Cult of Mac

BlackBerry CEO John Chen recently dismissed iPhone users as “wall huggers” due to his suggestion that they constantly have to hug walls looking for electricity sockets to stop their phones running out of battery midday.

Two patents published Thursday show that Apple is not taking similar criticism lying down, as it actively investigating the possibility of intelligently discerning when, where and how we use our iOS devices — and utilizing this information to tweak performance to prolong battery life.

Pyle’s Rocket Torch is a combination Bluetooth speaker and flashlight. It also has an FM radio and a microSD-card slot, plus a carabiner to hang it from your bag, belt or shower head. Yes, shower head. This thing is water resistant too.

Imagine the chaos that could be achieved by connecting three iPhones to a single stereo using a three-way cable splitter, and letting everyone fight for the right to run the party.

Now imagine that you can do the same thing, only wirelessly. That’s the idea behind the 3Play, a Bluetooth receiver from Grace Digital that’ll let you and your friends all share the music you love simultaneously.” Simultaneously!

Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas bay.

Despite telling journalist John Markoff in 1980 that, “There’s no yacht in my future,” Jobs began working on building his dream sailing vessel around 2008 prior to his liver transplant. Jobs commissioned legendary French designer Philippe Starck to design the yacht, which cost more than €100 million to build, although Jobs died before he was able to use it.

Remember back in the 1980s and some of the 1990s, when Sony made the coolest stuff around? Tiny Walkmans, awesome Hi8 video cameras and even some decent slimline (PC) laptop computers. Then it all went wrong, when Apple reinvented the Walkman as the iPad.

I’m not trying to say that the new Ultra Premium Hi-Res Bluetooth Speaker is about to turn the company around, but it is a reminder of what we used to love about Sony.

USB Fever’s SuperWide iPhone lens has one unique feature, and you can probably see exactly what it is kist by lookingL the huge sprung loop that holds it on the iPhone and over the lens and makes it easy to slip on and off.

Jumping from one mobile platform to another can lead to a lot of headaches initially — especially with respect to all your personal data. You won’t want to lose your contacts, calendar entries, and other important information, so it’s important that you transfer them properly.

If you’re thinking about dropping your iPhone for an Android — maybe because you realized you could pick up a flagship Android for less than the 8GB iPhone 5c — then our switching guides can help.

In this one, we’ll show you how to transfer your messages, contacts, and calendars from your old handset to your new one. On Friday, we’ll follow it up with a simple how-to on syncing your Android with your iTunes library, and how to transfer your photos and videos.

For the fourth year in a row, JailbreakCon will gather hackers, developers, and jailbreak enthusiasts from around the world under one roof. JailbreakCon 2014 will be held from April 12-13th at the South San Francisco Conference Center in sunny California.

Tickets are now on sale, and the lineup of speakers includes developers behind tweaks like Springtomize, and hackers like Cyril Cattiaux, who is better known as “pod2g.” The creator Cydia, Jay Freeman, will be speaking again as well.

If you’re a player of EA video games, better watch out: an EA Games server has been hacked to phish for your Apple ID. But here’s the good news: you had to be using Windows to get nailed by the attack.

Here’s a simple math question for you. How much more free space should a 16GB Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone have than an 8GB iPhone 5c?

If you said twice as much, wrong. That’s not Samsung math! Because in reality, an 8GB iPhone 5c has just 3.16 GB less usable storage than a flagship 16GB Galaxy S5.

Last month, Sir Lancelot’s Armor, a maker of screen protectors for smartphones, emailed Ars Technica and asked them if they would review the “first reusable screen protector for iPhones and iPads made out of bulletproof glass.”

So how bulletproof was their screen protector? Ars Technica put it to the test the only way they knew how… by firing a full clip from a Beretta into it at the range. Here’s how it did.

The Settings app in iOS is starting feel a bit crowded as each new update seems to bringing new tweaks and options to the main board and deeper menu. Control Center added quick access to key parts of the Settings maze, but we wouldn’t mind if Apple added this simple ‘Search Settings’ feature to iOS 8.

Rather than plunging multiple steps deep into the Settings app, this concept from Christoph Fahlbusch would bring the pull-down search bar into the Settings app, making it consistent with the ‘Search iPhone’ UI. It’d come in handy for quick tweaks, especially for less advanced users who are still trying to figure out where to turn on emjois.

Source: Dribble

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a sleep meter, an app that’s all ads, and something to help you get home safely.

Here you go:

I know I don’t get enough sleep, but I’m kinda dumb, so sometimes I need to look at pictures to really put things into perspective. That’s where SleepBattery comes in. You tell it how old you are, and it suggests how much sleep you should be getting every night. When you go to bed, you tap a button, and the screen-sized battery begins to fill. When you wake up, you tap the screen again, and the battery begins to drain.

When it’s completely empty, it tells you to go to bed. And I probably won’t, but it’s nice to know the app cares.

SleepBattery – Free | Max Haubold

Hey, did you know that the Veronica Mars movie is out now? I didn’t until I saw it listed on HypeDrive. I’m not interested in the Veronica Mars movie, but good looking out, HypeDrive.

It’s an app that lets you keep track of all the movies, TV shows, games, and other projects that interest you. You can add them to a list to stay up-to-date, but that requires a login. If you don’t feel like registering, you can also just look stuff up, but it won’t save. You’ll have to write it down or something. Like a caveman.

Hypedrive – Free | Hypedrive LLC

Sometimes, I’m standing in the produce section of my local grocery store, and I see fruit I’ve never even heard of before. And while nobody has developed an app that will let me taste them to see if they’re any good, Wholesome gives a pretty good idea of how good it is for me.

The app groups everything, mostly by color, but it also has categories for spices, meat and seafood, dairy, etc. You just pick your group and food, and then the information is all there for your perusal. You can even adjust quantities if you’re working from a recipe.

That fruit-tasting idea is free, by the way. Somebody please get on that.

Wholesome – Free | Sachin Hegde

Bind is kind of a weird idea for an app, but then again, I know people who watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials. So if you want big companies to try to sell you things without all that pesky programming getting in the way, here’s where you should go.

It collects ads. Just ads. Do you want to watch ads? Bind has all the ads including movie trailers and those ones people at work were attempting to describe (poorly) the day after the Big Game. And you can rate and share your favorites with your friends.

So at the very least, it’ll save you a trip to YouTube.

Bind – Free | Bind Group LTD.

So maybe one night you’re stumbling to your car and realize you really shouldn’t be driving. And also you’re so drunk that Siri can’t understand you. And the buttons in your contact list are so small.

Enter Too Drunk To Drive, an app that hopes to keep you from ending up dead in a molten hell of metal and glass. You pre-program it with the numbers of your local cab company or a reliable friend, and then all you have to do is plunk your drunken thumb down on one of the app’s two enormous and clearly labeled buttons.

Giving the other person directions is still up to you, though. So good luck with that.

Too Drunk To Drive – Free | Steffen Lund Andersen

Creator of Flappy Bird found and he told me he is going to repost it to the App Store!!! pic.twitter.com/odmKbWaTw8

— Todd Moore (@toddmoore) March 19, 2014

Thanks to the strange demise of Flappy Bird the App Store and Google Play are rampant with flappy knock-offs, but after a period of silence game developer Dong Nguyen confirmed that his life destroying game is making a comeback, but you’ll have to wait a while.

iTunes Radio still has a long way to go before it catches up with Pandora’s number of subscribers, but in an effort to keep up with increasing royalty costs, Pandora announced this morning that it’s bumping up the monthly subscription price for Pandora One.

Starting in May new subscribers will have to pay $4.99 per month if they want their music stream ad free, which is still cheaper than competitors like Spotify and Rdio (both $9.99 per month).

Apple’s alternative, iTunes Radio is ad-free with $24.99 annual iTunes Match subscription, but Pandora is deciding to just drop the annual subscription option altogether.

Here’s a breakdown of the pricing changes:

The science of the human body is something complicated, yet truly amazing. While the world leaves bodies prone to sickness, white blood cells can help to fight them. In the physics arcade game Microtrip players must help a blob trek its way through a strange body collecting white cells to stay alive. Do you think you can avoid all monsters standing in your way?

Take a look at Microtrip and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application Microtrip brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

When I opened the box that contained the Pi Dock-It Pro from Parle Innovations, my first thought was that it looked like an older model HP or IBM laptop. The dark gray plastic case, surrounded on all sides with a matte, silvery metal structure just scream “high tech,” albeit from a time in the recent past.

The manufacturer wants you to use the Dock-It Pro to turn your iPad into a laptop while letting it remain useful as a tablet, and they’ve succeeded in doing just that, at least from a design standpoint. I found myself using the Dock-It Pro case as a flip-up laptop more often than as an tablet, though.

Does The Dock-It Pro truly transcend its clunky, quaint visual style and become something truly useful? The answer is–of course–somewhere in the middle.

The LA Unified School District made headlines when it pledged to make it rain iPads on students by spending $1 billion on Apple’s tablets, but teachers are more concerned of the rain leaking through their classroom roofs.

The school district’s initiative is aimed to enhance students educational experience but a number of angry teachers have started a ‘Repairs, Not iPads‘ page on Facebook filled with pictures of everything from rat feces on desks, broken toilets, dead mice, termite infestations, leaky roofs and more, along with a demand that district spend money on much needed repairs before iPads.

So maybe one night you’re stumbling to your car and realize you really shouldn’t be driving. And also you’re so drunk that Siri can’t understand you. And the buttons in your contact list are so small.

Enter Too Drunk To Drive, an app that hopes to keep you from ending up dead in a molten hell of metal and glass. You preprogram it with the numbers of your local cab company or a reliable friend, and then all you have to do is plunk your drunken thumb down on one of the app’s two enormous and clearly labeled buttons.

Giving the other person directions is still up to you, though. So good luck with that.

Source:Too Drunk To Drive – Free | Steffen Lund Andersen

I like endless runners as much as the next person (which works out well considering how many I review), but I’m not opposed to a developer trying something new with them.

Dark Guardians is one such attempt, adding rhythm-game elements and arcade twitch play to the well-trod genre. And it’s an experiment that pays off big, resulting in an exciting and all-around fun title.

It’s also smart and good-looking. And the music is excellent. Basically, I’m a fan.

Have you ever seen this message when you’ve bought a third party cable for your iOS device?

“This cable or accessory is not certified and may not work reliably with this iPhone.”

This Cult of Mac Deals offer is delivering a cable and charger combination that is MFi-Certified so you know the quality is up to Apple standards. The Apple-Approved Lightning Cable and AC Charger is the ideal solution for your iOS charging needs – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $26.99.

Like every software platform, Android Wear’s future success will hinge on how it’s supported by third-party developers. But there’s one thing we can be absolutely sure of at this stage — and that is that Google has at least got the basics right.

The search giant’s promotional video, which was published on Tuesday alongside its Android Wear announcement, shows how it has optimized Android — or Google Now — to work seamlessly and elegantly on a tiny touchscreen that fits on your wrist.

But we get an even better look at some of Android Wear’s basic features in the overview video below.

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Recently Cult of Mac described how among Siri’s Easter eggs is a whole back story — programmed by her creators, and accessible by asking just the right questions.

Beginning life as a five-year DARPA-backed project to build an intelligent virtual assistant, Siri certainly has some stories to tell: if only we could gain access to them.

When I wrote my story a couple of weeks ago, I asked readers to send in any insights they managed to unlock. Dallas-based tech columnist and CoM reader Jim Rossman read the article and sent in some interesting screenshots from his own conversations with Siri — revealing some insights that go beyond her usual “I was designed by Apple in California” spiel.

Are you a Mac collector? An Apple investor? Do you like to buy old computers still new in their original packaging? If so, do we have a storage locker for you!

Marion Stokes was a librarian, activist and local access television producer from Philadelphia. Recently she made news for her incredible archive of 35 years of TV news broadcasts, recorded continuously on home videotapes from 1977 until her death in 2012. But Stokes was also a longtime Apple investor and Macintosh fan. Over the same timeframe she acquired nearly two hundred new-in-box Macintosh computers and related Apple gear, and kept much of this equipment sealed for posterity.

It’s another incredible history, about technology and one unique Silicon Valley tech entity. And it can be yours, if the price is right. The whole kit and caboodle is available on eBay, listed for the Buy It Now price of $100,000!