Since the release of the Apple TV back in 2007, it’s evolved into an essential gadget for all media streamers, and with that, Apple has invented some competition with the likes of Amazon Fire and the Roku. This week Cult of Mac puts the $99 Apple TV against the entry-level $49 Roku 1.
With yet another week in the past your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest news features. Touch iD coming to the iPad, Apple to buy Beats by Dre and more iPhone 6 rumors are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown. Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another.
Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
Hundreds of new games come out every week in the App Store. A select few are the next must-play title that everyone will be talking about (and ripping off) for the foreseeable future. Most of them are perfectly decent but may not receive the attention they deserve. And then you have the third group: games so odd, bizarre, and head-scratching that you’re not sure what to make of or do with them.
They aren’t necessarily bad; they’re just confusing and weird. And worst of all, people may never know that they exist. But that’s why we’re here.
Here are some of the strangest games to drop into the App Store this week, and they’re all about playing with fat stacks of cash. Or change. What you do with this information is between you and your iPhone.
At the giant Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, the exhibit halls were packed with wireless audio products. It’s all thanks to the mobile revolution. These are the listening devices of the future.
But future speakers and headphones will be quite different, predicted Matthew Paprocki, co-founder of Soundfreaq, a Southern California company that makes a range of critically acclaimed speakers.
Paprocki’s predictions may have implications for Beats, which Apple is rumored to be buying for $3.2 billion. Beats, of course, makes headphones and has a subscription based music streaming service, but Apple’s plans are unclear.
“They could take all the ingredients that Beats has and bake it into a new cake,” Paprocki said.
This time on The CultCast: No, those rumored new EarPods won’t measure your pulse. Last week’s biggest Apple rumor was a fake made up by a guy on a toilet! Plus, why you shouldn’t expect new hardware at June’s WWDC; iPhone warns you when the NSA wants you for drug trafficking; Apple’s newest executive gets a HUGE payday; Katie Cotton, Apple’s long time PR lead and Steve Jobs confidant, calls it quits; Cupertino will take on Samsung with more Guerrilla-style marketing; and since you asked, we reveal the jobs we’ve always wanted on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Have a few LOLs while we catch you up on 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 audio adventure begin!
Our thanks to Smile Software for supporting this episode! If you haven’t tried TextExpander from Smile software, you’re missing out on one of the most useful apps available for the Mac. With TextExpander, you’ll save time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text and pictures. Try it out yourself for free at smilesoftware.com/cultcast.
Click on for the show notes.
It’s time to turn your living room into a fun-filled recreation room with this iPhone-controlled, missile-firing helicopter.
We’ve seen our share of flying machines, but this iHelicopter is – in terms of ease-of-use and fun factors – one of the best we’ve seen. And we’ve got it for only $9.95 for a limited time!
Both Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will take senior positions at Apple as part of the Beats Electronics deal, according to people close to the matter.
While neither would move to Cupertino, they would reportedly commute to Silicon Valley (or wherever is needed) from Los Angeles. Although it’s currently unknown what role Iovine and Dre would fulfill at Apple, it is thought that Iovine might become a “special adviser” to Tim Cook on creative projects. Dre was recently seen celebrating becoming “the first billionaire in hip-hop.”
So who are these two possible new members of the Apple brain trust, and what would they bring to the table?
The theme that emerged from this week’s plethora of product press releases was “everything old is new again.” From the stunning leather-and-canvas bike bag from the talented folks at Tanner Goods to the retro speaker from Veho, it seems our fascination with yesteryear and retro continues unabated.
May your thoughts of relaxing in a cushy easy chair, whittling away with your new table knife while listening to Jack White’s new Ultra LP, helps you get through the weekend.
Until next week.
It’s impossible to know what humans would really do if aliens invaded Earth. While that scenario gets talked about on all types of platforms, the new app Aliens Drive Me Crazy brings the experience to life. Swipe to play as you drive your way through the city, taking out all enemies and climbing rooftops to attack enemy bases. Do you think you have what it takes to bring every district to safety and restore sanity?
Take a look at the video to see what you think.
Thank goodness for a game with just a few things to learn how to do.
Too many environmental puzzle games try to do too much, packing in all sorts of stuff you have to figure out to solve the ever-increasingly difficult levels.
Not so with Kiwanuka, an elegantly smart game that only has a couple of mechanics, but tons of fun levels to solve with them.
Oh, and it’s a little bit weird, too.
I’m constantly checking out new photography apps for the iPhone, and like many out there, my favorite remains VSCO Cam. There’s a new contender on the scene that was released this week, and it’s definitely worth trying if you like experimenting beyond VSCO’s filters.
A new video app from the Hipstamatic team also just came out in the App Store, and it has some of the best filters for mobile video I’ve come across.
Remember Facebook Poke? It’s become nothing more than a faint memory since its introduction in December 2012. But for some reason the iPhone app has stayed on the App Store until now.
Today Facebook decided to do some spring cleaning in the App Store by pulling not only the Poke app, but Facebook Camera as well.
They say your email inbox is a terrible place to manage tasks. I’d disagree. I think it’s the perfect place. After all, most of my tasks come in via email, and any app that can share information can share it via email. Why bother dickering with an extra app, keeping all that important stuff in two places, when it can all be easily managed in one spot?
I’ve been doing exactly this ever since I ditched OmniFocus, which is so long ago I can’t remember how long ago it was. With a little bit of setup in your everyday news and browsing apps, you can turn your inbox into a proper universal task list. Here’s how.
What would it look like if Apple let you work in multiple apps side by side on the iPad? Apple’s competitors like to poke fun at the iPad’s lack of desktop-class multitasking. But plenty of people are using the iPad to get work done, which begs the age-old question: is less really more?
Imagine OS X’s Mission Control ported to the iPad, and you’ve got the jailbreak tweak OS Experience. It’s an ambitious idea that is executed with surprising finesse.
If the rumors are true, Apple’s forthcoming purchase of Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion is all about one thing — making wearable technology fashionable.
Apple is poised to introduce a line of wearables that likely goes beyond the long-rumored iWatch. While the technology Tim Cook’s team is cooking up might be amazing, getting people to wear it — especially cracking the crucial mass market — will be one of the biggest challenges Cupertino has ever faced.
Injecting style into wearable tech notoriously difficult. Even Nike got flustered and discontinued its FuelBand fitness tracker. So far, no company has really cracked the code and turned gear into a fashion statement for the cool kids, with one giant exception: Beats, a phenomenally successful wearable technology brand that dwarfs the rest of the industry because it’s pulled off the hardest trick in the book.
With the global reach of Twitter, it’s totally possible you’re following a few folks that don’t necessarily Tweet in your native language.
When that happens, it’s TweetDeck to the rescue with its very useful translation function.
Here’s how to make that work.
The best type of charging cable is the one you have on you. So stay prepared and leave that tangled mess behind with ChargeCard.
ChargeCard is your iPhone lightning cable, shaped like a credit card. It’s designed to fit into your wallet so you’ll always have a charging/sync cable on hand. And Cult of Mac Deals has it available for just $24.99 for a limited time.
I like looking at art, but I don’t always like going to galleries because my fellow patrons don’t usually appreciate my habit of giggling uncontrollably whenever I see pictures with naked butts in them.
And sometimes galleries are really far away, too. I probably should have just said that.
But Curiator puts a whole lot of art from all over right into your phone and lets you browse and giggle as much as you want without bothering anyone but your coworkers, roommates, or people on the bus. But you probably annoy them daily, anyway, so it probably doesn’t matter.
Source:Curiator – Free | Curiator
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a home-improvement app, a bunch of motivational quotations, and some virtual flooring.
Here you go:
You probably have a few improvements you’d like to make to your home, but it’s possible you have no idea how to do them yourself. Or maybe you do, but you’d like some handy tips on how to store and maintain your paintbrushes or something. This app has you covered either way; it comes from Skil Power Tools, and it contains a wealth of information including tips on removing broken spade handles, tips about proper tool usage, and step-by-step directions on a ridiculous number of projects.
So now I can finally build that deck for my apartment. The landlord will love that.
DIY 4 Beginners – Free | Skil Power Tools
Style My Floor is a decorating app that lets you sample an assortment of different hardwood materials and styles. And even cooler, you can request a “Quick Key” that’ll let you see how different floors will look in your house. You just print out a PDF, lay it in a corner, and then point your iPhone or iPad camera at it. Magic does the rest.
Or technology. Probably that.
Either way, it hits my “easily impressed” button.
Style My Floor – Free | QuickStep Flooring
A lot of apps hope to inspire you to improve yourself and focus by offering you words of wisdom from people whose names you recognize. Like that rather stern one up there, which comes courtesy of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Maybe you’ll get something out of this app, which gives you a new quotation every day to make you work harder and feel better. But I’m going to use it to reply back to coworkers who have silly inspirational quotes in their e-mail signatures. It’s the ultimate passive-aggressive office way of saying, “Leave me alone, and get back to work.”
I’m sure my boss will love that.
Daily Productivity Quotes – Free | Michael Paddock
Cigar is a new aggregation app that pulls in new content from crowd-funding site Kickstarter, Netflix, TED Talks, and the App Store and presents it to you in a giant pile for your consideration. You run through them one at a time, swiping up to dismiss ones you don’t like and double-tapping to save some for later.
It can be a little daunting when it throws like 300 things on your stack. But Cigar also e-mails you a digest of things you liked, so you don’t have to go back to the app and sort through your “Liked” list again.
Which is nice.
Wingsuit Cute is a game about a bunch of adorable animals forced to glide through the air and collect snacks while under the constant threat of smashing their widdle snoots on rocks and trees.
It really downplays the animals graphically smashing their faces open, but that’s basically what’s happening. The game takes a sunnier approach, choosing to focus on the part where tiny mammals don wingsuits in search of thrills and noms. And it’s really cute. And kinda fun, with a fair amount of challenge to keep perfect-run seekers coming back.
But it’s mostly cute.
Angry Birds is coming to a big screen near you. Rovio Entertainment is taking the epic battle of birds-versus-pigs from your iPhone to the cinema, in 3-D, and launching it into the wide, wide world in July 2016.
We’re aflutter with anticipation: Can they actually make a movie based on a video game worth watching? It’s happened time and time again that our favorite living room brain-cell killer was transported to the land of plush seats and buttery popcorn only to disappoint.
Most video games turn into celluloid duds even though we stupidly paid to see them; Rotten Tomatoes gives Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within only a 44 percent approval rating. The rest go down from there.
In the gallery above, you’ll find a brutal rundown of the best of the worst video game-cum-movies that Rovio should watch — as a reminder of what not to do.
Notorious vegetarian Steve Jobs had few weakness. Black turtlenecks were one. The other was an extreme love of sushi.
Some of the West Coast’s best sushi places dotted Steve’s backyard, but Kaygetsu, a small sushi spot in Menlo Park, held the key to Steve’s heart stomach so tightly that Silicon Valley’s most impatient CEO could be spotted waiting up to 30 minutes like a normal pauper just to get his tongue on some hamachi.
Jobs loved the place so much he had a surprise birthday party for his wife there and even crammed Apple’s board of directors into the tiny restaurant for board meetings.
Reports of Apple’s pending Beats Electronics acquisition has left the vast majority of us scratching our heads, but if you thought this was just another spurious claim from anonymous supply chain blabbermouths, you can think again. Not only did the story come from reputable sources, but it has been all but confirmed by Dr. Dre himself.
In the short video below, a drunk Dre proclaims himself “the first billionaire in hip-hop” as he celebrates with friends.
Nokia’s incredible PureView camera technology is one of the reasons why so many Android users were desperate to see the Finnish firm ditch Windows Phone and bring Google’s platform to its flagship smartphones instead — and you could soon see the same technology in future iPhones.
Apple has used Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset business as an opportunity to poach executives who are seeking new challenges, and the Cupertino company has just hired Lumia engineer and PureView camera expert Ari Partinen.
If you’re counting down the seconds until you can lovingly hold the iPhone 6 in your sweaty palms, you may have less time to wait than you thought, according to sources within Apple’s supply chain.
As per Taiwanese media reports, Apple might be set to drop the first incarnation of its next generation iPhone in August instead of the expected September.
If true, this would likely be 4.7 inch version of the iPhone 6, while the reported 5.5 inch model would follow in September.