Infrared light. We can’t see it, but it surrounds us, permeating everything… especially our digital camera sensors, leading to images filled with off, unnatural colors.
With the iPhone 4S, Apple introduced an infrared filter to improve color quality in the images. But what are the practical effects of this filter? Much more accurate color and the elimination of the reddish tint that plagues so many iPhone photos.
If you’ve ever wanted to use Siri on your Mac, we’ve got the next best thing: how about using Siri on your iPhone 4S to pass along commands to your OS X desktop, launching apps just by giving your command out loud? Now you can, thanks to the latest update to the popular iTeleport VNC app.
A good report by Horace Dediu over at Asymco shows that about every quarter, about 56% of all new iPhones are replacing old models that have been discarded.
That’s interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily paint a good picture for AT&T, which seems to be growing new iPhone customers at a much slower rate than they once did.
Cue up the Norma Rae theme music. Apple is about to go up against the unions. Well, not quite. The tech giant is starting mandatory training for retail store managers that includes the “legal do’s and don’t of dealing with unions.” The training comes as Apple marks the 10th anniversary of its retail stores, now numbering 357 worldwide.
Noticing that people really liked to wrap the new iPod nanos around a wrist band and turn them into watches, Apple decided to embrace the Nanowatch movement with their latest update, specifically by rolling out a number of fun new watch faces. The most iconic of the new options, though, is the one that mimics the classic Mickey Mouse watch face, famous with Mouseketeers all around the world since the 1950s.
If you don’t have an iPod nano, there’s a cool, easy way to get yourself the nano’s Mickey Mouse watch face on your Dashboard. Here’s how.
There’s an easter egg in iOS 5: a new panorama mode that lets you stitch together multiple shots you take with your iPhone’s camera into a gorgeous 180+ degree image. Unfortunately, while Apple clearly spent some time putting this together, there’s no way to access it as a consumer unless you jailbreak your iPhone. Here’s how to get Apple’s panorama mode working on your iPhone 4, iPhone 4S or iPad 2.
Remember that new cheekily-christened “EasyTheft” system Apple was planning on rolling out to its official Apple Store app? The official update is here, and anyone can now try it out!
Remember those days when you didn’t want to go to school? Mondays. Rainy days. Exam time.
What if they’d told you it was “iPad Day?” You’d be up and atom with your lunchbox, pronto.
Teachers at three elementary schools in South Carolina say that thanks to the iPad, keeping kids focused on formerly “boring” subjects isn’t a problem.
We told you a couple of hours ago about security guru Charlie Miller’s new iOS vulnerability that allows an approved App Store app to run unsigned code remotely. Miller has been hacking Apple’s products for years, and this most recent bug is a particularly nefarious exploit that could be used for all kinds of evil purposes.
Charlie Miller is one of the good guys, however, and he is planning to show his cards at the SysCan conference in Taiwan next week. The ends don’t always justify the means in this case, as Apple has now kicked Miller out of the App Store and iOS Developer Program.
The iPhone 4S continues to break sales records left and right. Pre-orders for the iPhone 4S started in Hong Kong last Friday, and it’s been reported that pre-orders sold out after the first 10 minutes of availability.
Apple will launch the 4S in 14 more countries this Friday, and the smartphone is expected to reach mainland China by December.
Earlier today Google announced the addition of Google+ Pages, which allows businesses to create pages and interact with fans, just like on those other social networks. We’re really excited about Google+ (Hangouts are pretty freaking awesome), so we’re not wasting time to get started. We created our shiny new Google+ Page for Cult of Mac that will be getting all latest Cult of Mac news and love. Now you can add us to your circle and enjoy Cult of Mac’s news in Google+.
You can get to our Google+ Page by clicking here. And if you haven’t added us yet to your Facebook and Twitter parties, we’d love to be your friend there, too.
We recently told you about Apple’s acquisition of geo mapping company C3 Technologies. By utilizing state of the art satellite technology, C3 Technologies specialized in enhanced 3D maps that put Google’s map images to shame.
C3 Technologies was apparently working on more than just beautiful 3D mapping. The company was also focusing on making interior mapping a reality.
When it comes to Mac hacking, there are few security experts more dangerous than Charlie Miller, who can hack a Mac in mere seconds. Luckily, Miller only uses his hacking powers for the forces of good, so his hacks often lead to more secure systems for you and me.
Let’s hope that’s the case for the latest vulnerability Miller identified for the iOS platform. He has discovered a huge bug in iOS that allows malicious devs to write innocuous looking apps that slip by the App Store review process, only to phone home to a remote computer and repurpose all of iOS’s normal functions for malicious ends.
Smule’s been racking up the hits with apps like Ocarina and I Am T-Pain. Their latest is called MadPad, and like the others, it’s well-polished, cooler than an arctic popsicle and impossible to put down. And today, it’s free.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFKdyh68jo
Famed jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich has released a video of Siri running on the iPhone 3GS. Petrich is most known in the jailbreak community for his Activator extension that brings customized gestures for specific apps and tweaks in iOS.
In the above video, Petrich is demonstrating Siri on an iPhone 3GS. He has also mentioned that he is working on Activator integration with Siri.
Hysterical. In a recent response to HTC’s ITC complaint against Apple, Cupertino didn’t just deny all of HTC’s charges… it even went as far as to correct the Taiwanese device maker’s punctuation, snarkily writing:
Apple denies that its correct name is Apple, Inc. The correct name of Respondent is Apple Inc.
Priceless.
One of the few contemporaries in tech that Steve Jobs openly admired was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, the Apple founder said that he admired Zuckerberg “for not selling out, for wanting to make a company.” In other words, Jobs saw a lot of himself in Zuckerberg: a young kid out to change the world.
Well, it turns out the respect was mutual. In an interview with Charlie Rose that will air later today, Zuckerberg says that Jobs’s help was formative in building Facebook.
Wall Street seemed ready to have an epileptic seizure last month when Apple merely reported an incredible, record-breaking quarter instead of whatever financial fever dream they imagined, so this ought to give them a little spring in their step: the iPhone 4S is now the best-selling smartphone at all three of the top US carriers. Duh.
Despite the fact that Samsung’s being sued by Apple in pretty much every country in the world short of Xanadu and Zembla, the IP rip-offs just keep on coming from the plucky Korean electronics giant!
This time, as ObamaPacman notes, Samsung isn’t just content on ripping off the design of the iPod touch for their new Samsung Galaxy 4.0 Android MP3 player… they’ve ripped off the iPod touch’s official product image, right down to the way the white earbuds coil around the player!
Comically shameless. What bozos.
Google’s former CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt told U.S. Senators Apple’s voice-recognition system is an “interesting development,” suggesting the iPhone 4S feature posed a “competitive threat” to its search business. Schmidt’s written comments come as a new survey finds Siri drastically reduces the number of Google searches, many times to none.
Despite the fact that Siri’s guts are in a billion dollar data facility in North Carolina somewhere, the iPhone 4S can actually be used to voice control an old Mac 512K.
Despite a preliminary injunction granted Motorola Mobility on Friday, Apple continues to sell products in Germany. The tech giant has a two-week window until it must argue why a court’s default judgement should be reversed, averting the possible stop of retail and online sales in the nation.
Hackers have been hard at work attempting to port Apple’s new Siri assistant to older devices, but according to one report, their efforts may be wasted, because Apple is doing the same thing. The Cupertino company has reportedly issued a “special build” of iOS 5 to its staff, which introduces Siri to the iPhone 4 for testing.
If you felt like your Internet connection briefly died early Monday morning, you were not alone. About 9 am Eastern (6 am PT) many cable Internet customers along the East Coast and stretching down to Texas lost online connections. The glitch hit “most of our service areas,” Time Warner Cable told Twitter users.
Adobe is just one of the big-name developers that was quick to embrace the Mac App Store when it launched earlier this year, and today it has increased its presence with the launch of two “special edition” applications called Photoshop Elements 10 Editor and Premiere Elements 10 Editor.