Cult of Mac

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Anyone involved in digital publishing is pretty much forced to work with one of two applications: Microsoft’s Publisher or Adobe’s InDesign. The pricing of the two reflects the fact that they’re the only two games in town. And since Publisher is PC-only, Mac users have only one option.

Lucidpress thinks people are hungry for a viable alternative, so it’s created a web-based publishing platform that’s as scalable and feature-rich as any of the big-name desktop software — but priced for access to anybody.

Apple seeded a new beta of OS X El Capitan yesterday, and now the company is making the same software available to its public beta testers.

The fourth El Capitan public beta comes less than a week after Apple released the last one. And while it’s light on major new features, it comes with a bunch of bug fixes and performance improvements.

T-Mobile is doing pretty hot lately, but it’s unfortunately at Sprint’s expense. While the latter carrier has been declining in market share for the past couple of years, it’s finally now in last place out of the four major U.S. wireless carriers. T-Mobile snatched the bronze model.

In the quarterly earnings call, Sprint said it had 57.7 million customers with a net gain of 675,000. T-Mobile, however, gained 2.1 million customers last quarter for a grand total of 58.9 million.

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It happens all the time: you spot a tiny error in a PDF document, and you’re powerless to fix it. Instead of accessing the original doc, opening it, making the change and saving another copy, what if you could just edit the dang PDF? That’s what PDFPen lets you do, along with a bunch of other functions that’ll make PDFs a lot more pliable, and right now it’s going for half off at $37.

Just a day after Business Insider reported that Apple is planning to become a wireless carrier by launching an MVNO, the iPhone-maker’s PR team is squashing the rumor.

We should pity the astronauts on the International Space Station, especially the two who are currently there for a year.

Just feet away from where they probably drink their Tang, the Japanese Experiment Module will soon hold samples of that country’s legendary Suntory whiskey to see how it ages in microgravity.

Suntory announced last week that it was sending whiskey samples on a Japanese transfer vehicle that will take off on Aug. 16 to rendezvous with the ISS. Some of the whiskey will be stored for up to two years to see how it mellows in space.

Taylor Swift shares a few more details about her Apple Music beef and subsequent reconciliation in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, while reserving her harshest words for Apple’s streaming rival Spotify.

You understand bird’s-eye view. How about the view of its prey?

It’s likely that mouse or fish don’t even see the canopy of feathers coming. Our eyes and brains barely work fast enough to process the sight ourselves, so the guys who work in the studio for the BBC’s Earth Unplugged slowed it down for us.

The Earth Unplugged slow-motion studio, which loves to deconstruct the spit of cobras and the flight of fleas frame by frame, has compiled a 70-second clip of a variety of birds as they take off, float and hover and, of course, stick their landings.

New 5K 27-inch iMacs and a 4K 21.5-inch model are almost certainly on the the way, according to code discovered in yesterday’s sixth OS X El Capitan beta.

An in-depth look at the latest version of El Capitan reveals three new files referencing the new Mac resolutions, while an accompanying image suggests the exterior design of the machines will remain largely unchanged from current models.

Apple’s long-rumored (and eagerly anticipated) iPhone 5c successor, the iPhone 6c, may not have been shelved after all — but instead pushed back to the second quarter of 2016, according to a new report.

Sources in the supply chain say Apple’s next-gen budget smartphone will also boast advanced “FinFET” processors to deliver increased performance and greater power efficiency.

There are plenty of advantages to larger, phablet handsets like the iPhone 6, but an obvious disadvantage is that they’re less easy to transport by slipping them into your pocket.

Industrial designer David Tsai has come up with an interesting solution to that problem with his new 3-D-printed iPhone keychain case, which allows you to easily attach the device to a belt or similar in order to avoid accidentally dropping it.

Isn’t it the most Samsung thing in the world to introduce a new technology that’s actually kind of interesting, and then ruin any originality points it picked up by blatantly ripping off Apple?

That’s exactly what happened when Samsung recently announced the SE370, the industry’s first computer monitor with integrated wireless charging function for mobile devices — only to “borrow” the exact same charging battery charging icon Apple used back in its skeuomorphic days before iOS 7 came along.

Oh, Samsung, will you never learn?

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It’s usually a question of when, not if, your charging cable is going to start wearing around the point where the cord meets the connector. And maybe you’ll try to make it work for a little while, but sooner or later your denial will wear off and you’re going to have to drop the cash on a new one. And then the whole sad process starts over.

One company is hoping to break the cycle with a leather cable that is not only tough but also aims to be the best-working cord you’ve ever bought.

OK, play time is over. Last week’s article on five things to do with your obsolete Apple TV was meant to bring some light humor to your day, but we heard your comments loud and clear. Many of you looking for legitimate tips on what to do with an old Apple TV felt misled by the headline when you wound up scrolling through a sarcastic list. For that, we apologize. I apologize.

But we’re not all talk and no action at Cult of Mac. Without further ado, here is an actual list of nine things – four extras because we like you a lot – that you can do with your old or soon-to-be-obsolete Apple TV. For real this time. Seriously.

After releasing the last El Capitan beta one week ago, Apple has seeded the sixth beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan this afternoon, full of new fixes and features for developers.

IBM became Apple’s largest corporate customer this year when it agreed to buy 50,000 MacBooks from Apple, but according IBM’s chief information officer Jeff Smith, the company will more likely end up purchasing between 150,000 to 200,000 Macs when all is said and done.

In an internal IBM video, Smith describes how he and Apple CIO Niall O’Connor struck the deal that will see 50-75% of IBM’s workforce switching from Lenovo ThinkPads to Macs. Apparently that’s not good enough for Tim Cook though, who asked IBM VP Fletcher Previn, “well, what about the other third?” when the company told the Apple CEO of the massive bulk order they were planning.

Watch the video below:

Most luxury watch makers are desperately coming up with a plan to keep traditional watch wearers from upgrading to Apple’s decadent smartwatch, but California-based Nico Gerard has decided to follow the age-old adage, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

For the company’s new Pinnacle line of Swiss timepieces launching on Monday, the watch maker has created a special bracelet that lets you slap a 38mm Apple Watch to the inside of your wrist. It’s like the mullet of smartwatches, business in the front, party in the back.

Check it out:

Luke Skywalker is earnest, fiercely serious and seems to lack the sense of humor of, say, Han Solo.

But the force behind Skywalker, actor Mark Hamill, is as funny as Jabba the Hutt is fat.

Hamill’s mark on comedy is in his writings to fans on old Star Wars trading cards. He likes to quickly craft a funny sentence to go with the scene on the card, followed by an artfully penned signature.

In a card titled The Search for Vader, Hamill writes: “This Vader guy is a loser . . . Hope he doesn’t have kids!”

Apple signed a lease for 300,000 square feet of office space in San Jose last month, but the company might be eyeing a bigger expansion in the city, according to a new report that Apple just purchased a massive development site in North San Jose.

In a deal worth more than $138 million, Apple has purchased 43 acres of land at 2347 North First St., according to documents obtained by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Apple has yet to announce its plans for the property, but it will be the company’s first significant presence into San Jose in decades.

Here’s a map of the land Apple just bought:

Apple has touted the Mac’s resistance to viruses for decades as a selling point over Windows PCs, but a team of researchers have created a new firmware worm for Mac that might just make you want to go back to doing work on good old pencil and paper.

Two white-hat hackers discovered that several vulnerabilities affecting PC makers can also bypass Apple’s renowned security to wreak havoc on Mac firmware. The two created a proof-of-concept of the worm called Thunderstrike 2 that allows firmware attacks to be spread automatically from Mac to Mac. Devices don’t even need to be networked for the worm to spread, and once it’s infected your machine the only way to remove it is to open up your Mac and manually reflash the chip.

Here’s a preview of Thunderstrike 2 in action:

The web is a weird and wonderful place that’s also crawling with sneaks out to snatch your data. One of the best ways to keep those creeps at bay is to encrypt your browsing activity, and that’s exactly what TigerVPN does. Right now a lifetime subscription to TigerVPN is just $29, a whopping 96% off the regular price.

While preparing to move to another city, I recently came across my very first car charger. It was the size of a brick, about as heavy, and in the middle of it was a fuse. With it, me and my ’98 Malibu were unstoppable – unless, of course, the fuse blew.

So it is with amazement and amusement I write about a product that claims to be the world’s smallest and most powerful car charger. The reVOLT and reVOLT Dual by SCOSCHE offers 12 watts of power sitting flush in your car’s power socket.

The absolute worst part of buying an iPhone every year is having to deal with AT&T and Verizon in order to qualify for Apple’s latest device. That could soon be a thing of the past, though, as Apple is looking to launch its own wireless network so users wouldn’t have to deal with traditional carriers any longer.

Xiaomi is once again China’s top smartphone firm, pushing Apple down to third place despite its immensely strong quarter, and Samsung to either fourth or fifth position.

Huawei and Vivo rounded out the top five, in second and fourth/fifth place respectively.

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There are fertility deities, dances, stones, herbs and masks. Every culture has rites and rituals that try to improve the chances of a woman getting pregnant.

Tech culture, too, tries to influence the forces of fertility with gadgets and smartphone apps to create ovulation calculators, period calendars and temperature trackers. But you still need the discipline of consistent record keeping for them to work.

The startup company, YONO Labs, has developed an ear piece that records BBT, Basal Body Temperature, and other body and hormonal symptoms while a woman sleeps. When she wakes, the device gets docked and the data gets stored in an iOS or Android app for your smartphone.