We’re still at least six months away from the debut of iOS 8, but designer Sam Beckett has come along already with a very enticing look at one hot feature that could be in store for all of us: interactive notifications. And boy, do they look rad.
Tweetbot is probably our favorite Twitter client for iOS, especially after Tweetbot 3 gave the app a major makeover for iOS 7.
It’s also one of our favorite Mac Twitter clients, but it tends to hover a bit behind Tweetbot for iPhone when it comes to features. A new update, however, narrows the gap a little bit, introducing a number of useful bug fixes. Don’t expect a major aesthetic overhaul, though.
In the Mac space, Dutch designer Martin Hajek is the crown prince of concepts, having done some of the most realistic and jawdropping renders we’ve ever seen for the iWatch, Mac Pro, iPhone 6 and more.
One product concept we thought Hajek bit the pooch on a little, though, was his idea of what an Apple HDTV would look like. His concept was black, chamfered and gorgeous… but also looked like Martin Hajek had never used a television in his life. But here comes Hajek’s Apple HDTV, Mach II… and this is an Apple television set I would buy.
When the iOS 7 jailbreak from Team Evad3rs was first released, it was buggy as all get-out, largely because it had been released without giving the larger jailbreak community any heads-up. Even Saurik, the keeper of the Cydia app store, wasn’t given warning… which means that when the iOS 7 jailbreak went live, MobileSubstrate — the mechanism through which jailbreak tweaks are installed — wasn’t updated for the 64-bit A7 chip, leaving many tweaks broken.
Team Evad3rs quickly updated their jailbreak to fix some bugs and give Saurik the hooks he needed to get MobileSubstrate working, but what if you already jailbroke? Well, you’re in luck: instead of restoring your device and jailbreaking it all over again, you can just download the Evasi0n 7.x untether package version 0.2 off Cydia.
If you’ve been clocking into Cult of Mac over your Christmas holidays, you’re probably already aware that the iOS 7 jailbreak is out thanks to the tireless work of Team Evad3rs. The jailbreak is compatible with iOS versions 7.0 through 7.0.4.
But what if you hate iOS 7? What if you love Scott Forstall and skeuomorphism? What if you’re still rocking iOS 6.1.3 or iOS 6.1.4, the last stable versions of iOS 6, on an A5+ device?
Well, good news: a jailbreak is imminent for the last versions of iOS before Jony Ive rebooted it.
There are still a ton of us who game on our Macs. If you’re one of those folks, you’ll know how great a platform the Mac can be. While there may not be as overwhelming an amount of games on Apple’s fantastic computer platform, the ones that are there are of high quality.
And? There are a ton more these days than ever before. 2013 was a great year to be a Mac gamer, with ports of a ton of the big titles of the year, including games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Sim City, and Bioshock Infinite.
A bunch of iOS games came to the bigger screens of the Mac, too, with fantastic, hit titles like tower offense, Anomaly 2 and Solstice Arena, a speed massively online battle arena (MOBA) game from Zynga that has some legs, and some smaller indie gems like Gentlemen! from Lucky Frame.
Whether you like the big blockbuster games or the more cerebral indie ones, the Mac platform has a plethora of gaming experiences to choose from. Here are the best ones we’ve seen.
There was a time when one of the few parts of your Mac that you could upgrade was the CPU, but recently, Apple has phased out CPU upgradeability in favor of slimmer form factors with soldered-in silicon chips.
One surprising exception to Apple’s stance against user upgradeability, however, is the 2013 Mac Pro, which is now confirmed to have a processor that can be upgraded by the user.
There are more than a few people who would claim that not much happened with Apple in 2013. After all, they spent the first six months of the year without releasing a single product, didn’t they?
Maybe that’s true, but in actuality, 2013 was one of the most exciting years in the Apple space in recent memory.
Don’t believe us? First of all, check out our round-up of the biggest stories in 2013, and then, take a detailed look at this incredible infographic by Kevin Choi, beautifully showing the most important milestones in Apple’s fiscal 2013, from the introduction of the 128GB iPad to the App Store’s 50th Billionth App Download, and beyond.
We can only show a small snatch of the infographic, due to its hugeness, but you can see the whole thing here on Google Drive.
Jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich is one of the most esteemed in the community, having created the excellent Grabby, Liveclock, and Display Recorder tweaks.
Now, Petrich’s first iOS 7 tweak is here, and it’s an incredible one. Called FlipControlCenter, Petrich’s brand new jailbreak tweak lets you rearrange and customize the layout of iOS 7 Control Center, with all new buttons.
There’s a lot of different metrics out there for gauging the success of personal electronics, some more suspect than others. Many companies, for example, favor units shipped to retailers, where as Apple favors the more realistic metric of units sold.
Perhaps the best metric of all, though, isn’t what is shipped or sold, but what people want Santa to bring them for Christmas. And by this metric, the iPad is king.
Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s Christmas CultCast time! This episode: a new deal in China hands Apple 770 million potential new customers; we cover some of the wackiest rumors of 2013; the Mac Pro delivers surprising results in performance tests; some of App Store’s best apps just went on sale; and we recall some of the best and worst gifts we’ve given or received!
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest Apple stories! Download new and past episodes of The CultCast on iTunes or hit play below and let the audio enjoyment commence.
Thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode. Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.
This week, Cult of Mac Magazine looks back on 2013 with our Year in Review issue.
Apple has once again overturned a few carts and made mincemeat of our best predictions for where the Cupertino company is heading next.
In addition to a rollicking review of the best — and weirdest — news, apps, games, rumors and the like, Cult of Mac’s resident gadfly Mike Elgan opines on what Apple will bring us in 2014.
Elgan also weighs in on whether those iWatches or other gadgets (iGlasses? Yeah or Nay?) will be anything we actually want. Reporter Alex Heath takes a look at Apple’s bumper crop of acquisitions, a record this year, as a signpost of what the new year may bring.
As always, we bring you the best in apps, games, movies and books out of all the stuff our staffers have watched, played with and read this year — but only the stuff that doesn’t suck.
Cult of Mac Magazine: Year in Review.
Apple has reopened its iTunes Connect developer portal following the Christmas period closure — during which it gave respite to the gatekeepers whose job it is to manually approve new apps and updates.
Back in November we reported on the UK resident thrown in jail for accidentally buying what turned out to be a clay iPad from his local supermarket.
Well, jump forward another month and here’s a similarly bizarre tale: the man who set out to buy an iPod Classic for his wife’s Christmas gift — only to discover a box full of erasers and index cards instead. Twice.
He’s appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and been called a “Johnny Come Lately” by Apple shareholders — and now Carl Icahn has also received a response from Apple regarding his proposed $50 billion buyback plan.
In short, Apple claims it is already returning a lot of money to its shareholders, and will continue to look at ways to do so — but doesn’t feel that it should be bound by Icahn’s suggested strategy.
Tim Cook was paid $4.25 million in 2013, according to a regulatory filing reported by Apple on Friday.
This figure broke down as $1.4 million in salary, and a further bonus bonus of $2.8 million. Cook’s other compensation included $52,721 in company contributions to his 401(k) account, life insurance premiums, and vacation cash-out.
Nokia’s HERE mapping app has been available in Apple’s App Store since the problematic launch of Apple Maps with iOS 6 last summer. But due to “recent changes in iOS 7”, Nokia has pulled HERE indefinitely.
Here’s what Nokia PR had to say:
As the new Mac Pro trickles out into people’s hands, lucky owners of the world’s most high tech trash can have started playing with the machine to see what it can do. Over at Other World Computing, they figured that since the 2013 Mac Pro can drive three 4k monitors, it should be able to drive six 27-inch displays at 2560 by 1440 pixels – right?
The verdict? Yes, it can. Shown here is the diminutive dark tower surrounded by six 27-inch displays, radiating and reflecting in all their glory. Pretty slick. Besides serving as the ultimate multi-tasking system, this capability can also help drive things like video walls in museums, sports arenas and other on-location installations. Just remember to leave room for the stack of external hard drives!
Update: I just did the math, and this is equivalent to twenty-one 11-inch MacBook Airs…
Source: Other World Computing
Gaming publisher extraordinaire Square Enix just emailed us here at Cult of Mac to tell us that it has added quite a few more titles, most of them from arcade game publisher, Taito, to the big iOS Holiday Sale.
Most of the games below are 50 to 60 percent off the usual prices, so if you’re in the market (or just the mood) for some great retro iOS games, this is your chance. The sale lasts through January 6, so don’t take too long to head on over to the App Store.
2013 is arguably the year where phone cameras, and specifically the uiPhone camera, got as good as regular cameras. A DSLR or awesome mirrorless camera will still give you better photos technically, but the iPhone is way more convenient, and will give most folks better results in most instances.
Even in the days of film, convenience could win over quality. Only an enthusiast of a pro would go anywhere near an SLR. In those days, most people used a compact camera with fixed focus (AF crept in in the 1980s), and the real cheapskates opted for crappy 110 or Disc cameras, which used tiny films — the equivalent of small sensors these days.
I own probably the best camera I’ve ever used, the Fujifilm X100S, and I’ve all but given up taking it out with me, saving it for portrait work where it really shines. For everything else, I use the iPhone. So what’s changed to make it so compelling?
You know how when you’re working with numbers on paper, and you draw a line from the result of one equation to kind of “link” the result to the beginnings of another? Like maybe you’re planning a New Year’s Eve party and you tot up the cost of drinks in one section, the fake mustaches in another, and the overall cost in yet another?
Well, with Tydlig you can do that with your iPad and iPhone. And even better, the linked numbers get updated in any linked equations.
One thing that’s still lacking in the Nerdiverse is a way to collect quotes which I clip from, well, from everywhere. How neat would it be if you could collect snippets of text from Kindle books, web pages, news articles and so on?
Very neat, is the correct answer.
Lightly comes pretty close, and with a new update, the clip-to-Evernote service can run in the background indefinitely, grabbing anything you copy to the clipboard. In theory at least.
There’s something utterly terrifying about the above image, which is the promo picture for the Shot Trak HD, an HD gun camera. There’s nothing wrong with hunting (as long as you’re actually eating the animals you’re killing), and I guess that recording the action is no different than clamping a GoPro to your helmet and jumping off a mountain wearing a squirrel suit.
But the idea that you’d sit around with friends and family to view the kill shot in the comfort of your own living room? That’s a short trip to Creepsville, man.
Heyday for the iPhone is a little like the great (and defunct) Everpix flashback feature, which showed you photos you took on this day in history. Only Heyday goes one better: it doesn’t just remember photos, it remembers places, and weaves the two together into a rather neat little automatic journal.
Wahoo has added yet another low-power Bluetooth sensor to its range of bike fitness gadgets. The RPM is a cadence sensor which works without magnets, or bulky attachments on the frame, and talks direct to compatible apps on your iPhone.