The little BOLT Charger Battery is as clever as it is good looking. The USB wall-charger packs a backup battery into its tiny body, as body that leads its maker to call it the “The World’s Smallest Wall Charger + Battery Backup.”
I’m not sure how true that it, but who cares? It fits in your pocket and it’ll juice your iPhone twice, even without a wall to shove it into.
The already-great GeoTagr app has been updated to v4.4. This doesn’t sound like much, but there’s one huge new feature in this update: support for geotagging photos stored in your iPhone or iPad’s local photo library.
Have UK Apple users seen the end of 69p app downloads?
Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has closed a tax loophole, which may result in iTunes and App Store prices in the UK rising by as much as 20% from 2015. The loophole meant that international companies including Apple were able to sell digital content in Britain through Luxemburg, where tax is as low as 3% — compared to the 20% it is charged at in the UK.
The Tactivo Mini case for the iPad mini lets you lock down apps so they can only be used when you insert a smart-card into a slot on the back. The idea is that businesses and government agencies can secure software on mobile devices, which sounds like a neat idea.
RoomScan is a crazy app that seems like it should never work. It lets you use your iPhone to measure the rooms in your home and turn them into floor plans, and all you have to do is walk around and tap the iPhone on the walls.
Apple has continued rolling out its 3D Flyover support to Maps users — adding Perth (Australia), Saint-Tropez (France) and Cordova (Spain) to its list of available cities.
Apple and Comcast are in the early stages of negotiating a streaming TV service, according to The Wall Street Journal. The service “would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast’s cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web.”
Rumors have been saying that Apple is working on a TV streaming product for years, and this latest report suggests that Apple is concerned about its customers have enough bandwidth to make the experience worthwhile at home.
We’re big fans of the Philips Hue line of smart lightbulbs controllable with a slick, full-featured iOS app, but there’s no doubt it’s a pricey proposition for most people, with a single Hue bulb costing as much as $60.
If you want smart lighting in your home for about half the price, then, pay attention to what LG is doing. They have just announced their own smart bulb system called the LG Smart Lighting system, and each bulb will cost just $32.
It looks like paying for burgers using your iPhone is the next big trend in fast food.
Following Burger King’s announcement last week that it would be releasing a dedicate mobile app, Wendy’s has followed suit, unveiling their own iPhone-based payment app that will allow you to pay for Big Bacon Classics at any of Wendy’s 5,800 locations.
Do you have a lot of reliability issues with your iPhone or iPad? You might want to make haste to upgrade to iOS 7.1. According to a prominent app monitoring firm, iOS 7.1 is the least crash prone and most stable version of iOS yet.
Last week, Alex Kibkalo, a former Microsoft employee living in Lebanon, was arrested on charges that he had sold the Windows 8 source code in retaliation for a bad performance review. What was most shocking about the arrest was the means by which Microsoft gathered evidence pinning the crime on Kibkalo: they went into his personal Hotmail account and read his email to figure out it was him, without a court order to do so.
Apple would never do something like that by reading iCloud email without a court order, right? It’s not that simple, actually. Like Hotmail, Yahoo, and other webmail providers, iCloud’s terms of service specify that Apple reserves the right to read your email at any time.
Want to supercharge your stock music player? If you’re on a jailbroken iPhone, check out Aria. It’s a new Cydia tweak that adds a number of new improvements to the stock Music.app in iOS 7.1, including the ability to see albums in a grid view, a new ‘Now Playing’ interface (like in Apple’s Remote app), an ‘Endless Playing’ feature that will start a shuffled play after an album ends, improved lyrics views, and a number of UI improvements, including gestural support.
From a tectonic perspective, any time Apple releases a new version of iOS, it’s like an Earthquake hit the internet. But you might be surprised by how high on the Richter Scale an Apple iOS release is.
This chart by network management services provider Deepfield shows just how big of a seismic event the release of iOS 71 was. From almost zero traffic, iOS 7.1 caused traffic to spike to over 1 terrabyte of data per second… and that’s just a partial view of the effect iOS 7.1 had on the world’s networks. Imagine what this chart will look like when iOS 8 comes around?
Via: GigaOm
Blackberry — which recently celebrated the notable achievement of a zero percent marketshare in the smartphone space — has turned into a patent troll now. In suing Ryan Seacrest’s Typo iPhone Keyboard case (which gives the iPhone a physical QWERTY style keyboard which can be slide onto the screen when necessary) now claims that it is a “deliberate” copy of Blackberry that violates three patents.
Of the endless barrage of clones that emerged after Flappy Bird’s surprise success, Flapthulhu is the one that I go back to over and over again. Not only is it a clever parody of both the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Flappy Bird phenomenon in general, but it’s a genuinely better game than Flappy Bird, with a subverseive sense of humor, fantastic 8-bit style graphics great style. Now, Flapthulhu has gotten better thanks to a version 2.0 update, which adds to major new features.
Consumers update their iPhones at a fairly aggressive pace: when a contract expires, usually within two years, most consumers immediately upgrade to another one. But that’s not the way people upgrade their iPhones… in fact, it’s looking like iPads might be, for most consumers, more like Macs, which are replaced every 2-4 years.
The MacBook Air already feels impossibly thin and light, but it’s set to get even thinner and lighter if a rumor out of Asia is to be believed.
We’ll admit we’ve called the iPhone 5c a flop more than a few times. But it’s important to remember that what is a flop for Apple would be a huge success by the standards of any other company, which is why the iPhone 5c outsold every Blackberry, Windows Phone and Android flagship in Q4.
That’s not to say that the iPhone 5c’s sales are what Apple wants it to be. In the most recent quarterly earnings conference call, Tim Cook himself admitted that iPhone 5c demand “turned out to be different than we thought.” Even though the iPhone 5c is selling well according to the standards of the rest of the smartphone industry, you have to wonder if even for $100 less, people would really prever a colorful plastic iPhone 5c than a premium-feeling iPhone 5. Even people opting for year old miles are buying an iPhone to get a high-end product, and the major failing of the iPhone 5c seems to be the plastic just doesn’t satisfy that requirement. What do you think?
Thanks to a glitch in iOS 7, it was possible to put folders inside of other folders. With iOS 7.1, Apple fixed the glitch, but lo and behold, they seem to have missed an even bigger glitch that makes it much easier to accomplish the same thing. Here’s how.
In the Marvel universe, Captain America is a World War II era super soldier who happens to get frozen in ice, only to dethaw in modern times. As such, there’s a lot he’s missed out on, and in the latest Captain America film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we get a quick list of Captain America’s notebook, tracking the things he doesn’t “get.”
Lo and behold, Steve Jobs and Apple made the list, alongside Nirvana, Rocky, Thai Food, the moon landing, and — inexplicably — I Love Lucy.
Via: Reddit
Secret sauce—it’s the reason Apple keeps winning where others fail, and on our newest CultCast, we discuss the recipe that keeps Apple ahead of the pack. Plus, iOS 8 rumors detail some powerful new features; whispers of an impossibly thin iPhone 6; A-list musicians praise Pono as the digital music player for audiophiles; iPad 4 makes a comeback; and we reveal our favorite Cult movies on a all-new Get To Know Your Cultist!
Guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.
And thanks to FreshBooks for sponsoring this episode! That’s right, Fresbooks the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners – just like you – who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free 60 days, and enter “CultCast” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.
Show notes up next!
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CultCast #118 – The Secret Sauce
Leander Kahney – Cult of Mac Editor-in-Chief, loyal subject of the Queen.
Erfon Elijah – Cult of Mac writer and host of The CultCast.
Buster Heine – Cult of Mac writer and community manager.
iOS 8 Apple considers Notification Center Messages tweaks removing Game Center app (Discussion)
Pegatron And Foxconn Gearing Up For iPhone 6 Production [Rumor]
Apple Retires iPad 2, Replaces It With Retina Display Model
Apple Confirms The 8GB iPhone 5c Will Not Be Sold In The U.S.
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple fanpeople are gearing up for MacWorld/iWorld 2014 here on March 27-29, and while we’ll be at Moscone West live to cover all the happenings of this year’s show, it’d be so much better if some fans join in on the fun.You can hang out with us at the “6 About To Break” contest and join the mayhem for a live CultCast recording session, too.
No tickets? We’ve got you covered.
We’re giving away two free tickets to Cult of Mac readers to MacWorld/iWorld 2014. To enter, just tweet why Macs rock your world and include a shoutout to our iPad publication, Cult of Mac Magazine, with the hashtag #CultofMacMag.
The contest is open to all readers, but doesn’t include travel or hotel. Winners will be announced Monday morning at 10AM PST.
Good luck!
Update: Our two winners have been selected. Congratulations Andrea Holtz and Paul Burt on winning free tickets to MacWorld/iWorld 2014 and thanks to everyone who entered the contest.
Remember Twitter’s #music app? It was basically D.O.A. when it launched in the App Store last summer, and it hasn’t been updated since September.
Twitter has announced that it is officially pulling the plug today. The app will no longer be available for download after this afternoon. For those already using it, the service will work until April 18th.
Originally designed as a way to discover music based on who you follow and trends on Twitter, #music never really caught on. Farewell #music, we hardly knew you.
Source: Twitter
Via: Engadget
The appropriately named Transit app for iPhone has already gotten a lot of love in the App Store, including Editor’s Choice, and it is getting featured again because of a major update that’s out today.
Transit is designed to provide you with realtime data on public bus and train systems in 62 metropolitan areas around the world. Today’s update includes a more streamlined way of figuring out the right route to take, the ability to search locations using stop codes, a drastically improved offline mode, and more.
Here’s the full list of changes:
Apple has been talking to record label executives about launching its own on-demand streaming service, according to a new report from Billboard. In what would certainly be a shocking turn of events, Apple is allegedly considering an iTunes app for Android as well.
“The surprising discussions are part of a multi-pronged strategy to deal with the double-digit decline in U.S. download sales at Apple’s iTunes Music Store,” according to the report.