We’ve heard multiple reports that Apple will release a larger-screen iPhone 6 (possibly in two different sizes), but who really wants a bigger iPhone with a larger screen anyway? Actually, a lot of people: as much as 40% of prospective smartphone buyers are chomping at the bit for a bigger iPhone.
If you’ve ever come across a great snippet of text you want to Tweet right from your Mac, you know the drill: you have to copy it, open Twitter, create a new message, and then paste in the text there. Then hit the Send button.
Sure, it’s not that difficult, but what if there was an even easier way?
Well, there is, and here it is.
Slowly but surely, the worldwide PC market is drying up. In the first quarter, a recent report from IDC says that worldwide PC shipments have slipped 4.4% year-over years. And not even Apple has proven immune to the wasting away of the PC market, but they’re still making up for it on other ways.
When we think about the iWatch, we tend to think of a little smartphone that you wear on your wrist, or at least a bit of technology, but if the latest reports are anything to go by, Apple’s iWatch play is going to much bigger than that: with the iWatch, Apple intends to do nothing less than conquer the world of fashion, becoming just as synonymous with luxury watches as Rolex. But how?
Could Apple’s revolutionary re-imagining of Apple TV not be a set-top box at all, but rather an Oculus Rift style headset?
A patent published Thursday hints that this might be the case, as it refers to a head mounted display (HMD) capable of providing a personal media viewing experience for users.
The patent describes how data processing circuitry could feature optical component capable of adjusting left and right images to display 3-D media, or else to account for a user’s eyesight limitations.
The success of The Simpsons: Tapped Out meant it was only a matter of time before Family Guy got similar mobile game treatment.
First announced back in December, today marks the arrival of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff in the App Store.
A joint venture between Fox and TinyCo studios, the game lets you help Peter Griffin and the rest of the Quahog residents to rebuild their city after it’s destroyed.
Expect lots of fan service, in the form of regular Family Guy characters and reprised gags from previous episodes (Mermaid Peter, Rambo Lois, and the Petercopter, for instance.)
When you’ve got $158.8 billion in the bank, there’s not a huge amount you need to be envious of.
But while Apple is beating rival Samsung on both the quality of its products and adverts, it is perhaps losing out when it comes to the kind of big digital media strategies that really attract attention (and customers) — like Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscars selfie which Publicis CEO Maurice Levy recently valued at between $800 million and $1 billion.
With that in mind, Apple is reportedly changing up its marketing approach to invest more in digital marketing and social media support — adding four new digital agencies to its roster.
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
The little Luxi turns your iPhone’s front camera into a light meter. A what? A light meter, a device that measures the amount of light falling on a subject so that you can set the exposure correctly on your camera.
But wait, doesn’t you camera already set its own exposure? Doesn’t it have a light meter built in for when i want to kick it old school in manual mode? Yes and yes, but this $30 widget might still be handy.
Buy it $30
Ever wanted to take photos of people without them knowing? Perhaps a sneaky shot of a pretty girl to help you “remember” her later, or some equally creepy bit of deceit? Well then, we have good news for you, you pervert: it’s the COVR Photo, an iPhone case which lets you shoot in secret.
The COVR has a little prism stuck on the back, and when want to use it you slide it into place. Now you can hold your iPhone like a TV remote and shoot whatever is in front of you while looking down at your iPhone’s screen.
Buy it $75
Here’s the Das Keyboard 4, possibly the most bad-ass clacky keyboard in existence. No keycap markings, USB 3.0, Cherry MX switches and a huge knob. All that plus Das’s trademark feature: it’s as big as a boat. A “Das Boat” if you will.
You know how when you leave a pack of cookies open instead of sealing them in an airtight jar? They still taste the same, but they get all mushy: the satisfying snap has gone out of them. That’s how I feel now when I use even Apple’s excellent keyboards. They’re mushy compared to my clackety Filco keyboard.
Buy it $169
Elgato’s Thunderbolt Dock has a few unique features that are appropriate for a company that makes video accessories for Apple devices. First, there’s an HDMI port around back, and second, the USB ports put out enough juice to charge your iPad at a decent speed.
Buy it $230
Pad&Quill is at it again, this time with a low-profile rear-shell style case for the iPhone 5/S. While calling anything from Brian Holmes’s P&Q “minimal” would be a stretch, the Traveler Case gets pretty close. It is also gorgeous to look at, and would surely be just as lovely for the hands. It looks like the kind of case you couldn’t stop fingering.
Buy it $80
The Confidant is a 192-page notebook, packed with blank, ruled or dot-grid paper. It opens flat, has its own cotton bookmarker, is covered in pale gray fabric and has neat, extra-wide pages.
There are also 12 perforated pages at the back of the book so you can tear them out without ruining the binding. My copy doesn’t have these, so maybe I have a beta version.
Buy it $16
Look at this graph. Just look at it. The colored section represents all color visible to the human eye. The large black triangle shows the Adobe RGB color space, which is the space used by pro apps to process images, and can be captured by some cameras.
And the little white triangle, sat in the middle cutting out a fraction of the available colors? That’s the standard sRGB color space, which is what you’re looking at now on your Mac or iPad or iPhone (but probably not on the Retina iPad mini).
That’s because monitors don’t usually display so many colors. But the Eizo ColorEdge CG247 not only displays the full gamut of Adobe RGB, it calibrates itself too.
Apart from “correct horse battery staple,” the most secure passwords aren’t words, they’re phrases. You don’t even need crazy symbols or hard-to-determine numerals (is that an l or a 1, a 0 or an O?) – just a good, longish phrase made out of words.
And now you don’t even have to make one up. Using the XKPasswd generator, based on but not associated with Randall Munroe’s amazing comic strip XKCD, you can generate secure pass phrases easily.
The worst thing about losing a lens cap is having to buy another one. You can go with a generic but ugly replacement and save a few bucks, or you can buy the manufacturers official version, which will make you hate yourself.
Now there’s a third option – don’t lose the cap in the first place. Instead, spend $10 now on Photojojo’s Hufa Lens Cap Strap Holder, and never buy a cap again.
Unless you’re a hipster – you can still buy as many sweet ironic trucker caps as you like.
I wonder why every backpack doesn’t use a roll-top. They’re waterproof, they’re mechanically simple (and therefore they never go wrong), they let you extend the size of the bag and they form a handy grippy handle.
They also look cool, and the Becket bag has one.
“The best backpack we’ve ever made” — a heady statement from an outfit with a focus on making packs and cases to keep traveling Apple stuff safe. The Icon certainly looks impressive, with its Airflow channels and more specialized pockets than a troop of kangaroos. And at $200, it also might be the most expensive backpack the Southern California-based company has ever made.
When iTunes Radio was introduced, it was clear that Apple hadn’t made the true Spotify competitor everyone had hoped for. Instead, it was designed to get people to buy more music from the iTunes Store—hence the buy button at the top right of every song.
Sadly, iTunes Radio hasn’t helped drive music downloads for Apple, so the company is considering a “dramatic overhaul” of the iTunes Store.
Vodka is great for fruity drinks and drunken stupors; and beer is what you nurse, alone at the edge of the bar, after you’ve been dumped.
Wine, on the other hand, is the ultimate social lubricant. So it makes sense that Drync, a sophisticated app for oenophiles (the sophisticated method to describe wine-lovers), has just launched its own social-heavy website to go along with its new iPad app.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration.
This time, our picks include a donut locator, a good-looking scheduler and a quick house-hunting app.
Here you go:
I’m kind of obsessed with monitoring and comparing numbers like blog views and podcast downloads. It’s probably a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I made up my own word for it: “metriculous.”
Whether is an app that satisfies that part of your brain, if you have it. It lets you compare today’s temperature, precipitation, wind, and humidity to the same day last year. The temperature panel is free, but you can unlock the rest — and any future ones — for $2.99.
So it’s basically a cool-looking weather app with an extra layer of trivia on top of it for crazy people inquisitive, metriculous types.
Whether App – Free | Sturmware
It can be stressful when you have way too much stuff to do and it’s hard to keep track of everything.
Candooit is a new app that lets you add your obligations with a few simple gestures and then presents it all in an attractive, easy-to-read infographic. Once you select the type of activity (the app includes eight color-coded categories with numerous sub-items), you drag left and right to set the start time and up and down to set the duration. You can make notes, view by week or month, and even sync with your Google calendar.
And the busier you are, the cooler it looks. So that might actually be kinda dangerous.
Not everything in the App Store has to be a Swiss Army knife. Sometimes, you find an app that does one thing and does the heck out of it.
Doughbot is one such app. It tells you where you can buy donuts.
You can also get directions, read Yelp reviews, and look at pictures from Instagram, but that’s just overkill. I can count on one finger the number of bad donuts I’ve had in my life. Just point me toward the nearest besprinkled blip on the map so that I can start pointing at lumps of fried dough I’d like to cram into my face.
Doughbot – $0.99 | Timothy Tolbert
House hunting can be stressful and annoying, especially if you’ve never done it before. But the Doorsteps Swipe app wants to help you out by letting you quickly look through a bunch of listings in your desired location, then reject or save them with a single swipe. It also compiles data (average price, number of beds and baths, etc.) on the ones you’ve liked so you can get some idea what you’re looking for.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any cloud houses or big shells yet. But I haven’t gotten all the way through the list yet.
Photo Credit: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Look, we all know that Apple makes some of the greatest products around. We use iPhones, iPads and Macs because they work well, and they’re fairly intuitive.
That said, even the most dedicated fanboy has to admit that there are still a few places that just don’t quite work as advertised.
Here are a few of those, along with their fixes, for iOS devices, including the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
Some folks like the auto-expand of omw to “On My Way!” Honestly? I’m rarely that enthusiastic when sending a text about my plans to head over to a buddy’s house. Just sayin’. If this bugs you, here’s how to fix it, as well as add others to your texting repertoire.
Hop on over the Settings app. Tap on the General tab, then scroll down to Keyboard and tap through to Shortcuts. The omw! shortcut is built in right there. Tap it, and change it to whatever you want it to say. Be sure to hit the Save button in the upper right, or you’re back to square one.
Want to add your own shortcuts? That’s pretty easy, too. Simple tap the Add New Shortcut…field at the bottom of the Keyboard settings pane, and add one in. Try to keep your shortcut (bottom field) 2-4 letters, or it’s really more of a longcut, right? The top field contains the actual phrase you want the shortcut expanded to. Try not to get them confused, like I did the first one I added. You’ll get an error saying your Shortcut cannot contain spaces. That will be the tip you’ve gotten it backward.
We’re all data hoarders now, what with our iPads and iPhones having the ever-present connection to the cellular and Wi-Fi networks all around us. Unfortunately, unlimited cell data plans are as rare a programmer who doesn’t own a single hoodie, so it’s paramount to keep track of which apps are sucking up the cell bandwidth.
Luckily, iOS 7 lets you control which apps will use cellular, and which apps will only connect to and use the network juice via a stable WiFi connection.
Tap into your Settings app on your iPhone or iPad and then tap on the Cellular icon. Once there, you’ll see the option to toggle Cellular Data OFF completely, disable LTE, or enable Data Roaming, as your heart (and wallet) allows.
Swipe down to the bottom, however, and you’ll see a long list of all the apps on your iOS device that use cellular data. For each app that you want to restrict to using only Wi-Fi networking, tap the toggle next to each app name to OFF.
Now, when you’re strictly on LTE, 4G or 3G, your iOS device won’t let those specific apps connect to the cell network and take up all your precious, metered data. They’ll be able to connect once you’re in range and hooked up to a WiFi signal, so have no fear.
It’s pretty easy to reply to a phone caller with a text message in iOS 7. When the call comes in, tap on the little phone icon in the lower right and slide up. You’ll get the option to either reply with a message or have your iPhone remind you to call the person back later.
If you choose to reply with a text message, you get a couple of built in replies–Call you later, I’m on my way, What’s up–or you can type a custom message. Ever wanted to change those pre-written messages to be just a little bit funnier? You know you have.
Here’s how: Launch your Settings app, and find and tap on the Phone settings button. Then tap on Reply with Message. You’ll then be able to type in three custom missives. And you’ll still be able to type your own custom message, when the phone rings, too. Interestingly, the typical auto capitalization doesn’t seem to apply here, so maybe the developers wanted you to work at using proper English.
Whatever the case, this is a great way to personalize the way you interact with people when you tell them that you can’t answer the phone right now.
I like some notifications. I try to keep it down to a dull roar, of course, but I want a head’s up when I get a phone call, text message, or email from specific clients or friends. But when I see a flurry of these notifications in my lockscreen, I mentally dismiss them, only to have them appear again the next time I check my iPhone for the time.
I messed around with it and came up with this solution, thanks to iOS 7.
While your iPhone is locked but on (just hit the Home button), check out the little horizontal line at the top of your screen. That’s the Notification Center and it can be accessed without unlocking your iPhone.
Slide down from the line with your thumb or finger, and that will activate Notification Center. I tapped to the “Missed” notifications tab at the top to make sure the iPhone thought I saw everything, and then dismissed Notification Center with a swipe up.
Once you’ve done that, and you get to the lock screen again, you shouldn’t see any notifications hanging around in your lock screen. That is, of course, until you get new ones.
Some users have reported problems with sending text messages to their friends and family after the upgrade to iOS 7. Typically, when iMessage is unavailable, your iPhone should send messages as SMS ones instead, denoted by the green chat bubble as opposed to the regular blue.
If, however, your iPhone won’t send texts automatically, here’s a possible fix.
Tap into the Settings app, and scroll down to tap on Messages. Once there, you’ll see a toggle switch for Send as SMS. Set this to ON with a quick tap and your iPhone will start sending messages as SMS ones without you needing to intervene.
Even with this toggled OFF, you can still send messages when they stall out with iMessage. Simply tap and hold on the message mid-send, and choose Send as Text Message from the popup menu that appears.
Now you can send iMessages to those with an iOS or Mac device, but still communicate with anyone using an Android or feature phone (ugh).
With busy schedules it can be easy to be consumed by the stress of our everyday lives. Sometimes sitting down and playing a good game can be a great way to escape from it all. The new app I’m Aquarius is an arcade game with intense action gameplay and a relaxing soundtrack. Avoid all obstacles as you tap to keep your ship safe for as long as possible. How long do you think you can last?
Take a look at the video and find out what you think.
A key executive within Apple is reportedly leaving the company due to a fallout with design chief Jony Ive. The result is that Ive will directly control even more of how Apple designs its software.
Greg Christie has been getting a lot of attention lately in the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial for his role as an engineer for the original iPhone. And that’s not all he’s known for; the guy has also patented nearly a hundred ideas for Apple, including the iconic “Slide to unlock” patent Apple is using as evidence in the ongoing case with Samsung.
Christie has been heading up Apple’s software design under Craig Federighi. But according to a new report, Ive is basically pushing Christie out because the two haven’t been getting along.
Alongside Mailbox for Mac and Android, Dropbox announced an entirely new app today at an event in San Francisco. It’s called Carousel, and it’s coming to the App Store and Google Play later today. Think of it like a Photo Stream replacement that might actually work.
At an event today in San Francisco, Dropbox made several announcements about Mailbox, the popular email app for iOS that it bought a little over a year ago. Things have been busy around Dropbox since then, because Mailbox is coming to not one, but two new platforms.
Mailbox for Mac was unveiled today alongside an Android app, the latter of which is out now in Google Play. But that’s not what we’re really interested in. What’s important is that Mac users can now sign up to get access to the private beta of Mailbox on the desktop. There are some new Mailbox features that should also get you excited.
Braven’s 710 Bluetooth candybar speaker has a lot going for it. It’s the same size as my favorite pocket speaker ever, the Braven 650. It’s made of aluminum, it has the same battery-sharing tech as all the other Bravens, and it even fixes some of my complaints about the 650 – it has proper buttons for volume and play pause.
Hell, it’s even waterproof. But there’s one thing that isn’t quite so good. It doesn’t sound as good as the 650. Not by much, but enough that you should still buy the 650 – unless you want to use it in the shower.
The discovery of the Heartbleed security bug sent the web into a panic with it’s devastating OpenSSL vulnerability.
On a scale of 1 to 10 of Internet catastrophes this one goes all the way to 11, according to respected security analyst Bruce Schneier, who isn’t prone to manic exaggeration.
A shriek of “CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS” has erupted from the throats of sites issuing evasive maneuvers, but you might want to hold off on going password-reset-crazy for just a few days.
Here’s why:
House hunting can be stressful and annoying, especially if you’ve never done it before. But the Doorsteps Swipe app wants to help you out by letting you quickly look through a bunch of listings in your desired location, then reject or save them with a single swipe. It also compiles data (average price, number of beds and baths, etc.) on the ones you’ve liked so you can get some idea what you’re looking for.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any cloud houses or big shells yet. But I haven’t gotten all the way through the list yet.
The robots are coming, you guys. And they want all of our ice cream. What are we going to do?
We could call in the military, or we could devise some kind of electromagnetic pulse. Or, what the heck, let’s just stand out in the street and throw bricks at them. None of these ideas will work. But here’s a fun new game that knows the correct answer.
Robots Love Ice Cream knows that all free people must be prepared to sacrifice everything to protect that freedom, and the same should be true of tasty desserts. So obviously the best course of action is to convert an ice-cream truck into a rolling tank that fires single-scoop cones with enough velocity to penetrate an invading robot’s cold, unfeeling metal hull.
I mean, duh.