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New Apple Hires Could Help Create The Retina MacBook Air

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

It seems like we’ve been crowing for years about the promise of IGZO — a display technology that radically improves power efficiency, allowing for thinner, lighter, longer-lasting devices — for ages, but with the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display, Apple finally started actually delivering on that promise.

But what now? A new job application suggests that the next generation of Mac laptops might get IGZO too, paving the way for new design possibilities.

iLoud Bluetooth Guitar Speaker Rawks [Review]

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iLoud by IK Multimedia
Category: Speakers
Works With: Anything
Price: $300

To save time, here’s my advice: If you have an iPad or iPhone, a guitar and $300 to spend, then spend it on the iLoud. It’s a small, portable Bluetooth speaker that is way louder than any other Bluetooth speaker, and it lets you plug in your guitar and use your iPhone – wirelessly – to add effects using an app like IK Multimedias’s AmpliTube.

More importantly, the iLoud rocks.

Apple Releases iOS 7.1 Beta 5 To Developers

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Apple has released a fifth beta build of iOS 7.1 to developers this morning, two weeks after dropping the last iOS 7.1 beta was seeded.

iOS 7.1 beta 5 is available to developers in the Dev Center or via an OTA update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Like last time, Apple has also released a new beta for Apple TV as well as XCode 5.1.

The release notes only mention the addition of new natural-sounding Siri voice for English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin – China). We’ll update you on any other new changes once we get it downloaded on our devices. Feel free to yell at us on Twitter (@cultofmac) if you come across anything yourself.

Here are the download links:

‘Colour by Numbers’ Gives You Access To A Piece Of Interactive Art

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Colour by Numbers

Colour by Numbers — Lifestyle — Free

Have you heard of Colour by Numbers? It’s a light installation in Stockholm in which anyone with a mobile phone can participate.

The top 10 floors of the Telefonplan tower contain colored lights, and you can change their hues by either calling in and punching in a bunch of numbers or using this app. For five minutes at a time, you can select floors and mix red, blue, and green to create any color you want. And you can watch the live feed online to see your contribution happen in real time.

It’s kind of eerie, actually.

Colour by Numbers – Milo Lavén

The Great Martian War Has A Thousand Ways To Kill You [Review]

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The Great Martian War

The History Channel has gotten a little weird over the past few years.

The Great Martian War by Secret Location
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Price: Free

It used to be all about World War II and the Industrial Revolution, but ever since around 2008 or so, something has been creeping in. Something decidedly un-historic. Now, we flip over to History to learn about UFOs, prophecies, and pseudoscience. So it makes sense that the channel would release a fake documentary about a War of the Worlds-style conflict that took place instead of World War I.

The Great Martian War is an endless runner that shares its name with that program, and it places you in the middle of the conflict as a scout trying to deliver intel to Paris on foot. You’ll run, jump, and slide to avoid obstacles and massive alien walkers.

And you’ll die. You’ll die a lot.

How To Download Facebook Paper Outside The U.S.

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Facebook Paper is a pretty great panacea to the social network’s usually crummy iPhone apps, but unfortunately, it’s only available in the United States, leaving those overseas out-of-luck. But because Paper is a free app, you can download it pretty easily even in other countries. Here’s how.

Flaming iPhone 5c Battery Sets 13-Year-Old’s Pants On Fire

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Batteries are potentially volatile things, stuffed with electrochemical cells practically humming with electolytes. Every once and a while, then, they’re sure to break down, and companies like Apple do literally everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Here’s why. An iPhone 5c that exploded in the pocket of a 13-year-old girl resulted in a fire so severe that she was
rushed to the hospital with second-degree burns.

Solarpad. Finally, A Proper Solar Charger For Hikers And Bikers

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At an RRP of $200, the Solarpad isn’t the cheapest solar charger for your iPhone, but it does aim to be the best. Every detail has been tweaked to squeeze the last drop of juice from the Sun’s photons, from the battery itself (the same kind as Tesla uses in its cars apparently), through the efficient charge controller (form Maxim) to the cables themselves (fatter, to let the current flow more easily, says the blurb).

What’s more, you can pitch in early on Kickstarter and get a full setup for just $158 (right now anyway – the campaign only just launched).

Pacemaker For iPad Lets You DJ With Spotify Music

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I’m a terrible DJ (unless you count success by the number of people you can force off the dance floor with one track, in which case I’m a total mix master), but I’ve worked with enough DJs to know the tricks of the tracks. And one of those tricks is the old left-it-at-home routine.

When somebody requests a song you don’t want to play, you say “Excellent song! I love that one.” Then you pause and say “I think I left it at home.”

Now, Djs will have no excuse, becasue the new Pacemaker app will let you spin and mix tunes from Spotify’s huge gazillion-song library.

Unread, The New King Of iPhone RSS Readers

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Unread is an iPhone alternative to the king of iPad RSS readers, Mr Reader. Not that it works the same way, or looks anything like Mr Reader, or has anything to do with it at all. No, the thing that the new super-minimal, gesture-based Unread has in common with Mr Reader is sharing.

The Touchfire Keyboard: Keyboarding Reinvented For Your iPad [Deals]

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The Touchfire keyboard has all the functionality of a standard keyboard, but in a paper thin, transparent silicone that fits directly on your screen. You can still view the entire screen right through the keyboard with the ability to touch and swipe as if nothing was there. This keyboard will turn your iPad into a laptop killer!

If you own an iPad this product won’t let you down. And this pricing won’t let you down, either. That’s because for a limited time you can get the Touchfire for only $37.99 through Cult of Mac Deals!

Apple Ranks 4th In EPA’s 30 Greenest Tech Companies List

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the greenest tech company of them all? Not Apple, at least according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of the Top 30 tech and Telecom companies that run on green power. But they weren’t far from the top.

According to the EPA’s ranking, Intel is the greenest tech company there is, having used over 3 billion kWh of green power in 2013. Next up, Microsoft, who took second place at just under 2 billion kWh. Google came in third with a distant 737 million kWH, and Apple came up in fourth place with 537 million kWH.

There is a consolation prize for Apple, though. While they may only be fourth greenest company in the EPA’s eyes, they did at least source more providers for that power than any other company on the list.

Via: BGR

FiftyThree Accuses Facebook Of Stealing Their App Name

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Today, Facebook released an incredible new app called Paper that is a total reimagining of what Facebook on a mobile device means. As I wrote over on Fast Co. Design, it’s the opening sentence in Facebook’s next 10-year plan that puts mobile first.

It’s a great app, but there’s just one problem: the name. There’s another widely known drawing app called Paper by developers FiftyThree Inc. FiftyThree’s not happy about their name being lifted. Facebook’s response? Basically, “tough noogies.”

North Korea’s Official Operating System Rips Off OS X

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North Korea is a bizarre place, in which DPRK dictatorship denies its population any interaction with the West, even as the government’s elite drinks Cristal with Dennis Rodman. In such a regime, you might not be surprised to know that there’s not a lot of Mac users.

However, the North Korean government has released its own operating system, and the latest version looks decidedly familiar. It’s basically a Linux distro skinned to look like OS X!

Apple Posts Behind The Scenes Look At The Making Of 1-24-14 Super Bowl Ad

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After Apple’s Super Bowl ad — which we summarily declared to be so good that it won the Super Bowl without even trying — Apple has posted a behind-the-scenes video to its YouTube channel, showing how the ad was shot.

And how was it shot? On January 24th, Apple directed 15 camera crews across 10 countries armed with several iPhone 5s’s, who were all in communication with one another over FaceTime to stay in sync.