News - page 1376

Puzzles have been stumping people for quite some time. From jigsaw puzzles to the Rubik’s cube, people everywhere have been trying to tackle their fun challenges. The app Unroll Me features lots of levels at different difficulties having players help guide a white ball to its goal. Can you slide every piece correctly and quickly enough to get a high-score?

Take a look at Unroll Me and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application Unroll Me brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

Tim Cook has been named one of the top 50 greatest leaders in the world by Fortune. The 53-year-old Apple CEO is positioned at number 33 on the list, and the only American tech CEO above him is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at number 10.

Few CEOs can hold a candle to the wrath and fury of Steve Jobs, but when it comes to epic rants, Christian Bale can certainly hold his own against el Jobso, which might make him the perfect person to play Steve in the Aaron Sorkin written film from Sony.

Director David Finch is keen on getting the Dark Knight into Steve’s black turtleneck, according to a report from The Wrap, which says the director has pegged Bale as his top choice to play Steve Jobs.

It’s that time of year when office work comes to a stand still for weeks thanks to the NCAA’s annual celebration of sweat, leather, and nylon nets. The first games have just gotten underway and thanks to the glorious blessings of technology there are more ways to follow the March Madness action than ever before.

Here’s how to keep track of your favorite teams and your brackets on your iPhone, iPad and Mac:

Q) What’s safer than keeping your iPhone in a soft case to protect against unexpected falls and impacts? A) a soft case that just happens to give you accidental damage insurance.

That’s the neat concept behind iSkin’s new Claro GearCare combo, which combines the clarity of a hard plastic case, the protection of a soft-gel case and the security of, well, a good warranty service — thanks to an included GearCare Accidental Damage Warranty Service.

Samsung is back at it with a new ad that makes fun of the iPad. But this time the Korean company decided to go after all of its competition in one fell swoop; the Microsoft Surface and Amazon Kindle are also called out.

The whole ad consists of the same recycled arguments (you can’t do two things at once on an iPad, etc.), and there’s the usual flair of weirdness Samsung seems to be so fond of in its TV spots. My favorite exchange:

“So, your Samsung looks better than my iPad because it has got more pixels.”

“Right.”

“But mine has got the Retina thingy.”

Want to know what a library created by Apple might look like?

A public library in San Antonio, called BiblioTech, has become the U.S.’s first bookless public library — letting patrons check out five e-books at a time either on their home devices, or using the tablets or one of the 48 iMac computers featured in the Apple Store-inspired library.

Since updating to iOS 7.1, a number of users have complained of tethering issues — meaning that information doesn’t save when trying to entering custom APN settings into a device’s Cellular menu.

In the update, Apple has apparently disabled users from setting up Personal Hotspots on carriers who either aren’t official iPhone partners, or who don’t support the feature.

If you’re looking for a one-stop-shop to aggregate all your recent updates from various social networks, you may want to take a look at the newly-launched Recents iOS app.

Currently supporting Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, the app features a clean interface optimized for viewing different types of content — whether that be an article from Facebook or Twitter, or a photo or video from Instagram or Tumblr.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen recently dismissed iPhone users as “wall huggers” due to his suggestion that they constantly have to hug walls looking for electricity sockets to stop their phones running out of battery midday.

Two patents published Thursday show that Apple is not taking similar criticism lying down, as it actively investigating the possibility of intelligently discerning when, where and how we use our iOS devices — and utilizing this information to tweak performance to prolong battery life.

Pyle’s Rocket Torch is a combination Bluetooth speaker and flashlight. It also has an FM radio and a microSD-card slot, plus a carabiner to hang it from your bag, belt or shower head. Yes, shower head. This thing is water resistant too.

Imagine the chaos that could be achieved by connecting three iPhones to a single stereo using a three-way cable splitter, and letting everyone fight for the right to run the party.

Now imagine that you can do the same thing, only wirelessly. That’s the idea behind the 3Play, a Bluetooth receiver from Grace Digital that’ll let you and your friends all share the music you love simultaneously.” Simultaneously!

Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas bay.

Despite telling journalist John Markoff in 1980 that, “There’s no yacht in my future,” Jobs began working on building his dream sailing vessel around 2008 prior to his liver transplant. Jobs commissioned legendary French designer Philippe Starck to design the yacht, which cost more than €100 million to build, although Jobs died before he was able to use it.

Remember back in the 1980s and some of the 1990s, when Sony made the coolest stuff around? Tiny Walkmans, awesome Hi8 video cameras and even some decent slimline (PC) laptop computers. Then it all went wrong, when Apple reinvented the Walkman as the iPad.

I’m not trying to say that the new Ultra Premium Hi-Res Bluetooth Speaker is about to turn the company around, but it is a reminder of what we used to love about Sony.

USB Fever’s SuperWide iPhone lens has one unique feature, and you can probably see exactly what it is kist by lookingL the huge sprung loop that holds it on the iPhone and over the lens and makes it easy to slip on and off.

For the fourth year in a row, JailbreakCon will gather hackers, developers, and jailbreak enthusiasts from around the world under one roof. JailbreakCon 2014 will be held from April 12-13th at the South San Francisco Conference Center in sunny California.

Tickets are now on sale, and the lineup of speakers includes developers behind tweaks like Springtomize, and hackers like Cyril Cattiaux, who is better known as “pod2g.” The creator Cydia, Jay Freeman, will be speaking again as well.

If you’re a player of EA video games, better watch out: an EA Games server has been hacked to phish for your Apple ID. But here’s the good news: you had to be using Windows to get nailed by the attack.

Here’s a simple math question for you. How much more free space should a 16GB Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone have than an 8GB iPhone 5c?

If you said twice as much, wrong. That’s not Samsung math! Because in reality, an 8GB iPhone 5c has just 3.16 GB less usable storage than a flagship 16GB Galaxy S5.

Last month, Sir Lancelot’s Armor, a maker of screen protectors for smartphones, emailed Ars Technica and asked them if they would review the “first reusable screen protector for iPhones and iPads made out of bulletproof glass.”

So how bulletproof was their screen protector? Ars Technica put it to the test the only way they knew how… by firing a full clip from a Beretta into it at the range. Here’s how it did.

The Settings app in iOS is starting feel a bit crowded as each new update seems to bringing new tweaks and options to the main board and deeper menu. Control Center added quick access to key parts of the Settings maze, but we wouldn’t mind if Apple added this simple ‘Search Settings’ feature to iOS 8.

Rather than plunging multiple steps deep into the Settings app, this concept from Christoph Fahlbusch would bring the pull-down search bar into the Settings app, making it consistent with the ‘Search iPhone’ UI. It’d come in handy for quick tweaks, especially for less advanced users who are still trying to figure out where to turn on emjois.

Source: Dribble

iTunes Radio still has a long way to go before it catches up with Pandora’s number of subscribers, but in an effort to keep up with increasing royalty costs, Pandora announced this morning that it’s bumping up the monthly subscription price for Pandora One.

Starting in May new subscribers will have to pay $4.99 per month if they want their music stream ad free, which is still cheaper than competitors like Spotify and Rdio (both $9.99 per month).

Apple’s alternative, iTunes Radio is ad-free with $24.99 annual iTunes Match subscription, but Pandora is deciding to just drop the annual subscription option altogether.

Here’s a breakdown of the pricing changes:

The science of the human body is something complicated, yet truly amazing. While the world leaves bodies prone to sickness, white blood cells can help to fight them. In the physics arcade game Microtrip players must help a blob trek its way through a strange body collecting white cells to stay alive. Do you think you can avoid all monsters standing in your way?

Take a look at Microtrip and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application Microtrip brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

The LA Unified School District made headlines when it pledged to make it rain iPads on students by spending $1 billion on Apple’s tablets, but teachers are more concerned of the rain leaking through their classroom roofs.

The school district’s initiative is aimed to enhance students educational experience but a number of angry teachers have started a ‘Repairs, Not iPads‘ page on Facebook filled with pictures of everything from rat feces on desks, broken toilets, dead mice, termite infestations, leaky roofs and more, along with a demand that district spend money on much needed repairs before iPads.

So maybe one night you’re stumbling to your car and realize you really shouldn’t be driving. And also you’re so drunk that Siri can’t understand you. And the buttons in your contact list are so small.

Enter Too Drunk To Drive, an app that hopes to keep you from ending up dead in a molten hell of metal and glass. You preprogram it with the numbers of your local cab company or a reliable friend, and then all you have to do is plunk your drunken thumb down on one of the app’s two enormous and clearly labeled buttons.

Giving the other person directions is still up to you, though. So good luck with that.

Source:Too Drunk To Drive – Free | Steffen Lund Andersen

Recently Cult of Mac described how among Siri’s Easter eggs is a whole back story — programmed by her creators, and accessible by asking just the right questions.

Beginning life as a five-year DARPA-backed project to build an intelligent virtual assistant, Siri certainly has some stories to tell: if only we could gain access to them.

When I wrote my story a couple of weeks ago, I asked readers to send in any insights they managed to unlock. Dallas-based tech columnist and CoM reader Jim Rossman read the article and sent in some interesting screenshots from his own conversations with Siri — revealing some insights that go beyond her usual “I was designed by Apple in California” spiel.