Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost formed Studio Neat after a successful Kickstarter campaign funded a simplistic iPhone tripod mount that conveniently doubled as a stand. That was back when the iPhone 4 was Apple’s latest. The smartphone landscape has changed quite a bit since then, and now the Glif has too.
Rival tech companies have no problem promoting their products by ridiculing Apple’s, as evidenced by Microsoft’s recent anti-iPhone ads it had to end up pulling off the internet out of embarrassment.
In a new commercial for Nokia’s 2520 tablet running Windows RT, we are privileged to hear the inner dialogue of a man with an indistinguishable accent in a coffee shop wrestle over whether he truly loves his iPad. He finds it impossible to meaningfully connect with members of the opposite sex because of his iPad’s shortcomings, and we are supposed to sympathize with his inner torment. Then he sees the light of day when a girl whips out the Lumia 2520 with a physical keyboard. Microsoft Office! It all makes sense!
The man asks “Did I buy the wrong tablet?” at the end of the ad. No, but if you want a physical keyboard for the iPad, they are pretty easy to come by these days.
Apple’s Industrial Design studio is one of the most secretive corporate locations in the world, where even some of the company’s own high ranking execs can’t get in unless Jony Ive wants them to. So with the ID group barred tighter than a nuclear lockdown, how does one go about getting secrets about the design processes at Apple for a book?
Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang sat down with Leander on her show this afternoon to talk about some of the secrets he discovered about Jony Ive and the design team at Apple for his new book. Not only did The Gov dive into how hard it is to cover Apple, but he also dished on rumors he’s heard about Ive butting heads with top execs who have left Apple – and not just The Felt King, aka Scott Forstall – as well as how Tim Cook has become the ultimate peace keeper at Apple in contrast to Jobs diabolical ways of pitting execs against each other.
You can hear all the secrets in the video below:
Apple has yet to announce a successor to its three-year-old Thunderbolt Display, despite the fact that the company is releasing a new Mac Pro by the end of the year with the ability to power up to three 4K displays at once.
A Redditor did some digging and found that a display supplier overseas with ties to Apple is currently making 4K desktop-sized panels that are designed for Thunderbolt and could very easily be put in future Apple monitors.
Infinity Blade came out nearly three years ago, but even though its been one of the most successful iOS games ever thanks to its impressive graphics and rich gameplay, Chair has only made the game available for free once, but for a limited time the company is giving away the game on the App Store starting today.
Thanksgiving is almost here, which means its time for the sacred American tradition of Black Friday sales madness. Apple hates to hand out big discounts on its premium products, but even Cupertino can’t resist offering a few Black Friday sales, and its already starting to promote this years deal with a new promo page.
Apple has posted a teaser image on its Australian site for its upcoming sale on Friday, November 29th that promises free shipping to anyone who buys something from Apple.com on Friday.
Black Friday started as a major shopping day in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving, but more international retailers have started to embrace the sales day as well. We’re still waiting to see what kind of modest deals Apple will offer, but if last year is any indication, don’t expect to be blown away. Here are the price cuts Apple had last year:
In 1983, Electronic Arts released M.U.L.E., a seminal title in the history of gaming that not only was one of the first real-time strategy titles, but also one of the first multiplayer games. It’s a game that has been widely hailed for decades by gaming enthusiasts, but has never seen an official update… until now, as M.U.L.E. Returns has hit the iOS App Store.
When it comes to screens, 3-D=lame: our own brains are more than capable of turning 2-D cues into full 3-D scenes without any weird glasses or other trickery. But 3-D scans are totally useful for all kinds of fun and frolics, as well as real, serious applications. And now you can turn your iPad into a 3-D scanner with the Structure Sensor.
Following up on the successful release of Final Fantasy IV on iOS back in 2012, publisher Square-Enix is following it up with a sequel, which follows up on the characters and events of that game twenty years later. It’s called Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and it’s available now on the App Store.
Instagram does photos on mobile better than anyone else. They also recently added video to that mix, but it doesn’t look like Instagram is going to stop there: rumor has it they are getting into messaging next as well.
When you look at iOS, you’re looking at a user interface more than an operating system. Beneath the animations, transparencies and rounded-corner icons is the core of the operating system… basically, a bunch of ASCII text, similar to a Terminal window, that is what iOS looks like before it puts its face on.
In a rather interesting twitch, Winocm — one of the hackers behind the iH8Snow iOS 6.1.3/6.1.4 jailbreak — has managed to get iOS’s core running on a Nokia n900 smartphone.
VSCO, the iPhoneography app which retro-fies your pictures and turns all blacks into shades of dark gray, has taken what looks like the final step to become a social network: The VSCO Grid, a place for you to group and display your best work in – yes – a grid, is now followable. As in Twitter or Instagram-like followable.
Remember Mac font managing apps? I do: I hated them. Extensis Suitcase caused more problems with my old G5 PowerMac than anything else, ever, and I was fairly conservative in my font use back when I worked as a designer.
Thankfully, Macs these days don’t need the user to manually switch fonts on and off: our computers are powerful enough to handle it. Which is why Bohemian Coding ditched its old Fontcase app and replaced it with the shiny new Fonts, an app that is dedicated to just organizing and looking at your fonts.
When the topic of Apple expanding into wearable computing comes up, few people are likely thinking that a logical starting point is a new hearing aid.
But according to numerous reports, that is exactly the direction Apple is heading in. The Danish-based, fourth-largest hearing aid manufacturer in the world has been collaborating with Apple to develop a device, called the LiNX, that will allow users to stream voice and music from their iOS devices without the need for an intermediary device.
Marvin is an ebook reading app for the iPad that gathers together all your EPUB ebooks in one place. The idea is that you can keep your book files in your Dropbox and access them from anywhere.
It’s EPUB-only, which means it won’t work with your Kindle titles, but that’s no problem, because Marvin also has tight integration with the Calibre e-book app for desktop computers, and as all avid Cult of Mac readers know, it’s pretty easy to use Calibre to rip the DRM from your Kindle books and save them to your Dropbox as EPUBs.
Rickshaw Bags, the finest bag-maker in San Francisco, will now sell you a plush-lined sleeve for your iPad Air. I have tested the mini version and I loved it, although I’d say it’s actually better suited to the bigger iPad thanks to the fact that the mini looks after itself so well, even when left naked and cold in the basement of a dark messenger bag.
It would be next to impossible to ever label an iPhone thief “thoughtful” — but a recent story coming out of China took a turn for the strange when the thief in question painstakingly wrote out eleven pages of contact details and sent them to the owner of the iPhone he had pickpocketed.
There are two things that I love about this iPhone abacus case. One is that it’s an actual working abacus. The second is that I learned that you can stain and dye 3-D-printed plastic as if it were wood or leather.
Remember the rumblings about Apple acquiring PrimeSense, the Israel-based company behind the 3D motion tracking in the original Xbox Kinect? It turns out that the rumor is true, as Apple has officially confirmed the buyout.
Reports dating back to this summer have said Apple and PrimeSense were in talks, and just last week it was being reported that the deal was close to completion. Israeli business site Globes said the deal is valued at $300-$350 million earlier today, and AllThingsD later said the asking price is “around $360 million.”
PrimeSense certainly has expertise in full-body motion tracking, as evidenced by the Kinect, but lately the company has been focusing more on mobile. Its Capri 3D sensor is the smallest in the world and is designed for implementing natural gestures for smartphones and tablets.
Source: AllThingsD
Now here’s one for the record books – a special one-of-a-kind Product (RED) Mac Pro, created jointly by Jony Ive and Marc Newson, sold at Sotheby’s on Saturday for $977,000! The upper six figure bid makes the (RED) Mac Pro the most expensive desktop computer ever built or sold.
While there are plenty of revelations about how Jony Ive’s aesthetic developed in Leander Kahney’s NYT bestselling biography, Apple fans got a unique glimpse into an informative childhood inspiration for Ive this past week thanks to a television appearance on the Charlie Rose show.
Ive and industrial design pal Marc Newson have been making the media rounds recently to promote a charity auction featuring special items customized by the pair.
However, one item in the auction was neither designed nor modified by the pair: a Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet signed by none other than George Lucas.
Apple and a 12.9-inch iPad; the first iOS 7 game controller is long overdue; Retina iPad Minis are almost perfect; strategies to backup all those iPhone photos you take; and Adam Christianson from the Maccast podcast joins us on this time on The CultCast!
Have a few laughs and get 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 adventure begin.
This week in Cult of Mac Magazine: how some collectors are making serious money with old Macs.
Well, that and how some are discovering that it may be sentimental value that keeps the old machines humming – as it turns out for our publisher, Leander Kahney, who reminisces on the antiquated machines in his life.
And if you dream of finding an Apple 1 or coming across a Twiggy Mac and making a pretty penny, we’ll tell you what happens when those machines roar back to life and come up at auctions.
We’ll also help you figure out what to keep – and toss! – in your collection and showcase some of the coolest ways Apple lovers have repurposed those aging computer carcasses to give them new life.
Our Apple Genius dishes on how to keep your privates protected when you bring your machine in (it’s not as hard as you think) and the best way to let your technician know you’re not a total moron – so you can get your device fixed and get out as soon as possible.
Sure, those old computational machines are making some collectors serious new money. But love of Apple doesn’t always translate into hard cash. Over the years, we’ve covered a lot of cool things you can do with your obsolete — but still near and dear! — Apple gear.
Here are some of our favorites.
Springpad launched on the heels of Evernote in 2008. Though the two are superficially alike — they’re both cloud-based note-taking services often accessed though their respective iOS and Android apps — Springpad was always a little more geared toward collecting and organizing groups of things, like products or recipes.
Springpad’s latest update further underscores this difference; it now has a set of templates that can be used for organizing different categories of saved items, as opposed to the more open format of Evernote.