News - page 1602

With 60 episodes, over 1,000,000 downloads, and more appearances as an iTunes top tech podcast than we can count, we celebrate our first year anniversary on our newest episode of The CultCast! Join us as we remember our favorite episodes and guests, and tell the story of how CultCast almost never made it on the air.

But first, true to form, we discuss this week’s best Apple news and stories, including the new iOS features Sony is introducing into their just-announced Playstation 4; the honor Jony Ive just received that’s even better than a knighthood; and Woz says Apple is close to losing its cool—we disagree!

Get a fun weekly dose of all things Apple, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Street View is a new $0.99 iOS app from FutureTap that promises to bring Google Street View back to Apple’s Maps app on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Once installed, you’ll be able to access Street View from within Apple Maps with a series of simple taps. It’s not seamless, but it works.

Google has updated its Google Maps SDK for iOS to version 1.1, opening up its API to all third-party developers who now have the ability to build iOS apps with Google Maps embedded. The update also adds support for ground overlays, gesture controls, and more.

Now that you’ve upgraded to the latest iOS devices, you’re probably wondering what to do with all your old 30-pin speaker docks. You could get a $30 Lightning to 30-pin adapter from Apple and continue to use them, but for just $15 extra, you can get the auris and turn them into wireless Bluetooth speakers.

The official Call of Duty Elite app for iOS has today been updated to version 2.2.0, which adds a number of handy new features. Players can now compare their statistics with those of their friends, and track their progress during clan operations and challenges.

We told you that LEGO The Lord of the Rings was coming out this week, but if you were waiting for it to show up on Steam, you might be as disappointed as I was when I went to check it out tonight. The Steam store entry for the video game only shows PC compatibility, making my poor Mac-loving head sad.

Luckily, though, you can purchase LEGO The Lord of the Rings via the Mac Game Store as well as directly from Feral Interactive, the studio that ported the game to Mac in the first place, for the same $30 as it would cost you on Steam.

Maybe you’ve never played what is, inarguably, the best series of empire-building games ever created, and want to see what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you’ve been meaning to try that Vikings expansion pack. If any of the above fit, now is the time: Aspyr has cut the prices of all their Civilization titles by half to coincide with the release of the Civilization V: Gold Edition.

There are many Craigslist apps out there, but let’s be honest, most of them suck. A new app for Craigslist on Android and iPhone has arrived, and it’s beautiful. It comes from Mokriya, the development company behind high profile apps like Path.

Mokriya’s app is officially licensed by Craigslist, and it’s available now for free in Google Play and the App Store.

If you’ve been up on your Apple news the past few months, then you’ve probably heard about a “silly sideshow” that been going on about Apple’s stock. Basically, Greenlight Capital isn’t happy with the amount of cash their getting back on their investment in Apple, while Apple has been hoarding all their cash.

Hoping to convince Apple to give shareholders some of their cash, Greenlight Capitals found, David Einhorn, has a concocted a plan that would have Apple selling “iPref” stock to investors who want to eat Apple’s cake.

The only time I ever really care about Major League Baseball is during the Spring. And that’s only because I live in Arizona, where half of the league’s teams come for Spring training, and I can go watch tons of all-stars play games for cheap.

Whether you love baseball or not, you can certainly appreciate the amount of work that goes into the MLB At Bat app. It’s got tons of information, video, and photos, and it got a big update just in time for Spring training.

Every time I even go near a computer on a desk my wrists lock up and my carpal tunnels tighten. Still, even I can appreciate the amazing versatility and capacious storage power of this fully operational My Writing Desk, a beautiful plywood and fiberboard confection from etc.etc. designs.

Google has just unveiled an absolutely mystifying new product apparently created by insane millionaires, for even crazier millionaires: the Pixel, a $1,300 Chromebook with a Retina-like display. Although it’s attractive and well specced, it might be the most inexplicable product announced this year.

Sony and Microsoft, are all coming out with new gaming consoles this year, but when it comes to handheld gaming, Apple and Google have got them beat.

A new report claims that in the fourth quarter of 2012, gamers spend more money on iOS and Android games combined than the amount spent on dedicated handheld devices.

Following the public release of iOS 6.1.2, Apple has seeded the 6.1.3 beta to registered developers. Apple seeded the first iOS 6.1.1 beta towards the beginning of this month, and the minor release of 6.1.2 has caused the jump to 6.1.3 “beta 2.”

A crazy security flaw in the iOS lockscreen was recently discovered that could bypass a passcode, and Apple says it has patched the bug in this developer beta. There are also improvements to Maps in Japan.

Source: Apple

Now that you’ve jailbroken your iPad on iOS 6 with Evasi0n the right way, it’s time to install the coolest tweaks and apps from Cydia, the jailbreak alternative to the App Store.

Wondering what you should install? Here’s a roundup of the very best jailbreak tweaks available for the iPad:

Jailbreaking allows you to do all sorts of wonderful things to your iPhone that Apple wouldn’t trust you with. It’s totally awesome and can completely change the look of your iPhone, which could be great, or horrible depending on your taste in design, fonts, and wallpapers.

We’ve seen some really beautiful iPhone themes and tweaks over the last year, which got us thinking, “How beautiful could you make your homescreen with jailbreak tweaks?”

We could go down this lovely path alone, but we’d love to have our pals accompany us. So what do you say? Make your iPhone homescreen as pretty and different as possible, take a screenshot, and then post it in the Cult of Mac Flickr group. The five best homescreens will win a free copy of Kuvva Wallpapers, so hurry up and beautify your homescreens.

Here’s how to enter the contest:

We love photography at Cult of Mac. Whether it’s sharing photos at events through Instagram, or going outdoors and taking pictures for Flickr, snapping pictures and sharing them is one of our favorite ways to interact with readers. It’s also one of our favorite ways to write articles.

Today, Cult of Mac is introducing our new Flickr and Instagram groups. We want to see what life is like for all of our Apple fans across the globe, plus give you guys a way to get your pictures on the CultofMac.com homepage. The Flickr and Instagram groups will be the best place to see how Apple’s

Here’s how to join:

A petition against a phone unlocking ban that was introduced last month has now received more than 100,000 online signatures, the threshold petitions must reach to get an official response from the Obama Administration. The petition calls for the White House to make cellphone unlocking legal again, without having to go through a carrier.

Apple stock plummeted recently after a rumor went around that Foxconn had instituted a hiring freeze based upon a slowdown in iPhone 5 production. Foxconn quickly and emphatically deniedthat the freeze had anything to do with the iPhone 5… but what was the cause of the hiring freeze, then?

Here’s an interesting theory: Foxconn had to freeze hirings this year because, under pressure from Apple, they are treating employees so much more nicely that workers are no longer abandoning their jobs in droves after Chinese New Year.

Although these leaked images should be taken with a huge grain of salt, multiple photos purporting to be the rear aluminum shell of the second-generation iPad mini have leaked online, showing the next mini to be slightly thicker than the existing model… highly suggestive of the next iPad mini having a Retina display.

There’s this really cool, funny, slick video made by a bunch of Israelis called Sight, in which a guy walks around in a world where everything he sees is overlayed by augmented reality. Everything. All the time. Sounds far-fetched? Not so much anymore.

Today, Metaio announced that their new augmented-reality chip, called the Metaio AREngine, will make its debut in ST-Ericsson phones — in a handset(s) that may be available to the public as soon as the end of this year, or early 2014 if things move more slowly.

Rumors say that Apple is making an iWatch with a curved glass display, and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office just granted a patent for such a device. The patent in question was filed by Apple back in August 2011, and it describes a “touch-sensitive” bracelet that wraps around the human wrist and locks into place.

Apple calls it a “wearable video device” with a flexible display that “conforms to an appendage of the end-user.” The watch would be used to communicate with another device, like an iPhone.

For many people who bought the third-generation iPad, the faster, Lightning-equipped fourth-gen model came far more quickly than expected. Here in America, that’s lead to a bunch of grumbling, but in Brazil, it’s sparked a class action lawsuit, claiming that the update was tantamount to planned obsolescence.

Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn is a very influential Wall Street investor who is going after Apple for proposing to allegedly eliminate preferred stock options from AAPL shareholders. Apple recently started issuing small dividends to investors, and preferred stock would entitle investors to fixed dividends instead of the fluctuating common-stock dividends.

Einhorn and Greenlight Capital will hold a conference call today with interested Apple investors to discuss their ideas on how Apple should use its massive cash pile.

Ray-Ban, the sunglasses company, has a rather neat take on Instagram-style retrification filters. Instead of releasing yet another photo-filtering app, Ray-Ban’s Ambermatic actually shoots your photos through a real pair of Ambermatic shades.