I can’t believe it’s been two years since Verizon rolled out its 4G LTE network. That’s insane considering carriers such as T-Mobile have yet to even launch a 4G LTE network. To celebrate two years of providing consumers with the fastest, most reliable 4G LTE available, Verizon has a few amazing statistics to remind some of us why we continue to put up with their ridiculous prices and constant BS.
Got an Android phone with NFC and ticked off you can’t use it anywhere for mobile payments? Blame Apple. According to one industry watcher, the Cupertino-based tech company is responsible for setting back the emerging NFC market by two years in the United States.
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.
What’s hiding behind the door for Day 5? It’s a handy service called Pocket, formerly known as Read It Later.
Apple is racing to hire former Texas Instruments employees in Israel in an effort to staff a planned R&D center. Not wanting to be outdone, Intel has decided to ramp up their efforts to hire the same former Texas Instruments employees before Apple can grab them first.
A new report claims that Intel is offering the employees “healthy compensation packages” above the standard salary rates in an effort to keep the employees from slipping into Apple’s hands.
Microsoft’s new tablet, the Surface, is supposed to make the iPad and MacBook Air irrelevant. It’s supposed to be the best of both worlds by being a tablet/laptop hybrid. Reviews of the Surface have been mixed, and initial sales reports are indicating that Surface RT might be in trouble, because no one is buying it.
According to new research by the Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, Microsoft is likely to sell fewer than 1 million Surface RT units in the December quarter. To put that number in perspective, Apple sold 300,000 original iPad units on its first day of availability.
Apple released iTunes 11 last week, and it’s a step in the right direction. Its interface is cleaner and easier to use than previous versions, but what Apple fans have really been wanting for the past couple years is an unlimited music streaming service akin to Rdio, Spotify, or Pandora.
Rumors surfaced earlier this year that Apple is working on a Pandora-like radio service backed by iTunes’ huge music catalog. Some hoped Apple would introduce the service before the end of the year, but a new report claims that the new streaming service is nowhere near to being complete.
After Instagram was acquired by Facebook earlier this year, Instagrammers have worried that some changes are coming to the popular photo sharing app. On Wednesday, a big change was made to Instagram that disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display photos on the Twitter website.
Instagram images viewed through Twitter this morning now appear cropped and off-center. The change comes from Instagram disabling its integration with Twitter cards, which is used to display images and content within Twitter messages.
It wasn’t until I’d written the name at least five times that I realized the Amplifiear isn’t called the “Amplifear” after all. That’s not to say I’m disappointed: I’d much rather have an acoustic amplifier for my iPad than a small, buzzing metal box that amplifies the terror in my heart until my emotions are torn into rags and my life becomes a fearful shuffle from corner to dark corner.
If you’re an AT&T iPhone customer living in Pennsylvania, you may have woken up this morning to discover your handset had been inhabited by a mysterious being known only as “Dan.” He lives inside your iPhone and comes out when you’re asleep. While he’s awake, the AT&T name in your status bar changes to “Dan” — but it usually changes back before you get a chance to catch him.
Scary, isn’t it? Fortunately, that’s not true. Your iPhone isn’t inhabited by an unknown being that forgot to disappear before you woke up; it’s just a glitch on AT&T’s network that’s affecting users in Pennsylvania.
When you combine all the titles in Apple’s App Store with those in Google Play, you have a catalog of more than 1.4 million apps from hundreds of thousands of developers. But incredibly, more than 50% of the revenue made by these stores in the United States goes to just 25 app developers.
This is intriguing: leaked images purporting to be the rear housing of the forthcoming iPhone 5S have just appeared online, and if previous reports about when the iPhone 5S is supposed to enter production are correct, they could be the real thing.
The Boombot REX is a ruggedized, wearable JamBox for outdoorsy types. It looks amazing – and even more so because it was invented by Bill and Ted.
Props to the indefatigable Onion News Network for breaking this important story: Apple is promising an update by Christmas that will fix iOS 6 Maps’ unreliable mapping results by physically altering the shape and geography of the Earth’s crust. That’s a solution that Steve “you’re holding it wrong” Jobs could be proud of.
Source: The Onion
On the evening of Apple’s latest earnings call, David Miller, a 40 year old trader at Rochdale Securities LLC, had a great idea. Apple stock price always goes up after an earnings call, right? So what he would do is buy 1.6 million shares of Apple stock worth over $1 billion, then “flip” them the next morning when the stocks rose, pocketing a personal profit of millions of dollars.
A fine plan, don’t you think? There was only one problem: Apple stock actually went down the morning after the latest earnings call. Now Miller is facing 20 years in federal prison for wire fraud, and his trading company might be going under.
Apple released iTunes 11 last week, which introduced a new look and a number of new features. It also took a couple of features away, including Cover Flow and duplicate song detection. While the former appears to be dead and buried now, it looks like the latter is one its way back in a future update.
Da-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-da-DUH-duh. So goes the familiar tune of the iPhone’s default Marimba ringtone, as recognizable (and yet not nearly as annoying) as Nokia’s Gran Vals.
And yet what if you want to mix things up a little, but not too much? Greg Pierce, the wonder-developer at Agile Tortoise – responsible for Drafts, Terminology and others – has done the hard work for you, re-rendering iOS’ alert sounds on acoustic guitar.
Finding an iPad mini right now is like trying to find oil; they’re out of stock almost everywhere — at least where I live in the United Kingdom. Apple retail stores are getting them in, but they sell out in no time at all. The only option for most customers, then, is to order online and endure the lengthy wait for delivery.
That’s what Reddit user ‘vinlays’ did. And after a painful five-week wait, FedEx delivered the iPad mini to his door. That’s a picture of it above.
Casio has announced its new G-Shock GB6900AA wristwatch which syncs with your iPhone over Bluetooth to bring notifications to your wrist. It will notify you of incoming calls, text messages, and emails, and it’ll alert you when your iPhone goes out of range to prevent it from being misplaced. And if you do lose your device, the G-Shock will help you find it.
Productions rates for the iPhone 5 are improving, supply sources claim, just in time for the handset to make its debut in more than 50 additional markets throughout December. Now that Apple has caught up with demand, the handset’s shipping delay has been reduced from four weeks to just 2-4 business days. Suppliers now expect the Cupertino company to sell 45 million iPhone 5 units during the fourth quarter alone.
One thing that nobody sees to have noticed with yesterday’s iOS iWork update is that Pages now tracks changes. And not just changes from other Pages documents, either – it’ll import and export tracked changes from Microsoft Word documents.
This could be huge. Or maybe it just won’t work at all.
Sonos has updated its iOS app and introduced the ability to wirelessly stream music AirPlay-style to your Sonos speaker directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Until now, users have had to have a Mac or PC acting as a middleman, but Sonos latest iOS apps remove that requirement.
Following Apple veteran Bob Mansfield cashing in $20 million worth of AAPL, Eddy Cue has decided to let go of roughly $8.8 million in stock. Cue, who’s official title at Apple is “Senior Vice President Internet Software and Services,” recently sold 15,000 shares valued at about $583 per share.
Cue only owns 285 accessible shares in Apple now, but he has a treasure trove waiting for him should he choose to stay with the company for the foreseeable future.
I’m an avid Instragammer. And yes, I even take pictures of food, and clouds and all that stupid stuff. It’s horrible. It’s a bad habit. I need to stop. But I can’t. Maybe if the most loathed band in the world would just make a song about how awesome Instagram is then I’d be motivated to kick the habit.
Nickelback still hasn’t worked Instagram into the lyrics of their next mega-album, but CollegeHumor just created the perfect Nickelback video that destroys Instagram and its users with such perfection it’s unbelievable.
Will it keep me from snapping a pic of the French Toast I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow? Nope. But I’ll get rid of all my beautiful fingernail pictures now.
Source: CollegeHumor
As Google pushes more and more into the smartphone and tablet market with its Android operating system, it’s a no brainer to figure out that the company previously mostly known for its search business will come into conflict with the other gorilla in the mobile operating space, Apple. The media frenzy that results from these expected differences can be deafening in its fervor at times.
The press, however, has it all wrong, said Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking to the Wall Street Journal. His take? That businesses must be run more like countries, with diplomatic meetings and the like. He said that “the adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other.”
Rayman Jungle Run got an update today, adding ten more levels within a brand-new world for the holidays. The app description mentions, “10 new levels, including a snowy jungle, waterfalls, interactive environments, and a new crazy Land of The Dead challenge.”
There is also an updated character pack available for $0.99 as an in-app purchase, as well. It includes new character Globox, and two new Rayman costumes to use in-game.