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!

As great as it when a new game, specifically designed for iOS, makes its way to the App Store, just as good is the appearance of new ports of classic games.

The latter is what we have with the newly-released Shin Megami Tensei — only with the added twist that this classic game has never previously been officially released outside Japan.

Video sharing website Vimeo has acquired Cameo, a video-making app which launched last October.

Giving users the ability to create sophisticated video effects, including the ability to combine footage from multiple cameras, Cameo received plaudits from Apple, who named it in their “Best of 2013” awards.

Cult of Mac described the app as “Vine, but all grown up with muscles, a flashy wardrobe and a hip music collection.”

Want to be able to order and pay for burgers using your iPhone?

Burger King has announced that it will be releasing a dedicated mobile app, featuring a Passbook-style virtual card that allows users to load on cash and then use this to make payments.

According to an article published by Bloomberg, the Burger King app will also include “coupons for deals, such as $1 any-size drinks and free fries, as well as nutrition facts.” A feature allowing you to place an order for pick-up at a later time will additionally be included.

We first glimpsed the Highline way back in 2012, when we reviewed the 30-pin-dock-connector version of the leash for iDevices. Now, back in the future, the Lightning Highline has just launched, helping to save the butterfingered and terminally distracted from losing or smashing their iPhone.

In my review, I described the Ergotron Workfit-A as a terminator arm holding your iMac. The PadDock Pivot Dual Arm Locking Tablet Stand is the same kind of thing, only it’s a Terminator arm holding your iPad.

Apple’s brand value is more than the total cost of the Apollo Space Program in today’s dollars, according to a new report by brand consulting agency Brand Finance.

Apple topped a list of 500 firms — including heavyweights like Walmart, Google, and AT&T — to be named the most valuable billion-dollar U.S. brand name.

Brand Finance compiled the list by estimating the royalty rate that would be charged to use a company’s brand, taking into account current and expected future revenue. Notably Apple was the only brand to have surpassed the $100 billion mark, being valued at $104.7 billion.

Dropbox is planning an update that will let you switch between home and work accounts, according to the Verge. The new service will be announced on April 9th, and will let users switch between accounts without logging out of either.

I’ll admit it. I was about to pass on writing up the OGIO Ruck Pack because it looks like a dorky kids bag. And then I noticed it also looks like the pack on the back of a space suit. And then I saw the pocket on the side, stuffed with my favorite water bottle, the Klean Kanteen, and I was sold. So here it is: The dork-tastic, space-friendly water-carrying Ruck Pack.

People who were gaming during the late 1990s may well have fond memories of the long-dormant franchise RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise.

A series of construction and management sims that let you build and run your own theme park, developers Atari recently announced that they are creating a mobile version of the game called RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, which is set to debut on iOS very soon.

Do you get creeped out by the fact that Google reads your emails in order to serve you ads (even though every time you search any web-based email it’s doing the exact same thing)? Then you should leave now, because the Mod Notebook is a service that scans your filled-up paper notebook and sends you back the digital version.

Samsung’s NX Mini camera uses a one-inch sensor – like that inside the Nikon 1 series – only it comes in way cheaper, at $450 or $550, depending on which lens you choose. Other than that , the best description is probably “a lanes and a flip screen, and not much else.”

Windows 8 has been a gigantic flop for Microsoft, but Apple, at least, is giving the new operating system a surprising push. The Mac maker has dropped support for Windows 7 running under Boot Camp on the new Mac Pro, making the installation of Windows 8 the only option for those who want to dual boot Windows on the most powerful Mac yet.

One of iOS 7.1’s major changes was a new Calendar app that added such features as the ability to see a full list of events while in your Calendar’s month view, as well as a more complete list of nation-specific holiday.

If you use your iPhone as an organizer, the new Calendar app is enough to update to iOS 7.1 on its own right. Unfortunately, iOS 7.1 also broke the popular evasi0n jailbreak, meaning that to get the new Calendar, you had to abandon your jailbroken device.

No longer. If you have a jailbroken iOS device, you can now download a new app that patches the iOS 7.1 calendar into iOS versions 7.0 and 7.0.6. Called Gregorian, it can be downloaded through Cydia from the https://rpetri.ch/repo/ repository.

Via: Modmyi

We’ve seen Martin Hajek’s incredible Apple TV concept with a touchscreen remote before, but in an update to the project, Hajek has imagined what the Apple TV would be like if the next gen set-top box didn’t ship with just a touchscreen controller, but a traditional gamepad as well.

I’ll say this for Hajek’s Apple TV gamepad: it looks like a controller Jony Ive would design. Thin, sleek, classic, beautiful, and utterly unsuited for actual gaming.

What do you think? Additional images after the jump.

If you spend a lot of time on the App Store, you’ve probably wondered if app icons are colored the way they are for a reason. Are certain shades more likely to correspond to certain app types than others? And what are the most over- and under-represented Pantone swatches in the App Store pallette?

If these are the sort of questions you have ever asked yourself, you’ll probably enjoy this great infographic by Brandisty, who crawled the iOS App Store, grabbed the top 5 app icons from each category, and then ran a hisogram analysis to find out which colors were used most often.

I wish they’d polled more apps, but this is great. Business apps are just as blue and boring as I thought they were! Check out the complete infographic after the jump.

We’ve seen a lot of iPhone 6 concepts lately.

Here’s another one, in a dramatic mock advertisement that uses a much more dramatic electronic score than the poppier serenades usually favored by Cupertino. Check out the video below!

When playing games on your devices it’s common for the most challenging to be the most played. The game Bouncing Slime: Impossible Levels is an arcade game that boasts incredibly challenging levels. Simply tap to help the ball of slime surpass dangerous platforms and enemies to reach a checkered flag. Do you think you can pass every level?

Take a look at Bouncing Slime: Impossible Levels and find out what you think.

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