state as a teaser video and landing site, it looks amazing. In fact, it looks like it could become my favorite iPhone editor.
Not convinced? Read on…
I frequently “shop” for books using my iPhone, snapping pictures of books I want to read as I move through the store, and keeping them in my Camera Roll. This is a quick an easy way to keep track of stuff I want to check out later, but there’s really no organization to it. What would be cool is an app that I can keep track of the books, movies, and music I want to read, watch, and listen to that keeps track of stuff while organizing it.
Enter Done Not Done, a sweet little wishlist app that does just that, and more, adding recommendations from Facebook and Twitter friends to boot.
AT&T has been dancing around its FaceTime restrictions for several months now. Before iOS 6 even went public, it was discovered that the carrier would block FaceTime calls over a cellular connection at its own discretion. AT&T later confirmed that users would have to be on one of its new shared data plans.
Public outcry caused AT&T to then backtrack and extend the feature to anyone with a tiered, traditional data plan and a LTE device. That still didn’t cut it. Now AT&T has updated its policy again, and subscribers with grandfathered unlimited data plans are the only ones still left out in the cold.
The new year is well underway, and we’ve got a bundle lined up for you here at Cult of Mac Deals that will help you make the most of your Mac over the months to come. And the best part is that you’ll get all 8 of these time-savings apps for free as part of The Mac Freebie Bundle.
Temple Run from Imangi Studios is one of the most successful games on iOS, racking up more than 75 million downloads during 2012 alone. If you’re one of the many players who are still addicted to it after all this time, you’ll be delighted to know that Temple Run 2 is hitting the App Store tonight.
Readdle is well-known for its awesome productivity apps for the iPhone and iPad, so it’s always exciting when the company launches something new. Today sees the release of Documents, a terrific file manager, document editor, and media player for the iPad that promises to be unlike any other app you’ve download.
“You will use it constantly, at home, office, university or on the road, every single day,” Readdle says. And what’s more, Documents is completely free.