Earlier this week during its WWDC keynote, Apple announced that nine automakers have committed to introducing a special Siri button into their upcoming vehicles, allowing you to activate your voice-controlled assistant without removing your hands from the steering wheel. However, it seems the Cupertino company forgot to tell some of those manufacturers about its plan.
New Macs! Mountain Lion! iOS 6! The second part of our WWDC special edition CultCast is now on iTunes, and in this brand new episode, no fruity pebble is left unturned.
Join us as we discuss the pros and cons of Apple’s new Macbook Pro with Retina display, the mysteriously missing iMac and Mac Pro updates, and the best and worst new features of Mountain Lion and iOS 6. Yes sir, we cover it all on this special WWDC edition MEGASODE of the CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes, and find out why 2012 is going to be a great year to be an Apple fan.
Full show notes ahead!
Apple’s attention to detail, its subtle understanding of the way we interact with our machines, just never ceases to amaze. Case in point: did you know that Apple precisely angles all of the screens on its Apple Store display units to encourage you to walk up and touch them? It’s true!
Every alternative punk in the 90s knows Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins’ bald, amorphous, nasally-voiced lead singer. And he can sometimes be an idiot. Now he’s being an idiot about iTunes.
Does Instagram really make your photos better? If you’re shooting them with the crappy camera in the original iPhone – for which the app’s grungy filters were designed – then the answer is yes. But what about the iPhone 4S, or any other camera – even film?
Allen Murabayashi decided to find out. He grabbed a handful of famous images from the web and ran them through everybody’s favorite photo grungifier. From Neil Leifer’s iconic 1965 shot of Ali vs Liston through Steve McCurry’s Kodachrome-tastic Afghan Girl to a shot from the royal wedding, all of them suffer from being Instagrammed.
If you’re an iPhone user who plays Angry Birds and watches YouTube videos all day long, you probably think your handset’s battery life is terrible. In reality, the iPhone often provides you with a lot more energy than many rival smartphones, and as for the iPad, well, no other tablet beats it when it comes to staying awake.
But there are some things you can do to make your battery life even better. In addition to obvious fixes — like turning down your brightness when you don’t need it to melt your retinas, or killing apps like Skype that constantly run in the background — identifying buggy apps that might be using battery unnecessarily could make a huge difference. And Carat for iOS helps you do that.
Normally we leave camera rumors alone until the actual real thing is launched. But the stories whirling around the internet regarding the Nikon D600 are too much to resist.
The D600 is said to be an entry-level full-frame DSLR, coming in at a price way below the new D800, and also the amazing D700. This is a big deal as full-frame (35mm film sized) DSLRs have always been reserved for the high (and expensive) end of manufacturers’ lineups. And now, we have (purported) photos to prove it.
Canadian lawyer Perminder Tung is suing Apple over a Time Capsule failure that cause him to lose laptop backups that included precious photographs of his child’s birth. Tung wants $25,000 in compensation for the broken device and the lost memories after Apple told him the data on his Time Capsule could not be saved.
The iPhone Marimba ringtone is iconic. It’s just a few notes played on an African xylophone, but somehow, it captures everything that is light and breezy about Apple’s platform.
The problem is, everyone uses it as a ringtone. Like Nokia’s overexposed ringtone before it, Marimba’s musical resonance has been oversaturated for most of us.
That’s why I really like the Marimba Take Two mix by Will Neaverson, embedded above. It takes the original Marimba and builds layers upon it, until it almost sounds like a Coldplay track.
As one of Reddit’s commenters note, it sounds so good, you can imagine Apple even using it in a commercial. That’s an ad I’d like to see. (Update: One of our readers made one!)
Source: Soundcloud
Via: Reddit
Apple’s new MacBook Pro follows the fine tradition of the iPhone 4 and third-gen iPad in that it has a super high-resolution Retina display: a 2880 x 1800 panel with an amazing 220 pixels packed in per inch.
It’s an incredible display. In fact, it’s such an incredible display that it actually has about one million, seven hundred thousand pixels more than it needs to satisfy Apple’s definition of Retina, leading some to claim that those pixels are all going to waste.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Apple’s new MacBook Pros have absolutely great displays, but they need every single pixel they have, because the truth of the matter is that Apple’s got a long way to go before it catches its display tech up to the incredible power of human vision. And that’s a good thing, because it means we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
As we detailed in another post earlier this week, Apple’s new iOS 6 beta features a nifty new status bar that changes color to match the app you’re currently running. We provided a number of screenshots that showed the status bar in three different shades of blue, and in silver — colors the status bar never displayed in iOS 5.
So how does the status bar determine which color to use? Well, it’s actually pretty simple.
Like he did when he ran for President back in 2008, Obama is seriously leveraging the power of mobile in his campaign for re-election. The mastermind behind that mobile campaign? Steve Jobs. And the iPhone and iPad are Obama’s secret weapons.
Dropbox has issued an update to its iOS app this morning, introducing the ability to automatically upload photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to the cloud. Version 1.5 also delivers a new gallery view for your images, the ability to move and delete multiple files simultaneously, and more.
Apple attorneys are surely enjoying the latest ruling in the patent case involving Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, which grants Apple the chance of making its case via an injunction. The judge’s order yesterday is one last chance for both parties to plead the case to continue to trial, a trial that was canceled by Judge Richard Posner last week, with the judge ruling that neither party could prove damages.
In the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, the author tells the story of the first Apple computer, the Apple I, created ostensibly for the Homebrew Computer Club. According the the account in the book, Steve Wozniak wanted to give it away for free to members of the club; Steve Jobs, however, had a different vision. When convinced to sell the computer, Wozniak chose the price of $666.66, one that reflected his taste for repeating numbers, not the number of the beast. This friday, that price will get a hefty upgrade.
There’s no denying Temple Run has had quite the success across both Android and iOS. Apparently, Disney has taken notice of this success and reached out to Imangi Studios (the couple behind Temple Run) to create an official Temple Run version for Disney/Pixar’s upcoming computer-animated fantasy adventure film Brave.
In yet another patent filing, it appears that Apple is, if nothing else, researching the idea of interchangeable camera lenses on the iPhone. While the chances of an idea like this actually making it to the iPhone are slim to none, it’s an interesting look into what goes on behind closed doors at Apple.
With Windows 8, Microsoft is making a strong push for the tablet market, in a last-minute attempt to catch up with the wild success of the iPad. While its clear that the Redmond based company has a long road ahead of it to even catch up with the first iPad, we may see some dramatic progress on Monday, seeing that Microsoft has announced an event to be held in L.A. about Windows tablets.
Star Walk is one of my favorite iPad apps which I use all the time. So I was really interested to meet the people behind this app when its developer, Vito Technology, hit town for WWDC this week. And as their demonstration shows, they’ve gone all out to enhance even further the beauty of their wares.
Rovio’s Angry Birds updates are becoming more and more creative. The next batch of summer fun transports our favorite angry aviators to the land of aquatics. Down in the depths of the ocean lives a mythical green beast whose appetite for destruction can only be satisfied by the souls of the avian unborn.
Beginning with iOS 6, Apple will now prompt you before allowing any app to access your personal data. This includes not only your contacts, but calendars, reminders, and photo library as well. In addition to these dialog boxes, iOS 6 also includes a new privacy section where you can manage fine-grain controls over which apps can use your data.
Apple touts their new 3D maps in iOS 6 as being brand new, but as it turns out, Nokia — of all companies! — beat them to it. That’s right, if you head over to maps.nokia.com right now, you can use what is essentially iOS 6 maps from your desktop browser.
This is really great. Apple has taken the initiative in iOS 6 to update the operating system’s selection of emoji — or visual characters — to now not have some options for gay and lesbian users, including a gay and lesbian couple holding hands. Sweet!
That’s not all, of course. There’s also some cute new monkey who can do no evil, see no evil, and hear no evil, apparently. Hope they can’t smell evil, either, because they are just a few columns down from a grinning, anthropomorphical piece of crap.
I wish there were some gay and lesbian monkey emoji, but I guess Apple had to leave something back for iOS 7.
Source: Techcrunch
Samsung rips off everything about Apple.
They’ve ripped off the iPhone. They’ve ripped off the Mac mini. They’ve ripped off the iPhone 3G. They’ve ripped off the iPad Smart Cover. Heck, they’ve even ripped off Apple’s commercial actresses.
We were wondering, then, what it would look like if Samsung just went whole hog and decided to design themselves a new logo the same way they “designed” their smartphones and tablets: by stealing their ideas wholesale from Apple.
Ready? Without further ado, here’s Samsung’s new logo:
Gameloft continues to make friends with all the right people as Hollywood seems to be trusting them to create the official mobile games to accompany their summer blockbusters. First they teamed up with Marvel and Sony Pictures to bring the official Amazing Spiderman and now they’ve teamed up with Warner Brothers Games and DC Comics to bring the official Dark Knight Rises to Android and iOS this summer.