Cult of Mac

It’s not even a question anymore — we need to stay connected everywhere, at all times and Cult of Mac Deals is offering a little device to help us do it.

You can connect all your USB devices to The Freedom Stick Bolt and get instant high-speed wireless internet on the go. Even at half the price of a hotspot, the Bolt delivers a fast and secure broadband connection so you can connect without fear of someone else getting on your wifi network. And Cult of Mac Deals has this little gem for only $59 — and that includes 500MB data per month and 1 year of premier service. That’s a savings of 62% off the regular retail price!

Please note: The Freedom Stick Bolt offer is only available to customers in the United States (excludes Alaska). The sale price includes shipping and all sales are final.

Surf, stream, and game with download speeds up to 12Mbps — no cables or chargers required. With no contracts or cancellation fees, you’ll be able to pay for only what you need even if it changes from month to month.

The top features of The Freedom Stick Bolt include the following:

• Easy To Use: Plug, play and get online fast
• Super Compact: Fits in your pocket so you can take it anywhere you go
• Stay Safe And Secure: Your own private internet access point
• Supports Most Computers: And devices with a standard USB port, no installation required
• Free Data: Get 500MB 100% free every month for a year, no questions asked
• Fast Speeds: Enjoy 4G wireless internet (10x faster than 3G)
• No Gimmicks: Take advantage of no data caps or speed-throttling
• No Contracts: Cancel any time without fees or commitments

For the best answers to your questions regarding this promotion, please contact FreedomPop directly by clicking here. To review all of the system requirements, visit the Deals page.

But that’s not the only offer Cult of Mac Deals has for you today. For a limited time you can get Insync — a drive app that combines multiple account support, advanced syncing and sharing features with elegance and simplicity. Built for the power user, you get the usual suspects of features but get advanced features so you can get work done. Insync is only $4.99 through Cult of Mac Deals, and you can learn more about it — and get it — here.

FreedomPop believes that the “internet is a right, not a privilege,” and Cult of Mac Deals believes that you deserve the best deal possible. That’s why you should take advantage of this offer while you can. Get The Freedom Stick Bolt – along with 500MB data per month and 1 year of premier service — for just $59 from the Deals page today!

Alright, so the Iron Man-shaped hero in Robo Nativity is totally not licensed. I was unsure if he was supposed to be more like Mega Man until a helpful prompt informed me that for a minimal fee I could also play as War Machine. So, you’re definitely playing as Iron Man in this curiously named platformer-meets-endless runner.

You start off running along the ground beneath various platforms. Enemies and obstacles require you to jump and fire as you collect as many gold coins as you can. As far as this being a nativity, you won’t encounter any babes in mangers, but the Mandarin-like baddies this not-Iron Man shoots do look a bit like wise men. So, don’t look for any new religions in Robo Nativity, unless you are way into the idea that Tony Stark is the messiah (I kinda am).

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this news item, Ive’s photo appeared back on the U.S. Executives Profiles page.

In a strange move, Jony Ive’s picture has vanished from Apple’s online list of executives – although his profile page is still accessible to users who type in the address.

While it would be a massive mistake to jump to conclusions, this change has previously signaled the departure of an Apple Senior VP — as it did when former iOS head Scott Forstall left the company in 2012.

After being bombarded with Flappy Bird clones, it appears that both Google Play and the iOS App Store have started rejecting all new apps featuring the word “flappy” in their titles.

The move was publicized by developer Ken Carpenter of Mind Juice Media who took to Twitter to reveal that his game, Flappy Dragon, was rejected during the iTunes authorization process because the “name attempts to leverage a popular app.”

Musical video sharing app Mindie has received a significant new update.

Similar to (non-musical app) Vine, Mindie lets users select a backing track, and then record and share a looping music video of up to 7 seconds.

Apple opened its first store in Brazil over the weekend — with around 1,700 impatient South American Apple lining up to be the first through the doors.

The Apple Store, located in Rio de Janeiro, holds the (dubious) distinction of offering the highest priced iPhone 5s currently available on the market. The 16-gigabyte, contract-free model is selling for 2,799 Brazilian reals — a figure that translates as $1,174.

MarginNotes is an interesting app that may just be a little too confusing to use, or may be the perfect document markup app ever. I still can’t figure out which.

The app will open EPUB and PDF files and let you mark them up, adding comments, margin notes, sketches and anything else, and also lets you add entire outlines, or turn the document into an outline – I’m not quote sure. Let’s take a quick look:

Successor to Steve Jobs, BFF of Steve Wozniak, and all-around “creative genius” Kanye West had some harsh words for Tim Cook over the weekend.

Speaking/singing on stage at a Saturday night show in Newark, NJ, West blasted the Apple CEO for allegedly asking him to perform for free at an Apple event.

How about an iPad accessory so dorky, so unashamedly utilitarian that even the Android-using Killian Bell just dared me to wear one around this year’s Mobile World Congress? Interested? Good. It’s the Survivor Harness from Griffin, and it is so named becasue if you wear it, you’ll struggle to survive the taunts and humiliation it will surely bring.

Apple is reportedly looking into developing a device capable of predicting heart attacks.

The medical sensor device — possibly a feature for the long-reported iWatch, if previous rumors are to be believed — would listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict irregularities.

Between your iPhone, your iPad and your Mac, it’s hard to imagine a time when you’d be online and need to edit a photo, but somehow not have access to an app like Snapseed (which has its own browser version BTW).

But should you find yourself trapped at a PC, while nestled deep in bowels of a government building that has confiscated your iPhone and iPad at the gate (to be root-kitted and infected with spyware no doubt), and with a desperate need to add some pop to that cute cat photo you found, then head for Pics.io.

The BluCub is a lot like the Tempo pebble I reviewed a few weeks back, only instead of measuring just temperature, it also measures humidity, adding another feather to your home-weather-station cap. If you wear a cap and put a feather in it when you buy a Bluetooth sensor, that is.

Lightroom Analytics is a plugin that breaks down the metadata in your Lightroom library into all kids of neat and interesting charts and graphs. Want to know what lenses you use the most? Or which setting you always tweak? Then you need LR Analytics.

Snippefy takes the almost-useless highlights from your Kindle and syncs them to Evernote, Dropbox or anywhere that’ll accept text. It’s an iPhone-only app, but as it’s only really there for processing your snippets to use somewhere else, it’s fine for the iPad too.

Google bought a tiny Israeli startup today called SlickLogin.

The three-person, two-month-old company has an interesting technology that replaces passwords. The terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition is a tiny victory for people who believe in sound as a viable medium of digital communication. 

We’re all guilty of it: the “cellphone-in-the-lap” move while driving. Whether we’re reading directions, sending a text, or talking on speakerphone, we’ve all used our cellphoens in the wrong place (the vehicle) and at the wrong time (while we’re driving said vehicle). Now you can avoid the temptation with the Universal Car Mount – the perfect accessory for any car owner.

Dial your phone, talk, and hang up without ever moving your hands away from the steering wheel. And thanks to Cult of Mac Deals you can get 51% off the regular price of the Universal Car Mount because it can be yours for only $14 during this limited time offer!

TV sucks.

The reason TV sucks is that the companies who control it make it suck on purpose because they believe that’s more profitable.

It’s technically possible for viewers to watch any TV show, movie or online video ever made at any time at either low or no cost.

This possibility is only theoretical. In reality, certain companies artificially prevent viewers from getting what they want. They create artificial scarcity in order to make more money.

A movie comes out in the theaters. But it’s not available for download. This non-availability has nothing to do with technical reasons. The studios are withholding it from you to make you go to the theater and pay for a ticket.

After it’s gone from theaters, there’s often some amount of time before its available online. And when it is available, you often can’t “rent” it. You can only “buy” it. It’s another form of artificial scarcity designed to trick people who are impatient, designed to exploit fandom, designed to manipulate the public into paying more for something.

And then there’s TV. Ugh! What a cesspool of customer-hating manipulation and exploitation.

There are two kinds of companies in existence. There are companies trying to make money enabling you to watch what you want when you want to watch it. And there are companies trying to make money by preventing you from watching what you want when you want to watch it.

Apple fans may argue that from a bang-for-your-buck perspective, an iPhone is one of the best smartphone deals around. If you’re judging simply by how much screen proportionally makes up the front of your device, though, this chart makes a strong case that the iPhone is a pretty bad deal compared to various Android phones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7v0F_oaZQ

How bad does the other half — those who have never owned a MacBook — have it?

Pretty bad, as this hysterical video showing what Macgasm (tongue-in-cheek?) says are a trio of Norwegian Microsoft employees hurling around a MacBook Pro between themselves like the early hominid apes in the Dawn of Man section of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So oblivious are they to the fact that this shiny wedge of unibody aluminum is a laptop, that they blindly destroy it, hooting and hollering as if they could never even envision a laptop that wasn’t made of cheap black plastic. Which, surely, many PC owners can’t.

Via: Macgasm

We’ll never stop Flapping! On this CultCast, we investigate the worldwide obsession with the iOS wünder-game, Flappy Bird, and the bizarre stories of why the game’s developer pulled the wildly popular game so abruptly from the App Store. Plus, some new iPhone 6 rumors surface, and a Macintosh super-grid you’ve never heard of is hunting down a cure for cancer.

Softly giggle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

And thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode. Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.

With over 1 million apps in the App Store, your app needs a good design to stand out. Cult of Mac Deals has got an offer that will help you get that good design – and at a fraction of hte cost and effort.

This deal is for two iPhone/iPad App Design Templates that will help you bring your app to life. The templates include an Xcode project which shows you how to implement the design in the template. You also get access to a Photoshop PSD file which means you can tweak the colors or look and feel of the app. For a limited time you can get these flawless iOS 7 App Design Templates at the low price of $39 – a savings of 80%!

Electronic Art’s recently released update of Peter Molyneux’s Dungeon Keeper has garnered a lot of criticism for its shameless destruction of the gameplay of a strategy classic. But hey, why play that cynical piece of freemium crap when you can play the original for free?

For the next 24 hours, GOG.com is having a great promotion capitalizing upon the nigh-universal hatred for the Dungeon Keeper iOS remake. Just go to their site and sign up for an account to download the original classic Dungeon Keeper game for your Mac for free. Although seventeen years old, the original game still holds up, and runs just great on modern Macs. If you want to know why people are so honked off about the new version, look no further.

Source: GOG.com

Periodically, Best Buy has been known to offer $50 discounts on select iPhones and iPads. If you’re looking to save a few bucks on an Apple product, Best Buy’s deals are a good, regularly occurring window to buy the device you’ve had your eye on.

If you’ve been waiting for that window to open again, good news! Starting this Sunday, February 16, and going to February 22nd, Best Buy will be taking $50 off the purchase of any iPhone with a two-year contract on any carrier.

You can also get $50 off the iPad mini with Retina Display, but only if you hop to it: that deal ends today. And if you trade in your old iPad while you’re with it, you can get a Best Buy gift card worth up to $200… probably not the best value for trading-in an old iPad, but a deal that could possibly influence some President’s Day weekend impulse shoppers.

Via: CNET

We’ve been hearing tell that Microsoft will release a version of Office for iPad “soon” since at least February 2012, but instead of a native version, the only thing Microsoft has released so far is Office 365, a cloud-based version of the Office suite that works on mobile devices.

According to some well-connected insiders, though, the wait is almost over, and Microsoft could launch Microsoft Office for iPad in the next three months.

This week in Cult of Mac Magazine: Can iMacs find a cure for cancer?

Right now, thousands of kids across Kentucky are furthering cancer research while they do their schoolwork, thanks to the DataseamGrid.

Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney delves into how this massive grid of educational iMacs are churning data to help find a cure for cancer. One starter fact to make you blink: Every week, the grid processes 300 man-years worth of calculations while kids learn about fractions and foreign languages. Brian Gupton, Dataseam’s co-founder and executive director, talked to Cult of Mac about how this game-changing research is proving rich ground for education, employment and research.

Reporter Buster Heine checks out iPhone apps that can harness the processing power of your device while your run or walk your dog — he has found a bunch of great two-fer apps to get you in shape as you do good. We also bring you the best in new books, music and movies from iTunes and what’s worthwhile in the app store, plus our resident Apple genius dishes on whether the grass is greener, workwise, outside the store.

Cult of Mac Magazine