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Add simplicity and comfort to your back pocket with the EZGO Wallet [Deals]

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Isn’t it time to replace your bulky old wallet with something that really does make a difference? Sure it is – and Cult of Mac Deals can help you out with that!

EZGO is a new kind of wallet that brings ingenuity and many new useful features. A modern, buoyant, slim and lightweight wallet designed with no moving parts, for easy access to cards, cash, digital media and more. And Cult of Mac Deals has the EZGO Wallet for 42% off the regular price – just $19.99 – during this limited time offer!

#AmazonCart lets you shop without leaving Twitter

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What Amazon taketh away, Amazon also giveth.

One week after enraging comic nerds everywhere by removing the option to purchase titles within its ComiXology iOS app, Amazon has made it easier than ever purchase products thanks to a snazzy new Twitter feature.

From this point on  — provided you live in either the U.S. or UK — whenever a customer discovers a tweet from their favorite artist, brand, friend, etc. featuring an Amazon product link, they can simply add “#AmazonCart” to their reply and that product is added to their Amazon.com Shopping Cart. (UK customers must add #AmazonBasket instead.)

Daily Productivity Quotes wants you to work smarter and harder

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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.

Source:Daily Productivity Quotes – Free | Michael Paddock

Minimalist puzzler Bicolor will charm you right to sleep

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Here’s yet another artsy, minimalist puzzle game you’ll want to check out.

Bicolor by 1Button SARL
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Price: $0.99

Bicolor gives you some colored blocks with numbers on them, and your job is to swipe them around to make the entire screen a single color. It sounds easy — and it typically is, if I’m honest — but it has moments of beauty and elegance that make you forget that it isn’t challenging you. And it’s fun enough without the head-scratching because, like all minimalist puzzle games, it’s about calm, man.

And as long as you keep that in mind, the two of you will get along just fine.

This week in Cult of Mac Magazine

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Cult of Mac Magazine May 5 Edition

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

This week Buster Hein foraged for the best in movies, books and music in the iTunes store, his picks include an album of flamenco-rockin goodness, plus a haunting Southern drama and a riveting nonfiction book how the modern office got “cubed.” We also review the best in apps as well as take a look at the best minimalist iPhone cases and the most awesome Apple-related gadgets we found this week.

Cult of Mac Magazine May 5 Edition

Machine Crush Monday: Leica M6

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Dial it in: The shutter speed on the Leica M6 goes all the way to 1,000. Can you handle all that speed?

When I worked on my college paper a million years ago, my buddy Bruno had Leicas. This made him the coolest person in the whole wide world.

The cameras were tiny and had the smoothest-operating lenses I had ever touched. They were a feat of German engineering. For me, it was love at first sight. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop lusting for one of those tiny black boxes.

I immediately started my quest to get one. I had to have a Leica. And because this was the mid-’80s, I definitely wanted an M6, which was introduced in 1984. Hell, it was advanced. It had a meter. The first real meter in a Leica, if you disregard the much-maligned M5.

Apple donates $500K to help fight poverty

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Apple has donated $500K to the anti-poverty initiative SF Gives, according to people close to the matter.

Launched in March this year, SF Gives is the joint venture of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Daniel Lurie, CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point. Their goal is to get 20 businesses to contribute $500,000 each to fund local charitable programs.

Of course, when you’ve got more money in the bank than the gross domestic product of the whole of Luxembourg, giving $500K to charity isn’t exactly breaking the bank. But it’s interesting because it shows a public commitment to charity in line with Tim Cook’s vision for Apple as a philanthropic “force for good” in the world.

Up, up and away: New tweak lets you swipe vertically to unlock your iPhone

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photo by Jim Merithew, Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Have you ever dreamed of swiping up instead of across on your smartphone to unlock it — a whole new way of doing things that is totally unlike the iPhone standard?

No, this isn’t a leaked memo from Samsung’s R&D department, but rather a new tweak available to jailbreakers free of charge in the Cydia Store, optimized for iOS 7 and ARM64-devices.

Called SlideUP2Unlock, the tweak more or less does what it says on the tin: getting rid of the Lock screen camera shortcut in favor of allowing you to use upwards swipe gestures to unlock your iPhone.

Sunday Tips: iOS 7 for your outdated iPhones & iPod touches

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Most people these days have a spare, old and unused iPhone or iPod touch gathering dust somewhere in a drawer, but it’s time to breathe new life into your retro Apple device by updating it to iOS 7 … almost.

Cult of Mac’s Ste Smith shows you how to install Whited00r onto your Apple device to bring it back to the future so you can use your iPhone 2G or 3GS as a spare, or an old iPod touch as your main MP3 Player.

Make sure to subscribe to the Cult of Mac YouTube channel for all the new videos coming seven days a week.

Metal Slug Defense adds dose of strategy to popular run-and-gunner

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I think it’s safe to say that no one was clamoring for a Metal Slug tower defense game. Don’t get me wrong: I love Metal Slug and have since the Neo Geo days. But despite the number of entries in the series now being firmly in the double digits, I don’t think anyone was calling for a shake-up of the formula. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Metal Gear Defense by SNK Playmore
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Price: Free w/ in-app purchases

With Metal Slug Defense, developers SNK Playmore have indeed “fixed it.” In some ways, this is no surprise. We live in an age where game franchises are constantly expanding into new genres: where Angry Birds aren’t content to simply be aggrieved avians in their original incarnation, but must also spread their wings into genres like kart racing and turn-based RPGs. But what’s more surprising about Metal Slug Defense is that, by changing the concept of the game, SNK haven’t “broke it” at all.

In fact, they’ve made something of a gem.

Celebrate Star Wars Day with the ‘May The Fourth Be With You’ Star Wars Gamer Bundle [Deals]

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May 4th only comes around once per year, and Star Wars fans know it as Star Wars Day.

We love puns as much as we love savings here at Cult of Mac Deals, so we’ve assembled The “May The Fourth Be With You” Star Wars Gamer Bundle to help every Cult of Mac reader celebrate Star Wars Day for a fraction of the regular price – just $16.50!

Tune into the Force with these surprisingly great Star Wars headphones

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Photo: Rob LeFebvre, Cult of Mac
Photo: Rob LeFebvre, Cult of Mac

May the fourth be with you on Star Wars Day this year.

The droid-loving folks over at SMS audio (a company majority-owned by rapper 50 Cent) have put out a set of surprisingly good on-ear headphones based on the company’s entry-level Street by 50 on ear wired headphones.

Each set boasts a Star Wars-themed logo on the ear cups (see below) with associated fan service pack-ins like stickers and a poster.

This Week in Weird: 4 oddball games about food

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Photo courtesy of Meghan Stratman

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 food (mostly desserts, oddly enough). What you do with this information is between you and your iPhone.

What’s next for iPod? Catch the discussion on our newest CultCast

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This time on The CultCast: rumored new EarPods take your pulse and more; updated Macbook Airs get faster and cheaper; a leaked “iPhone 6” case indicates an iPod-inspired design; Google takes on Office with new iOS apps for Drive; we ponder the state of the iPod; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps then vote on which is best… it’s an all new Faves N Raves!

Have a few chuckles 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!

And thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

Saturday Deals: Typinator and The Apple-Approved Lightning Cable and Car Charger [Deals]

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Cult of Mac Deals is starting off the weekend right with a couple of offers that aim to make your life easier – both at home and on the go!

We’ve lined up a great price for Typinator, the productivity-boosting text expansion app, offering it for 42% off the regular price. And for those of you who want to stay charged while on the go, we’ve got The Apple Approved Lightning Cable and Car Charger available for only $26.99!

Jury’s in: Samsung found guilty of infringing Apple’s patents, again

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Samsung is after more of Apple's iPhone business.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

The jury is done deliberating. The results are in. And Samsung is guilty. Again.

Weeks of legal sparring between Apple and Samsung has finally culminated this week in San Jose, as a federal jury just ruled that Samsung did indeed infringe on at least one of Apple’s patents while it only partially infringed on others.

Find your gaming zen with …and then it rained

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If you’re looking to get away from it all, you might want to check out this game. …and then it rained is an arcade game full of sound, rain, and colors, and it’s the perfect game for a quiet few minutes away from the hectic pace of your life.

With true zen-like minimalism, there are just a few simple mechanics at work here, but it may just be the best game you play all week.

Check out the video below to see how it plays.

Finally, a portable battery designed for the MacBook

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What if you had a Mophie-like battery pack for your MacBook? Available for preorder now, the BatteryBox is exactly that.

The box itself is about the length of a credit card and packs a whopping 12,000mAh battery. That equates to about 12 hours of extra juice for the MacBook Air and 6 hours for the Pro. The BatteryBox can charge any device over USB, and it has its own MagSafe2 connector.

Apple buys microLED company with potential to light up the iWatch

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An iWatch concept by Todd Hamilton
An iWatch concept by Todd Hamilton

The complications behind creating a small screen for something like an iWatch are immense, but Apple has bought the company it may need to make it all possible.

TechCrunch reports that Apple has acquired LuxVue Technology, a small California-based company that specializes in “microLED-based displays for consumer electronics applications.” It turns out that microLEDs could work very well with wearables.

Apple is jealous of Samsung’s selfies

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Celebrities like Samsung phones, but they love marketing paychecks even more.

The wave of Samsung-sponsored selfies that started with massive retweets at the Oscars, has become one of the most popular viral campaigns in the history of the Internet as everyone from Ellen to Big Papi have been spotted snapping Samsung-selfies in exchange for a fat paycheck.

And Apple is totally jealous.

New Apple TV and iWatch will be MIA at WWDC next month

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Those hoping to get a peek at Apple’s game-changing future products at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference reportedly need to “dial back [their] expectations or be disappointed.”

Despite Tim Cook’s promise from the WWDC stage last year that Cupertino would enter “new product categories,” no big reveals are forthcoming on the iWatch or Apple TV fronts at this year’s big conference, according to a report from Re/code.