News - page 1654

One of the best things about Christmas is the endless number of Ugly Sweater Parties during the build up to Santa smothering me with presents. Sure, ugly sweater parties have become cliché, but I’m not bored of them just yet, and using an iPad to create the ultimate ugly christmas sweater sounds awesome.

I pride myself on my ability to dominate the competition at an ugly sweater party, but never before had I thought to integrate an iPad or iPhone into the costume with the elegance Mark Rober pulls of in the video above. Replicating Mark’s sweater is pretty easy. Just download his Digital Dudz – Christmas app, buy a sweater, cut a hole in it, duck-tape your iPad to the back and you’re done.

Rather than going with a simple fireplace though, I’m thinking of displaying an endless collection of the best/worst GIFs, or just this.

Source: YouTube

Via: Gizmodo

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

So what’s behind the door on Friday the 7th? Tweetbot for Mac, the best (and most expensive) Twitter client on the Mac App Store!

If you’re a gamer, enjoy yourself this lazy December Friday afternoon through this wonderful, whimsical two-and-a-half minute video — in which Link, the elven, immortal hero of the Legend of Zelda series — travels across a series of Macs and iOS devices in a university computer land in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the evil wizard Gannon.

Just incredibly well done. Makes me want to load Majora’s Mask up in an emulator on my MacBook Air and while the afternoon away.

T-Mobile recently announced that they’ve reached an agreement with Apple to start selling the iPhone in 2013. Coming on the heels of their iPhone announcement, T-Mobile says they plan to stop subsidizing smartphones in 2013 to give customers more freedom.

All four of the major U.S. carriers offer smartphones at a subsidized price, giving subscribers a discount in exchange for tying them to a two-year contract. The contract helps the carriers retain customers, and the lower price point of the smartphone makes customers happy, but it also ramps up costs and restricts customers from upgrades. T-Mobile says they want to get rid of that system entirely.

Square Enix has announced today that it will be bringing Final Fantasy IV to iOS devices on December 20, and to Android at some point during 2013. The port appears not to be the original, but instead the title’s remake that was brought to the Nintendo DS with 3D graphics among other features and improvements.

Unlike Facebook and Google, when Apple decides to build a huge new data center, they’re not going to let anybody inside to see the technological marvels that they’ve cooked up. Apple just broke ground on a $68 million data center in Prinveville, Oregon, so rather than waiting forever to get an invite to tour the place, Wired sent out their spy plane to get some pictures.

Only a few parts of the data center have been completed, but it is interesting how close Apple is building their data center to Facebook’s gigantic new twin data center. Maybe being neighbors will help the two companies become best friends.

Here’s the pics of the future iCloud of the West.

Apple made its new iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad available to customers in China today, where its iOS devices have recently been seeing record demand. However, that wasn’t the case at the Cupertino company’s new retail store in Beijing. Lines outside the building were almost nonexistent when doors first opened, while only four customers entered the building in the following hour. Most of those who did walk out with a device sold them straight on to scalpers waiting outside.

Google’s social network, Google+, rolled out a new Communities feature this week. Your favorite blog has already established the biggest and fastest-growing Apple-related community on the network.

Click here to join the Cult of Mac Community on Google+.

You should also circle the Cult of Mac Google+ page!

Apple warned us that supplies of its new iMac would be extremely limited this year, and it hasn’t taken long for its initial stock pile to diminish. The 27-inch all-in-one, that was once shipping in “3-4 weeks,” now won’t be sent out until January via the Apple online store.

T-Mobile customers are quickly jumping ship, turning to rival carriers to bag the iPhone. But on Thursday, the company announced that it will finally begin selling Apple’s immensely popular smartphone from next year, and it is hoping that the move will help it claw back some subscribers. Chief Executive John Legere wants to see it making a positive impact on the carrier’s subscription numbers by 2013.

“It is an aggressive target but we think it is possible,” Legere told reporters on Friday.

On Tuesday I went to a party at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord to celebrate the launch of Fuze For Mac, a nifty cloud-based videoconferencing tool from FuzeBox.

I heard several interesting things about Steve Jobs and some intriguing Apple TV rumors. One of the rumors made me think that Tim Cook’s new Mac — the one that is going to be made in the U.S.A. — might actually be a big-screen Apple TV.

Here’s what I heard:

• The software was developed at the behest of Steve Jobs himself, who persuaded FuzeBox to make the software not just for the Mac, but for an upcoming Apple TV.
• Steve Jobs gave the company a special dev lab on Apple’s campus.
• According to FuzeBox’s CEO, the upcoming Apple TV has a 60-inch screen. It has no inputs whatsoever, except an AC power cord. No wires. You can’t plug in a cable box or a game console. Nothing.
• It does have Gigabit wireless Wi-Fi and gesture controls, equivalent to Microsoft’s Kinect accessory for the Xbox.
• And finally, the story of how FuzeBox got an ultra rare meeting with Steve Jobs is worth telling — details below.

Now, I’m the first to admit that not all of this adds up. I got it from Jeff Cavins, FuzeBox’s CEO, who told a good tale, especially after I’d had a couple of pints. While I was fascinated and entertained, it didn’t get to pin him down on details. The party was loud and crowded, and we were constantly interrupted. So mostly for entertainment purposes, this is what he said:

The iNotebook from Targus is yet another attempt to solve the old problem of hand-writing on your iPad. This one comes in the form of a folio with a pad of paper, a special pen and a sensor up top to record your ink strokes in digital format.

The trouble is, it looks like another “faster horse and carriage” solution.

Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for the whining kids in your life.

The ongoing legal battles between Apple and Samsung were rather entertaining early on, now it’s like watching two school children fight over who was first to own the latest pair of trendy sneakers. Even the judges presiding over the cases are beginning to lose their patience. As the pair continue to fight it out in the U.S. district court of Northern California this week, Judge Lucy Koh has made a plea for “global peace.”

As I shrieked in jubilation on Twitter, it’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here! Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition — the modernized port of one of the best RPGs of all time — has finally landed on the iPad!

And if you, like me, ever spent six months in 1999 slowly turning your skin translucent under the X-Ray glow of an old CRT monitor massacring half the Sword Coast with a chaotic evil gnome, well, say good bye to your social life, boys.

This is theGOODbook. It is a book, and it is very, very good. It’s so hot that even though I’m a dedicated non-user of cases, I have the product page primed and ready to place my order.

A TSA agent caught stealing iPads and numerous other electronic devices was arrested this week following a sting operation at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport. Sean Henry, 32, joins the growing list of TSA workers who have been accused of stealing from passengers as they pass through airport checkpoints across the United States.

We already posted the transcript to Tim Cook’s full interview with Brian Williams on last night’s NBC Rock Center, but here’s the video, covering everything from his CEO role at Apple, the failure of iOS 6’s Maps, the future of the Apple TV, and more.

Part one is above, and part two is below the jump. Sorry, NBC insists on posting their videos in Flash, so you’ll need to watch this on a Mac or PC.

Apple CEO Tim Cook practically never grants interviews, and rarer still, one where he talks with such candor about the future of Apple, the legacy of Steve Jobs, and why Apple products aren’t currently made here in the USA, but soon will be.

Join us on our newest CultCast as we discuss Mr. Cook’s recent interviews, his frank comments about Apple’s “intense interest” in TV, and why that new Apple-stamped mystery set could be built right here in the U.S. of A.

All that and more on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

KitCam has quickly become one of my favorite photography apps for the iPhone — featuring in last week’s must-have apps roundup — and it has just been updated to add a number of handy features. In addition to photo importing from the camera roll, KitCam now has a time lapse timer, and better zoom functionality.

“All work and no play makes Homer something something…”

Fans of The Simpsons will know that all work and no play actually made Homer go crazy, so to celebrate those brief times when we get to play, Cult of Mac Deals has a pretty sweet ride that will keep you entertained for hours. And (hopefully) keep you from going crazy.

This remote-controlled hyperspeed stunt flier is the most dynamic of its kind – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $49…but it is a deal that is wrapping up very soon!

As jailbreakers wait with eager expectation for an untethered jailbreak that works on iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, Cydia developers are still hard at work. One of the community’s most popular hackers, Grant “chpwn” Paul, has updated many of his popular tweaks. His most famous tweaks, Infinidock, Infiniboard, and Infinifolders, have all been completely rebuilt and made compatible with iOS 6. Collectively they now form Infiniapps 2.0.

Some of Paul’s other iOS tweaks have also received minor updates, like VoiceActivator and Zephyr.

The Big Four US mobile carriers–AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile–have just sent out a press release committing to push the issue of text to 911 capabilities, hopefully sooner than, but at least by, 2014.

These major players, plus The 911 Association and the Association for Public-Safety Communications Officials International, have decided to work together on standards and procedures to make this happen with a seamless transition to text to 911 services across the US.

NBC Rock Center just aired its exclusive interview with Brian Williams and Apple CEO Tim Cook. In his first real TV interview, Cook was candid about his CEO role at Apple, the failure of iOS 6’s Maps, the future of the Apple TV, and more.

Here’s the full transcript of tonight’s Rock Center segment with Tim Cook:

Zazzle Instant is an iOS app that lets you add your own pictures to a ton of different products, including Macbook and iPad sleeves, iPhone cases, messenger bags, playing cards, and a whole lot more.

The app has updated recently to include some great new features, like integration with your Facebook photos, easier adjustment to images, and new panoramic photos (in case you were wondering what to do with all those new iOS 6 panoramic photos). The folks at Zazzle promise to unleash new features on the app for the next few Saturdays, as well, so now is a great time to try it out.