News - page 1917

We started an Instagram account a few days ago and have had a blast posting pics of what life at Cult of Mac looks like. Interacting with readers in this new way has been one of the funnest projects we’ve started. Wired.com had the same idea as us a few days ago but we’ve already amassed more followers than them. We threw down the gauntlet to them last night to see who can get to 3000 followers first and they’ve haughtily accepted. We need your help to kick their ass.

If you haven’t started following us on Instagram we’d love for you to open up your app right now, search for “cultofmac” and follow us.

What will you get from following us on Instagram? Here’s some samples of our awesome feed –

Fed up of seeing updates in the App Store for apps that you do not want to update? Unfortunately most of us just have to put up with them, but if you’ve got a jailbroken device, you can use the Update Hider for iOS 5 tweak to hide them away.

The entire jailbreaking community has its eyes on Pod2g and his “Dream Team” of fellow hackers right now, anticipating their exploit for Apple’s A5-powered devices. The team recently revealed that the it was just “a matter of days” away from public release, and today we have a video of a jailbroken iPhone 4S in action.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases out there that promise to protect your beloved iPhone, but the ‘Nissan Scratch Shield’ case is the only one that will self-heal itself when you scratch it thanks to the Japanese company’s pioneering paint technology.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – There are some really awesome products on the showroom floor of CES this year, but we think we’ve found the greatest Microsoft product of all time. OF ALL TIME! Microsoft lipbalm. Admit it. You’re jealous that you don’t have your own stick yet aren’t you?

To make up for your absence at CES, we’re going to have a caption contest, and the winner gets a bag of CES swag that we got from the floor today.

To enter the contest, just comment on this article with your caption for the Microsoft Chapstick picture. Funniest caption wins and we’ll announce the winner on Friday, Jan. 13th at 12pm PST. Good luck.

My colleagues here at Cult of Mac, PR reps completely unrelated to Fuji or anything photographic, random showgoers whose snippets of conversation I intercepted — everyone seemed to be talking about it. Even the very air at CES seemed to be pulsating with the word “Fuji.” Of course, they were all talking about the enigmatic, neo-retro Fuji X-Pro1.

What’s this? Android news on Cult of Mac? Who cares? Maybe you don’t, maybe you do. Point is: these are a few of the popular topics going on in the Android world today. Maybe you’d like to know what the competition is up to, or perhaps your aunt received a Kindle Fire she needs to update. Regardless of the reason, having a resource such as Cult of Android allows you to learn more about what’s going on with the competition. You know what they say: the best way to beat the enemy is to know which way they’re moving!

Apple has added a handy feature for finding apps and videos in the desktop version of iTunes. When searching for App Store apps, a new info button is available in the bottom right of each app icon.

Clicking this “i” button will open a preview of the desired app. From here you can quickly see the price, average rating, description, and screenshots.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – The Consumer Electronics Show is winding down, ending today. It was an exhausting three days of navigating the jam-packed halls for Mac related items. We saw a lot of stuff. Some crap, some cool. Here it is.

Above: PhotoStitch can turn any scanned image into an embroidered work of art with a sewing machine. It’s like printing but with thread. Here’s a sample design of Steve Jobs. A Mac version will be available later this year.

The Fair Labor Association (FLA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights and living conditions of factory workers around the world. Following the string of scandals and suicides throughout Apple’s supply chain, the Cupertino company has joined the FLA as a Participating Company.

Apple is the first technology company to join the FLA, and this will hopefully prompt many other industry leaders to do the same. The FLA will closely monitor Apple’s supply chain environments and help protect the rights of the workers that make the products we use every day.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – For Christmas, I bought my kids the immensely popular board game Settlers of Catan. We haven’t played it though, because no one can be bothered to learn the rules.

iPad versions of popular board games solve this problem, as I learned talking to the makers of Ticket To Ride.

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple’s next-generation iPad will feature a quad-core processor and LTE/4G data speed capability. The tablet has reportedly entered production and is slated for a March launch.

According to the report, the iPad 3 will feature a hi-res display, faster processor, and compatibility with LTE. Full production is expected to begin in February for an official launch the following month.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – Mark Bowles has a long history making money off of Apple’s designs.

Back in the mid-90s, Bowles helped put together the funding for Power Computing, the first company selected by Apple to make Mac clones. The investment paid off big-time when Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and bought Power Computing for $100 million, just to kill the company off.

Around the same time, Bowles did it again. He helped put together funding for a company called Panorama Designs, which put together the first Mac laptop clones. Motorola eventually bought Panorama Designs for $130 million, but when Jobs came back to Apple, he made sure Motorola (who designed all of Apple’s PowerPC chips) was too petrified of losing their contract with Cupertino that they let their new acquisition just die.

Fast forward fifteen years, and Bowles has figured out a new way to make money off of Apple designs. Unlike his forays in the 90s cloning Apple devices, though, Bowles’s nw company does something different: they make ATMs that buy people’s old iPhones, iPods and iPads for cash on the spot.

Oliver Bussmann, CIO of SAP, makes an unlikely cheerleader for Apple’s iPad — but one who is bound to get noticed. (If you’re now picturing him in a varsity sweater shaking pom-poms, sorry).

But Bussmann is unabashedly enthusiastic about Apple’s magical tablet computer.
SAP deployed some 14,000 iPads to employees last year, making the stodgy German business management software colossal the second largest corporate iPad user worldwide. (Korea Telecom handed over 30,000 to its workers).

“It’s an exciting time. The line between consumer and corporate is fading and we’ve been aggressive in regards to the iPad,” he said. “There’s a  huge opportunity to be in driver’s seat.”

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 — How did professional auto-modder Mark Abate build this custom iPad-integrated Bat-trike? He started with a stock 2010 Can-Am Spyder trike, then worked a whole lot of Gotham-inspired magic on it, that’s how. Full gallery ahead!

Facing a storm of criticism over the working conditions in factories building iPods, iPhones and iPads, Apple today for the first time released the names of 156 global suppliers along with a report showing mixed success obtaining fair working conditions. One bright spot: fewer children are working on the much-prized Apple devices.

As iPhone sales continue to climb, U.S. carriers should expect Apple to also require increased subsidies, one observer writes. Verizon could pay nearly 28 percent more in 2012, with Sprint and AT&T also facing double-digit hikes in payments for the popular smartphone.

Apple, a veteran of long lines ahead of iPhone launches in the U.S., has temporarily halted retail sales of the iPhone 4S in China. The tech giant announced Friday it has stopped in-person sales in Beijing and Shanghai “for the time being” in the wake of a near-riot by angry scalpers.

If you need another reason why iPhone rivals just don’t get it, there’s word four of the largest smartphone makers plan to introduce fewer models in a bid to replicate Apple’s success. Ah, if it were only so simple.

The music streaming service Grooveshark, which was pulled from the App Store a while ago after it upset a number of major record labels, has returned to the iPhone — and other mobile devices — with a new HTML5 web app. The app can’t be pulled by Apple this time, but how long will it last?

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – As a kid who grew up in the ’80s, I feel robbed by the tech industry. Robbed, spit upon, and laughed at by a bunch of bald guys in suits who have deprived the ghost of my youth by failing to give me the technology they flaunted when I was a kid. I was promised holograms, damn it, so where the hell are they? Compared to holograms, touchscreens just seem like caveman technology.

Wading through the heaping mess of CES rubbish, I got lost in a time vortex. When I popped out the other side, I stumbled upon this little beauty. Behold! The holographic iPad!

Remember that stunning iPhone designed by Antonio De Rosa that we brought you last week? It’s called the iPhone SJ and it’s a tribute to Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. It looked pretty great in the photos we published, but it looks even more awesome when brought to life in this new video.

Apple’s carrier partners in Singapore are removing the front- and rear-facing cameras from the Cupertino company’s latest iPhone 4S before selling it, according to a new report. The doctored devices are aimed at members of the military who are prohibited from taking cameras into their bases.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2012 – If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple must be feeling very flattered. Also ripped off.

Many of the new Ultrabooks here on display at the Consumer Electronics Show are so similar to the MacBook Air, they can only be described as knockoffs.

Not only do the they rip off the basic design premise — lightweight, portable laptops with long battery life — they copy the same wedge aluminum casing, wedge shape, chiclet keyboard, large, button-less trackpad, and the selection and placement of ports.

See for yourself. Here are just a few of the MacBook Air knockoffs on display at Intel’s massive booth.

If you’re frustrated that your app was rejected from the App Store, you are in good company.

Scott Virkler, senior vice president of eProducts at global science and medical publishing behemoth Elsevier, had a few choice words about Apple’s approval process – and getting rejected by it.

Virkler, speaking in San Francisco at Appnation Enterprise, said his company had three apps rejected by Apple just last week, “because they don’t get our business.”