Cult of Mac

Given the extra security you find at airports these days, we’re grateful for anything that makes the experience of checking in and boarding your flight that bit quicker and easier.

With that in mind, Southwest Airlines has just posted an update for its official iOS app, adding several notable improvements, including faster access to tools like the Checkin and Mobile Boarding Pass options, right from your home screen. There’s also info about your upcoming trip card on your homepage, which means that you can view information related to Flight Status, Boarding Position, and Gate Information more easily than ever.

Better yet, the app update coincides with support for mobile boarding passes being added at 28 airports around the United States — rather than just Austin, where the technology was previously trialed.

Controversial cannabis-growing game Weed Firm has been booted out of the App Store.

Essentially Farmville for stoners, the app put you in the role of a marijuana dealer, as you try to grow your business (literally)  and stay one step ahead of “thugs and cops.” Somehow making it past Apple’s usually stringent guidelines for adult content, the app had made it to the top of the App Store’s Top Free iPhone games prior to its expulsion.

Google has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable brand, according to a new survey.

As per Millward Brown’s BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, Apple’s brand value fell by 20% in the past year to just under $148 billion, while Google’s value increased by 40% to $159 billion.

“Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,” says Benoit Tranzer, regional managing director of Millward Brown Europe. “All these activities send a very strong signal to consumers about the essence of Google.”

Dan Lyons lambasted Steve Jobs and his fellow Silicon Valley cronies for years under the Fake Steve Jobs blog, but now after stints at Fortune, Newsweek and Hubspot, the tech writer will mock a new generation of startup wannabes and tech wackos as a writer for HBO’s hit comedy Silicon Valley.

Itching to take on the future techno-war depicted in the hyper-realistic Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise? Well, if you’ve finished off the original Modern Warfare game on your Mac, ported in 2011 by Aspyr, it’s time to lock and load your weapon of choice for the next two installments in the series, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3.

These huge sequels are available now for the Mac platform, on Steam or porting publisher Aspyr’s own GameAgent distribution service. The new Mac versions of the game have all the downloadable content (DLC) packs from each game ready for your first-person shooter marathon.

There have been a lot of remixes of the iconic iPhone ringtone over the years, and this one may be the best. The guitar solo at the end is an unexpected twist.

The remixer goes by the name MetroGnome, and his YouTube account features countless remixes of popular songs. He’s got some original stuff on iTunes, and it’s pretty standard electronic music.

You can download the above track yourself and turn it your own ringtone if you want to be that kinda guy at the party. It’s not free, but I recommend Ringer in the Mac App Store.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love affair with his iPad hasn’t been as well documented as some of his other lusts but Conan the Governor loves his Apple tablet so damn much he takes it everywhere, which makes it the perfect tool for capturing the Austrian Oak’s greatest love – his deteriorating guns.

Here’s Arnold’s iPad selfie from another angle:

There’s a scene in recent movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier in which Steve Rogers checks a list of things he’s missed since he took the cold plunge into the ice after his exploits in World War II.

In the U.S. version of the movie, the list looks like this:

Verizon’s upcoming Voice over LTE standard, or VoLTE (terrible acronym), will finally fix the biggest problem so many people have had with Verizon for years.

VoLTE will bring enhanced call audio calling over LTE, which also means that you’ll finally be able to talk and surf the web simultaneously.

Today Apple made some upgrades to its web-based version of the iWork suite that are more suited for those working in large teams. The number of people that can collaborate on a single document has been doubled to 100, and the maximum storage size for files and docs has also been increased.

Apple and Google may have declared a truce but the patent war with Samsung still rages across the Atlantic as an ongoing patent battle in the Dutch appeals court has upheld Apple’s plea for an injunction against sales of older Samsung Galaxy phones.

Apple wants to deliver content directly to your iPhone, iPad or Mac and according to a report, it’s ramping up development of its own Content Delivery Network (CDN) to take make it happen.

Dan Rayburn at Streaming Media reports that Apple’s CDN plans are ramping up as the company has begun negotiations with the US’s largest ISPs to secure paid interconnection deals that would let Cupertino beam updates directly to your iPhone more efficiently than the third-party providers it currently uses.

Whether you’re watching television at home or a new feature film at the movie theaters, popcorn always serves to be a tasty viewing companion. While popcorn is delicious there’s nothing more frustrating than smelling the buttery cooking kernels only to find it burnt when finished. Luckily the app Perfect Pop can save you from destroying your snack and filling your home with unpleasant smells.

Take a look at the video to see what you think.

In the newest Wolfenstein game, out today for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PC, you’ll play as Captain B.J. Blazkowicz, an American war hero out to take on the Nazi regime and the evil General Wilhelm Strasse.

In what might be the best homage to classic gaming I’ve ever seen, the new title has a beautifully recreated level from one of the original iterations of the popular gaming title Wolfenstein 3D, which came out in 1992 and made its way to every computing platform at the time, including the Apple II and Mac OS, and has recently been ported to iOS as well.

The video below shows this awesome throwback to the original game, blocky graphics and all, in what looks to be a dream sequence in The New Order.

Instead of taking on the iPad Air’s 9.7-inch display, Microsoft is thinking even bigger with a 12-inch Surface Pro 3 that could make it the perfect competitor for Apple’s long-rumored 13-inch iPad Pro.

Like Microsoft’s other’s tablets, the Surface Pro 3, which the company revealed Tuesday morning, comes with a kickstand and a collapsible keyboard that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay says will remove all the conflicts you’ve had about buying a laptop or tablet, plus they’ve added a Surface Pen for seamless digital writing.

Cult of Mac Deals regularly offers “name your own price” bundles, and we’ve got another here for you that assembles 9 apps and an iOS course that really deliver the goods…and the savings!

These types of bundles are time-limited opportunities to buy a collection of apps for whatever you want to pay! The bundles are exclusively constructed and are made for anyone looking to discover the best apps from around the globe. And The Name Your Own Price Mac Bundle 5.0 is no exception.

Some Apple collectors gather one of every Mac, iPod or iPhone, while others specialize in portables or all-in-ones. Then there are the outliers, the super-collectors who search out the incredibly rare items most people never get a chance to see.

“I’m always on the hunt,” says Henry Plain, a California man who specializes in tracking down impossible-to-find Mac prototypes.

Plain owns some of the rarest, most unusual Apple machines ever produced. These are the speed bumps, works in progress or developer’s editions that the secretive Cupertino company never intended for outside eyes. His vast knowledge of Apple’s production gave him a role in facilitating the sale of the Storage Wars-esque Macintosh collection of Marion Stokes that came to light last month. I like to think of him as Prototype Man.

What’s in Plain’s amazing Apple menagerie? Transparent versions of the Macintosh SE and PowerBook 140. A Mac mini with a built-in iPod dock. Prototypes of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM), the Power Mac G4 Cube and iDevices too numerous to mention. Even to other collectors — and I have a Mac Museum in my house — his inventory is crazy-impressive.

Celebrities have been lending their voices and likenesses to video games for years, and you need only look at the voice-cast lists for big games like epic first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops to see how prevalent they are.

But some appearances are more subtle, relevant or just straight-up awesome. Here are seven celebrity cameos that actually belong in their respective games.

George Orwell once wrote that, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

Yesterday we reported on the fact that Samsung and Apple were sitting down to negotiate an end to the ongoing litigation between the two companies — and unlike all the previous occasions, this time the plan was to make it stick.

Well, one day later, and talks between the two warring factions are reportedly breaking down — as lawyers from both sides express difficulty working with each other. What is seemingly particularly grinding gears in the Apple camp are statements made by Samsung’s top lawyer, referring to the protracted lawsuit as “Apple’s Vietnam” and Apple as “jihadist.”

Like Scarlett Johansson’s phone number, wine is something I’d like to know a bit more about. It’s good to hear, then, that popular wine assistant app Hello Vino (great name!) has just been given a sparkling update in time for spring.

The update adds support for a massive 140,000 store and restaurant locations to help you pick out the perfect wine. It also adds improvements to the app’s search engine, which is powered by wine-searcher.com and features more than 6 million wines.

Super Monkey Ball was one of the real gems of the GameCube era, and now a version of it is set to bounce its way onto iOS this summer.

But this isn’t your grandpappy’s Super Monkey Ball. According to SEGA, the game takes inspiration from the classic arcade game, pachinko, and features AiAi and the rest of his monkey pals as they attempt to thwart the evil machinations of the dastardly Prof. Boscis.

Gulf Air, the Kingdom of Bahrain’s flagship air carrier, has become the latest airline to participate in an iPad-based electronic flight bag program. The program will see Gulf Air purchase 355 iPads, to be distributed throughout the airline’s fleet.

“We are proud of our existing strategic relationship with VIVA Bahrain and pleased to extend this partnership to include the provision of iPad devices as part of Gulf Air’s Electronic Flight Bag project,” says Gulf Air Acting CEO Maher Salman Al Musallam. “This is an essential component of our ongoing commitment to all new technology that provides integrated solutions for managing information in the air and on the ground.”

A video has surfaced online showing a jailbreak solution for iOS 7.1.1, compatible with the 64-bit iPhone 5s.

This is the third iOS 7.1.1 jailbreak we’ve seen in a matter of days, although it’s possibly the most impressive yet being that it is for Apple’s premier iOS device.

If you’re looking for a new home awesome enough to house all of your Apple products in style, you’re not going to find one better than this.

A 10,000 square feet palace — newly on the market for a cool $35 million — it will be instantly recognizable to cinema buffs as the home of none other than Tony Montana in the 1983 movie Scarface.

Instagramming your skinny cinnamon latte and taking selfies of yourself with your skinny cinnamon latte is always going to take its toll on your phone’s battery. But that’s going to be less of a concern for those who live and work in New York, where AT&T’s new solar charging stations allow anyone to top up their juice while they sit down and relax with their skinny cinnamon latte.