It’s our T-Day edition CultCast! This time: Jony Ive’s golden touch makes millions for charity; Apple teases underwhelming Black Friday deals; how Apple’s blacklist keeps bad press at bay; the new money in old macs; and we pitch our favorite Thanksgiving Day foods on our holiday edition Faves ’N Raves!
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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I’ve tried plenty of popular translation apps in the App Store, and my favorite by far is SonicoMobile’s iTranslate. Until a couple days ago, the app was only optimized for iPhone, but on Turkey Day an iPad version was released as a free update to the existing app.
iTranslate recently underwent a big overhaul for iOS 7, and the new design is clean and efficient. There’s support for over 70 languages and a pretty capable text-to-speech translation tool. Intuitive gestures are peppered throughout the app, like swiping in from the outside of the right or left to initiate voice recognition.
The app is a free download, and a small in-app purchase removes ads, unlocks Siri voice recognition, and the ability to translate long amounts of text at once. Check it out. SonicoMobile also makes other great apps, like iTranslate Voice, Files App, and Languages.
Cult of Mac Magazine wants to get you on the right track for giving good gifts in 2013.
It happens to all of us. There’s a time when “thanks” is as hollow as a fuzzy stocking on December 26. That half-hearted “you shouldn’t have!” that comes out when you have just given (or received) a total dud for a gift. You don’t like it. You certainly don’t need it. Or maybe you aren’t even sure what it’s for, like that InstaSlim compression shirt. So the item in question gets shoved under a growing mountain of gift paper that the recipient (perhaps) hopes goes into the recycling bin, never to be seen again.
Here’s where we come in. Our stellar reviews editor, Charlie Sorrel, has momentarily put aside his bah-humbugging to trawl through all the best items that he has attached, stuffed or otherwise prodded his iGadgets with this year to get down to the essentials. He’s got the goods on what you need to buy for all of your devices – and, yeah, while you’re at it, your loved ones’ devices, too.
You’ll also read about how publisher Leander Kahney earned the reputation for being the worst gift giver in his entire family and get the real deal on how to get better deals on Apple products with our exclusive “Ask A Genius” column.
Dog Diary is an app that helps you keep track of all the people and events in your canine friend’s life. You can store important, pet-related contacts, expenses, and photos. You can also create entries for multiple animals to keep everything organized. It’s an address book, a photo album, and a bookkeeping program all in one. You can also track measurements like body temperature, provided you’re not shy about pulling out your phone as soon as the vet pulls out the thermometer.
I’m still waiting for an app that will walk the little guy for me once it gets snowy out, but we might need a robot for that.
Apple surprised us with its Black Friday deals for Australia, which include free Apple Store gift cards with new Macs and iOS devices, but no discounts. And as you may have suspected, it’s the same story in the U.S., where customers can now get credit worth $150 with a new Mac, up to $75 with a new iPad, and up to $50 with a new iPod.
Apple is also offering gift cards worth up to $25 with other accessories and gadgets, including the Apple TV, the Nike+ FuelBand SE, and Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad mini.
Readdle, the team behind some of the best productivity apps and utilities for iOS, has slashed 50% off five of its top offerings for Black Friday. The sale includes titles like PDF Expert for iPhone and iPad, Calendars 5, and Printer Pro — all of which are now half price for a limited time.
The iPhone 5s introduced us to Touch ID. Photo: Apple
Yahoo! has released its list of top searches for 2013 and, when it comes to tech, Apple is once again leading the way.
The iPhone had the most searches (the second most searched subject overall), with the iPad making it to fourth place — ahead of PS4 and XBox One — and the iPod to eighth, above the Nokia Lumia and just below the Blackberry.
Practically everyone reading this will have heard the reports about the lengths Apple will go to in order to ensure that its products are on the cutting edge of industrial design.
Well, to those reports you can add the one which suggests that Apple recently paid a total of $578 million — more than half a billion dollars — to GT Advanced Technologies to speed up “the development of its next generation, large capacity ASF furnaces to deliver low cost, high volume manufacturing of sapphire material.”
This move is designed to help keep down the costs of the Sapphire Glass screen rumored to be featured as part of the iPhone 6 — along with a redesign and bigger display.
When you’re among the world’s most sued companies, we imagine that you get used to some pretty hefty legal fees from keeping lawyers on retainer.
Even Apple has kicked up a fuss, however, when its court-appointed “monitor” — given the job of ensuring Apple’s antitrust compliance concerning e-book price fixing — handed in what the company considered a fairly outrageous time sheet.
There are different ways to measure the success of a tech company — thing like how many lucrative patents it’s sitting on, how much money it’s giving back to shareholders, and what its overall market penetration is in whatever area it’s operating in.
Well, there’s another way also: how much do its product launches correlate with a spike rates. You can keep your reports about Apple’s recent financial quarters disappointing Wall Street analysts — as far as San Francisco’s criminal element is concerned, Apple is doing better than it has in years.
The ClipR is a little disk that turns any headphones into a set of Bluetooth headphones. Or, to be more accurate, it turns any 3.5mm jack cable into a Bluetooth-enabled jack cable.
And it has a clip, so you can tuck that cable neatly away.
It’s Black Friday everyone, and Cult of Mac is here to tell you that Apple has kicked off its sales across retail outlets in Europe (including the UK). We’re not just talking about gift cards being on offer, either — but real cash savings.
Here are the the most popular savings being given on Apple’s most popular products:
When I ordered a Retina iPad mini, I went for the cellular version – and not only because it means I can get online anywhere without draining my iPhone’s battery by tethering. I got it for the GPS, which is pretty fantastic to have when traveling, especially in the (big) pocket-sized mini.
But if you didn’t have the foresight to spend the extra $130 on a cellular, you can now spend that exact same $130 on a dongle that adds GPS through the Lightning port.
I love my Olloclip, but I wince every time I use it and see its anodized red body next to my white iPhone. Kidding. Who cares if it matches? After all, it’s what’s on the inside that counts and beauty is only skiZzzzzzz.
Kidding again. Somebody at Olloclip cares, which is why you can now snap up a limited edition gold or space gray Olloclip, along with a neat Cyber Monday cyber discount of 10%.
Native Union wasn’t kidding around when it chose the name “Gripster” – this thing can be gripped and grabbed any way you like. Hell, even a Dolphin could get a purchase on this thing with its slippery flippers. The case, now available for the iPad mini, had a swiveling hand loop, a kickstand/carrying handle and a Smart Cover that folds up to add yet another handle.
Hatch, the cute virtual pet for iPhone from the makers of Clear, has received its first update just one week after making its App Store debut. The release adds some beautiful wallpapers for your iPhone, introduces some new shop items, and makes a long list of fixes, tweaks, and improvements.
Hoping to get a nice discount on your next Mac or iOS device this Black Friday? Then you’d better buy it from a third-party retailer. Apple has taken a new approach to its Black Friday deals this year and decided to give away gift cards rather than discount its goods.
An astonishing 76 percent of new smartphone sales in Japan for the month of October were either iPhone 5s or 5c handsets, according to recent data.
The report comes from a Kantar World Panel, and demonstrates just how far Apple’s share of the Japanese smartphone market has increased over the present quarter.
Just when you thought you had heard every wacky app concept going, here’s another you might not have considered: Facebook for dogs.
Okay, it’s not exactly Facebook, but the free Woof iOS app (from developer Woof Labs) is pretty much that — describing itself as “an ecosystem to bring dog lovers closer to their dogs and local dog communities.”
Imagine that your task list was made up of a bunch of little slips of paper that you can slide around in any order, only these slips can’t blow away. That’s the central metaphor for Gneo, a universal task manager app which starts out looking like the ultra-simple Clear app, but hides a lot of power under the hood.
“Great pen, lousy software” was the gist of our review for the Livescribe 3, a.k.a. “The World’s Smartest Pen” when we got the chance to use it recently.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Livescribe 3 is a so-called “smart pen” which takes handwritten notes and transfers them from paper to screen on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. (In other words, it’s something of a next-generation Newton stylus for those old enough to remember Apple’s long-abandoned line of PDAs.)
There are few tech terms more loaded than “user privacy” here in 2013.
Back in January Cult of Mac reported that Apple had lost its spot on a list of the 20 most trusted companies when it comes to user information. That was long before the revelations of Edward Snowden and PRISMgate (the subject of an entire recent issue of our Newsstand magazine), which made everyone super-jumpy about data collection and what it means for personal liberties.
Would you pay $100 for a cutting board with a few holes drilled in it? No? Are you sure? Because somebody certainly does. In fact, as of this writing, 349 people have ponied up between $68 and $98 to pre-order the Slate Mobile AirDesk on Kickstarter, a wooden laptop tray that lets you put your laptop on your lap. Like a sap.
Ever wished that there was an app like Diptic, only it let you put videos together in a grid instead of just photos? No, me neither, but if we had, then we’d love Diptic video.
