There is perhaps no name in the world of hacking as legendary as Geohot. George Hotz was the first person to unlock the original iPhone back in 2007. He was 17 years old at the time. He also released multiple jailbreaks, including “purplera1n” for the iPhone 3GS. Hotz later went on to hack the PlayStation 3 and battle Sony in a high-profile lawsuit.
In a recent profile by The New Yorker, we get a fascinating look at Hotz and several stories from his career as a prolific, self-taught hacker.
When Apple introduced the MacBook Air without an optical drive, everyone freaked out. “How on earth will we be able to watch all of our DVDs and listen to our CDs?” cried the internet. And sure, totally disowning physical media with a disk drive-less laptop may have been a little preemptive of Apple back in 2008, but the times have changed since then. We live in a world of digital media and digital software distribution. The success of services like Netflix and the Mac App Store proves that.
With rumors saying that Apple will introduce new and improved Macs in the coming weeks, what can we expect? Faster processors? Solid-state hard drives? Retina displays? While these features certainly seem to be on the table, there’s also the chance that Apple’s next-gen MacBook Pro will sport significant physical changes. Namely, we could finally see the optical drive retire from the MacBook line once and for all.
Apple’s iTunes Match service is rolling out to more countries across the globe, including Italy, Greece and Portugal. The music storage and streaming service can be purchased directly in the iTunes Store.
This marks Apple’s second major international rollout of iTunes Match to date, following the service’s expansion to parts of Latin America and Europe back in January.
Earlier in this day, we reported on a New York Times piece in which the paper claimed that Apple was using a variety of measure to avoid paying U.S. income tax. It turns out that the Times based key pieces of its information on a study that had been discredited two weeks prior.
The data used by the Times included a report by the Greenlining Institute, which made errors in computing Apple’s supposed tax rate at 9.8% for the 2011. The data used by the report effectively compared Apple’s 2011 profit with taxes paid by the company for profits in 2010 and drew unfounded conclusions as a result.
When it comes to our mobile devices and the operating systems we use, we can sometimes be a bit defensive and downright vile. We’re usually quick to make a joke or two at the expense of one another, but in the end, we’re all human, and most of us are surprisingly close friends who frequently kick back and enjoy a cold beer together (even if some of us accidentally leave our prototypes behind). That’s why this next invention will have tech-loving beer connoisseurs foaming at the mouth (literally).
Remember the IKEA cardboard camera that popped up in a Milan press goody-bag last week? It turns out that it was actually a thing — IKEA is billing it as the “world’s cheapest digital camera,” and it should be going on sale in the Swedish giant’s labyrinthine stores soon.
Like the rest of the BookBook range, Twelve South’s BookBook for iPhone ($60) is a luxury, handmade leather wallet case that’s designed to look like a pocket-sized vintage book. Not only will it lovingly house your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, but it also features three credit card pockets, and a larger pouch for notes and bills.
The BookBook is available in a dark tan brown leather, and every one is hand-distressed to ensure each one is a little bit unique. As you’d expect, the case provides access to your iPhone’s dock connector; headphone jack; mute switch; and volume, home, and sleep/wake buttons.
A jailbreak tweak called Forecast presents a handy weather widget on your iPhone’s lock screen for displaying current weather and the weekly forecast. Powered by Apple’s own Weather app, Forecast replaces the standard time and date at the top of your iPhone’s lock screen. Weather info is displayed on the right while the time is still displayed on the top left of the lock screen, giving you the best of both worlds.
There’s an unforeseen cost for companies as workers become more mobile and trends like BYOD become ever more common. It isn’t the cost of a mobile management solution, deploying iOS apps, or even supporting iPads and iPhones that users want to use to connect to the work email and other business resources.
What is this hidden cost? Wi-Fi.
Popular iOS Twitter client Tweetbot has been updated with several new features and improvements in the App Store. Version 2.3 for iPhone and iPad is available now with more gestures, added timeline thumbnail support, and more. Storify and Droplr integration has also been included for sharing Twitter conversations and media/links with followers.
It’s hard to believe a mobile game franchise that’s about four years old could be more popular than ever but that seems to be the case with the uber-popular Angry Birds. Today, Rovio announced their latest iteration, Angry Birds Space, has broken all previous records and surpassed 50 million downloads in just 35 days — making it one of the fastest growing mobile games of all time.
While it will be six months or longer before Microsoft releases Windows 8 and its companion products, the company has been putting out a lot of information about its plans lately. One big Windows 8 mystery to date is Windows for ARM based tablets. Formerly known as Windows on ARM (or WOA), the company recently settled on Windows RT as the official name for Windows 8 on low-cost ARM-based tablets.
Microsoft is very clearly positioning Windows RT tablets as iPad competitors for both the home and business markets. Until recently, there wasn’t much solid information about them beyond that they would include a touch optimized full version of Office. With the information released recently, however, there’s enough detail to speculate how Windows RT tablets will stack up to the iPad in business.
The jailbreakers among you will undoubtedly already be familiar with DreamBoard, an awesome tweak that quickly applies custom themes to an iOS device. It’s probably the easiest way to give your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch a nice new look, and therefore it’s extremely popular.
One shameless iOS developer is attempting to cash in on that popularity by creating a DreamBoard knockoff that is now available in the App Store for $2.99.
Patent Armageddon is set to take place in less than a month thanks to dates set by Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero. The settlement talks were originally ordered by Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, in hopes that Samsung and Apple’s CEOs and their chief lawyers could reach an agreement to end the 50+ lawsuits filed by the two.
Having already treated himself to the hugely popular photo-sharing service Instagram earlier this month, there’s talk that Mark Zuckerberg could now be eyeing up a potential takeover of Viddy, a service that is often described as “Instagram for videos.” It would be the perfect companion to Facebook’s latest purchase.
We can all surmise that urinating upon your Mac will not be covered by your AppleCare, but here’s an interesting question: if you stand up right this second, unzip your fly and hose off all over your MacBook, can you even pay Apple to service the machines?
The answer is no, because Apple looks at micturated-upon MacBooks as a biohazard. Along with an obnoxious 11-year-old’s full bladder, the obscure fact above is what ended up costing a Pennsylvanian school district upwards of thirty-six thousand dollars to replace a cart full of thoroughly soaked MacBooks.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran another in its series of exposes about Apple. This one focused on Apple’s complex mix of offices and subsidiaries located throughout the world and the U.S. that allow the company to keep large portions of its more than $100 billion in low-tax states and countries.
The report comes after the paper’s expose on working conditions within Foxconn, the contractor that Apple uses to assemble most of its products and calls by politicians and members of the media for Apple to move more of its manufacturing and money to American soil.
Apple’s mythical, standalone TV set has been the subject of much speculation over the past several months. Rumors have been saying that we’ll see an Apple-branded TV set (dubbed ‘iTV’ in most cases) by the end of this year at the earliest. The TV is expected to feature Siri integration, IP-based streaming and even a gaming element.
On the streaming side of things, a new report claims that Apple has been in talks to secure the rights to stream Hollywood movies for its upcoming TV set.
When Windows 8 debuts as a tablet OS later this year, it will have one major advantage over the iPad for people who want to use a Windows 8 slate as a laptop replacement: you can run apps side-by-side, consulting a document in one pane while writing up an email, say, in another.
I’ve been saying since last year that this is a killer feature Apple should try to lift in iOS 6, but up until now, all we’ve seen are jailbreak hacks sloppily emulate the functionality. No longer. A hack has finally come along that does it right.
Microsoft has teamed up with Barnes & Noble with a $300 million investment that will create a new subsidiary focused on accelerating “the transition to e-reading.” Microsoft will take a 17.6% equity stake in a subsidiary, which is yet to be named, while Barnes & Noble will own the remaining 82.4%.
The move will provide Microsoft with its own answer to iBooks, with plans for a NOOK application that will run on Windows 8, and it’ll give users an alternative to the Kindle Store.
Alternative desktop browser fans(*), your attention please. Opera’s released its next thing, and it’s a feature-packed beta of Opera 12.
Despite his love for the iPhone and its iOS operating system, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak surprisingly feels that Windows Phone apps are “more beautiful” than their counterparts on Android and iOS, and jokes that Steve Jobs may have been reincarnated inside Microsoft.
Woz also revealed that he favours Windows Phone over Android, but that iOS is still his number one choice.
The new Apple TV has made its debut in Brazil today, but it picked up a pretty hefty price tag on the way. Although the set-top box sells for just $99 in the U.S., in Brazil it costs 399 Reals — roughly $211.
We’re excited to announce new promotional opportunities on The CultCast, Cult of Mac’s new technology podcast.
Since our launch on February 24th, The CultCast has been consistently positioned as a top-five technology podcast on iTunes, and has had multiple appearances as iTunes’ #1 most popular tech podcast. We’re off to an amazing start!
If you visited the site yesterday, you’ll already be aware that Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have apps and games roundups are now back. This is where we choose our pick of the best new releases and updates to hit the App Store in the past week.
This week’s feature includes the official Klout app, which has finally made its way to iOS; a great service for storing and syncing your passwords from security specialists Norton; a beautiful weather app, and more.