Cult of Mac

With so many Bluetooth speakers, varying in size and price, it can be hard to find the best fit for you. In this episode of Cult of Mac’s Product Recommendations, we take a look at the Angle speaker by Oontz, a portable Bluetooth speaker perfect for office, bedroom and other settings.

Take a look at the video to see what you think and make sure to enter the giveaway to try your hand at winning one.

Enter the Cult of Mac giveaway: We have two Oontz Angles to give away to two viewers who like and comment on our video, and also subscribe to the Cult of Mac channel on YouTube. Winners will be picked at random and entries end Monday, May 26, 2014. Prizes provided by Oontz.

It’s totally irritating when you’re using your Mac and it slows down all of a sudden. While your computer is obviously doing what you’re focusing on, it can also be working hard on pointless tasks running in the background. In today’s how-to video, find out how to stop this and speed up your Mac in no time.

Remember those summer days of yore, playing in the pool with your friends, and one of you would close your eyes and yell out Marco? And all your buddies, who got to keep their eyes open, yelled Polo!*

Now you can find wherever you’ve lost your iPhone in your house, car, or office cubicle by shouting at it with the nifty and useful new app, Marco Polo: Find Your Phone by Shouting MARCO!, which may be the longest name for an app, ever.

Marco! Polo! Marco! … Polo!

There are a number of way to track emoji use on Twitter but this globe of real-time emoji tweeted across the world has me so spellbound I can’t look away.

Good thing too, because unlike EmojiTracker, it won’t cause a seizure.

What if we lived in a world where you could pay for your food by sharing it on Instagram? Some would call it hell on earth because of how our Instagram feeds are already overwhelmed with such pictures, but that kind of attitude could be starting to change.

A new pop-up diner in Soho, London called The Picture House is letting its customers pay for their meals in exchange for posting a pic of it on Instagram with the hashtag “BirdsEyeInspirations.”

Joel Thomas Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, is undoubtedly one of the most popular EDM artists/DJs on the planet. He’s apparently so famous that he has his own subscription service with an iPhone app that came out a few days ago.

The self-titled app is the one-stop shop for everything Deadmau5, and it costs £2.99 per month.

The web has spun about 13,000 different theories on why Apple bought Beats. Did they want the headphones? Or was it Beats Music that tipped things over?

It’ll be months, if not years, before we learn Apple’s real play with the Beats acquisition, but Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson has his own theory on why Apple bought Beats and it has nothing to do with music, overpriced headphones, or other wearables.

It’s all about video.

So you got yourself a Tumblr blog, right? Whether you’re a newbie website runner or a veteran Tumblr owner, you’ll need to keep track of your website stats.

The best (and free) system out there to find out who visits your site and why is Google Analytics. The web stats analysis package there is the best in the business, but unless you have some sort of degree in SEO or traffic analysis, it can be pretty overwhelming.

So, for those of you that just want to get into tracking your site stats with a minimum of fuss, here’s how to get Google Analytics installed on your Tumblr blog, and a quick and easy way to set up your Analytics dashboard with the basic info.

“So here we are,” says Chris Pratt’s Starlord in the new trailer from Marvel Studios, “a thief, two thugs, an assassin, and a maniac.”

They may be an odd team, but they’re not going to stand by as evil wipes out the galaxy.

Guardians of the Galaxy is shaping up to be a fantastic take on the cult-hit comic book series, further cementing Marvel Comics as the cooler-than-you comic book movie studio with this hot new trailer, embedded below.

While you’re distracted by the bright screen in your hands, the real world is passing you by. This is where MetaWatch saves the day.

MetaWatch is a Bluetooth-connected smartwatch that will discreetly alert you to new text messages, phone calls, app alerts and certain athletic metrics. You can leave your phone in your pocket and avoid getting sucked into the vortex of refreshes and updates. And Cult of Mac Deals has The MetaWatch STRATA Smartwatch for only $99 during this limited time promotion.

iPad users in the UK, Spain, Germany and France can now trade-in their old iPad for credit towards a new device as Apple expands its iPad trade-in program internationally

Apple’s trade-in program doesn’t give customers cash for their old devices, but it will exchange it for Apple Store credit that can be used to purchase a new iPad or iPhone.

Is it a stills camera? No. Is it a video camera? No. Is it something between the two? Correctamundo! The OTTO is a “Hackable GIF Camera” that uses a Raspberry Pi brain to make animated GIF pictures.

Xbox One owners just got a shot in the arm as the team behind the acclaimed Halo franchise has just revealed a new iteration in the series: Halo 5: Guardians.

Halo has always been associated with the Xbox system, reaching back to Microsoft’s original console, released in 2001. With the latest title now in sights, Halo fans will start the salivation required of the lead up to the game industry’s most popular series.

Apple is finally giving iOS developers the opportunity to provide promotional codes for in-app purchases. EA will be one of the first to take advantage of the new scheme with a Real Racing 3 promotion that will allow players to redeem free in-game gold that would usually cost $1.99.

Cult of Mac Magazine May 19 Edition

Every week, we serve up the best of the Cult of Mac website as a magazine so you can download and read it at your leisure on your iPhone or iPad.

Apple’s iconic Fifth Avenue retail store might be turning eight today, but the company is looking to boost its New York presence with a new store on the city’s Upper East Side.

City building permits, dated May 15, detail soil testing at the new site, along with the demolition of the building’s current interior — costing a total of $80,000. The new Apple Store is set to be located at no. 940 Madison Avenue, a limestone and marble building currency occupied by luxury retailer VBH.

Samsung was the elephant in the room following last week’s surprising news that Apple and Google/Motorola had come to a surprising agreement, in which both companies would agree to drop all ongoing litigation against the other.

Having spent the last few years waging bitter patent campaigns against each other in court, it seemed unlikely that Apple would be willing to afford similar treatment to Samsung.

Google Glass is immensely difficult to get hold of right now. In fact, you have little to no chance of bagging the device if you live outside of the U.S. and don’t have a spare $1,500. But thanks to a new Kickstarter campaign, you can now become a Google Glass owner for just $33.

You’ll have to act quickly, though, because it’s almost certainly going to get pulled by Google. And yes, there is a catch.

It takes a lot to be both New York City’s most photographed landmark and Apple’s most beautiful retail store. It’s rare that a shop can genuinely be said to take your breath away, but in the case of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store, it lives up to its reputation — and then some.

A big glass box with a glass elevator in the middle, as well as a see-through staircase, complete with wrap-around glass banister, it’s a little bit like Apple’s long-forgotten (but spectacular) Power Mac G4 Cube — only so big that you can shop in it.

It grosses more than any other store in New York City. And it makes more money per square foot than any other store in the world. exactly eight years after it opened its doors, Apple’s flagship retail store has become an iconic part of the New York landscape.

And like a lot of the best Apple products, it owes its success to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Unfortunately iOS 7.1 brought an end to the versatile Evasi0n jailbreak,which let anyone using iOS 7 to iOS 7.0.6 run unsigned code on their iOS device.

But no-one thought that would be it forever when it came to jailbreaks, and this weekend two prominent hackers posted evidence of iOS 7.1.1 jailbreaks online.

Mailbox, the popular gesture-based email app owned by Dropbox, has received a small but significant update.

First up are bug fixes, which (among other things) sort out the frustrating problems that have plagued the “reply” and “forward” features of the app’s iPad edition.

More importantly, however, is the app’s integration with App Links, the free and open-source initiative introduced by Facebook last month, that allows quick and straightforward linking between apps.

AT&T has confirmed that it is going to acquire satellite television operator DirecTV for $48.5 billion.

With a customer base of more than 35 million subscribers (as of December 2012), DirecTV is the second-largest pay TV provider in the United States. AT&T notes that the move will create “a unique new competitor with unprecedented capabilities in mobility, video, and broadband services.”

Facebook vs. Snapchat: round 2… fight!

After turning down a $3 billion acquisition offer late last year, Facebook is reportedly working on out-Snapchatting Snapchat with a new video messaging app, referred to internally as “Slingshot.”

The service — which lets user send short messages to one another with just a few taps — could be launched as early as this month, although as of yet Facebook has not signed off on it.

Silicon Valley, much like the place it depicts, is one big sausage fest. An “inclusive” tech conference is one where there is almost a line for the women’s bathroom and flirting involves some guy trying to exchange PGP keys with you.

So it makes sense that the show’s only main female character — Monica, the right hand of billionaire VC Peter Gregory — feels obliged to tell the crew of Pied Piper before they head to the battle at TechCrunch Disrupt that the place is a “vortex of distraction.” But it’s not the gizmos or other gimmicks, it’s the women.

“Normally, the tech world is 2 percent women, the next three days it’s 15 percent,” she warns gravely.

“It’s a goddamn meat market,” Gilfoyle deadpans.

The episode is all about how sparks fly when sex meets the single startup guy.

Some spoilers follow. Medium, though. 

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has written an open letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concerning the subject of Net Neutrality.

In it, Wozniak runs down his history with telecom and details the various headaches he’s dealt with as a result of monopoly companies and government policies. With several examples, Woz points out how innovation and experimentation will be stifled if new rules concerning net neutrality are passed into law.