August is upon us, and that means it’s time once again for a number of U.S. states to hold their annual sales tax holidays. If you’re in the market for a new Mac and reside in one of these states then consider the following tips – especially if you’re thinking about buying a new MacBook Air.
Thanks to Samsung and the International Trade Commission, Apple will be banned from importing the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 into the United States from Sunday, August 4. The Cupertino company has been trying to fight the ban since it was confirmed last October, but it’s had little success.
Now it is seeing unlikely support from Microsoft, Intel, and Oracle, which all agree that the use of standards-essential patents to ban products should not be allowed.
In case you had any doubt that iOS 7 Beta 4 was dropping today (probably around 10AM Pacific time), Apple has already uploaded at least one build of Beta 4 to the Developer Center: specifically, for the AT&T iPhone 5 with a build number of 11a4435d. The Verizon iPhone 5 also has a related download.
You can’t download these betas yet — instead, you just get a “session expired” message — but all that means is Apple hasn’t “turned on” the download yet. So start your engines, gentlemen: iOS 7 Beta 4 is coming.
Via: Redmond Pie
There was always a good chance that that image showing a bin of empty iPhone 5C packaging was bogus, and now Steve over at Nowhereelse.fr is positing just that, saying there’s a lot of noise around the iPhone 5C logo that might be consistent with Photoshopping.
Apple’s under fire again for labor abuses by one of its manufacturing partners again, this time Pegatron. Bizarrely, though, the report incriminating them also confirms the plastic “budget” iPhone, the so-called iPhone 5C.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s a popular academic quiz show called Quiz Kids that airs on local public-access television. In each show, local high school teams of three players each compete for a $1,000 per-student scholarship based upon who can answer the most quiz questions correctly.
It’s a cute show, but of special interest to Cult of Mac’s readers is Episode 1110, in which the Mercy High School Crusaders competed against the Crystal Springs Griffins. The captain of the latter team? No less than Steve Jobs’s son, Reed, who talks about some of his extracurricular work helping out at Stanford, trying to assist finding new gene therapies for colon cancer. And Steve himself can be seen in the back at around the 2:53 mark, cheering Reed on.
That Reed Powell kid sure seems like a chip off the block, huh?
It’s hard to make a buck, especially in China. It’s also hard to get an appointment at the Genius Bar. It’s hard, then, to know where our sympathies should lie in this story: Chinese scalpers are apparently booking up all of the Genius Bar appointments in China and then selling them online at huge premiums. Oh wait, no, it’s not. Those scalpers are scumbags.
One of the many big, tattery holes in Apple’s Maps app is the lack of transit data. At launch, Apple wisely allowed third-party transit apps to plug into Maps to supplement their own subway and bus directions — perhaps the first bonafide example of Apple allowing iOS users to set their default app for anything — but it was obviously just a stopgap, because just last week, Apple scooped up Hopstop, one of the biggest transit apps around.
Unlike other Apple acquisitions, though, Cupertino hasn’t shut Hopstop down. In fact, the app was just updated with a beefy 2.6 update that makes it even better, including real time delay and incident reporting.
Loom is yet another app that promises to organize your photos for you, just like the amazing Everpix. Unlike Everpix, though, which shows the Apple heritage of its engineers in its oversimplified and sometimes frustratingly opaque user interface, Loom looks to be a little more accessible. And controllable.
The Toffee Cases Fold Wallet takes a different approach to iPhone wallets that most others. Instead of trying to squeeze your cards and cash into a few tiny slots stuck onto the back of the iPhone, Toffee’s Fold Wallet is more like a regular billfold, only with an extra pocket inside for your iPhone.
Ever wonder what your iPhone might look like if Apple decided to add a zoom lens? Then take a look at Thanko’s Appollo 2, a crapware camera with a massive 30x schnozz on the front.
Despite their slim and delicate appearance, Apple’s iDevices are pretty tough. I have dropped my iPad mini from the top of the fridge onto a tiled floor with no real damage – just a dented corner. In fact, in the five years that I have owned iDevices, I have broken one screen, and that was an iPod touch in a front jeans pocket which got completely wrecked in a drunken bike crash (I think that’s what happened, anyway – I don’t really remember).
Which is to say, the majority of mollycoddling we bestow on our iPhones and iPads is unnecessary. The only thing which really needs protection is the screen.
Back at the end of May I wrote about a great Kickstarter project which updated the Camera Lucida. The Neo Lucida is a prism on a bendy stick that you can use to superimpose the scene in front of you onto a sheet of paper so you can “trace” around real objects.
In the post I wondered if there was an app that would use your iPhone’s camera to do the same thing, but then – as usual – I didn’t read any comments. Reader Golan pointed out that the app is called Camera Lucida, and as of this weekend it has updated to v7.0.
Wunderlist v2.2 adds two big new features to the rather beautiful cross-platform todo app; one great improvement and a slew of fixes. And it might even change how you use the app.
Veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield is no longer a member of the company’s executive team. But that doesn’t mean he has left altogether. Mansfield is still working in an unknown capacity on “special projects” for Tim Cook. He was previously responsible for leading the new Technologies group that was formed during the big executive shakeup last year.
The above photo shows what is allegedly Apple packaging for an unreleased “iPhone 5C.” The packaging comes from the supply chain overseas and was first posted on the Chinese forum WeiPhone. It’s important to note up front that there is no way of confirming the packaging’s authenticity, but if it’s real, it has most likely revealed the name for the rumored budget iPhone.
This week on the ‘ol CultCast: why Google’s new Chromecast is great for us Apple fans; the 5S might be the biggest S-upgrade ever; Apple’s earnings make a low-cost iPhone look likely; how to best connect your iDevice to your car stereo; the Dev Center gets hacked; and then, Tim Cook sings Barbie Girl!
Have a few laughs and get 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.
Thanks to Bitcasa for sponsoring this episode. Show notes up next.
After being offline since last Thursday, Apple’s Developer Center is back and operational. Certain parts of the portal are still coming back online, but Apple’s system status page reveals that several services are accessible again, including the centers where developers can download iOS and OS X betas.
Supermechanical, the startup behind Twine, has a new Kickstarter campaign for a smart kitchen thermometer called Range. The device plugs into the iPhone’s headphone jack and helps you cook by telling the temperature and creating recipe graphs. It looks like a cool product, and it has 34 more days to reach its $90,000 goal.
Buying a $35 dongle to magically stream all the video of the internet to your TV sounds pretty awesome, and based on early impressions Chromecast does a decent job, but how does its content stack up against the Apple TV and Roku?
Danny Sullivan created the chart above to break down the content you’ll find on Chromecast, Apple TV and Roku. If you only care about streaming video off Netflix and YouTube, then Chromecast is the best bang for your buck. But if you want to watch HBO Go, Hulu, or pull content from iTunes or Amazon, Apple TV or Roku have more content options.
Source: Marketingland
Via: Twitter
Just in time for beach season, Griffin’s ruggedized, waterproof iPhone case – the Survivor+Catalyst – arrived at CoM’s Spanish HQ (aka my apartment). And after a month or so of using it and abusing it, I can say its the best rugged case I have used. For the iPhone anyway.
Let’s see why.
Apple has opened a new office in Boston that is working on beefing up Siri… and probably means that Cupertino wants to move away from relying on Nuance to provide Siri’s voice-recognition technology.
We’ve seen tons of leaked photos claiming to be the rear shell of the budget iPhone, and here’s the latest one we can add to the pile. The photo was posted on Weibo and looks pretty similar to images we posted two days ago.
Why does Apple put all kinds of weird screws on your Mac and iPhone that take an Apple Genius to unlock?
Because a little guy lives inside there doing all the work! HaaHAa! *rimshot*
Microsoft commissioned Eldon Dedini to make the comic above and a couple others back in 1985 to poke fun at the Macintosh. The comics were made for Microsoft’s marketing team, but weren’t distributed. To Microsoft’s credit, opening the original Mac was difficult as hell, and it took more tools than just a screw driver – and Apple certainly hasn’t made it any easier since then.
Source: Reddit
It’s no secret that Microsoft’s would-be iPad-killer has been a complete disappointment, but now Steve Ballmer, the company’s ever-optimistic CEO, is admitting to employees that the Surface is a flop.
Ballmer held a “rally the troops” event on the Microsoft campus yesterday to go over the company’s quarterly earnings and boost morale, but according to people at the event, Ballmer dove into how disappointing it has been trying to make Surface a success.