Cult of Mac

Boy, you’d think this would be an easy one, right? Most third-party menu bar icons allow you to either drag and delete them from the menu bar itself, or at least provide a Quit or Disable function in their own drop-down menus, but not Chrome.

The little bell menu bar just sits there, mocking us, providing no easy way to delete it from the horde of other app icons competing for our admittedly limited attention.

Fear not, though, as there is a fairly easy–though rather unintuitive–way to delete this bell icon.

Maybe you’re walking down the street, and you see a squirrel fighting a feral cat over half of a hot dog. That’s awesome, and you must capture it.

But what if a construction crew is ripping up the sidewalk 50 feet away, and you don’t need that messing up this amazing moment? That’s what Hush does: It captures video without sound. It even preformats your video in an Instagram-friendly square format so that your friends can cheer on that plucky undersquirrel as soon as possible.

Plus, it’ll save them the embarrassment of having the noise of a thousand shrieking metal demons blasting out of their phone in public. They’ll owe you one.

Source:Hush – Free | Zhukovskiy

Alright, so we’ve endlessly run, flown, swam, and jetpacked. Why not add skateboarding to that list?

Skyline Skaters is a new free-to-play endless skateboarder that transports you to a world with one of the most ridiculously strict police forces ever. I always thought it was weird in Jet Set Radio Future when the official response to graffiti was for a bunch of officers to run down perpetrators and hold them down so that their boss could come up and shoot them with his giant hand cannon.

These police are a little less hands-on, opting to chase down renegade skateboarders with a helicopter and catch them with a comically large claw. As for the game itself, it’s a fun time once you suspend that disbelief.

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

Games make up more than 65 percent of downloads in the App Store and Google Play, and a whopping 90 percent of mobile gaming revenue is generated by a freemium business model, according to Bertrand Schmitt, CEO of App Annie.

These are just two of the insights that came from a trends panel at the Game Developers Conference last month in San Francisco. The panel also included folks from gaming engine Unity and publisher/developer Pocket Gems.

If you’ve ever dreamed of designing that killer mobile or desktop game, Cult of Mac Deals has exactly what you’re looking for.

The Game Developer Bundle features 7 courses and over 30 hours of training that will give you everything you need to create the games you’ve always wanted to make. No matter the platform, no matter the genre of game you want to build, this bundle has you covered. And right now Cult of Mac Deals has The Game Developer Bundle available for 95% off the regular price…only $49!

At an event in New York City this morning, Amazon finally announced FireTV, its long-awaited Apple TV competitor. It’s three times faster than its competitors, with a “best in class” quad-core processor and a dedicated GPU, and it runs the latest Android games.

Some photos have leaked showing Apple’s first Turkish physical retail store days before it opens.

The images were posted to Instagram by user orbaygumus, and depict a large cuboid glass structure, similar to the glass installations at Apple Stores in New York and Shanghai. All that is currently missing is a giant Apple logo.

Pebble Notes, a new iPhone app written by a student for students, puts important information on your wrist by sending your notes to your Pebble.

So many of us rely on the notes we’ve created and stored on our smartphones to get us through the day. We use them to make shopping lists for the supermarket, jot down passwords and codes we’ll need later on, and to help us remember other important information — such as answers for exams.

But if we leave our iPhone at home, they’re no good to us — unless you have Pebble Notes.

Evolution, just released on the App Store, is looking like a badass free-to-play science fiction role-playing game with real style.

Build your base to collect resources, battle with your character in real time, solve environmental puzzles, and upgrade everything–weapons, armor, special abilities–as you go.

All of this and free to boot, Evolution promises to meet your sci-fi combat gaming needs on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

I may not be able to say that Fantastical is the best calendar app for everyone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s the best option for most people. What started on the Mac and made its way to the iPhone is now on the iPad. Fantastical 2 for iPad is here, and it’s great.

Today marks the launch of an intriguing new Kickstarter project.

Created by former Apple employee Michael Grothaus, SITU is a simple, attractive Bluetooth food scale which talks to your iPad. By showing you the exact nutrition content of any food you place on it, SITU lets people see the exact calories, sugar, salt, protein, vitamins and minerals of any food they’re about to eat, based on that food’s weight.

BlackBerry has announced that it will not renew the T-Mobile (U.S.) license to sell its products when it expires on April 25 — ending a decade-plus relationship between the two companies.

“BlackBerry has had a positive relationship with T-Mobile for many years. Regretfully, at this time, our strategies are not complementary and we must act in the best interest of our BlackBerry customers,” said BlackBerry CEO John Chen in a statement.

The Google-owned Nest thermostat arrives in the U.K. today.

Created by “Podfather” Tony Fadell and former Apple colleague Matt Rogers, the Nest thermostat is an iOS-connected device which allows users to control and automate their indoor heating.

It can be purchased from Nest’s online store, alongside Amazon, Apple, and B&Q — priced at £179, or £249 with the recommended professional installation included.

Apple has released its latest weekly list of the most downloaded games in the App Store.

Unlike a near-realtime list like the iTunes chart, this list reflects cumulative total downloads over a 7-day period — in this case March 24 to March 30.

Perhaps the most notable inclusions are the success of Papa’s Freezeria To Go and Backflip Madness in the paid charts, and the Threes!-inspired 2048 and Boom Beach in the free charts. Here’s the whole list:

Phil Schiller took to the stand yesterday for the second day of Apple’s latest patent trial with Samsung.

Schiller mostly rehashed the same defense he used when the two companies met in court last November, also over a patent dispute — namely that Apple was the company which took the risk developing the iPhone, and that Samsung’s copying has hurt the company.

“I believe it has caused damage for Apple in the marketplace,” Schiller said. “It has caused people to question some of the innovations we’ve created and Apple’s role as the innovator. That challenge is made harder in the copying.”

Spotify will today rollout a stunning redesign of its entire app catalog. The company has overhauled its desktop, web, and mobile offerings with entirely new user interfaces that make the content the key focus — and you can take a sneak peak at them now ahead of their release.

iWork’s web apps have lagged behind Apple’s iOS and Mac apps in terms of design and functionality, but no more! Apple has redesigned the iWork for iCloud suite to make it look more like its iOS 7 counterpart.

Available to use now on iCloud.com, today’s updates to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote brings a unified look and feel to the iWork suite across all platforms.

Apple has rolled out what is perhaps the most important update ever to its mobile advertising platform, giving anybody with an Apple ID the ability to create iAds for free.

Using the updated iAd Workbench tool, anyone can make their own iAd campaign in a simple, Apple-style interface. It just got a whole lot easier to make iAds for iOS devices.

And that’s not all Apple has added.

I have a kind of standing checklist of things I like and things that annoy me in bag design. Booq’s Python Mirrorless Bag flags just one of my “annoyances,” and that’s a purely aesthetic matter. That’s not to say it’s perfect, but it’s pretty damn good at what it does.

Apple is considering a buyout of a division of Renesas Electronics that specializes in display chips for smartphones. The buyout would give Apple engineering expertise to help improve the iPhone’s display “sharpness and battery life,” according to Japanese business site Nikkei.

Apple already orders all of its liquid crystal display chips from Renesas, and the Japanese company is responsible for powering about a third of the world’s small to midsize LCDs. Instead of using the chip division of Renesas like an outside contractor, Apple wants to bring it in-house.

While the app store is updated every week, many new addicting games come with it. With so many developers creating their own versions of popular apps, only some succeed at adding their own original twists. The new app Tiny Frog is an arcade game that takes a familiar popular style of gameplay and adapts it into a new form. Help the frog reach as many lily pads as possible in 15 seconds. Do you think you can tap quick enough to get the highest score of all your friends?

Take a look at the video and find out what you think.

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the iOS application Tiny Frog – redBit games, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

There are times when you just need to clear off the icons on your Desktop, like when you’re giving an important presentation at work. No one wants to see all the images you’ve saved from the internet, right?

I used to solve this problem with a Sort Me folder on the Desktop, just select all in a Finder window focused on the Desktop, and drag it all to the Sort Me folder.

There’s an even faster and easier way to hide all the icons on your Desktop, though, using the Terminal.

If you’re on the go and missed last night’s episode of The Daily Show, Comedy Central’s new official app can hook you up. It offers a wide selection of programming, including talk shows, series, and standalone shorts. All the new stuff is right there for the viewing, but you’ll have to go through a cable-company login to check out everything else.

Just be aware of your surroundings. You don’t want to be another crazy person laughing on the bus.

Source:Comedy Central – Free | Comedy Central

What are you doing?

You would tell yourself, “I am reading a review for Sometimes You Die.” You take it for granted that I am going somewhere with this. My opinion is just a shadow. A number.

Alright, I can’t keep that up, but before you leap into the Internet and punch me in the face, know two things: First, that was a taste of the narration for the oddball minimalist platformer Sometimes You Die. And second, I’m still recovering from my last face punch, so don’t be a jerk.

As for the game, it’s brilliant. You don’t even need to read the rest of this. Just go buy it and get it in your brain-hole.