If you thought that all apps that turn photos into “paintings” and “drawings” were total gimmicky junk, you’d be dead right. Applying a “find edges” filter and desaturating the result into grayscale doesn’t make a picture look like you drew it. It looks like you’re a dummy for even using it.
But things have changed: Glaze is an iPad app which actually makes faux paintings that look good.
Apple has just announced that OS X Mountain Lion is the most successful launch of Mac OS X ever, with over three million copies sold in four days.
“Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
Last year, Apple sold over 1 million copies of OS X Lion in the first day of release. It looks like Apple managed to not just match that rate, but exceed it with Mountain Lion.
Apple’s press release is after the jump. Have you updated to Mountain Lion yet?
September 21, 2012 is looking increasingly likely as the release date for the next-gen iPhone and upcoming iPad mini, as a new report from a trusted site pegs the date.
Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Apple was in talks to invest a significant amount of cash into Twitter. The multi-million dollar investment would raise Twitter’s company valuation to a healthy $10 billion.
But that doesn’t really sound like something Apple would do, does it? If you thought that when you first read this rumor, then you had the right hunch. Apple and Twitter have talked, but not recently. Beyond the current Twitter integration in iOS and OS X, the two companies are merely friends.
We thought about simply updating our original post on this story, but a separate article to debunk the former seemed more appropriate in this case.
Rumors surrounding Apple’s next-gen iPhone are started to pick up steam leading up to the device’s rumored release this fall. We know that the sixth iPhone will probably have a 4-inch display, slimmer design, smaller dock connector, and launch before November.
Leaked snapshots of purported next-gen iPhone parts have surfaced in recent months, but nothing as complete and authentic-looking as a series of images published over the weekend.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a stunning new weather app called Solar, which boasts a simple, intuitive user interface and a no frills approach that doesn’t suffocate you with information you’re not interested in. There’s also a great new drawing and animation app from Disney that you and your kids will love; a great new photography app that adds bokeh light effects to your photos; and updates to Google Earth and Yelp.
After making its debut on consoles, The Walking Dead series is now available on iOS, and it’s kicking off this week’s must-have games roundup. We also have two classic titles in the form of Fur Fighters and Spy vs Spy, a retro-style 2D platformer, and the official game of the new Total Recall movie.
The Walking Dead is the definitive zombie tale of the past few years, moving quickly from indie hit black-and-white comic book to even bigger hit television series, and then as a Mac and PC game on Steam. If you haven’t played it there, you owe it to yourself to check it out on your iPhone or iPad – it’s really that good. Heck,if you have played it on Steam, you might want to check it out on iOS.
Ping never had a chance, but a recent report may show the way to Apple’s eventual success in the social media space. According to a report in The New York Times, “people briefed on the matter” say that Apple has been talking with the social media startup about making a strategic investment.
The numbers bandied about include an Apple investment stake of hundreds of millions of dollars, which might in turn increase Twitter’s high valuation of around $8.4 billion to a nicer-looking $10 billion.
In a not-so surprise move today, Apple filed a proposal with the US District Court that is handling Monday’s trial between it and rival Samsung over possible patent infringements. The surprise move today is the fact that Samsung agrees with Apple.
Both companies have to submit documents as exhibits in the wide-ranging trial, scheduled for Monday, and each company would like to keep it’s sensitive business data private. The two tech industry leaders today came up with a proposal that, if accepted, will have them jointly submitting documents they would like redacted from the public.
Tonight during the Olympics, Apple aired several new Mac focused ads. The spots are drastically different than the kind of style Apple has been using in its TV ads for products like Siri and the iPad.
One features a man on a plane receiving assistance from a Genius with iMovie on his Mac, and another features a conversation between the same Genius and a customer who has just been tricked into buying “basically a Mac.” The third ad shows a scene in which a frantic dad explores iPhoto with a Genius.
One of the new features in OS X Mountain Lion is called Power Nap. Touted as a tool that get things done while your Mac is sleeping, Power Nap enables a Mac running Mountain Lion to download email, sync with iCloud, check for system updates, etc. while in sleep mode. There is a big caveat, however. Power Nap will only run on Macs with an internal solid-state hard drive (SSD).
During the developer beta phase of Mountain Lion and continuing into its public release stage, it was noticed that certain compatible Macs didn’t have Power Nap installed by default on the final release of Mountain Lion. Apple has since issued a firmware update to bring Power Nap to the MacBook Air, and now a new update today has been issued for the new MacBook Pro with Retina display.
Have you ever noticed that the Shuffle option on iTunes or on your iPod isn’t truly random? For example, if you have a playlist with ten tracks and start off by playing, say, the second track, iTunes will always shuffle to the exact same next track, everytime.
Doesn’t seem much like “Shuffling,” does it? It is, though: Apple’s just thinking about Shuffling a different way than you are.
Our Mountain Lion Megasode is here, and on this minty-new CultCast, we’ll tell you what we like, what we love, and which hidden features we’ve discovered in Apple’s new big kitty.
Plus, should you upgrade or do a clean install of Mountain Lion? We ponder that very question, then tell you when a clean install makes more sense and how to do it the right way on this all-new megasode.
Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.
Show notes up next!
The 2012 Olympic Games are set to kick off in less than 2 hours, so we wanted to make sure you had some apps and links to ensure you don’t miss a single lap, dive, punch, or round-off. You’ll find a list of the top apps and a few websites to keep you on track and in the game. Feel free to check them out, or if you have any other suggestions, throw them up in the comments. Now let the games begin!
The Soloshot is not, as you might suspect, a wipe-clean target aimed at the adult video market. Instead, it is a motorized stand for a sports camera, although its target customer is likely the same lonely soul that would be interested in the (mythical) pop-shot tracking gadget I mentioned above.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has only been available for 48hours but that’s not preventing many Mac owners from already upgrading. The $20 price tag, combined with easy download access via the Mac App Store has led to an incredible rate of adoption by Mac owners across the globe, and it might be on pace to be one of the most quickly adopted operating systems ever.
A new traffic report released by Chitika this morning shows that more than 3% of Mac users surfing the web have already installed Mountain Lion. Estimates are claiming that about 2.11 million Mac users downloaded OS X 10.8 within the first 48 hours of its release.
The Apple Command key (or, as you might better know it, ⌘) has a beautiful and clear history. Originally, the ⌘ key was an Apple symbol instead, but Steve Jobs thought that using the Apple logo as a keyboard shortcut in the original Macintosh’s menus was “taking the logo in vain” so he tasked the great icon designer Susan Kare to find a solution. The symbol she chose was the traditional clover symbol we all know today, chosen because it is commonly used in Scandavaniva to indicate a tourist attraction or place of interest.
Interesting, right? Unfortunately, there’s no related story as to why the Option key has its own unique (and very abstract) symbol: ⌥. Marc Edwards’ brilliant take on what the ⌥ symbol means is doubtless revisionist history, but I love the visual metaphor of a train switching tracks. That may not be the real tale, but it should be.
Source: Twitter
Via: Brooks Review
You know those big fat puzzle books you used to buy before you went on vacation? They’d be full of so many crosswords, word-searches and other mindless diversions that you could spend an entire week in a foreign country without seeing a single thing but the rough, badly-printed pages.
Now that wonderfully reclusive experience is available on the iPad, in the first game to be sold in the iOS Newsstand.
If you’ve ever searched for a wallpaper in the Google Play Store, chances are you were met by a never ending list of results. That’s because the word “Wallpaper” just happens to be the number one most frequent word in an Android app title. In fact, 26,900 Android app titles contain the word “Wallpaper” according to a list compiled by app discovery site App Brain. App Brain decided to create the list after a similar one consisting of the top most frequent words used in iOS app titles was released by Appsfire.
Mountain Lion is packed with over 200 new features, some of which you may never notice. Like did you know you can change the name of documents just by clicking its name up in the menu bar now? Or there’s tons of neat little things in the Accessibility Settings that will steal 15 minutes of your life as you play with them.
Now that you’ve had a few days to play around with Mountain Lion, what have you found that’s surprised you? Have you found any tricks and hidden features yet? If so, what are they?
CLICK HERE TO TALK ABOUT HIDDEN FEATURES IN THE CULT OF MAC FORUMS
Hueless, the excellent monochromatic iPhone photography app, has just launched its v1.2 update. And despite the pedestrian-sounding version number, it packs in quite a lot of new features. Let’s take a look.
Apple isn’t known for attending trade shows. Apple especially isn’t known for attending conferences that revolve around security research and the hacking community. That’s why it was a huge surprise when it was revealed that Apple would be making its first ever appearance at the Black Hat security conference this year. Dallas De Atley, Apple’s head security guru, was slated to give a talk on iOS, the company’s mobile operating system.
You’d think that De Atley’s talk would be pretty interesting, right? Unfortunately, attendees weren’t very impressed.
It’s official: Wi-Fi is the new megapixels. Or something. What’s certain is that the camera phone market has forever mixed up the regular camera world, and in order to offer some form of uploading and editing convenience for their dumb offline boxes, camera makers are adding Wi-Fi. Specifically, Wi-Fi that will connect to your iPhone or Android device.
The latest is the Fujifilm FinePix F800EXR, a compact superzoom which will cost you $380.
Okay, this probably isn’t what you were hoping for from the company that brought us titles such as Final Fantasy XIV and Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, but Square Enix’s next mobile release is none other than SolaRola. If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry — most of us haven’t. This cute mobile puzzler platformer was actually launched on Java back in 2007, and believe it or not, happens to be among a handful of games to secure a perfect 10 score and Platinum Award from Pocket Gamer.