Mind Maps are a great way to brainstorm and visualize ideas. And plain text is a great way to hammer out lists. And Markdown is a perfect tool for quickly adding hierarchy to those lists as you write them. If only there were a way to combine these three things…
And guess what? The fairy godfather of Internet tinkering, Brett Terpstra, has already done it for you. It’s an OS X System Service that takes the messiest of Markdown lists and turns them into a format suitable for most mind-mapping apps.
Y’all know Serious Eats, right? It’s the one place on the Internet where you can go to be entertained, educated and properly fed. I’m a fan of cooking, but I generally avoid recipes on the web because it’s hard to gauge their quality until it’s too late. Serious Eats is solid every single time.
And now there’s a Newsstand magazine, and — again — it stands out above the rest.
I’m always interested to see a new iPad stand, and I’m especially interested if it can do the job of both my two favorite stands in one neat package. The stand is the Nimblstand, and it wants to replace the Origami keyboard case and stand, plus the PadPivot, or similar.
This week on The CultCast: Jobs! We’ve seen it, and now the question is — is it any good? We’ll discuss the much-hyped movie (100 percent spoiler-free), Ashton Kutcher’s performance and love for the man, plus examine if the real Jobs fits the fictional portrayal.
Then, an all new Yay & Nay: September 10th edition. We’ll yes and no our way through the rumors and what we expect at the all-but-confirmed Apple iPhone event.
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on this 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 and let the audio adventure begin. Show notes up next!
Google updated its flagship social network app for Google+ on iOS today, bringing it up to par with the recently released Android Google+ app update. The new features includes integration with Google Drive, the loss of Google Messenger in favor of Google Hangouts, and some new stuff for Apps for Business users.
Apple just released a new update for iTunes, saying, “This update corrects an issue with iTunes in the Cloud, where some purchases may download or play unexpected items.”
What does that mean, exactly? Apple didn’t say much more, but I’m guessing that some users were clicking on the button to download a previous purchase that was stored in iCloud, but ending up with something totally different.
This update should totally fix that. You can download the new 11.0.5 update directly from the Apple support site linked below, or use the Mac App Store via Software Update to get it.
There’s a bewildering array of iPhone 5 cases to choose from — waterproof cases, cases that double as stands and even cases that carry business cards. But how many can double as a business card?
Findables Flex cases can, because they have QR codes stamped on the back that link to your contact or social media details.
At this point in the rumor cycle, it would be easier to list things we don’t know about the iPhone 5C. Apple’s lower-cost model will likely be announced alongside the 5S on September 10, and it will probably look a lot like the iPhone 5. The main difference is the plastic shell, which will reportedly come in several colors.
What you see above comes from Tactus, a reliable parts leaker that was one of the first to go hands-on with 5C parts earlier this year. The company’s sources are saying Apple will offer the 5C in white, black, red, yellow, blue and green. The iPod touch currently sells in black, white, pink, yellow, blue and red.
Designs from California bag outfitter Booq tend toward the highly unorthodox and original; the last time I wrote about one of their bags I even made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the company’s gear was designed by folks from outer space.
But with its square-jawed, establishment lines and pockets that open conventionally, Booq’s new $150 Boa brief laptop bag seems like it would look much more at home on the set of Mad Men than it would on the set of Battlestar Galactica.
Gone Home, developed by The Fullbright Company, is a newly released indie adventure game that’s getting quite a bit of buzz across the interwebs. Here’s the setup.
It’s June 7th, 1995. 1:15 AM
You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something’s not right. Where is everyone? And what’s happened here?
How do you not want this game? Even better? It’s on sale right now through the 21st of August for $17.99 on Steam.
It seems hard to believe that Apple would come out with a gaudy-looking iPhone, but according to the rumor mill, Apple is set to release the iPhone 5S in black, white and gold. We haven’t seen any convincing evidence of the gold iPhone yet, but if MacBoutic is to believed, these are the first leaked photographs of the golden iPhone 5S shells.
The Apple logo and the word “iPhone” have been deliberately blurred out, but it looks like the anodized coloring has been applied to all metallic parts — something that’s not possible in a post-production paint job, but doesn’t rule out the possibility of Photoshop.
Even though we can’t verify the authenticity of the photos, they’re the best evidence we’ve seen so far. We’ll have to wait until the iPhone event on September 10 to see how real it is.
Syfy announced today that its iPhone and iPad apps have merged into one mega-nerd monster app called Syfy Now.
The new app now gives both iPhone and iPad users access to full episodes of favorite Syfy shows, with new episodes available the day after they air. You can add new shows to a watchlist to view episodes later or track a season, and Syfy Now syncs your watchlist across multiple devices via iCloud, so can pick up where you left off with any series on any device.
A cable subscription is required to view all the shows, but there are a select number of full episodes and clips you can still view without it.
Steve Wozniak has made his feelings about Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs movie pretty clear, but how does he really feel about the film? Kutcher believes Woz’s views could be swayed by the fact he’s being paid by another studio to support a different Steve Jobs movie, and because Jobs doesn’t place enough focus on Woz’s contribution to Apple.
German retail chain Media Markt has added a 128GB iPhone 5 model to its inventory, sparking speculation that Apple could be planning to double the handset’s maximum internal storage at its iPhone event on September 10. The iPhone 5 is currently available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants, but a 128GB model is sure to appeal to plenty of customers.
Some of the folks behind Project Gotham Racing and Blur are bringing their racing game chops to iOS this fall with upcoming premium iOS game, 2K Drive. Developed by Lucid Games (Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery, Pixel Smash) and published by 2K Games (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands Legends), 2K Drive aims to be everything a car-loving racing game fan could want, all on iPhone or iPad.
Shadowgun: DeadZone, the award-winning multiplayer shooter that has attracted millions of players on Android and iOS, is now available to download on your Mac.
Like its mobile counterparts, the desktop version is completely free, and you can even sign into the same account you’ve already been playing with — so all the characters and weapons you’ve upgraded will be available to you right away.
Joshua Michael Stern, who directed Jobs, calls the late Apple leader a purist. Bingo!
It’s not easy making a posthumous movie about the world’s most well-known and beloved control freak. Just ask Joshua Michael Stern, director of new Steve Jobs biopic Jobs. The film delves into the early days of Apple Computer as Stern paints a picture of a man he calls a “brutally honest character.”
Don’t go into the PG-13 Jobs expecting any bombshells about Apple’s late, great maximum leader — you won’t find any. Instead, what you’ll get is a straightforward cinematic take on Jobs’ early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played mostly for comic relief by Josh Gad), a healthy dose of Hollywood-style boardroom intrigue and a few glimpses into Jobs’ personal life. Many of the scenes, whether factually accurate or not, have been woven into the tapestry of tech history. And Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, obviously isn’t around to fact-check the past or exert his famous control over the final product.
“Part of the shackles for me as a director was, we really had to do everything that was sort of public domain, you know, we couldn’t stray too far off of what we basically knew about Steve,” Stern told Cult of Mac during a recent interview at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco. “But the interesting thing about Steve, being such an enigma, there really isn’t that much more to know at all. I mean, everyone knows what they know.”
Look, I’ll be straight with you, I’m not a movie critic. Nope, just an average moviegoer. But I am an Apple fan, and probably, like you, one who greatly admired Steven P. Jobs.
So ever since last Tuesday, when I got to sit through an early screening of Ashton Kutcher’s much-hyped new movie, Jobs, people have been asking me what I think of it. Is this a film that lives up to the buzz? Did Kutcher deliver? Or more often, “Just how bad was it?”
If ever proof were needed that pixel art’s deceptive simplicity requires a huge amount of work and skill, it’s here in the form of Belowrez, an iPhone camera app that measures its pixels not in the millions but in the tens.
Following reports that it was looking to open a new research and development center in Taiwan, Apple is now going on a massive hiring binge in China for talented engineers, having recently put up openings for over 300 new employees in Taiwan on the professional social networking site LinkedIn.
Ashton Kutcher (left) plays the late great Apple leader in new biopic Jobs.
You might think it’s too soon for a movie about Steve Jobs. After all, the Apple co-founder walked off the world stage just 676 days before Friday’s premiere of Jobs, the movie about him that stars Ashton Kutcher.
I had that same uneasy feeling sitting through the interminable 122-minute Jobs, a PG-13 movie that frequently stalls like a spinning beach ball.
Editorial might just make you ditch your computer altogether as a writing machine. It’s a new iPad text editor from Ole Zorn, the man behind the incredible Pythonista app (Editorial actually features a built-in Python editor). Editorial could just be used as a really polished, really well-designed text editor, but it also has customizable, Automator-style workflows that let you do pretty much anything with the text you have in the app.
If I told you that Apple had a monopoly over all of the apps sold through the iTunes App Store, what would you say? Would you stammer for a little bit, eyes boggling, trying to understand how an injustice like this could happen in our tightly regulated markets? Or would you say, “No kidding, Sherlock. The App Store is their exclusive proprietary platform. It’s a walled garden,” and then, perhaps to emphasize what an idiot you think I am, slowly twirling one finger around your ear while using another to rapidly flick your lower lip up and down while googling your eyes?
I can’t blame you; I’d probably do the latter myself. Yet would you believe that an antitrust complaint was filed against Apple because there aren’t third-party app stores allowed on the iOS platform? Of course someone did. The case has been dismissed by a U.S. District judge, but not because it was a stupid complaint, but because the plaintiffs made a procedural mistake.
I should probably start a Tumblr for weird and amazing Kickstarter videos, but I’m sure someone has made it already. If I was starting one, then my first video would be this one, from Dave Garcia and GearLeash. The product is called the iPhone Bumper Case and Holster, which will probably conjure up images of polo-shirt-and-chinos-clad office drones practicing their Travis-Bickle-style quick-draws in the bathroom mirror.
And that would be pretty rad. But Dave has managed to go one better: His Kickstarter promo features muggers, gymnastics and girls leaping down stairs. And that’s just for starters.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is one of the few analysts who routinely predicts Apple’s moves correctly. Yesterday, Kuo sent out a research note to investors that was filled with details about the iPhone 5S, including Kuo’s belief that we will see a gold-colored iPhone 5S available with 128GB of storage.
