Cult of Mac

Tim Cook stepped up as the CEO of Apple on August 24, 2011. The soft-spoken Southerner, who has worked at the Cupertino company since 1998,  had previously acted as interim CEO when Steve Jobs stepped down to battle cancer.

Cook’s ascent to the permanent CEO position marked a sea change for Apple. Once called the stage manager to Jobs’ star, he’s now running the show. After endless speculation about whether Cook’s rule marked the end of Apple or signaled a bright new era, going by the numbers, it looks like he’s earned a solid B.

Here’s a look at his first three years as the head of Apple, a job he got paid $4.25 million to perform in 2013.

At this point, thanks to myriad leaked parts, we have a pretty good idea what the iPhone 6 will look like. One question some of us still have, though, is what the antenna panes of the rear shells we’ve been seeing so far will actually look like.

On the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s, the cellular antenna peeks out of two glass antenna panes, installed specially for just that purpose in the aluminum rear shell. The rear shell leaks we’ve seen so far suggest that the iPhone 6 will keep the antenna panes, but they may not actually be made of glass. Other leaks have suggested the opposite, indicating that the iPhone 6 might look more like the iPhone 5 and 5s in the back than previously thought.

Hedging his bets, iPhone conceptualist Martin Hajek has created renders comparing both possibilities. Check them out after the jump. For my money, the glass antenna panes look infinitely better. What do you think Apple will go with?

Secret, the iPhone app that is supposed to let users share secrets anonymously, is nowhere nearly as anonymous as it first appears. But an upcoming update to the app is looking to beef up the app’s anonymity, by banning real names, preventing users from uploading images on their Camera Roll, and the addition of a new polling feature.

With the iPhone 6 set to come in two separate display sizes — a 4.7-inch model, and a 5.5-model — Apple needs to increase the iPhone’s resolution to keep up. But what will the new resolutions be? Up until now, Apple has stuck with 326 pixels-per-inch for all Retina iPhones, but will larger iPhones require higher pixel densities.

Pulling out a spreadsheet, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber worked out the math for what he thinks the resolutions of the iPhone 6 will be. Using the Pythagorean Theorem, Gruber says that he thinks the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will keep the current iPhone’s 326 pixels-per-inch, but the 5.5-inch model will have an astonishing 461 pixels-per-inch, making it practically Super Retina.

This week on the Cultiest of Casts: Steve Ballmer lands the perfect job; NFC and your iPhone make credit cards obsolete; iPhone 6 gets even faster data access; new photos give us our best look yet at a 4.7-inch iPhone 6; Apple wins their first Emmy; APPL stock hits an all-time high; and, behold, Podcasting turns 10! Oh, and it’s growing like crazy, too.

Snicker your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

Cult of Mac brings you the very best deals in technology, software, training, and more every single day. As new deals emerge, others must end.

Today we feature three such offers that we don’t want you to miss. Check out Cult of Mac Deals for these and much more.

When my 2001 Subaru Forester died on the side of the highway a week or so back, I was not excited about trying to find a replacement.

Buying a car is right up there with heading to the DMV, going to IKEA and attending your ex’s next wedding. It’s depressing. And inevitable. The load of anxiety-ridden, “hurry up and wait” BS that has marred my every interaction with car dealerships both new and used is overwhelming.

So it was with glee that I bypassed all that crap and used my iPhone, email and Twitter to buy myself a new car. Let me explain.

Apple has launched a new iPhone 5 battery replacement program for a “small percentage” of iPhone 5 devices that “may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently.”

The idea behind Secret is that you can share anything to your social circle with the comfort of total anonymity. Users’ identities are kept hidden, and that’s what’s supposed to make the app enjoyable or whatever.

As it turns out, it’s not that hard to see who someone actually is on Secret. The catch is that you need their email address.

The uncertainty about iPhone 6 availability this fall is largely centered around one component: sapphire. The ultra-durable material is rumored to be in not only two new iPhone models this fall, but the iWatch as well.

Apple’s only sapphire partner is GT Advanced Technologies with a relatively small operation in Arizona. According to another report, GTAT’s sapphire production, particularly for the 5.5-inch iPhone 6, will he heavily constrained until 2015.

The next-gen version of USB will be reversible like Apple’s Lightning connector, meaning you’ll be able to plug it in from either side. Called USB Type-C, the new connector recently entered production, and leaks indicate Apple could ship compatible cables very soon.

If you can’t wait any longer, you can actually buy a Lightning to reversible USB sync cable right now.

With the probable iPhone 6 reveal nearing, a new Samsung device — referred to as the Samsung Galaxy Alpha — has leaked. The ongoing Apple-Samsung rivalry means the two companies battle each other with practically every new device and software update. But will Samsung’s latest offering hold its own against the iPhone 6? Or will it become another faceless device that’s simply here then gone?

Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup to see the latest rumors regarding Apple’s and Samsung’s latest devices, tech luminaries taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and the inside scoop on how a former Apple employee turned his store uniform into cash for his favorite charity.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Pretty much everyone already knows that the iPhone 6 is coming out next month, but one of Apple’s carrier partners in China just couldn’t hold onto the secret anymore, and announced to customers on Weibo that it will sell an unlocked iPhone 6.

The ad was quickly deleted, however, it did reveal that Apple plans to release a single version of the iPhone 6 that supports all the wireless networks in the China for the first time ever.

Gabe Ibañez directs and Antonio Banderas stars in this gritty, realistic near-future sci-fi flick, Automata.

The premise is that, in 2004, robots have found a way to circumvent built-in Protocols against harming human beings or self-altering their own physical form.

The award-winning film looks to be a fantastic take on the robots-gone-wild sub-genre, and it’s got Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) as a rogue killer robot and Melanie Griffith as a scheming politician; what’s not to like?

Apple has added 16 new countries and regions to the App Store’s Volume Purchasing Program today that allows businesses and schools to purchase mass quantities of a single app in just one purchase, and distribute it among multiple students or employees.

The list of new countries joining the program include Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the UAE.

The addition of the new countries was announced by the App Store team via the following email:

Apple’s expected to announce its first foray into wearables this October, but a new report out of China is adding to fanboy fears that the iWatch launch won’t take place until 2015, with claims that suppliers won’t even start delivering components until September at the earliest.

And then it’s going to take months just to assemble a few million units.

Foxconn factory employees have leaked the complete dimensions of the iPhone 6, according to iGen.fr, which posted photos of what appears to be Foxconn’s internal software listing the full dimensions for both the 5.5-inch and 4.7-inch iPhone 6.

The two new phones, code named N56 and N61, are expected to be announced next month, and if the leaked specs are right, not only will the 5.5-inch iPhone have more screen than your iPhone 5s, it will also be 60% heavier.

Apple is expected to reveal the iPhone in nearly three weeks, but according to a Reuters report, production has hit a snag, sending suppliers scrambling to get enough parts in time, thanks to a last minute design change.

To make the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 thinner than ever, Apple planned to shrink the backlight assembly by using a single layer of film — instead of the two used on the iPhone 5s display — but after running into some last minute problems with production, Apple decided to redesign the key component.

This post is brought to you by Alamex Ltd, creator of Zen Clock.

Are you busy on your Mac all the time? Does that little clock in the top right hand corner of your screen govern your life, at least during the week?

Maybe it’s time to switch to Zen Clock.

The Zen Clock turns your desktop to a color that constantly changes through the whole spectrum throughout a 24-hour period.

Take life a little slower and bring some Zen onto your Mac as you learn to tell the time of day in the way nature intended.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 has become the latest tech giant to take on the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness for ALS — but does it have an ulterior motive? Like the vast majority of videos that Samsung puts out, this one can’t help but take a swipe at competing devices from rival companies.

When you’re gaming on a new-generation console like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’ll be astounded by the crystal-clear graphics and the silky-smooth 60 frames per second animations.

If you want to share this video at its native resolution, you’ll need something heavy duty to do the capture and editing. Something massively capable that can handle input via an HDMI interface. Something that doesn’t take up too much space — you need that for your gaming consoles. What you need is something like the Elgato Game Capture 60HD.

Because life’s too short for a crummy converter box with a huge footprint.

San Francisco-based developer Giacomo Balli doubled his take on his iPhone apps thanks to an April Fools’ Day joke. When he ratcheted up the price to an eye-popping $4.99 for an app that catalogs books, he got downloads instead of complaints.

The App Store lets devs change the sale price of their apps pretty much any time they like, but most folks take conventional routes: cutting prices during sales or dropping prices to free. Balli made his previously free apps premium with just a toggle.

“There weren’t any app updates, either,” he told Cult of Mac over the phone. “Just the price.”