News - page 1712

It used to be that we carried spare batteries for our devices. Then Apple sealed its products’ cases shut and some of us complained. Loudly. Then we realized that carrying an external battery pack meant we didn’t have to power-down to swap out batteries, and that we could now pick and choose the perfect third-party option, and we all shut the hell up.

Which is my long-winded way of introducing the new Zaggsparq packs, a range of three battery packs tailored perfectly to your iCharging needs. As long as you don’t own an iPad 3, that is.

Humans have progressed a long way since the days of “Will It Blend?” Rather than just tossing an iPhone into a blender, we now have dozens of ways we like to watch the iPhone get destroyed on YouTube. After the iPhone 5 was released on Friday the internet went to work on different ways to destroy it – like having an NBA player dunk it, blowing it up in a microwave, or shooting it with a .50 caliber rifle.

Here are  the best iPhone 5 destruction videos:

Got an iPhone 5? Missing the Glif stand/tripod adapter/icon that fits your old, fat, ugly (not to mention slooowwww) iPhone 4/S like a (right-angled plastic) glove?

Don’t worry: by simply spending more money, you can secure yourself a brand new, elongated and slenderized version of the Glif for your new iPhone.

Earlier today, we reported on the Foxconn riot that broke out at the company’s Taiyuan, China, plant on Sunday evening. More than 2,000 employees were involved, and it took more than 5,000 police several hours officers to bring the disturbance under control.

Although many were injured, it was first thought that there were no deaths. Unfortunately the riot was much worse than initially reported, and ten workers have now been pronounced dead, according to reports.

Even though the iPhone 5 has only been in most owners’ pockets for four days, a lot of people have complained that the back plate on their iPhone 5 has a ton of scratches. Apple says the back of iPhone 5 is made of anodized 6000 series aluminum — the same material used in Apple notebooks — so it shouldn’t scratch that much, but if you’ve seen this picture, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

How’s the back of your iPhone 5 holding up? Does it have a few scars already, or has it been just fine? Are you going to get a case, or does a little wear and tear give your device some integrity? We want to know how your iPhone 5 has been doing so far so come chat with us about it in the Cult of Mac Forums.

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and talk about whether your iPhone 5 is prone to scratches.

When Apple launched iCloud last year, it killed off MobileMe and provided paid subscribers with 20GB of free iCloud storage when they migrated to the new service. Most of us have been using that storage to back up our iOS devices, but like most good things, it’s coming to an end. The company has now begun emailing previous MobileMe customers to inform them that their free storage will be no more come September 30.

Photographer Dustin Curtis decided to put his new iPhone 5 up against his ~$4,000 Canon 5D MkIII SLR in a head-to-head shootout. The result? Clearly the Canon won, but the iPhone did surprisingly well.

Apple is said to be “aggressively” recruiting Google Maps employees in an effort to fix its highly criticized Maps service, according to an unnamed source “with connections on both teams.” The Cupertino company is reportedly using recruiters to attract individuals who have previously helped develop Google Maps, and many of them seem to be snapping up the opportunity to work at Apple.

Some years ago, I had a science-fiction idea. What if you could wear a camera and record your entire life? It would be small enough to hang around your neck or clip to your clothes. It would have enough memory and battery power to run all day, and it would record with a high enough resolution that you could “enhance” images to see close-up details.

Of course, this tech now exists. The latest iteration is this neat little Autographer, and in some ways it’s even better than my “invention.”

iPhone 5 is selling like hot cakes covered in chocolate sprinkles.

Apple has announced that iPhone 5 sales surpassed a whopping five million units in just three days following the handset’s launch on Friday, September 21. Demand for the device has exceeded Apple’s initial supply, and while the majority of pre-orders have been shipping, many are scheduled to arrive in October.

A Foxconn factory in Taiyuan, China — where many of Apple’s devices are assembled before being shipped — has had to be closed after 2,000 workers became involved in a “mass disturbance” on Sunday evening.

The fight reportedly broke out after a personal quarrel involving workers from two different production lines, but messages posted to Chinese microblogging network Sina Weibo have claimed that the brawl was actually caused by factory guards beating Foxconn workers.

iOS jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich has successfully gotten the old iOS Maps app, which was powered by Google and boasted features like Street View and walking directions, running under iOS 6. The port is said to be unstable at the moment, but it’s working, and with a little more work, it could be available in all its glory to users with jailbroken iOS devices.

If you installed iOS 6 last week, you probably expected to be able to use your Starbucks rewards card in Passbook. For some unknown reason, Starbucks has not yet updated its iOS app with Passbook integration, but the company has confirmed that the update is coming “at the end of this month.”

Passbook, Apple’s approach to a virtual wallet in iOS 6, allows merchants to store coupons, tickets, passes and rewards cards in barcode form on an iOS device. Starbucks cardholders will be able to pay for their drinks and earn rewards with Passbook when the update comes out.

Waiting for your shiny new iPhone 5 to arrive? Well we’ve been man-handling ours for the last 24 hours, and on our just-recorded Special Edition CultCast, we’ll tell you what we like, the stuff we don’t, and which one feature alone makes iPhone 5 a very worthy upgrade.

Think you can handle a full four inches of Apple iPhone? Download episode 33 of the CultCast and find out!

Note: Some of you have let us know that episode 33 is not yet showing up in iTunes. We’re not sure what’s taking so long, but if you subscribe to The CultCast on iTunes or with Apple’s Podcasts App, it downloads just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1Rc4MDmr8o

Apple has released four new TV spots, and three of them tout the brand new iPhone 5. One ad is specifically devoted to EarPods, highlighting the design process Apple went through to create its new earphones.

Unlike the failed Genius ads from the Olympics, these 4 new ads feel much more like classic Apple. Each iPhone 5 spot is 30 seconds and focuses on a particular aspect of the device.

We’ve embedded the other two iPhone 5 ads and the EarPods ad below:

Your iPhone 5 is gorgeous and thin and you love the hell out of it, right? New wallpaper selection for the iPhone 5 is a little bit lacking right now while everyone gets used to the taller resolution, but we went out and dug up 15 amazing wallpapers that perfectly fit the iPhone 5’s taller screen. Check ’em out.

Galaxy on Fire 2 is perhaps the best-looking space game on iOS. With astronomical scenes that call to mind a portable Eve Online, Galaxy on Fire 2 is an action space shooter with RPG elements, such as upgraded ships and weaponry, questing systems, and the like. It’s even made the move to Mac OS X.

It’s been a couple of months since FishLabs, the developers behind the title, released a teaser trailer and a vague September timeline for a release date for the upcoming downloadable content (DLC) expansion, Supernova. Well, that date is actually here, as Supernova is available on both the iTunes and Mac App Stores, for iOS and Mac OS X, respectively.

There have been quite a few worries out there on the web today, with new owners of the iPhone 5 comparing the screen to the older iPhone 4 and 4S. I was one of these early adopters, and I also set the phones next to each other to see the differences. When I turned them both on to look at the difference in screen ratio, I noticed that the new iPhone 5 screen had a markedly yellow tint.

I did what anyone might do upon seeing a possible defect in a brand new gadget device: I panicked.

Then I spent a little time on some other sites on the internet, and found out that I might have overreacted.

It’s about two years behind the Windows release, but who cares; in just under a week you’ll be able to tell those Zune-loving sods to take their “but Macs can’t game” nonsense and shove it down the barrel of your MP5 — because Call of Duty: Black Ops arrives next Thursday. In the meantime, Aspyr has again made the three other Call of Duty titles temporarily half-off, just to hold you over.

Today I did something I swore I’d never do: I bought a white iPhone. Like my fellow Cult of Mac colleagues and many of you readers, I too bought a brand spanking new iPhone 5. Deciding not to brave the crazy lines, I took my chances and waited till later in the day before I picked one up.

Black has always been my color of choice when it comes to iOS devices. I’ve always owned black iPhones, iPads and iPods. But for some reason I decided to go with white this time around, and I’m happy I did. The white iPhone 5 is absolutely gorgeous.

My oh my, is Apple getting a lot of hate from professionals reviewers for the new EarPods. Gizmodo calls them “garbage,” and The Wirecutter’s mixed review says they are no better than $10 earphones. But lots of new iPhone 5 users on Twitter today are saying “ftw.”

I actually like them too. Then again, I liked Apple’s old earbuds as well. They were cheap and cheerful. The price to performance ratio was really good.

The new EarPods sound way, way better than the old ones. In fact, to my ears, the new EarPods have more bass than a pair of $160 Tour earbuds from Beats by Dr. Dre, which are marketed for their extra bass boom. And they cost $130 less to boot.

While we don’t expect a public iOS 6 jailbreak — much less a jailbreak for the newly-released iPhone 5 — for quite some time, it appears as though things could be moving along quicker than originally expected. Noted jailbreak developer Grant Paul just tweeted a screenshot of Cydia on the iPhone 5’s taller display. He’s saying that he didn’t fake the Cydia icon, which would lead us to believe that the iPhone 5 has already been jailbroken.

A4 devices like the iPhone 4 and fourth-gen iPod touch can be jailbroken on iOS 6 already, but A5X devices like the iPhone 4S and third-gen iPad cannot be. Cydia running on the iPhone 5 is an even more impressive feat given the fact that Apple’s newest iPhone sports an entirely new, proprietary A6 processor.

It’s been confirmed that Verizon is actually selling the iPhone 5 factory unlocked out of the box, and you can pop in another SIM card to use the device on even a GSM network like AT&T. Jeff Benjamin of iDownloadBlog has already tried inserting an AT&T SIM card into his CDMA Verizon iPhone 5, and it worked!

Everybody has been totally nerdgasming all over themselves this morning about the thinness of the iPhone 5.  It’s been kind of annoying to be honest, but then once you actually get to caress its skinny little body, you realize no one is overreacting.

The iPhone 5 has a serious eating disorder, and it’s freaking beautiful. The iPhone 5 isn’t supermodel thin, it’s subatomic thin. Like, this iPhone 5 is so crazy gaunt that I’m actually having a hard time texting on it, but I love it.

I had just taped the pre-signed authorization for UPS to the door of my house, when the brown UPS truck pulled up in front. I ran downstairs, signed breathlessly, and took possession of an absurdly small package. Apparently, Apple’s not happy enough with a small phone; they need to make the box it’s shipped in super small as well.

I ran upstairs, sliced the packing tape open, and pulled out an even smaller iPhone 5 box, all shrink-wrapped and beautiful. The exterior retail box is quite a bit smaller than the last iPhone I purchased, the iPhone 4. The iPhone 5 itself? Stunningly small and light, yet fits almost perfectly in my hand, as has been said a bajillion times already.

I pulled off the sticky, protective plastic, held down the Wake button, and let the device do its start up thing. Then came the moment of truth: setup. How long was I going to be stuck at my desk?