Cult of Mac

In Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, a mustachioed Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a Siri-like “digital assistant,” Her, played by Scarlett Johansson.

You’d think Siri would appreciate having a movie made about her, but instead, kitty’s got claws when it comes to her filmic counterpart: thanks to Apple’s cheeky and surprisingly timely programmers, if you ask Siri “Are you her?” she will respond: “No. Her portrayal of an intelligent agent is beyond artificial”, “No. You know that it’s just a movie, right?” and “No. In my opinion, she gives artifical intelligence a bad name.”

LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – Chatting on Facetime with friends is great. That is until your double-comes barreling over the screen. We’ve seen people go to some pretty extreme lengths to overcome the unflattering Facetime camera angles, but Brookstone is introducing a new product at CES that finally gives users a Facetime facelift without the need for cosmetic surgery.

iTOi Booth is a case/console that goes over your iPad and uses a patented optical lens system perscription to adjust the camera angle of your iPad so your eyes are level with the screen when Facetiming. The result is direct eye contact with the other person on the screen and a more natural appearance, but will anyone want to lockup their iPad in a gigantic console just to look prettier on Facetime?

Here’s video of iToi Booth in action:

As a Christmas present, hackers over the holidays released two great jailbreaks. For the majority out there running iOS 7, Team Evad3rs released the much heralded Evasi0n jailbreak, while for the holdouts, p0sixninja released a working jailbreak for iOS 6.1.3, 6.1.4 and 6.1.5 called p0sixspwn. It’s the latter jailbreak which has been updated today with support for OS X Snow Leopard, and numeorus bug fixes.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – Hyundai will reveal an app for its 2015 Hyundai Genesis vehicle that will allow drivers to wirelessly operate certain features using Google Glass and other wearable devices.

The remote features (currently still under development) work via Hyundai’s cloud-based Blue Link platform.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – LG clearly got the memo that 2014 is set to be the year of wearable electronics — since the South Korean manufacturer has taken advantage of CES 2014 to unveil its new Life Band Touch fitness wristband.

The device — which lets users track physical activity including steps taken, distance covered, and calories output — can be synced with both Android and iOS devices, using Bluetooth 4.0.

Your smartphone and tablet will soon offer noticeably better performance than a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, thanks to NVIDIA’s new Tegra K1 processor, the successor to last year’s Tegra 4. The 192-core “Super Chip” will come in two versions, one of which is built upon a next-generation 64-bit Denver architecture and boasts clock speeds up to 2.5GHz.

Have you ever watched somebody with long fingernails tap-tap-tapping at their iPhone or iPad screen? It’s painful. Either their overgrown keratin caps skitter over the screen in a chitinous clatter, or they have to approach the screen with the flat pads of their fingers, as if they were carefully giving the government a perfect image of their fingerprints.

But no longer. The most useful new product showcased at this year’s CES is Elektra Nails, a set of capacitive stick-on talons.

We recently called SteelSeries’ H Wireless gaming headset a “miracle of sound and function.” Will the same enthusiasm hold true about the company’s other gaming accessories?

SteelSeries is obviously hoping so, since is has announced its new wireless iOS gaming controller — the Stratus — at CES 2014.

You know what would make all of those crazy-dangerous squirrel-suit action movies even better? A big, wide, cinematic 2.39:1 aspect ratio. And that’s just what you’ll get with the new Letus AnamorphX Adapter for the GoPro Hero.

Griffin has added a non-ugly, multitrack version of its StudioConnect music box. The sturdy-looking unit lets you record multiple instruments on your iPad (or Mac, if you’re still living in 2010), piping the results straight into the music software of your choice.

Having beaten out Apple TV as the most-used streaming set-top box in the United States, Roku is set to debut its own smart TV — called Roku TV.

“That’s right, actual TVs, designed to give consumers a simple and powerful entertainment experience in today’s connected world,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood noted in his company’s announcement. “We’ve applied the same principles that have made Roku the most popular streaming players in America to TVs.”

Ever felt the need to turn your Mac up to 11? Of course you have, and now, thanks to Griffin’s new Bluetooth PowerMate, you can do it wirelessly.

The rush to announce products at CES means we often see CGI renders and vague price promises, just to get in on the news action. But we’re giving SuperTooth a break here for two reasons. One, the company makes great speakers, and two, pretty much every one of those speakers has started life as a dummy model on a trade-show stand.

Withings isn’t content with looking after your body throughout every waking hour of your life. Now it wants to make like some kind of Inception-style doctor and keep an eye on your dreams with the help of the Aura.

Today LaCie announced its new lineup of hard drives, including the Fuel, a wireless 1TB hard drive that works with the Seagate Media iOS app. This is the first collaboration between the two storage companies since Seagate bought LaCie last year.

Besides the Fuel, LaCie is also unveiling three new hard drives at CES, including the Little Big Disk portable drive with Thunderbolt 2.

This is the year that Android busts out — out of phones and tablets and into all kinds of devices.

Android is coming this year to your home, car, desktop, wrist, face, camera and other locations near you.

Of course, Android has been used by a huge number of non-phone, non-tablet devices. But these have almost always been niche products that didn’t go anywhere.

What’s likely to happen this year is a kind of “mainstreaming” of Android as the OS that powers random devices that you normally wouldn’t think of as mobile computers.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – At the big “CES Unveiled” press event on Sunday night, one of the biggest draws was the TrewGrip keyboard; a funky Bluetooth keyboard for smartphones and tablets with the keys on the back of the device.

The company’s reps were mobbed by curious journalists, jockeying each other to get a better a look at the keyboard that claims to be “the evolution of typing.”

Designed for typists on the go, like healthcare professionals making hospital rounds, the TrewGrip is a unique reverse keyboard with a full set of QWERTY keys on the back.

Using it requires retraining and takes a week or more to master, but at the booth, company reps were tapping out 60-80 words a minute. Not as fast as many touch-typists on a regular keyboard, but a lot faster than pecking away on a glass screen.

If you’re a photographer that does a lot of portrait photography, look no further because this app – with special limited time pricing courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals – will only make your life easier.

You can’t always look your best in every photo… but when you do need a touch-up, you don’t need to pay a makeup artist or learn Photoshop. With Beautune you can do it quickly and easily with a complete makeover kit. And now you can get it for only $9.99 during this time-sensitive promotion.

Apple acquired today a one-man startup called SnappyLabs for an undisclosed amount.

The startup makes just one product: A 99-cent iPhone app called SnappyCam.

Apple hasn’t said why they acquired SnappyLabs, and probably won’t say. But such an acquisition would make sense as both an aqui-hire of founder and sole employee John Papandriopoulos (pictured), who has a PhD in electrical engineering, and also an IP purchase of the amazing thing that Papandriopoulos built.

Here’s what Apple bought and why it makes perfect sense that they bought it.

Apple has acquired SnappyLabs, the small startup behind the SnappyCam iPhone app, according to a report from TechCrunch. SnappyCam gave the user the ability to shoot 20 full-res photos per second with the iPhone’s camera. By comparison, Apple’s new Burst Mode on the iPhone 5s can only capture 10 photos per second.

The price Apple paid and exact date of the acquisition remain unknown, but the SnappyCam app was recently pulled from the App Store.

This time on The CultCast: We all know the NSA likes backdoor access, but are they really spying on us via our iDevices, and worse, is Apple in cahoots? We’ll tell you what we think… Plus, if you had to pick just one app, one piece of tech, and one movie as your favorite of 2013, what would they be? We’ll tell you ours on this first episode of the year!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on 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 adventure begin.

Thanks to Squarespace for supporting this ep.! If you need a beautiful website that will look great on any device that visits, you need Squarespace. Try it for free, or checkout with code Cultcast1 to save 10%.

Cult of Mac Magazine wants to help you get it together in 2014: you are probably already using your iPhone, iPad and Mac to track the bejesus out of your habits, right? We’re calling it iFitness (*yeah, I know!) because Apple devices have kickstarted a new way of thinking about and monitoring everything we do.

But maybe in between logging your couch to 5K you’ve discovered that your iPhone isn’t always the best running partner — or that it still can’t kick you out that line for the cronuts.

Cult of Mac talked to a bunch of fitness experts, including personal trainers, on how to make sure your iPhone or iPad and those apps you love can help you reach goals you’ve set yourself for this new year and lessen the more painful fitness fails.

Reporter Sarah Stirland also examines the growing body of health-related apps and discovers what’s on the horizon for this burgeoning business and why doctors are keen on keeping track of patients this way.

Cult of Mac Magazine

A few years ago I bought a cycle computer to help me train for the Death Ride, a single-day, 130-mile bicycle ride through California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. It was a top-of-the-line GPS-equipped device from Garmin. It had digital maps and turn-by-turn directions and every feature under the sun. It measured speed and performance, including things like cadence (pedaling speed) and climbing rate.

I bought it mostly to use with a heart-rate monitor, which fellow riders advised me to use to modulate my effort. If you keep your heart below a certain threshold, you can pretty much ride all day. All the other members on the team (The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Fantastic, btw) had the same high-end models. We all had different bikes, but the same Garmin computer.

At first I didn’t much care for most of the measurements it took. But as I got fitter, I got faster, and I started to look at my average speed over those long-distance training rides, which were often 100 miles or more. Every week the average speed crept up, even though the rides got longer and harder.

Oddly, because I wasn’t expecting it, that one simple number proved to be a huge motivator. Every weekend I’d look forward to a 120-mile ride through the hills of the Bay Area just so I could add 1 or 2 MPH to my average speed.

Proselytizers of digital fitness gadgets pitch the “quantified self” as the best way to take control of your health; know thyself through your data.

I’m not an A-Type personality by any means, someone who sets goals and measures my performance. I’m the opposite, in fact. I mostly avoid all the numbers in my life — my bank balance, the traffic to the Cult of Mac website, sales of my books. Because if the numbers aren’t good, I get depressed and I can’t function for a day or two. Better to avoid the numbers altogether.

I’ve suffered from depression since I was a kid. It’s not a big deal, but once a month or so I need to withdraw for a couple of days. It’s a physical thing, regular as clockwork. As I’ve grown older, a couple of days can sometimes stretch into several days, and sometimes, very rarely, into weeks.

For me, the best cure for depression is exercise. It doesn’t actually cure depression, because I can’t exercise when I’m into the deep blue. I can’t force myself to do it. But it does keep it at bay. If I exercise regularly, it don’t get depressed as often. Trouble is, work and life too often get in the way.

More recently, I’ve started wearing a Jawbone Up wristband, which I bought mostly out of curiosity. I had the idea I’d use it to get fit, but I really didn’t like it at first. I was exercising only sporadically, and the graphs just showed how sedentary I was. They were clear, graphic representations of chronic inactivity. I was flatlining. Again, instead of motivating me to get off the couch, I simply stopped looking at it.

Then I started running regularly at the gym. I uploaded the Jawbone once a week or so, but didn’t pay it much mind. But again, as I slowly got faster and better at running, I started to pay more attention to the data. The graphs would show a huge spike of activity in the day when I exercised, making me feel slightly guilty, even anxious, on the days that I didn’t.

The feedback started to become a motivator. It wasn’t the main motivator — that was the running itself. I started to look forward to the run. The graph at the end of the day was just the icing on the cake.

Since the iOS 7 jailbreak came out, one of the hottest new iOS hardware features that hackers have been looking to utilize is Touch ID in the iPhone 5s. For example, a tweak was just recently released that allows jailbreakers to use Touch ID to simulate pressing the home button.

The coolest use of Touch ID I’ve seen in a jailbreak tweak so far is AppLocker, which was updated to version 2.2 today in Cydia with 64-bit and iPhone 5s support. The premise is simple: AppLocker lets you lock individual iOS apps (stock or third-party) with a password. On the 5s, you can now use Touch ID to unlock.

Here’s a hands-on look:

Today Corning announced that it’s ready to manufacture a new 3D-shaped Gorilla glass for availability this year. The new glass is designed with curved phone and wearable displays in mind.

As the main glass supplier for iOS devices, Corning’s 3D Gorilla glass could very well end up in future Apple products.