Cult of Mac

The portable battery from Halo is perfect for those times when I want to go stealth, keeping my iPhone 5 as free of those bulky, heavy battery cases as possible.

Between running levels of Hodappy Bird and checking Twitter for any vanity retweets, slapping photos of my meals up on Instagram and surreptitiously reading Facebook posts from ex-girlfriends, I am a battery killer.

With the Halo charger available, I found myself grabbing it and a lightning cable on my way out the door all the time, whether heading to the coffee shop or just for a quick bike ride along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. It’s a perfect way to ensure I have the power I need on demand without strapping my iPhone into some fat case like the Mophie.

This is Leica’s new T, a camera with just a few buttons, and which is milled from a solid block of aluminum. Sound familiar? Hell, it even comes with a Smart Cover.

Specs-wise, this thing looks great, with Wi-Fi and a very clever way to add GPS. But I do worry about that lack of buttons.

Yesterday, often reputable Japanese Apple rumor site Macotakara reported that like Marilyn Monroe, the iPhone 6 could be curvy.

Specifically, they said that the iPhone 6 would have curved edges, compared to the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5’s squared edges, as well as a curved display. The result would be a device that felt almost organic in the hand: an important consideration, given that, at 4.7-inches, the iPhone 6 will be more difficult for people to hold.

Today, famed Apple concept artist Martin Hajek has updated his iPhone 6 render based upon the ‘curvy’ rumor, and my god, does it look gorgeous. Check out more images after the jump.

In the past, we’ve seen at least one madman use his iPad as a cutting board. While the guy was clearly senile, it does raise an interesting point: the design of many Apple products, from the iPad to the Mac, look like they might have been inspired by cutting boards in Jony Ive’s kitchen.

If you’d like to show solidarity with the Cult of Mac in your kitchen, consider this: a cutting board made of Apple wood that is identical in shape and design with the unibody MacBook Pro. For a cutting board, it’s not cheap at $110, but on the positive side, that’s at least a grand cheaper than you’d buy a working aluminum MacBook Pro for.

More pics after the jump.

Remember the olden days when you had to phone up and order a pizza — or worse still, trudge down the road to go and pick one up in person?

Thankfully that dystopian past will be well and truly over come Monday, when Domino’s Pizza launches its new iPad app — which lets you build your own custom pizzas, and then order them for take-out and delivery from the comfort of your own couch.

Making this app particularly nifty is that the 3-D pizza builder uses rendering application OpenGL to give you a realistic photo-effect image of what your final pizza will (or should) look like upon delivery.

If you’re a Pinterest user, you may be interested in a new mobile app feature being rolled out by the photo-sharing site.

Called ‘Guided Search,’ the tool makes it easier to explore Pinterest when you’re not exactly sure what it is that you want to find.

Forget about a close run race — the iPad is absolutely obliterating Android tablets when it comes to web traffic stats.

The data, which comes from Chitika Insights, looks at the distribution of Web usage across leading tablet devices for early April 2014.

Based on a sampling of tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian tablet-based online ad impressions, it leaves no question who’s ruling the tablet roost.

Frogmind’s excellent Badland has just been updated — adding ten new levels to what was already a fantastic game.

For those who haven’t played it before, Badland is well worth downloading. It’s a flapping game, but one that will cleanse your palate of the sour (if slightly addictive) taste of Flappy Bird, thanks to its gorgeous graphics and well-designed level layouts.

Having turned over a new leaf when it comes sustainability, Apple is rightly proud.

So proud, in fact, that it made the surprisingly un-Apple move of opening the doors of its North Carolina data center to NBC’s show, to shine a focus on the building’s pioneering use of renewable energy.

Facebook has been on quite the buying spree lately. After snatching up Oculus VR, the social network is now acquiring a popular fitness tracking app for the iPhone. ProtoGeo Oy, the Finnish app maker behind Moves, announced today that it is joining Facebook.

The third episode in acclaimed adventure game The Wolf Among Us has just dropped on Steam, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and iOS, and –if the trailer below is any indication — it’s a doozy. Titled ‘A Crooked Mile,’ the new episode looks to raise the stakes for its main character, the detective in a city full of ex-patriate fairy tale characters.

It looks like Bigby Wolf is really working on the “bad” part of his better known moniker (The Big Bad Wolf) in this video game series based on the Eisner Award-winning Fables graphic novels by Bill Willingham and published by Vertigo Comics.

The trailer (below) is short on details but long on accolades as it shows Bigby tearing through the magical side of New York, dropping the F-bomb and getting very, very angry. Those red eyes aren’t a good sign for anyone.

Apple hasn’t shied from going toe-to-toe in a heavy legal battle for months or years if need be, but rather than seeing its latest class action lawsuit go to trial, Apple has relented to settle instead.

Four major tech companies including Apple and Google reached a settlement this morning with the 64,000 tech workers who filed a class action lawsuit on the grounds that the Silicon Valley firms had conspired to keep wages artificially low through no-hire agreements.

You know, it sure would be nice if you could retain ownership of all that pithy writing you’ve done over the years on Twitter, right?

I mean, chances are you’ve crafted some fairly amazing 140-character diatribes along the way, and it might be fun to go back and see just how awesome you are.

Of course, the truth may be that you need to delete that Twitter account and just archive all of them for some embarrassing reason, but we’re not judging. Whatever the reason, it’s super-simple to download all your Twitter writing to your Mac. Here’s how.

When a product wins both Red Dot Design and iF product design awards you have to take notice. We definitely did, and jumping on board with Gum Plus became easy.

Gum Plus is a stylish portable backup battery for iPod, iPhone, iPad and USB-powered devices. Unlike most backup batteries, the Gum Plus is Apple-certified. The aluminum shell makes this high capacity battery backup a durable and elegant looking unit that will provide you with all the charge you need for your fast paced lifestyle. And Cult of Mac Deals has the Gum Plus for just $64.95!

It’s not uncommon to find yourself in a situation throughout the day when you’re just bored and looking for something to do. New iOS game Spin It will bring a fresh type of gameplay to your device to keep you entertained. Spin colored circles around the screen to match them in sets of three and four. Can you spin your way to the top of the high-score charts?

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

If you’ve ever wished you could grab lunch with Apple’s Tim Cook, now is your chance. Cook is auctioning off a lunch date at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. All proceeds from the action will go to the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.

And yes, you might be experiencing deja-vu. Cook did a similar auction last year, and the top bidder paid $610,000 to have coffee with the CEO.

Who doesn’t love to let their imagination run wild every once in a while? And who doesn’t like to save money while doing so? Well, Cult of Mac Deals has you covered on both fronts.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum combines the excitement of roller coasters with the fun of an epic strategy simulation. This special “Platinum” version combines the theme park fun of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 with included expansion packs, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Soaked! and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Wild! And you can get RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum for only $4.99 during this limited-time offer.

PaperSync is a more appealing version of the Mod Notebooks service. Like Mod, PaperSync scans your paper pages and turns them into digital files. Unlike Mod, PaperSync uses plain old PDFs, and works with any notebook you like, not just the special Mod notebook.

Prong’s PWR promises to provide your phone with power, preventing all problems. It’s a slim-ish case with a built-in battery along with a pair of flip-out power prongs that can be thrust directly into a wall outlet.

Emoji are versatile and cute, but if you want to get a little … direct with your significant other, you have to get pretty creative. SinkFoot wants to help with its small fleet of increasingly specific pictures that you can send via text or e-mail directly from the app. No nudity in here, but if you have a thing for cheerleaders, nurses, doctors, or members of SWAT, SinkFoot will help you communicate that.

Yep. SWAT. I guess that’s a thing.

Anyway, it has some other options, too. Although I’m not sure what this one means. I don’t really see what someone would do with an–Ooooooh. Alright, I get it.

Huh.

Source:SinkFoot – $0.99 | SinkFoot LLC

Sinkers has been out for a couple weeks now, but if you haven’t played it yet, you should.

It’s a minimalist puzzle game with two controls: You tap to remove all of the pieces of the same color that are touching, and you swipe up to “sink” the board and fill in the gaps from the pieces you’ve removed.

You have 20 moves to make as many points as you can. And that’s basically all you need to know, other than that this game is worth your time.

Remember when the coolest brag for a gadget was that it was “credit card size”? Those times are back. The Revi Charger is a credit card-size iPhone charger with a built-in backup battery, and could really be just the thing in an emergency.

Over the years, cherubic Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has demonstrated a love of all things two-wheeled, four-wheeled and winged.

After spotting his latest hot wheels — a super-spiffy Tesla X — we were inspired to take inventory of what he’s been docking in his garage (that other one) all these years. He’s something of a speed demon, really. Though you’ll be the judge whether he or Jony Ive has the winning wheels. 

Compared to the likes of the Roku, which boasts a 1,000+ channel library, the Apple TV doesn’t exactly have a lot of different media channels. The Apple TV boasts only has around 33 third-party channels. Much of the reason the channel selection is so limited is because, unlike Roku, the Apple TV is a closed ecosystem: only Apple can release a new channel for its streaming set-top box.

Things, however, are getting rapidly better, as the above chart shows.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, the hugely popular kart racing game that features Sonic and a number of other famous video game characters, is now available for free on Android and iOS.

SEGA hopes that making the title free will improve its multiplayer experience, and the company has new updates planned to introduce new characters, tracks, and modes that will keep new and old players coming back for more.