The psychedelic Whale Trail for iOS has been updated with 32 brand new levels and more power-ups. As the lead developer of Whale Trail told us in a recent interview, the popular App Store game now includes a second Challenge Pack called “Baron’s Revenge.” Among other additions, players can now keep progress synced across multiple devices.
The new levels in Whale Trail 1.2 will take you to the dark side. Now that’s what we’re talking about!
If you live in a city, the people that you meet when walking down the street are often great photo subjects.
But if you, like me, have a hard time getting decent shots with your iPhone of the woman with the cascade of facial tattoos you pass every day on your way to work, check out a free workshop at San Francisco’s Apple store this Sunday.
Brad Evans and Travis Jensen will teach you how to add some street cred to your everyday iPhone photos. They’re a pair of veteran urban shutterbugs who teamed up for #iSnapSF Field Journal, which showcases 42 images from thousands snapped on the streets of San Francisco using the iPhone 4 and the Hipstamatic app. (If you can’t catch the workshop, stay tuned for Cult of Mac’s interview with Jensen for some great iPhone photography tips.)
Which would win in a fight? OS X Mountain Lion or a real Mountain Lion? Over at DealMac, Jeff Somogyi put together this absolutely hysterical chart, delving into the question.
The cheeky result? If the criterion on which you are judging Mountain Lions includes messaging, productivity, note taking, notifications, sharing, gaming or Twitter support, OS X has the edge. If, however, you are judging mountain lions based upon their ability to leap 18 feet straight in the air, run at land speeds of up to 45 miles per hour and urinate upon things to mark their territory, the real-life Mountain Lion will eat your face off.
Go on over to DealMac to check out the full post, it’s priceless.
What with the whole Path address book debacle, this isn’t a good week to be caught up in a user privacy scandal on iOS as far as public perception is concerned. Google better batten down the hatches then, as it has just been discovered that they have been exploiting a loophole in the way Safari blocks cookies to bypass the privacy settings of millions of iPhone, iPad and Mac owners. Ouch.
Osfoora, a popular Twitter client that made its debut on the iPhone, has made the leap from iOS to the Mac. It is now contending with the likes of Echofon, Twitterific, and Twitter in the Mac App Store, but is it worth its $4.99 price tag?
Microsoft’s Active Directory is a core component in virtually every enterprise network. When I looked at Centrify’s DirectControl for Mobile, I singled out its deep integration with Active Directory as a major feature and a leg up over some of the other mobile device management (MDM) suites on the market. That’s because Active Directory is an essential piece of technology infrastructure in the vast majority of businesses.
Despite being a Microsoft solution (and a feature of Windows Server), Active Directory is a technology that all Apple IT professionals should understand and have some skills in using. With the Xserve gone and OS X Server headed to more limited uses since the release of Lion last summer, Active Directory is becoming a de facto standard for Macs and iOS devices as much as it is for Windows PCs.
Yesterday, we reported that Apple’s new Messages app icon looked pretty shamelessly similar to that of HipChat‘s. Now HipChat has spoken out about the maybe-theft-probably-concidence, and while they don’t have any hard feelings, they still think it sucks they’re about to get steamrolled by Apple.
Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.
Apple has been introducing high-resolution artwork in preparation for Retina Display Macs since last July, when the company released OS X Lion. And it continues to do so, with artwork from its new Messages beta available at double its normal size.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEH1H-4Siw
Following our handy video roundup of new OS X Mountain Lion features, InsanelyGreatMac has published a video walkthrough of AirPlay, which allows you to mirror your Mac’s display on a television hooked up to the Apple TV.
As you can see, the feature works in much the same way as AirPlay on an iOS device, sending both video and audio from your Mac to your TV over a wireless network.
While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.
This is Pinwheel, a new iOS app for leaving and finding virtual notes anywhere in the real world.
It’s in private beta right now, but you can join in if you ask nicely and leave your email address in the box of the Pinwheel home page.
Avid Apple fans will undoubtedly remember The New York Times’ series on supply chain worker abuse overseas. The Times published a piece looking at Apple’s effect on the global economy followed by a second article titled, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” The probing look into worker abuse at Foxconn, Apple’s largest supply chain partner, sparked a firestorm of reactions from the media.
Since the report from the Times, Apple has made every effort to reassure the world that it is leading the industry in terms of supply chain accountability. CEO Tim Cook recently stated that Apple does more than any other company to provide fair working conditions. While that may be the case, it seems that The New York Times has now be given the cold shoulder for uncovering the issue originally.
A new jailbreak app called MultiTunes lets you sync with multiple iTunes libraries on your iOS device. Apple limits you to one iTunes library at a time by default, and while iCloud and iTunes Match make it easier to access your music from anywhere, some would still like to sync with different libraries without deleting all locally stored music first. That’s where MultiTunes saves the day.
If you’re as excited as I am about OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll want to check this video out. Since only developers have access to the Mountain Lion beta at this point, I put together this quick video for all of Cult Of Mac’s great readers detailing 30 of the best new features of Mountain Lion, all jam packed into just two minutes. Check out the video after the break.
Apple has seeded a pre-release of Safari 5.2 to registered developers. Following the release of the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview this morning, a new beta of Safari has been made available with browser features from Apple’s upcoming desktop OS.
Namely, Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion introduces the unified, Google Chrome-like address/search bar. There are some other minor cosmetic changes that mirror the Safari version from the Mountain Lion developer preview.
Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.
Nowbox is a slick iPad app that allows you to waste spend many hours watching YouTube.
Nowbox was co-founded by Thomas Pun, who worked at Apple for six years, including stints as technical manager for the team responsible for the H.264 encoder technologies that shipped with QuickTime 7 and on the first video iPod.
When Apple announced iMessage for iOS 5 last summer we were excited to finally have a universal messaging app that sought to free our cellphones from the slavery of wireless carrier texting plans. Today with the announcement of Messages for OS X it looks like Apple is serious about creating a messaging service that supplants texting and chat services by providing a one size fits all solution that works well on every screen. The new Messages app is pretty awesome and it’s a needed step forward that finally unifies iChat, iMessage, and Facetime, but it is not without its flaws.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re a big fan of HipChat, a phenomenal team calibration tool based around group chat and IM, which works on any platform with dedicated apps for Mac and iOS. In fact, it’s how we keep in touch with each other throughout each work day. The app is a mainstay in our docks.
So when we woke up this morning and found out Apple was announcing a new version of OS X including a brand new Messages IM app, the first thing we thought was: “Hey! That icon looks familiar!” Very familiar.
Chances are, you’re already salivating to download the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, when it’s released later this summer. For a fair number of Mac owners, though, installing Mountain Lion is going to require buying a new machine, as Apple has abandoned support for Intel’s GMA 950 and x3100 chipsets.
Here’s a list of the machines that can run Lion that can’t run Mountain Lion.
Apple has included a more subtle, yet very important, change in OS X Mountain Lion that points to the company’s focus moving forward. If you open the “About This Mac” window in the Mountain Lion developer preview, you’ll notice that “Mac” has been dropped for a simpler “OS X.” The prefix has also been dropped from promotional materials on Apple.com and the Mac App Store.
Why the change to just “OS X Mountain Lion?” Apple is continuing to blur the line between hardware and software. It’s about the unification of iOS and the desktop experience.
With Mountain Lion, Apple has finally tied iCloud to the Mac desktop. While iCloud has worked seamlessly on iOS since launch, moving documents between iCould and your Mac was embarrassingly awkward, involving web browsers, dragging and dropping.
Now, it has been shoved deep into the heart of the OS, in the form of a kind of alternate Finder.
Not a huge change, but we just noticed that in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has changed the way adding widgets in Dashboard works to be more akin to Launchpad, with a full screen of equally spaced widgets being selectable instead of Lion’s approach, which puts available widgets at the bottom edge of the display.
In case you hadn’t already noticed, Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion earlier today, its latest operating system for the Mac which will make its public debut this summer. Mountain Lion will further increase the iOS influence on Apple’s desktop operating system, with the arrival of features like Notification Center, Messages, and Notes.
But for gamers, undoubtedly the most exiting new feature will be Game Center’s arrival on the Mac. With promises of cross-platform multiplayer and the ability to rack up achievements on both your Mac and iOS devices, this is set to create a new bridge between mobile and desktop gaming that will revolutionize cross-platform play.