Phil Schiller just announced Apple’s new lineup of MacBook Pros with Retina display. The new machines received beefed up graphics, processors, and RAM, but Apple has been able to drop the price on both the 13 and 15-inch models.
Apple software chief Craig Federighi took the stage today to talk OS X Mavericks. With his usual sense of humor, Federighi demoed new features in Mavericks and joked about his sense of style with his wife via iMessage. He also announced that the new OS is shipping today.
Tim Cook has finally taken the stage in San Francisco. No big announcements have been revealed yet, but Tim started his keynote off by reiterating Apple’s earlier announcement that the iPhone 5s and 5c shattered previous launch weekend records with 9 million unit sales.
Cook also showed off a new video celebrating the iPhone 5s launch and announced that over 200 million devices were running iOS 7 after the first week of shipping, making it the fastest software upgrade ever. Over two-thirds of iOS devices are now running iOS 7.
iTunes Radio now has 20 million users since its launch this Fall and over 1 billion songs have been streamed. Apple also announced it’s paid over $13 billion to developers of the App Store.
Looks like these dudes are trying to crash Apple's iPad event pic.twitter.com/oEyq4ntNUL
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) October 22, 2013
We’re less that 30 minutes away from the official unveiling of the iPad 5, iPad mini 2 and whatever other goodies Tim Cook and the gang have instore for us. The press are just about to be let in but it looks like some Android fanboys are trying to crash the party in their Android Bot costumes.
No idea if they’re from Google or just some happy fans doing some Android proselytizing for fun. Good luck getting in.
Source: Jon Erlichman
Backstep – Travel – Free
If you’ve ever traveled to an unfamiliar city, found a new café, or parked at a SuperTarget, you know the value of being able to get back to where you were. Backstep wants to help. It’s a new app by developer D Leak that lets you drop a waypoint at your current location with a single tap on your screen. You name the waypoint, then call up your various pins individually, and Backstep will show where you are in relation to it and update as you head back to your starting point. It’s a simple app with the cleanest of interfaces, and it might save you a few fights over which arbitrarily named row your car is in.
Apple has a gorgeous shot of the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco on its website right now because that’s where today’s big iPad event is happening. We’re less than an hour away from kickoff, and Apple is live streaming the event on its website for the world to watch.
The image of Yerba Buena makes a great wallpaper. Here it is in full resolution for you to scale to your iOS device:
Apple’s iWork for iCloud apps have been made unavailable ahead of today’s iPad event, pretty much confirming that we will see updates for Pages, Keynote, and Numbers during the keynote. “In just a few short hours, you’ll be able to create and edit documents, and enjoy great new features,” a notice reads.
The Apple online store has gone down ahead of this morning’s special event event. When it comes back up, you can expect to see new iPads, updated MacBook Pros with Haswell processors, and possibly even a new Apple TV.
Even though most of the focus has shifted t the iWatch, people can’t seem to stop talking about Apple’s mythic HDTV, the iTV. Case in point: ahead of today’s iPad event, a Tokyo-based analyst has gone on record out of the blue saying 4K 55-inch and 65-inch iTVs are coming next year.
The Spotify app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has finally been updated to support iOS 7. There are some subtle interface changes that better fit iOS 7’s new design guidelines, but it’s not quite the overhaul you may have been expecting.
Need a spot to stow your stylus when you’re not using it ti draw on the screen of your iPad mini? No, me neither. But I could find space for a case which holds a regular old ink pen, which Adonit’s Jot Tote will doubtless manage just fine. Hell, the slidey-out metal drawer could even be used to store a little chocolate snack as you read.
In OS X Mavericks, websites will be able to send you push notifications in Notification Center. This means, for example, that every time Cult of Mac publishes a new article, you could get a notification through Mavericks.
Sounds potentially maddening to me, but some big names are coming on board, with NBA.com and The New York Times enabling push notifications on their sites.
If you’ve ever wanted a tiny, pressure-sensitive digitising tablet for your Mac, then you’re in luck: you will soon be able to get the SketchDock, a flat aluminum panel which turns your iPhone into a pen tablet.
The next best thing to actually being at an Apple press event is being able to watch the whole thing live from the comfort of your own living room. Unfortunately, the Cupertino company doesn’t live stream every event to the public, but you’ll be pleased to know it will be showing today’s iPad event.
This one’s pretty nerdy, but if you use Markdown to write anything with links in it (web articles, e-mails and so on) then you’re going to love it. It lets you use “lazy” reference links in Markdown to keep your text nice and tidy, but it does it without the references. Reference links without references? What? Wait…
Users of EvoMail are about to find the iOS app getting a whole lot more reliable, and a whole lot cooler. The company has just launched its EvoCloud, which adds a whole bunch of neat server-side tricks to your e-mail.
You’d have a hard time forcing me to remove the fantastic Gemini duplicate removal tool from my Macs, but that’s not to say I don’t like to have a little fling now and then (in fact, I regularly two-time Gemini with Daisy Disk, another great app for seeing what’s taking up space on your hard drive or SSD). And that fling might just be with Intego’s WashingMachine 2014, another duplicate finder app which adds in some distinctly different features.
What do high-end bicycles, Formula One race cars and Shure’s pricey new SRH1540 headphones have in common? Yes, they’re all snazzy objects that can boost your coolness factor, and/or might help you get laid (except maybe the bicycle). Also, they’re all made with carbon fiber.
I dig biplanes, but nothing says dogfighting like a British Spitfire up against a Messerschmitt Bf 109, or a Marine Corsair duking it out with a Mitsubishi Zero.
For the next installment of turn-based strategy gem Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol, 2K and Firaxis Games have gone with the latter, and bumped the game ahead several decades from World War I, setting it smack in the middle of the Pacific during World War 2.
Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.
The iOS App Store has no shortage of titles that you can just download and play without paying a thing. The actual amount of content you get for your not-money varies, but more often than not, the free version is little more than a demo to entice you into paying for the whole thing.
Some games offer enough content in their lite versions that you’ll be set until you get tired of the thing and cast it into the virtual trash. But others are so good that you can, should, and must throw the developers some money. They’ll thank you, and you’ll thank yourself. Because these games are really good, so pay for them, cheapskate.
Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.
Most video games transform you into a warrior, a thief, a space alien or race car driver. A new breed of games aims to make you a better person by putting you in the shoes of a young father with a son dying of cancer or playing the part of someone grappling with depression, immigration or sexual identity issues.
Called “empathy games,” they hope to change one of the most often criticized aspects of these beloved pastimes: that they foster violence and isolation. Game designer Jane McGonigal’s widely read 2011 book “Reality is Broken” set the playing field for a world where games reward good behavior and nice guys finish first.
InstaPhotoBlend – Photo & Video – $1.99
If you’ve ever looked at two of your photos and wished that you could somehow transmogrify them into one Frankenphoto, you might want to check out InstaPhotoBlend. It’s image-editing software for your iOS device that uses a simple interface to let you combine and blend two photos together. You start by selecting two pictures — one top layer and one bottom layer — and then fiddle around with the controls to control opacity and adjust color until you’ve created the perfect thing that used to be two things. After that, you can post your masterpiece to social media, email or text it, or just hang onto it until the time is right. It’s a fun little app to play with, and it’s not hard to create some interesting effects.
The Hulu Plus app for iOS has been updated today with support for Google Chromecast. You’ll find a new ‘Cast’ button within the app that will stream your favorite shows to your television with the help of the $35 dongle.
“We know you’ve been enjoying the Hulu Plus app on Chromecast with your Android phones/tablets and iPads over the last few weeks. Today, we are excited to add the Chromecast integration for Hulu Plus to your iPhones.”
The addition of Chomecast integration will finally give iPhone users the ability to use their app as a custom remote. From the Hulu Plus ass you can control videos on Chromecast connected to your TV while also browsing the app on your iPhone to queue up your next choice. The update is available for free in the App Store.
Source: Hulu
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re just starting our coverage of iOS and Mac games, as our fearless leader Leander told you in the publisher’s letter for the inaugural edition of our Newsstand magazine.
Since we’re just starting up, it’s pretty easy to get our attention when it comes to promotional emails and review requests. While we can’t review all the games we’re sent, we do read all the promotional emails that you’re sending our way.
Even still, we’d be lucky to review even a minuscule percentage of games we get requests for, so there are a few things that you can do to guarantee that we’ll take a closer look. There are a few more than you can do to make sure we don’t look much closer, too.
Here’s a list of both extremes, to help guide you on your way to getting coverage on Cult of Mac.
With this latest Halloween-flavored update, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is bringing vampires and werewolves to its acclaimed tower defense gameplay in a new update, entitled Shadowmoon.
You’ll get three brand spankin’ new levels to defend your base against nine new enemy types, including scary vampires and vicious werewolves (oh my!). The update will go live on All Hallow’s Eve itself, so get ready for some Halloween fun after you fill your pillow cases full of loot from your local neighborhood.
Here’s the brand new trailer to whet your appetite.