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.
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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.
Does the recent spat over Writer Pro and its software-patenting shenanigans leave you wishing you could use its beautiful Nitti Light font in a different developer’s app? Or are you so scarred by years of using Microsoft Word that you can’t concentrate unless you’re staring at a page of Times New Roman?
Fear not, friends, because The Soulmen have the answer. Hidden in the latest update to Daedalus Touch is a way to import any font you like. Yup, I’m talking about Comic Sans on iOS.
The barrier to entry for emulating classic games on a Mac has always been pretty high, until now. OpenEmu is an amazing retro game emulator for the Mac that has been literally years in the making, and it’s finally available for everyone to download and use for free.
Apple has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars by the country’s Fair Trade Commission for illegally fixing iPhone prices with Japanese carriers. At only $670,000 U.S, the fine is chump change for Apple, but the allegations are serious.
In Japan and other Asian countries, an annual tradition that many retailers participate in during the holidays is called “Fukubukuro,” commonly referred to as “lucky” or “mystery” bags.
The concept is simple: you put together bags of heavily discounted products at random and sell them to customers who don’t know exactly what they’re getting. It may sound weird to westerners, but if you really think about it, an overweight old man in a bright robe coming down your chimney at night is a lot weirder.
Anyway, Apple Japan is participating in the tradition again this year, and it has confirmed the special sale’s kickoff date of January 2nd. Lucky Bags will cost 36,000 yen, or around $345. Bags usually contain items like iPods, random accessories and t-shirts, but customers have received more expensive hardware like iPads and even MacBooks in years past.
Supplies are limited, so Apple stores in Japan will definitely have lines of eager customers after New Years.
Source: Apple
This is the first year Apple has made its 12 Days of Gifts app available for U.S customers, and to kick things off the company is giving away a free EP of Justin Timberlake’s performance at the 2013 iTunes Festival.
The iOS app will be giving away a free gift (music, iBooks, apps, movies, etc.) once a day until January 6th. A new single from popular artist Lorde was released as a separate, bonus giveaway through the app last week.
Four exclusive tracks and two accompanying videos from Justin Timberlake’s concert are available for download. Once you tap the album cover in the app, you’ll be taken to the iTunes Store where you can get the album.
Source: App Store
Apple is by far the most secretive company in tech, so predicting its next move or the specifics of its next big thing is incredibly difficult. No one in Cupertino will leak this kind of information, so analysts and investors are forced to look a little further afield for scraps.
They usually turn to Apple’s supply chain — the people who are in some way involved with the production of its upcoming products. Sometimes this yields successful results, but other times, it results in some pretty crazy rumors.
Like every other year, there have been many memorable ones throughout 2013, so we thought it might be fun to look back at some of them. Here’s our roundup of the craziest Apple rumors from the last 12 months.
Remember all those stories that accompanied the iPad’s launch about how the device was so straightforward that a person with no previous computer experience could use one? Well, it turns out that they’re so easy that cats can use them too.
A new endeavor from the UK’s Cats Protection charity has seen pictures “painted” by felines, using the Paint For Cats iPad app, sold off to raise money.
The Rockstar Consortium — a group of several tech companies, including Apple — has reportedly been in talks concerning the sale of a portion of its $4.5 billion worth of patents.
This marks a major turnaround from 2011, when the patents — acquired from the Nortel Networks Corp — were highly sought after. In that instance, Apple and its bidding partners outbid Google for access to more than 4,000 patents.
I was all ready to write a sarcastic post about the Splitter, a little box that allows independent volume control of the two pairs of headphones you jack into it. After all, sharing a music track is something spontaneous – adding a specialist piece of hardware into the mix seems a little like quickly clipping your FitBit to your pubes before making love.
But then I thought about traveling, and movies.