Apple has been doing its “12 Days of Christmas” promotion for a few years now — offering iOS users a bit of Yuletide cheer in the form of free videos, songs, games, books and apps.
Strangely, while this promotion has spread Cupertino Christmas wishes to those as far away as those in Europe, Canada and Japan, it has never before been available to U.S. customers.
All’s quiet on the Scott Forstall front — and pretty much has been since the former SVP of iOS was unceremoniously fired from Apple back in October 2012 for refusing to sign an apology for the Apple Maps fiasco.
Well, there’s an update on the horizon for Forstall watchers: and it involves the former Apple exec spending much of the last year traveling to Italy and South Africa, advising a handful of startups, and getting more involved in philanthropy work — mainly focused on education, poverty, and human rights.
With holiday shopping season well underway, Apple has chosen a good (and likely not coincidental) time to finally catch up with U.S. demand for the iPhone 5s.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said on Monday that his bi-weekly checks of 60 U.S. Apple retail stores found that the iPhone 5S hit 100% in-stock as of last Wednesday.
As Black Friday approaches, Cult of Mac Deals continues to deliver the goods at a fraction of the regular price. This offer is, once again, no excpetion.
This hand-picked Mac bundle includes 8 top apps valued at $401 – and for a very limited time, you can get all of them for only $39!
When I saw Tunnel Escape in the App Store my first thought was that it looked a lot like the magic carpet sequence in the Super Nintendo version of Disney’s Aladdin (which is the best version, do not bring your Genesis fanboyism into this). What I wasn’t prepared for was it bringing back all the tension I felt as a kid trying to avoid swells of lava while soaring through increasingly narrow passages.
Tunnel Escape is decidedly much more relaxed than Aladdin as the only thing you’re fighting against is how long you tap the screen. Each tap raises the little cube higher in the world, and if you don’t tap, it’ll sink down on the bottom of the tunnel. Touching the walls, or top of the screen, means instant death, so you have to feather your taps to succeed.
It has become somewhat of an old joke, but Microsoft’s retail stores are essentially ghost towns. Every once in awhile you’ll see a side by side comparison of an Apple Store filled with busy shoppers sitting right next to a completely vacant Microsoft store.
Slate visited both stores yesterday in Arlington, Virginia. The above image shows Microsoft’s store, and here’s a shot from inside Apple’s:
Today Square unveiled its new card reader with a design that’s nearly half the size of the original. By ditching clunky stock components in the first Square Reader, the mobile payments pioneer has created a smoother card swiping experience and sleeker, tapered design the second time around.
How did Square achieve such drastically improved hardware in only one revision? Apple’s former head of accessories, who led the development of the Lightning connector, was in charge.
The latest game in the Adventure Time series of mobile games will go live on Google Play, the Amazon App Store, and in Apple’s own iTunes App Store this Thursday, according to Cartoon Network.
You’ll get to play as main characters Finn and Jake, along with several other supporting cast members, evading the crazy Ice King while skiing down an epic mountain. Mathematical!
Of course, you won’t use skis, but rather slide down the slope on your butt, true to the wacky television show on which the game is based.
The clock app in iOS 7 is pretty straightforward. There’s an alarm, stopwatch, timer, and a world clock. The latter allows you to add any number of cities to your list and your iOS device will tell you the time in each city. You can rearrange them into any order you like with a quick tap on the Edit button in the upper left. To add new cities, simply tap the plus button in the upper right.
The world clock defaults to an analog representation of the time to the right of each city. We can fix that.
Reminders are delightful thing. Apple’s implementation syncs across the Mac to iPhones and iPads, and if you log in to iCloud.com, you can share Reminders with friends, family, co-workers, and the like. They’re super useful.
Sometimes, though, you might want to single out a specific Reminder for special attention. There’s really no starring system or tagging available within Reminders itself, so you’ll have to get creative.
Emergency Exit — Utilities — $0.99
If you’re like me, you never go into a new building without knowing how to leave as quickly and safely as possible. I usually apply this skill at parties, which is why I don’t get invited to very many of them. But Emergency Exit wants to use that same thinking to get people out of airports, casinos, and other public buildings in case the worst happens. It uses Indoor Google Maps and your own location to show you all the ways you can get out, including those on other floors. The app already includes 100+ sites in 12 countries, and the developer plans to keep adding more.
We all aspire to be more than we are, to mold ourselves into our own perfect forms and escape the limits thrust upon us by circumstance or luck. But we can’t always do it on our own. Sometimes, we need someone to come along and nudge us in the right direction and help us achieve our full potential.
Division Cell is a metaphor for that. I think. I mean, it could be, I guess. It’s a minimalist puzzle game about helping unhappy shapes to become what they wish to be. See that rectangle? It really just wants to be a square. That irregular polygon over there? It looks at triangles with tears in its eyes and whispers “Why not me?” into the night.
Why wouldn’t you help them out? Jerk.
Pandora released an update for it’s iOS app today that brings its UI inline with iOS 7’s minimal aesthetic. The free update isn’t just a new coat of paint though as the company also included a neat new alarm feature that allows users to wake up to their favorite Pandora station.
Apple added the ability to change the alarm tone to a song in the new Alarm app for iOS 7, but rather than waking up to the same song everyday, Pandora’s feature allows users to pick their favorite station to wake up to, so you’ll be serenade into consciousness by a new crooner every morning.
The free app update also contains a number of small improvements and bug fixes and is available in the App Store now. Here are the full release notes:
With the busy holiday season upon us, there’s plenty of driving to and from destinations where you’ll get together with family and friends. Cult of Mac Deals has partnered up with Cobra Electronics to assemble a combination that makes the idea of logging all of those miles a lot more bearable.
The Essential Cobra Bundle features the iRadar, an award-winning real-time location alert warning system, and the Cobra Mini Universal Phone Mount, a device that securely holds all mobile devices and adjusts easily. And this bundle can be yours for 45% off the regular price – only $84.99.
China Mobile is finally set to begin taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c later this week, according to advertisements on its website. Apple’s latest smartphone will be one of a handful of devices that support the carrier’s new 4G network.
Hoping to recreate the success Instagram has had doing a similar thing to still images, new app Spotliter Video allows users to add a range of effects to videos shot using iOS devices.
Ever wanted to take a tour of Apple’s secret Industrial Design studio in Cupertino? Now you can — a virtual one, anyway — just for writing a review of my new book about Jony Ive. It doesn’t even have to be a good review!
Located on the ground floor of Infinite Loop II behind frosted glass windows, the industrial design studio is where Ive and his team of design elves cook up Apple’s awesome products.
Few have been inside — even some of Apple’s own executives haven’t seen it. Rumor has it that the former head of iOS, Scott Forstall, wasn’t allowed inside, even when he was developing the iPhone’s operating system. Only one published photograph has ever been taken inside the studio. And no, Blue Peter and the Objectified documentary weren’t filmed there, contrary to popular opinion.
Now you can take a tour. I had a 3-D model of the studio created, based on detailed descriptions and diagrams by former designers who worked inside. I used it to create a video tour of the studio, showing the layout and explaining how everything works. I think the video turned out great, and here’s how you get a sneak peek.
If you think back to the iPhone launch in 2007, one of the things Steve Jobs was most proud of was the fact that the phone didn’t feature any kind of fixed, built-in keyboard in the manner of the BlackBerry or the Palm Treo.
Well, leap forward six years and the Typo Keyboard (largely bankrolled by American Idol host Ryan Seacrest) has either set things back or forwards by introducing a BlackBerry-inspired physical iPhone 5 keyboard, designed for those who spend large amounts of time typing messages and emails on the device.
It was back in the good old days of 2012, that we reported that Apple’s App Store had received more than 1 million submissions.
Well, it took between then and now for that number to mean that there are 1 million apps currently live.
Are you an Android user with $57,000 to spare proving that the gold iPhone 5s isn’t the gaudiest phone around?
Well, you may be pleased then to hear about a new line of blinged-up phones from Swiss designer Alessandro Savelli.
Steve Jobs once said in an interview that everyone in America should learn programming.
Well, if you’re interested in coding, but don’t know where to start, your local Apple Store may be the place for you.
Since revelations of NSA eavesdropping surfaced earlier this year with the Edward Snowden leaks, Apple has been at the forefront of a tech company push-back demanding reforms.
The company is joining a number of other industry giant — including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn and AOL — in setting aside business rivalries to demand a scaling back of government surveillance.
A brand-new subscription news site called The Information published a story this week saying Google would launch a product within the next seven months called Nexus TV.
I believe and hope the story is true. Because I’m rooting for Google in the TV space. Here’s why.
It’s that time of year again.
The time of year where we start looking for the best deals out there. The time of year where we want to get the most bang for our buck wherever we can. Well, Cult of Mac Deals has assembled quite the offer with The Black Friday Mac Bundle. You’ll get 11 killer Mac apps for the low price of $49.99 – a savings of 88%!
As the week ends for many of us (and starts for others), Cult of Mac Deals has a couple of offers that look appealing in more ways than one.
First up is KICK: the Game-Changing Portable Lighting Studio. KICK provides smartphone-controlled studio quality lighting and effects that you can add to all your images and videos – and it fits in your pocket! The other offer is The Icojam Raster Icons Bundle, which features over 4,200 high quality icons for your design arsenal. KICK is going to cost you only $149 and the Icojam Raster Icons Bundle will run you just $35 – but both are available for only a limited time.