iPhone - page 363

Well, it’s been about three months, but Apple’s finally managing to get iPhone 4S online order ship dates down to a reasonable amount of time: just 3-5 business days. Nice one, especially considering just a couple weeks ago, shipping times were between one and three weeks at all times. No matter how much iPhone building capacity Apple seems to make, though, they can’t ever seem to make them fast enough. Bet that’s a problem the competition would like to have.

Here at the business desk, we love to hear ways companies are falling head-over-heels for the iPad. The latest is a survey finding Apple’s tablet is all work in the office. Employees use the iPad for business more than 90 percent of the time, refuting concerns the device would be tied up flinging angry birds at all those smug pigs.

It happens to us all: frozen app. Yes, frozen app, the frustrating condition that causes your iPhone or iPad to suddenly seize up, forcing you to do a full restart because even your home button has stopped working.

Now while the causes of frozen app are varied, you can remedy its foul presence in two easy steps.

While this may not be quite as awesome as that NES controller concept for the iPhone we showed you last week, it’s still pretty amazing. Paul Rickards, a blogger behind biosrhythm, has hacked a NES controller to work with iCade games on his iPad using a Camera Connection Kit.

Holy guacamole, we won! To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how this happened. Wired is bigger than Cult of Mac in almost every measurable aspect (except sex appeal, obviously), and their magazine is cool as hell. But somehow, we went off like Tom Brady and managed to melt their faces off with our awesomeness during our “Insta-gram Challenge.”

Even though we were slightly somewhat heavily inebriated at the Wired Party in Las Vegas when we challenged them, you guys managed to pull it off for us. First off we owe a big thank you to our readers for making this momentous feat possible. Secondly, Wired deserves some credit for playing along with us and being good sports even if they obviously aren’t the better Instagramers. Thirdly, I guess we’re obligated to thank ourselves in that prototypical KanYe West fashion. I heard whispering around the office today that CoM’s John Brownlee credits the “Kobe System” for helping him come up with hilarious tweets and pictures during CES.

What’s next? Don’t worry, our Instgram feed isn’t going dormant until the next CES. We’ll be pumping out more Cult of Mac pictures for your entertainment because we realize that taking down Wired is cool and all, but who we really want to beat is The Biebs. We’re coming after you’re next Justin!

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.

We don’t have to tell you that there are a ton of amazing apps on the App Store, but how much profit do those apps make? We all know Angry Birds is raking in the money, but what about the others guys? Take Camera+ for instance. 18 months ago TapTapTap released Camera+ and have been enjoying consistent success ever since. On average, a copy of Camera+ is sold approximately every 3 seconds. Recent sales numbers released by the company show that the app has earned a grand total of $5,125,844 to date….that’s after Apple got their 30% cut.

There’s no shortage of waterproof coating coming to market that Apple could potentially slather future iPhones in, making water damage all but a thing of the past.

After CES, though, if you wanted to take bets about which company would end up landing the deal, money would rest on HzO, who not only claim that their WaterBlock superhydrophobic coating is better than the competition’s… but Apple’s interested.

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 entire jailbreaking community has its eyes on Pod2g and his “Dream Team” of fellow hackers right now, anticipating their exploit for Apple’s A5-powered devices. The team recently revealed that the it was just “a matter of days” away from public release, and today we have a video of a jailbroken iPhone 4S in action.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases out there that promise to protect your beloved iPhone, but the ‘Nissan Scratch Shield’ case is the only one that will self-heal itself when you scratch it thanks to the Japanese company’s pioneering paint technology.

Laaaaaaaaaaadies and Gentlemen, welcome to Friday Night Fights, a new series of weekly deathmatches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?

After this week’s topic, someone’s going to be spitting teeth. Our question: What’s Better? The iPhone’s 3.5-Inch Display, or Android’s 4+ Inch Superphones?

In one corner, we have the 900 pound gorilla, Cult of Mac; in the opposite corner, wearing the green trunks, we have the plucky upstart, Cult of Android!

Place your bets, gentlemen! This is going be a bloody one.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Mark Bowles has a long history making money off of Apple’s designs.

Back in the mid-90s, Bowles helped put together the funding for Power Computing, the first company selected by Apple to make Mac clones. The investment paid off big-time when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and bought Power Computing for $100 million, just to kill the company off.

Around the same time, Bowles did it again. He helped put together funding for a company called Panorama Designs, which put together the first Mac laptop clones. Motorola eventually bought Panorama Designs for $130 million, but when Jobs came back to Apple, he made sure Motorola (who designed all of Apple’s PowerPC chips) was too petrified of losing their contract with Cupertino that they let their new acquisition just die.

Fast forward fifteen years, and Bowles has figured out a new way to make money off of Apple designs. Unlike his forays in the 90s cloning Apple devices, though, Bowles’s nw company does something different: they make ATMs that buy people’s old iPhones, iPods and iPads for cash on the spot.

Oliver Bussmann, CIO of SAP, makes an unlikely cheerleader for Apple’s iPad — but one who is bound to get noticed. (If you’re now picturing him in a varsity sweater shaking pom-poms, sorry).

But Bussmann is unabashedly enthusiastic about Apple’s magical tablet computer.
SAP deployed some 14,000 iPads to employees last year, making the stodgy German business management software colossal the second largest corporate iPad user worldwide. (Korea Telecom handed over 30,000 to its workers).

“It’s an exciting time. The line between consumer and corporate is fading and we’ve been aggressive in regards to the iPad,” he said. “There’s a  huge opportunity to be in driver’s seat.”

Facing a storm of criticism over the working conditions in factories building iPods, iPhones and iPads, Apple today for the first time released the names of 156 global suppliers along with a report showing mixed success obtaining fair working conditions. One bright spot: fewer children are working on the much-prized Apple devices.

If you need another reason why iPhone rivals just don’t get it, there’s word four of the largest smartphone makers plan to introduce fewer models in a bid to replicate Apple’s success. Ah, if it were only so simple.

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?

Remember that stunning iPhone designed by Antonio De Rosa that we brought you last week? It’s called the iPhone SJ and it’s a tribute to Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. It looked pretty great in the photos we published, but it looks even more awesome when brought to life in this new video.

Apple’s carrier partners in Singapore are removing the front- and rear-facing cameras from the Cupertino company’s latest iPhone 4S before selling it, according to a new report. The doctored devices are aimed at members of the military who are prohibited from taking cameras into their bases.

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.

Intel wants to be friends with Apple — or more specifically, Apple’s hoard of cash. As the PC industry craters and mobile devices seem to be the future, the chipmaker wants the tech giant to buy its Medfield design. Although Intel if talking, is Apple listening?

Consumers have another reason besides low-cost designer collaborations to mob their favorite retailer. Target confirmed 25 of its largest U.S. stores will offer an expanded line of Apple gear later this year. The stores join Best Buy in catering to crowds of Apple fans looking to buy more than iPods at their local retailer.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — I hate having three different cameras to address various situations in life – iPhone for when I’m lazy, DSLR when I want to pretend I know how to take pretty pictures, and a GoPro for when I’m doing something adventurous. Thankfully it looks like I’m going to be able to discard at least one of those cameras from my bag now that the MiVue is in existence.

Readdle has issued an update to its popular Calendars app for iOS today, introducing an awesome new interface and a whole host of new features that allow you to add events quicker than ever before, sync even faster with Google Calendars, and use special keyboards for snappier calendar entries.