Cult of Mac

When he set out to create the iPhone, Steve Jobs deliberately picked engineers with no mobile phone industry experience because he didn’t want Apple’s smartphone to be “tainted” by old ideas about what could and could not be achieved, says a former software engineer who worked on the project.

“We had the opportunity to hire people from Palm, from Nokia, to help us build this thing. [But] Steve said, ‘No, no, we don’t need to do that,'” Andy Grignon told me during a recent onstage interview at the DENT conference on innovation in Sun Valley, Idaho.

If you want a fast, discreet way to determine when you’ve had too much to drink or put a number on all of your inebriated muscle flexing, then Cult of Mac Deals has you covered. With the small and affordable BACtrack Keychain Breathalyzer, you can quickly estimate your blood alcohol content (BAC) .

The BACtrack Breathalyzer Keychain is small enough to keep in your pocket, and accurate enough to keep your keys there as well, if necessary. The folding mouthpiece pulls out during testing and slides back down during storage. As one of the smallest, sleekest breathalyzers on the market – it also delivers reliable blood alcohol estimates in just five seconds. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $24.99.

Russian government officials have ditched the iPad in favor of Samsung-made tablets according to a recent report. The move was supposedly made to “ensure tighter security.”

Russia’s telecoms minister Nikolai Nikiforov notes that Russian officials switched over to Samsung tablets “not so long ago,” and noted that the new tablets are “specially protected devices that can be used to work with confidential information.”

Apple’s possible plans for an iPad smart cover reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface were revealed in a patent application published Thursday. The design differs from Microsoft’s iPad competitor in that Apple’s keyboard would double as a Multi-Touch gesture keyboard, eliminating the need for a touchpad.

Drawings filed with the patent show how it would be possible to use the iPad cover in various configurations. Several hinges allow the iPad smart cover to fold away with the tablet and keyboard, while the cover would feature magnets to lock its various components in place. In one embodiment of the patent, Apple suggests that electromagnets could be used.

Would you pay an extra $100 for an iPhone “phablet” with a larger display?

At least 33% of you would, according to new survey data published by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt. The study suggests a third of U.S. iPhone users would be willing to pay an extra hundred bucks for an iPhone with a larger display than its predecessors.

When Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg said virtual reality was the natural follow-up to mobile as a platform. And while Apple might have missed the boat on Oculus, has Cupertino really missed out on virtual reality?

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Apple has been investigating this area for the better part of a decade — well before the Oculus Rift gaming headset appeared on Kickstarter.

This week in Review Roundup we look at luxury leathery book-a-like iPhone cases. All three are made to last, with real leather or bookbindery covers. Two are ultra tough, one is a little more low-profile, and all three will probably last you forever. But which one is best?

The Candidates

Pad & Quill’s Luxury Pocket Book, a wood-framed, leather covered wallet case with space for some cash.

Davarg’s Kanam is a simple wraparound flap of leather with a (somewhat reusable) sticky pad that glues the iPhone into place. It’s less bulky than the other two, and very nice looking.

Meison Morgan’s Handmade Case is a lot like the Luxury Pocket Book, only it has a bookbindery cover instead of leather.

Let the contest begin:

Meison Morgan’s Handmade iPhone 5s Case Is A Beauty 

Manufactured in Greece using the same bookbinding process that traditional notebook makers use, this case offers not only good looks, but also all-round protection that promises to withstand the test of time.

It’s available in black and denim (blue), and it’s super affordable at €30 ($46).

On the whole, the Meison Morgan is a fantastic iPhone case that looks great and offers plenty of protection. It’s also relatively inexpensive at €30. But the experience is marred somewhat by a couple of issues that could so easily be fixed.

If its makers can iron out those problems, then I’d have no reservations about recommending this case.

Buy it $46

P&Q Luxury Pocket Book Is The iPhone Wallet Of Kings

The Luxury Pocket Book is a leather-bound book with a Baltic beechwood insert, a leather lining and slots inside the front cover for credit cards and cash (bills, not coins). It has cutouts for all your ports and buttons, plus a hole in the back for the camera and flash.

Lastly, there’s an elastic strap to hold it closed, just like on a Moleskine notebook.

Buy it $85

Like Fine Wine, Davarg’s Case Will Only Get Better With Age 

The Kanam is a book-like wraparound cover which protects the back, the front and one edge. Unlike the SurfacePad, the Kanam protects the right edge, opening backwards (or forwards if you’re one of those manga weirdos). This leaves the mute and volume switches free to be used. There’s also a small cutout over the phone speaker so you can talk with the case closed and still hear the conversation.

The iPhone 5 itself is held in place with a sticky, reusable adhesive pad. You just clean the back of the phone, peel off the protective waxed sheet (setting it aside in case you ever need to take the iPhone out of this case) and stick. It holds just fine.

Buy it $52

The winner? The Pad&Quill Luxury Pocket Book. Why? It’s expensive, but it’s made to last. The Meison Case is already falling apart in our review, and the Davarg is bulky without adding any extra features. The P&Q case wins for a combination of craftsmanship and clever design.

Can we all agree that iTunes’ App Store search is truly, truly awful? That you can not only never find what you’re looking for, but you have to wait forever for the results to load?

Good. Then you’re going to love Fnd, a web-based search tool for the whole iTunes Store. It’s accurate, fast and not at all annoying.

Fotobit is a 4.25 x 4.25-inch frame designed for wall-mounting your Instagrams. It’s modular, so you can slot the frames together to cover the wall with an Insta-mural, and the frames themselves are a handsome matte black or white. But there’s more.

Sharebox adds a feature to Dropbox that should probably already have been there: it lets you drag and drop files onto the Dropbox icon in your Mac’s menubar, and have them upload to Dropbox. The neatest part is that it works using the existing icon, keeping your menubar clear.

Twitter will now let you attach up to four images to a Tweet, and tag the people in those photos, all without counting towards your 140-character limit. This is a pretty obvious attempt to beat Instagram and make Twitter your go-to sharing service.

When Facebook snapped up virtual-reality company Oculus VR this week, it got us wondering what other interesting startups Apple might want to buy before Mark Zuckerberg can get his hands on them.

While Oculus is most well known for its Rift gaming headset, Zuckerberg sees a far more wide-ranging application for the company’s VR tech, envisioning it as a futuristic communications platform. “One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people,” he said in his post about the acquisition.

That’s the kind of big thinking Steve Jobs brought to the table when he talked about the way the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad would change the way people interact with technology. While Apple rarely dips into its $150 billion cash hoard to buy other hardware firms, here are seven awesome companies whose technology could help Cupertino enhance and improve its existing devices — as well as build entirely new ones.

We all have busy days, and going to sleep at night is the perfect remedy for having to do it all over the next day. While regular alarm clocks can serve their purpose in waking you up, they can’t ensure they’ll do it at the most convenient time in your sleep. The app Sleep Cycle strives to wake you up while you’re in your lightest sleep, resulting in a better awakening. Simply place your phone on your bed and let the app do the rest. Will Sleep Cycle become your go-to alarm clock?

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

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the iOS application Sleep Cycle, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

It’s not that often that the Mac gamers out there get to download new content for a big title game like BioShock Infinite on the same day as their Windows-using brethren, but here it is.

Well-known Mac gaming company Aspyr has done just that, announcing on Wednesday that the latest and final episode of BioShock Infinite’s story-driven “Burial At Sea” module has just dropped on the Mac.

Disruptor Beam and HBO revealed on Wednesday the debut of Game of Thrones Ascent on the iPad. It was originally released in 2013 as a Facebook game, making last year’s Facebook Games of the Year list to boot.

Now you can play Game of Thrones Ascent on your iPad, leading the life of a noble in Westeros, collaborating and conniving with other players in a persistent online world.

Tiny portable bluetooth speakers are all the rage these days, and we’ve seen our fair share of them.

Trouble is, the smaller the speaker, the worse it sounds. Honestly, if your bluetooth speaker sounds worse than the built-in speakers on your iPhone, you’ll likely not want to go through the trouble of even pairing the thing up.

The Music Cup bluetooth speaker is small, shaped like a mug, and it sounds pretty darn good.

For the company behind Candy Crush, developer King Digital don’t exactly seem to be crushing it in their public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares in the popular developer — which grossed $1.88 billion last year — were valued at $22.50 on Tuesday. They then debuted at $20.50 on Wednesday, before quickly dipping to $19.06.

I should warn you now, the iOS version of Shin Megami Tensei is perhaps the most bewildering game you’ll play on your phone. The game world is unforgivingly nondescript, and you navigate it in first person. It’s very easy to get lost indoors and bypass important people and doors until you get the hang of navigating. I recommend you pause briefly before entering any room to see if a nameplate appears — otherwise you’ll be running in circles. Also, Atlus’ strange control panel shell for SMT is a little unwieldy. I played in landscape mode in order to take screenshots, but I highly recommend playing in portrait mode as the interface buttons are smaller, easier to reach, and not covering the game screen.

You start off in the midst of a terrifying dream where spirits are being tormented by demons. You rescue your future teammates by saying their names, which breaks the demons’ hold. And suddenly, you wake up. A ghastly murder in a parking lot has set your bustling city on edge and a weird man named Steven is constantly sending you information about a demon summoning program. Yet your mother still wants you to go out and get coffee.

I don’t have a lot of time to read, so it’s always nice to find an app to help me out there. SprintReader employs rapid serial visual presentation to let you read one of a selection of classic (i.e. public-domain) works with haste.

You get a box, and the words appear one at a time. They always appear in the same place, so you just plunk your eyes there and let the text come to you. The selections are a bit limited right now, but if you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, now might be a good time.

Source:SprintReader – Free | Robert McBride

Developer Parsec Productions’ PC horror title Slender: The Eight Pages was one of my favorite games of 2012. It packs an impressive amount of horror and suspense into a very simple idea — being lost in the woods while an unbeatable enemy relentlessly pursues you — and it was one of the few games I’ve ever played that really and truly terrified me.

It makes sense that others would want to get in on that action, and while you have plenty of Slender Man games to choose from in the App Store, Dead Room: The Dark One takes the same basic concept and puts its own creepy spin on it.

And as fairly overt copies go, it’s pretty good.

Realmac Software today confirmed that the much-anticipated update that will bring reminders to Clear for iOS will arrive in April. It was originally due to arrive this month, but the company has been working hard to ensure everything’s just right before it goes live.

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s that time of year when the biggest Apple fans in the world congregate on Moscone North for a three day celebration of all things Apple. This year’s Macworld/iWorld show offers a little something for everyone from hands-on tutorials for taking better iPhone photos or live-recording with an iPad, to parties, tons of exhibitors, games, and more.

Cult of Mac will be covering all the Macworld festivities starting today on our live-blog, but if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about for Macworld, an event that even Apple doesn’t attend anymore, here six things that you won’t want to miss this year:

HTC finally made its much-anticipated HTC One M8 official today. In addition to a gorgeous aluminum unibody design, it boasts all-new internals, a larger display, improved BoomSound speakers, and HTC’s latest Sense 6 user interface.

But how does it stack up against competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Sony Xperia Z2, and even the Apple iPhone 5s? Our in-depth comparison chart makes it all clear — and helps you decide which of today’s flagships is worth your hard-earned cash.

Guitar Hero will vanish from the App Store at the end of this month.

Not the best rhythm game available, but still a lot of fun, we praised Guitar Hero back when it first arrived on iOS in 2010. With its price now reduced to 99¢ as a parting gift, it’s absolutely worth picking up if you’re interested in the genre.

It’s been almost two years since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s still the only Mac with a Retina display. But according to sources in Apple’s supply chain, that’ll change this summer when the Cupertino company finally unveils the Retina MacBook Air.