Cult of Mac

Another piece of the “when will Apple release the iWatch” puzzle may have fallen in to place, with the news that Apple is actively pursuing the iWatch trademark in dozens of countries around the globe.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Apple if it was that straightforward.

Rather than trademarking the term itself, Apple appears to be using a shell company called Brightflash USA LLC to do the work on its behalf.

The firm is registered in Delaware, and has previously been tied to trademarking efforts by Apple. One indicator of the connection between Apple and Brightflash is that it is using the same IP attorney in several locations.

I keep a movie to-watch list, a plain text list somewhere in my Dropbox. And as you may have guessed, I never read it. What I probably need is an app like Moviedo, a to-do list for movies that runs on your iPhone.

Apple’s latest iPhone 5s ad debuted during last night’s Agents of SHIELD on ABC, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Built around the idea that “You’re more powerful than you think,” the ad shows the iPhone being used to as a tool by people in various lines of work. In this way, it’s very reminiscent of Apple’s recent “Your Verse” campaign for the iPad.

But while it’s good aspirational fare — with absolutely nothing offensive about it — it also comes across as, well, kind of boring really.

The iOS Kindle app just got an update, and it’s a good one. The left sidebar that you can summon while reading now has direct access to the table of contents, and you can access X-Ray info just by tapping on a word.

Remember the Elevation Dock? Yeah, me too. The Kickstarter took so long to ship that everybody who’d ordered one had upgraded to the iPhone 5 by the time the dock shipped, so they needed adapters to make them fit their new phones.

Still, that won’t happen with the new Elevation Stand, which is a simple $100 aluminum brick that adds a few inches to the height of your iMac.

DC Comics comic game, Injustice: Gods Among Us, will be getting a new mobile multiplayer mode and tons of new characters, according to reports coming out of WonderCon.

Developed by NetherRealm and published by Warner Brothers, the fighting game is one of a very select few that gets it right on touch-based devices — faithfully translating the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console game to Apple’s mobile operating system.

Until now, however, playing the game on iOS has been a solitary experience. That looks like it will be rectified in a future game update, as a video from DC All Access reveals a multiplayer mode in the works.

Barely two months after I bought the original, Logitech has updated the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad, with matching new models for the iPads Air and Mini. The Bluetooth keyboards still work as covers and stands for your iPad, but now they also hold the iPad at an adjustable angle, and have a hidden hinge that pops out when your need it.

Lytro’s new Illum field Camera is the first of its products you’ll want to buy. The original Lytro Field Camera was a nice proof of concept, but the low resolution images were pretty crappy, and the unit itself was one of the least ergonomic camera designs I’ve ever seen.

The Illum still has some ergonomics issues, but promises much better pictures.

Apple has released security patches to fix the Heartbleed bug on AirPort base stations, and SSL-based security updates for Apple TVs and Macs.

You should probably go and update all of them as soon as possible.

Apple has aired a new ad for the iPhone 5s titled “Powerful.” It’s the first TV spot dedicated solely to the 5s since “Metal Mastered” last fall.

This new ad showcases the iPhone helping with creative tasks live music. The song is “Gigantic” by the Pixies, a hit song from the 90s.

Under the watchful eye of Tim Cook Apple’s gone from the most powerful tech company in the world to the most green. Yesterday’s new ad shone the spotlight on Apple’s environmental practices but the true celebrations of going green kicked off today for Earth Day.

Select Apple Stores around the world sprouted green leafed logos to go with new Earth Day shirts and lanyards for Specialists and Geniuses, but rather than driving all the way to your local store we’ve gathered shots of Apple Stores near and far celebrating Apple’s pledge to leave the world better than they found it.

Take a look:

If pangs of jealousy hit you every time developers start waxing poetic about new OS X goodies found in a new beta update, your time has finally come to join in on the fun.

Starting this afternoon Apple has opened up its OS X Mavericks beta testing program to let everyone – not just those slick coding developers – download the latest OS X beta seeds.

Some folks find that the iPhone’s noise-cancellation feature causes a weird, uncomfortable sensation. It’s a product of the way the technology works, as Apple Discussion member KiltedTim says, linking to HowStuffWorks:

“In order to cancel out background noise, the sound is not “eliminated” from the audio stream you’re hearing. It is countered by a second audio stream that basically eliminates your ability to hear it.

Since the sound and the “counter sound” are still hitting your eardrum, this can result in an odd sensation. Your ear is processing the sound, but your brain isn’t registering it. Since the inner ear controls balance, this will produce a dizzying effect in some people.”

If this is bothering you, here’s how to turn off the noise-cancellation feature, which Apple added to iOS 7. (Originally exclusive to the iPhone 5s, noise cancellation is now available to older devices in iOS 7.1.)

Summer’s (nearly) here! And that means we are forced outside to use our devices in places that remain inhospitable to our iPhones and iPads.

The Incipio Atlas ID is a slimline waterproof iPhone case that lets you keep using the iPhone 5s’ Touch ID scanner, even while it’s in the case.

The OS X sidebar, introduced in Mac OS X Panther (10.3), has gotten an increased set of features over the years, including the most recent changes in Mountain Lion, which let you Hide and change the order of your Sidebar items.

These changes carried over to Mavericks, and it’s possible some of us forgot that we could do these things, if we even knew it in the first place.

In the spirit of showing you how to do do stuff you may have missed, here’s how to add things to your Sidebar, hide them when you don’t want to see them, and then move them into a different order over there on the left-hand side of your Finder window.

It’s been over a month since Apple released its beefy iOS 7.1 update but iPhone and iPad users can now update to iOS 7.1.1 which was just made available this morning.

The update comes with a number of bug fixes as well improvements for Touch ID fingerprint recognition. Other fixes added a included the extermination of a bug that was impacting keyboard responsiveness, and an issue when using Bluetooth keyboards with VoiceOver enabled.

You can grab it via an OTA update on your device, or through iTunes, or you can grab the version you need in the download links below:

It’s easy to get a thrill from the action portrayed in the movies. While these characters perform bank heists and other risky situations, these are all far from being like our average days. When the office isn’t giving you a rush, the new app Bike Assault is perfect for you. Tilt your way through traffic shooting an armored truck, and catching as much money as possible, without crashing. Just how much loot will you be able to pick up?

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

Want to create a digital copy of your entire Blu-Ray collection? This is exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Leawo Blu-ray Ripper for Mac is a handy Blu-ray converter that rips and converts Blu-rays/DVDs to video and other formats for your viewing pleasure. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $14.95 for a very limited time!

Your iPhone and iPad already have some fonts on board, but what if you want to make something that looks like it was stenciled or written in cursive? Or maybe you just like knowing that you have like 800 typefaces to choose from, just in case? Install New Fonts has you covered with enough options to keep you out of trouble for a while. If you’re wondering how to install fonts on iPad, here’s a guide that covers everything you need.

It’s free to download, but most of it is locked behind a $2.99 in-app purchase. But everything’s licensed for commercial use, so think of it as an investment.

Source:Install New Fonts – Free | Denis Tokarev

Anyone — even a fat plumber — can run around and jump on things. But what if progress depends on being in two places simultaneously? Or three? Or five? Mario can’t even handle that. Unless we’re talking about the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games with all the mini-Marios.

Which we’re not.

Anyway, the hero of Instantion can be all those places. Let’s focus on that. Because it’s a fun game.

Pretty much every Apple product has cannibalized sales from another one: the MacBook cannibalized the Mac, the iPhone cannibalized the iPod, the iPad cannibalized the MacBook, and the iPad mini cannibalized the iPad Air.

On its part, though, Apple has always been cavalier about cannibalizing its own sales. In February, 2013, Tim Cook told investors that “if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will.” Which is why Cupertino is unlikely to be worried about analyst concerns that a larger iPhone 6 could cannibalize sales of the iPad mini.

When the developers at AgileBits showed me 1Password’s highly anticipated iOS 7 redesign at Macworld last month, I naturally asked when it would come out. They were cagey, but I was told to expect some “interesting things soon.” The day has finally arrived, and 1Password’s biggest update since version 4.0 is out in the App Store.

Redesigned to match the cleaner aesthetics of iOS 7, 1Password 4.5 finally brings support for switching between multiple vaults. The feature was previously limited to the Mac, but now the iOS app can switch between vaults from within its settings.

1Password 4.5 also includes notable improvements to its built-in browser, better integration with its desktop counterpart (which has also been updated), and some other welcomed features.

Streaming media services that want to sell subscriptions to users of their apps on the iPhone or iPad have to make a deal with the proverbial devil: if they want to sign up customers on an iOS device, they have to give Apple a 30% cut of the sale.

For music subscription services like Rdio and Spotify, where the margins are razor thin, giving up that 30% cut is enough to turn a subscription from a profit to a break-even proposition. So when a company goes this route, it’s easy to assume they are hurting.

By this logic, Beats Music — the new subscription music service launched in January — is hurting.

So far, the consensus is that while we will see a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 in September, we will have to wait until the holidays, or even later, to see the rumored 5.5-inch model. The culprit, claim reports, are those ever pesky “yields,” but what does that mean? Why is a 5.5-inch iPhone 6 so much harder to make than a 4.7-inch one?

A new report out of Taiwan sheds some light on the matter. The issue apparently is that the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 is meant to be super thin… even thinner than the 4.7-inch. And that requires perfecting a very special kind of battery.

Do you have an ancient first-gen iPod lying around? A candy-shelled iMac G3? An iPhone 2g? Heck, even a vintage Macintosh SE, or working Apple I?

Good news. Starting today, Apple’s retail stores will accept any of its old products for recycling, and if they think they can resell it, you’ll even get some store credit (although you may want to hold off on trading in that Apple I).