Between iTunes Radio, Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio, do you feel as if you don’t have enough options for streaming music? Well, good news: Beats Music — the new streaming service previously known as “Project Daisy” by the most overrated headphone manufacturer out there — will reportedly launch on January 21st.
Unfortunately, when the Evasi0n jailbreak was released, the team behind it didn’t reach out to members of the jailbreak community, leading to an initial release that didn’t support Cydia, Mobile Substrate, and had a number of bugs that could cause unfortunate boot loops, especially on the iPad mini with Retina Display.
Yesterday, Team Evasi0n released a new version of their jailbreak that not only includes an updated Cydia bundle and fixes the iPad mini boot loop, but also makes the tool compatible with iOS 7.1 beta 3 so that Apple’s latest iOS beta can be jailbroken. That probably won’t last for long — Apple is likely to close the hole that makes the Evasi0n jailbreak possible when iOS 7.1 is released to the masses — but it’s nice for the time being.
The Evasi0n jailbreak may have opened up iOS 7 devices to Cydia tweaks, but due to the fact that Apple’s new A7 chip is 64-bit, many of the most popular tweaks have needed to be upgraded to support devices like the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display.
One of the more popular reasons to jailbreak your device is Winterboard, a jailbreak tweak that makes you change the way iOS looks. For example, you can use Winterboard to make iOS look and feel like Windows Phone, Android, or even your Mac. But because of the aforementioned lack of 64-bit support, Winterboard didn’t work on the newest (jailbroken) iOS devices.
According to Cydia gatekeeper Jay Freeman, otherwise known as Saurik, the newest version of Winterboard is compatabile with 64-bit ARM processors, and should allow you to reskin any device with an A7 chip. You can download the update on Cydia.
Early in 2013, the old aluminum Mac Pro was pulled from sale in the European Union due to the fact that their pro-level desktop fell afoul of new E.U. regulations that prohibit computers from having fans that spin so fast they can cut off your fingers. Really!
Instead of opting to redesign the old Mac Pro, Apple decided to pull it from sale for a few months until the new models made their debut. Since the new Mac Pro doesn’t have exposed fans, customers in Europe can now order Apple’s super-powerful trashcan Mac through Apple’s online store, and will start receiving their units in February. Neat!
This time on The CultCast: we’re live from Las Vegas and ready to report the best and worst tech from the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show! We’ll call out some of our favorite Apple accessories too, and some will surprise you. Plus, did you hear about the Michael Bay meltdown at the Samsung keynote? Well we were in the room when things got weird… let us regale you with the whole story.
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Enjoy a few laughs whilst getting caught up on 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 audio adventure begin.
Product designer Iain Finlay shows off his creation, Audiofly's first set of cans. Photo: Eli Milchman
LAS VEGAS — Audiofly has been busy since we last visited the company at CES two years ago. This year, Audiofly is finally ready to ship its long-promised AF140, albeit with a radical redesign, and are introducing the quad-driver AF180.
The Aussie crew also showed us the over-the-ear set of cans they’ve been working on.
LAS VEGAS — You know those convertible, touchscreen Windows laptops with screens that flip around and do all kinds of twisty tricks? iHome has a new keyboard case that turns the iPad Air and Retina iPad Mini into one of those.
LAS VEGAS — Walking the long, dusty road between the Encore Hotel and the CES Convention Center, I was approached by two guys. They offered to give me a ride. I know I should never accept rides from strangers but their offer was to good to pass up. It was the most creative and original marketing ploy I’ve seen at CES.
This week, Cult of Mac Magazine takes you to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, CES.
Our intrepid writers — Leander Kahney, Traci Dauphin, Alex Heath, Buster Heine, Eli Milchman and Erfon Elijah — tested smart toothbrushes, electric bikes and heat-sensing iPhone cases.
All while balancing cocktails!
Our CES roundup brings you the best of what was on show in Vegas so you know which gadgets to look forward to in the spring.
As always, we’ve also got the best in new apps, music, books and movies on iTunes, plus the inside scoop from a real Apple Genius on what goes on behind the slick facade of the retail stores.
Nessie by Blue Microphones Category: USB Microphone Works With: iMac, MacBook Price: $99.95
A seriously condensed condenser mic, Blue’s Nessie (named after the famous Loch Ness monster) advertises itself as one of the premier USB microphones out there, a device capable of capturing studio-quality recordings for everything from polished music demos to broadcast-standard voiceovers.
Siri has a dark side. Try to send a text in a movie theater, and you might feel the life-destroying wrath of Apple’s perky AI helper.
That’s the message delivered in a new PSA-style video that’s the Alamo Drafthouse‘s latest salvo in the war on rude moviegoers. The creative clip, which will be shown ahead of screenings of Spike Jonze’s Her at the indie tastemaker’s theaters, uses the voice of Siri to send an anti-texting message.
Speaking to Apple employees who worked at the company during its first decade, the people who seemed most frustrated were the ones tasked with getting big business to buy Apple computers, instead of the IBM units they were used to. What a difference a day several decades makes.
Although Windows is still the operating system system you’ll find in most corporate and government offices today, a new study by Forrester Research shows how the popularity of iDevices is prompting corporate tech managers to change their traditional buying habits.
Yesterday came and went like any other day, but it was in fact the seventh anniversary of the iPhone launch, which took place back in 2007.
What better way to celebrate, then, than with a free game of Pac-Man, which was part of the first wave of games for the iPhone when the App Store first opened?
Panasonic, maker of everything from vacuum cleaners to bikes, can now count itself as a maker of awesome lenses. The brand-new Leica 42.5mm f1.2 for Micro Four Thirds cameras is not only impressive specs-wise (it’s an ultra-fast 85mm equivalent portrait lens) but by all accounts it takes some pretty amazing pictures.
Here’s another keyboard from Matias to get you through this post-CES Friday. This one is called the SecurePro, and it’s target market might be the smallest intersection of any Venn diagram ever: Users who want a stylish Bluetooth keyboard AND who require 128-bit AES encryption of its wireless connection.
We first reported on it back in May last year, and now Apple’s latest Beijing store has finally opened.
The store is located in China Central Place, a large mall area on the east side of Chaoyang district which is home to a number of high-fashion and other luxury brands.
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.