If you have been thinking about dipping a photographic toe into the contrasty, blurred waters of Lensbaby’s lenses, and you happen to have $750 (but not $805) lying around the house with nothing to spend it on, then perhaps you might consider the Pro Effects Kit, a bundle of some of Lensbaby’s funnest gear, all in its own special bag.
Back in March, Amazon offered up certified refurbished Amazon Kindle Fires for an amazing $139. It was only a 24-hour deal but sold out in half the time. Well, the deal is back, and yes, it’s another 24-hour deal. It’s already about half-way through the deal but they still appear in stock so you might want to take this opportunity to pick up a nice little tablet for cheap.
Deploying a large number of Macs with a full load of software can be a challenge for any organization. There are, of course, tools that help ease the process of both initial roll outs as well as software installation or updates.
If Mac users also need the ability to run Windows apps,however, there’s an extra layer of complexity. IT departments need to to get Windows onto each Mac, configured, and joined to enterprise systems in an efficient manner. Adding to the challenge Windows on Mac deployments add to the good amount of additional data that needs to be deployed – more than doubling it in some situations.
The BYOD movement has transformed the relationship between IT staffers and other employees in a wide range of companies. While there are benefits to BYOD, there are also headaches – and securing data on personal devices and/or securing the devices themselves is one of the biggest. While there’s an ongoing discussion about whether to manage data, apps, or devices, right now most companies are developing a strategy that has a mix of approaches.
All that could change if the mobile management industry unfolds the way Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney expects. Dulaney is an advocate of creating what he calls “beneficial viruses” that companies can layer into apps and data itself – the idea being that the data could delete itself if it becomes compromised.
Amazon’s lineup of Kindle e-readers and tablets have been fairly successful devices for U.S. retailer Target, with the Kindle Fire becoming its best-selling tablet on Black Friday last year. However, a leaked memo has revealed that the company is about to cease carrying all Amazon devices due to a “conflict of interest.” Many believe it’s simply a ploy to boost its sales of Apple devices.
PopCap and Walls360 have teamed up to bring the the zombie apocalyptic hit Plants vs. Zombies to a bare wall near you. You’ve spent countless hours defending your virtual home from these hideous undead, now you can protect your real home with these re-positionable, self-adhesive wall graphics that will stick to almost any surface.
Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior Vice President of iOS Software, has sold 65,151 shares of his Apple stock — the equivalent of 95% of his stake in the company — for a staggering $38.7 million. He now owns just 2,988 Apple shares, worth around $1.8 million, but if he sticks around, there’s plenty more where they came from.
“Unopened! Still sealed in original retail box!” cry the Craigslist ads advertising “new” iPhones and iPads at lower-than-retail prices, but the truth is far more insidious: many of the “new” iPhones you see on Craigslist and eBay are actually old, used iPhones repackaged and sold as new using the hardware equivalent of meat glue.
Despite steady demand since the device made its debut back in March, Apple has still been able to maintain a speedy international rollout for its latest iPad. The new device is now available in 57 countries around the world, and what’s more, its shipping delay in the U.S. has now dropped to just 3-5 days.
Even with iCloud now up and running, Dropbox is still one of the best ways to sync documents between your Mac and iOS devices. It’s so great that all kinds of iOS apps — task managers, word processors, and even games — use Dropbox to send your data to the cloud so that you can access it on any of your devices.
However, Apple just turned up to the party swinging its banhammer. The Cupertino company has begun rejecting certain iOS apps that use the Dropbox SDK simply because they link to the Dropbox website.
Many of us are dreaming of a liquidmetal casing for the next iPhone which will sport a tapered, teardrop design that will help make the sixth-generation device thinner than its predecessor. However, a SIM tray that is believed to be destined for the new device suggests it could feature a box-like design similar to the iPhone 4S.
Apple released a slew of iOS app updates today in the App Store. iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, Cards and iTunes U were all updated with various improvements and bug fixes.
All of the updates can be downloaded for free and are available now.
Apple has seeded an update to its third OS X Mountain Lion developer preview alongside Xcode 4.4. Preview 4. Registered developers can install the new software now in Software Update and the Mac Dev Center.
The update doesn’t seem to pack any major new features, but it looks like Apple is gearing up for the public release of Mountain Lion this summer.
Author of the new book, “Insanely Simple,” Ken Segall got to do something most can only dream about: work one-on-one with Steve Jobs, creating some of Apple’s most iconic products and ad campaigns.
From naming the iMac, to helping develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign, Ken has 12 years of stories to tell about what it’s really like to work with the man most of us Apple fans revere: Steve Jobs. And on episode 10 of The CultCast, Ken opens up on who Steve was, what his creative process was like, and the best ways to not get yelled at.
To hear Ken’s fascinating insights and amazing first-hand accounts, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes.
The jailbreak community has always been striving to improve the way iOS handles system settings. iOS 5 failed to introduce a quicker way of managing preferences like screen brightness and Bluetooth, and jailbreakers still use tweaks like SBSettings to toggle prefs without popping into the Settings app.
More elegant solutions for enhancing iOS have started coming out in Cydia over the last year or so, and a jailbreak tweak called Swipebright brings very useful functionality to the status bar.
The Instagram phenomenon continues to captivate mobile users across the globe and now generates over 5 million new users a week, according to its API. Those are absolutely amazing numbers for the once iOS exclusive photography sharing app that now boasts over 50 million total users thanks to its recent launch on Android. With numbers like this, it’s no wonder Facebook reached deep in their pockets to snatch them up.
Siri is already about as simple as it gets, but that hasn’t stopped freelance journalist and TV host Marc Saltzman from creating Siri For Dummies. The 192-page book “shows you all the cool things Siri can do for you, so you can get the most from your iPhone’s voice-activated personal assistant.”
Say hello to John Tambunan. This five-year-old resident of Indonesia published his first book on the iBookstore a few days ago – a cute tale about catching fish.
Are you curious about what it’s like to work for Apple? Here’s a chance for you to find out. Career advice site CareerBliss recently complied a list of the “Happiest Companies For Young Professionals” – a top ten list for which Apple didn’t make the cut. Even though Apple didn’t make that list, CareerBliss does offer a lot of insight into what life is like for Apple employees.
CareerBliss allows people to rank and describe their experiences in their current or past workplaces. Users researching potential jobs and companies can then see overall rankings (based on a one to five ranking scale) and browse through the individual reports. For Apple fans, that means a treasure trove of data about what it’s like to actually work for the company.
We here at Cult of Mac just can’t get enough of Instagram. It’s really hard to not love the little photo sharing app, even after it got bought by Facebook for $1 billion.
Have you ever wondered why images upload so quickly in Instagram? The whole app feels super snappy, and images can seem to upload instantly after you take a picture and apply a filter. What kind of magic is going on in the background?
As it turns out, the app’s design tricks you into believing its working faster than it really is.
Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising announcement, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble agreed to a deal that resolved their ongoing patent dispute, spun off the bookstore’s Nook business as a subsidiary into which Microsoft invested $300 million, and ensured that a Nook app will be available for Windows 8 when it launches later this year.
Although rumors have been floating around for months that Barnes & Noble was planning to spin of the Nook as a separate company or subsidiary, Microsoft’s involvement came as a surprise – one that raises interesting questions about what the two companies have in mind for their new joint business.
The projected May release of Cognovant’s health record management app, PocketHealth, looks to become a reality thanks to a recent $500,000 seed round closing. The announcement was made today by Cognovant, the Kansas City, Mo.-based startup that specializes in personal health record technology for mobile devices.
“This seed round of funding enabled development of PocketHealth and its forthcoming introduction into the Android and iOS markets,” Ketcherside said in the release
Last week, Eugene Kaspersky — the eponymous founder of the industry leading Kaspersky security company — made some waves by claiming that OS X was “at least 10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security.”
Since Kaspersky’s eyebrow-arching claim, there’s been a lot of bickering about whether what he said was true, or whether his comments were self-serving. Maybe Kaspersky’s right, though, and Apple should follow in Microsoft’s footsteps and outsource OS X security to the anti-virus industry?
At BlackBerry World this week, RIM began giving prototype BlackBerry 10 phones to developers. The prototype, known as BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha is an effort by RIM to drive developer interest in its upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system with the hopes of building an app catalog for the platform before it launches the first BlackBerry 10 phones later this year.
While that’s a laudable and important idea, the handsets RIM delivered are lacking critical features like the ability to make calls or connect to wireless networks. RIM even pointed out that the actual user interface for BlackBerry 10 isn’t even running on the Dev Alpha devices because the company hasn’t finalized what that interface will look like.
Thanks to the good folks at Digiarty, we’ve been able to bring you some great video software that will rip your DVDs and stream video anywhere. Both the MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer Edition and the MacX Video Converter Pro have been free to all Cult of Mac readers over the last 7 days, but the window to grab these awesome freebie is closing tomorrow, May 2nd.
By using the MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer Edition package that includes Air Playit, and MacX Video Converter Pro, we’ve shown you how to rip your entire DVD collection to your Mac, stream video files to your iPhone or iPad, and convert any video file to play on your iOS devices. Unfortunately, after May 2nd the MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer Edition will go back to its full price. If you want some truly phenomenal and easy-to-use software that will change the way you use video on your iPad or iPhone you better hurry and get your free copy now before it’s too late.
Here’s how to get your copy right now: