News - page 1416

 Kanto’s YU2s seem to come from a time when speakers were solid, simple structures; proud temples to sound that said of their owners, Hey, I’m serious about music, and I know what I’m doing. Aesthetics were important, of course, but unquestioningly took a backseat to sound. Sound was king.

If you haven’t heard of Kanto before, that’s OK — the Canadian outfit just sprouted up in the Vancouver suburbs around five years ago. The YU2s are Kanto’s latest speakers, the smallest of their lineup of a half-dozen or so, and they’re designed to fit unobtrusively on a bookshelf or desk and play music from your computer or mobile device.

The YU2’s performance during our review, however, was nothing short of astonishing — and they could very capably substitute for larger speakers in a variety of roles. For those looking to elevate their desktop setup even further, pairing these speakers with a NuPhy Air75 V2 could create a seamless and high-quality workspace.

Christmas came early this morning for jailbreakers who have been waiting for iOS 7 to be cracked. Today the Evad3rs, the same group of hackers behind the iOS 6 jailbreak, released the full iOS 7 untethered jailbreak to everyone’s surprise.

Evasi0n7 is available now for free, but here’s why you should wait to jailbreak your iOS 7 device:

Apple, Google and Microsoft all want to be your phone company. But with both competitors’ communication offerings in disarray, Apple has an opportunity to offer the best, most elegant and integrated communication platform.

All they have to do is keep moving in their current direction, make a couple of key rumors come true and keep Steve Jobs’ promise about FaceTime.

On our all-new CultCast: Apple has a new Christmas commercial and some are hailing it as their best ad yet; Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful computer ever; Beyonce’s iTunes-only album release breaks all the records; an alarming new study shows pervs can use your Mac’s camera to peep your naked bod; and we choose on our favorite Christmas movies of all time!

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 DigiDNA and MacUpdate for sponsoring this episode. Need an easy way to wirelessly transfer movies, music, and data to and from your iDevice? You need DiskAid. Plus check out Macupdate’s new holiday app bundle and get $400 worth great apps for only $40.

Cult of Mac Magazine’s Unboxing Issue is a super-sized, mega edition packed full of good advice for your new device, whether you’re giving or getting.

We’ve got guides on how to set up your brand new iPhone and iPad, what apps and games you need as well as the accessories Cult of Mac reviewers won’t leave home without.

There is something unimportant and yet oh-so-important about choosing the right way to carry around your laptop.

Apple purists likely hate anything which covers up their beloved machines for even the shortest amount of time. For the rest of us, however, it’s about finding the most attractive way possible to transport your laptop without being mugged in the process.

The famous Square Enix tax, defined as the premium price the Japanese video game company has always charged for its ports of classic and new RPG games on the iTunes App Store, seems to be up–for a while, at least.

We’re talking huge discounts, like recently released Deus Ex: The Fall, originally debuting at seven bucks, now only $0.99, and The World Ends With You (perhaps my favorite Square Enix game of all time) at half the regular $20 price.

How about Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, classics in the role playing game genre, at half off, each going for $3.99 on the App Store? There are eight other Final Fantasy titles on sale, as well. Yeah, I thought you’d like that.

One of the most phenomenal — and frankly, underrated — aspects of the handheld computing revolution ushered in by the iPhone and its ilk is how much power, in the form of knowledge, has been placed, literally, in people’s hands.

Case in point: iCitizen is a new, free app that clearly and elegantly places pretty much all the information you need to know in order to make informed voting decisions — right in the palm of your hand. There you go: Direct democracy in the palm of your hand, courtesy of the iPhone (and the app’s developer).

Sure, The Room Two is a sequel to Fireproof Games’ original effort, The Room, but more of the same, with bigger and better puzzles is most definitely not the worst thing in the world.

Check out our video of the tutorial level of The Room Two below to get a sense of the game, and decide whether you’ll want to purchase the game right away.

Wait, what am I saying? Of course you’re going to want to.

Aspyr has figured out how to shrink an entire galaxy (one far, far away, of course) onto the iPhone and iPod; all the Wookies, Jawas, Jedis, Tusken Raiders and bounty hunters — all now made tinier as Aspyr updates the previously iPad-only Knights of the Old Republic as a Universal App.

To celebrate this feat of quantum mechanics (or simple coding, your pick) Aspyr has slashed the app’s price in half, from $10 to $5.

New Years resolutions are just around the corner and if running if your go-to method for shedding the holiday pounds, Nike+ just added a coaching feature to its running app that promises to whip you into shape.

The free app allows users to create running goals like taking on your first 5k, 10k, half-marathon, or marathon, and then lays out a running regiment for you up until the big day of the race. Nike+ Coach trains users by mixing in various distances and running paces throughout you jog and can setup running reminds for you to help get you off the couch.

Here’s what’s new:

55 percent of Hinge users are looking to find a relationship, according to internal user surveys by the app developer. 35 percent want to find good dates. Only 5 percent admit to just wanting a hookup.

That’s a huge contrast from other apps like OK Cupid or Tinder, said Hinge developer Justin McLeod, who spoke to Cult of Mac over Skype.

His goal, he said, was to create a much better dating app, one that was just as easy to join as Tinder, but with more quality results. It seems to be working, as the app is growing by 10 percent every week.

Things has been a staple to-do app on iOS and OS X since the iPhone app was first released back in 2008. And despite its infamously slow update cycle, it remains popular.

The Apple Design Award-winning app has not yet received its major iOS 7 redesign, but today Cultured Code has announced that Things 3 will be coming “as early as possible in 2014.”

On top of that, Cultured Code is also announcing that Things has sold one million copies to date.

We’ve shown you plenty of app deals, but this one may be the best. App Santa is a new project from some of the best and most popular indie iOS developers. It includes 15 award-winning apps that have been discounted for Christmas, like Clear, Tweetbot, 1Password, and Day One.

Here’s the full list:

Remember that story we ran recently about the Grinch Apple Store that stole Christmas?

For those who don’t recall, the news item in question concerned a giant Christmas tree  in shopping area De Passage of Netherlands city The Hague, which had been removed at Apple’s request so as not to obscure the entrance of its new store.

Just as in real life — where trouble-making siblings get more attention than quiet, studious ones — it seems that everyone is speculating about the supposed low sales of the iPhone 5c, while ignoring the fact that the iPhone 5s is ticking along nicely.

Very nicely, in fact, according to Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Chris Caso, who says that sales of the 5s haven’t fallen off since launch — and are more than offsetting weak demand for the 5c.

Investors and other interested parties may have an explanation for Apple’s M.I.A. deal with China Mobile — and that explanation could be lower-than-expected iPhone 5c sales.

That’s according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who suggests that this is the reason a deal between the two parties has yet to be finalized.

It’s come a long way from its disastrous early days (although there is still the occasional tendency to direct someone the wrong way up an airport taxiway), but Apple Maps may finally be taking the lead over its competitors — if you’re inclined to believe Apple’s latest patent.

The patent — recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office — was filed May 31 this year, and applies to an “Interactive Map” application, which would display multiple layers of information regarding local landmarks.

The built-in iOS Reminders app has two big advantages: it’s ubiquitous, and it syncs flawlessly between devices. This makes it a great back end for other apps’ reminder systems, which is handy as the reminders app is a nightmare. Viewing and checking off completed tasks is fine, but creating them? Even Siri starts to seem attractive.

Luckily, you can now use an app called This Week to create and use your reminders. Better still, it excels at adding and managing due dates, which is the weak point of Reminders’ already weak task-creation offering.

Having issues with the VPN service for OS X Server Mavericks not accepting L2TP connections?

According to Apple the problem can happen if the client and server are behind different network address translation (NAT) gateways.

What would happen if you took a dork-o-lithic nylon “Executive Laptop Case” and tossed it onto a (giant) blender with a Chrome messenger bag? Well, I guess the blender would choke and break, but if you used a metaphorical blender then you’d end up with a slurry that could be turned into the Boa Nerve, a bag designed to take you “from the conference room to your bike.”

Coinciding with the launch of the redesigned Mac Pro and the upgrade to Final Cut Pro X, Apple’s pro digital audio workstation Logic Pro X has also received a major update — in the form of a Mac Pro-optimized version number 10.0.5.

The IMDB app has finally – finally – been updated to fit in with iOS 7’s tasteful decor. Heavy users of the app won’t really notice anything different in the layout, which remains as easy to use as ever (and way better than the terrible web version), but everyone will appreciate the new lick of paint, and the other new features that have been added to v4.0.

Speaking of remote-control and movies, Filmic Remote is a new companion app for the fantastic-but-fugly iOS movie-shooting app, Filmic.

As you will have guessed from the name, Filmic Remote lets you use one iOS device to remote control the Filmic app running on another iOS device.

AirWeb is web browser for your Apple TV. It uses your iPhone or iPad as a control and shows the results on the big screen via AirPlay, letting you quickly browse to any site using your multitouch screen.

You know hellish it is to watch somebody else browse the web as they double-click links and circle their cursor/finger around the page as they search for something to click? AirWeb solves that problem.