Photoful is a great photo-browsing app that offers an alternate – and in many ways better – view of your iOS photos. You can see all your pictures on one long scrolling timeline, and when it comes to adding captions and tags, Photoful makes iOS’ Photos app look like something that crawled out from under a PC.
From multimedia robots to genuinely stylish smartwatches, there’s a lot of tech at CES that falls into the “would like to have” category. There’s relatively little, however, that classifies as a genuine “must have.”
That may have changed with the appearance of the Finsix laptop charger, which used a high frequency switching technology developed at MIT to impressively shrink the size of a standard laptop charger to something that could charge your iPhone.
Cult of Mac reader Christian Kos wrote to ask a couple of questions about shooting photos on a camera and importing them to the iPad using the camera connection kit. Specifically, he wanted to know
If there was any difference between slurping the pictures into the iPad using the SD card adapter in the camera connection kit, or connecting the camera direct via USB cable and
Whether the iPad actually gets the full-res pictures from the camera (in Christian’s case, a Fujifilm X100S (great choice BTW!)
Danilo’s Command-C app is cool in many ways, but here’s just one thing it can do that’ll make you smile. With the app installed on both your Mac and your iPhone, you copy a URL on your Mac, click the menubar item for your iPhone, and your iPhone gets a notification. Whatever your copied is now on your iPhone’s clipboard, ready to paste, all without launching the iOS version of the app.
I tried to use Microsoft’s Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for a while, and it was indeed comfortable. However, the keys were squishy, and the unit itself made it seem like I had a black-painted Bantha-II cargo skiff on my desk.
The brand-new Matias Ergo Pro will fix both of those problems.
According to a new report, Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron could be responsible for assembling as many as half of Apple’s next generation iPhone 6 units.
The company is currently assembling the iPhone 5c and iPad mini, but if this news is to believed (it does cite an unidentified source) Apple’s reliance on Pegatron will grow in 2014 — with a new plant planned in Shanghai satellite city Kunshan in anticipation of an iPhone 6 manufacturing deal.
The aerodynamic Rukus Xtreme on the left, Rukus II on the right. Photo: Eli Milchman.
LAS VEGAS — Eton has improved the wedge-shaped, solar-powered Rukus Bluetooth speaker it introduced just over six months ago, and are now calling it the Rukus II; they’ve also built a second, bigger, badder (and more expensive) version they’ve naturally dubbed the Rukus Xtreme.
The Babolat Play is a tennis racquet for those of us who want to improve our game without having to hire a real coach. Those folks cost a lot of money!
For $399, though, you can purchase this new app-enabled, Bluetooth-connected, motion-sensing tennis racquet for your very own. The company has stuffed a ton of sensors into the handle of this thing without even affecting the balance or weight.
You can connect the racquet to your iPhone or iPad and get real-time feedback, or just let the Babolat Play record your performance information and sync it up later for analysis.
The Babolat Play is available now in the US, and should release worldwide very soon.
There’s nothing better than a good coach for any sport. When learning how to be good at something like basketball, you need good feedback and suggestions based on how you perform. It’s a dynamic process for sure.
94Fifty thinks so, too, and decided to create a smart basketball that pairs with a free app for your iPhone and iPad. The ball is loaded with sensors and bluetooth and gets you instant, quality feedback on how you’re tossing the rock to the hoop.
The 94Fifty Smart Sensor Basketball will run you $295 at Apple retail stores or online, while the app is free for anyone to download, though it won’t do you a whole lot of good without the ball.
New Withings Aura helps you make the most of your sleepy time. Photo: Cult of Mac
LAS VEGAS — If you’ve ever had trouble falling asleep, or you’ve felt crappy waking up, it might be worth your while to check out the Withings Aura. The new app-enabled sleep machine comes from the folks that brought you other fitness gadgets like the Wi-Fi Body Scale and the Pulse.
When AT&T announced it’s new Sponsored Data program on Monday, they raised the grim spectre of Net Neutraility by suggesting a plan that would let advertisers pay for data. What people worried about was that AT&T’s new plan would slow data connections to non-partner sites, a big no-no according to the FCC.
So what does the FCC think of all this? Asked about AT&T’s new plans at CES, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was surprisingly chill about the whole thing: let’s just wait and see before freaking out, shall we?
First debuted in 2005, the bring-your-own-monitor Mac mini has always been Apple’s entry-level Mac desktop, but at an entry level price starting at $599, the Mac mini isn’t exactly “cheap” compared to competing budget desktops out there.
Doubtlessly, Apple doesn’t consider this a problem — they’ve never tried to compete in the race to the bottom — but what if Apple did release a Mac mini that was cheaper? Over at Letemsvetemapplem.eu, they’ve taken a crack at imagining what such a 2014 Mac mini would look like, and they think it would look a lot like a double-stuffed Apple TV, and start at just $399.
More details below, including a close-up of the concept.
One of the maddeningly tiny details of iOS that has been completely broken for ages is the fact that page indicators — those little bubbles you see at the bottom of the home screen indicating there are more pages of apps to swipe to — have been off-center.
In fact, while the indicators have been screwed up since iOS 3.1.3 — a journey of drifting that seems to have started when Apple decided to put Spotlight search in iOS — iOS 7.1 is finally set to put things right, perfectly centering the page indicators for the first time in four years. You can all stop rioting in the streets now.
iOS can support dynamic icons: just look at the subtly changing clock icon in iOS 7, where the minute hands change in real-time throughout the day according to the time. So why not do the same with weather?
It’s unknown why Apple didn’t think of this first, but if you have a jailbroken iOS 7 device, you can now have a live Weather icon anyway, thanks to a new jailbreak tweak.
Particularly if you grew up in the 1980s, you’ll be familiar with games like the Castlevania series which ask the player to invade a villain’s lair.
Adult Swim’s new strategy game Castle Doombad cleverly turns that concept on its head: with gamers taking on the role of the princess-kidnapping Dr. Lord Evilstein, tasked with defending his tower against the various heroes who try and save the day.
Chinese microblogging site Weibo (think a combination of Twitter and Facebook) has been circulating these images — reportedly showing the metal housing for a supposed iPhone 6.
Prepare to have you socks blown off, and to know the exact GPS coordinates of the exact spot where those socks land. How? With Dr. Drang’s new Pythonista scripts which grabs your current location and writes it down in plain-text form. Better still, it does this using the Drafts app, so you can add location stamps to anything you like – journal entries, notes, or even pictures of your socks, over there in the corner of the room.
Chinese appliance maker Haier has announced that it has become the first company of its kind to be accepted into Apple’s MFi licensing program, guaranteeing ease-of-use and compatibility with iOS devices.
“Haier’s Tianzun [cabinet air conditioning unit] is the first air conditioner and white good that is authorized by Apple’s MFi program,” noted the company’s official press release — going on to claim that, “Haier will use this technology in the other Haier products, such as water heaters, ovens, intelligent home accessories and the like.”
WriteRight is an iPad writing app that helps you with your, uh… words and stops you having to just use the same… mmm… words… Over and over. Instead of struggling to come up with alternative words to the word “word” all the time, you just ask WriteRight for “synonyms, antonyms and phraseology.”
Did somebody send you a RAW photo file and you just don’t know what to do with it? Do you need to send your latest DSLR shoot from your Dropbox, only your friend/family member/client can’t be trusted with RAW files, and you only have your iPhone on hand?
Fear not, becasue the already awesome CloudConvert will now turn any RAW file into any regular image format, in the cloud, and save it back to the cloud for you.
According to Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White earlier this year, Apple’s busy working on an “iRing" finger ring we’ll use to control our Apple devices with. The suggestion was so preposterous that even the usually poker-faced Tim Cook cracked a joke about it.
The reality is that much of the “digital hub” functionality that an iRing would have brought will likely be carried out by the iWatch when it finally surfaces. For those who really wanted this rumor to be true, however, never fear: several companies have created their own third-party iRings to bring this rumor to life.
While those predictions may not have come to fruition just yet, music technology company IK Multimedia is launching an iRing of its own that will allow people to perform specific tasks on their iOS devices using gestures.
iPhone users can now enjoy Spotify music for free, as long as you’re happy with shuffling through your tune. And even better news for iPad owners: the tablet version of the app treats you iPad as if it were a desktop machine, letting your listen to any music you like.
CES 2014 has been an orgy of “wearable” crap. Smartwatches, life-logging cameras, even 50-inch TVs can now be worn on your body. But if you’re looking for the future of personal tech, then look at the Speaker Band from Bem Wireless. If you thought teens were annoying now, with their mobile phones and tinny music, then wait until they get hold of this wrist-mounted speaker.
Arcam, the UK high-end audio company, has a little nugget to tempt audiophiles. It’s called the miniBlink, and it’s a “hi-def” Bluetooth audio adapter with a proper built-in DAC. What? Don’t fret. It just means you can beam Bluetooth audio to your stereo without it sounding crappy.
In news to be filed under L for “late to the party” Staples is finally selling the iPad Air and iPad Mini on its physical store shelves.
Phone up your local Staples, and you’ll hear a message informing you that the iPad is available both online and in the chain’s brick-and-mortar outlets. Prior to this, the tablets were only available through Staples’ online ordering service.