Once it was revealed that the new Mac Pro could power up to three 4K displays at once, speculation immediately followed about Apple releasing an updated Thunderbolt Display. Rumors have been scare on that front, and a recent slip up in Apple’s online store indicates that the company may be looking to other manufacturers to supply 4K displays.
Yesterday Apple briefly sold Sharp’s new 32-inch LED monitor in several of its European online stores. After the product was spotted, Apple pulled the listing.
Last night Apple replaced its normal website layout with a fullscreen tribute to Nelson Mandela, the beloved freedom fighter and South African president who passed away on December 5th at the age of 95. The design is reminiscent of the tribute Apple made for Steve Jobs when he passed away.
Apple flipped a switch this week and enabled customers at 254 U.S. Apple Stores to get spammed with micro-location based promotional nagging.
The new system, called iBeacon, is a low cost, low-energy way to achieve actionable “indoor GPS” in which “beacons” use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals to figure out exactly where you are and send messages relevant to that specific location.
But Apple Stores are probably the least-compelling iBeacon scenario I can think of.
Your typical Apple store is a glass box, a single room with a door in the front, a Genius Bar in the back and tables and shelves in the middle. It’s impossible to get lost in a regular Apple Store and trivially easy for customers to find any of the tiny number of products for sale. Also: Apple doesn’t do in-store promotional discounts except for one day a year (Black Friday).
Right now, you participate in the Apple Store iBeacon system by launching the Apple Store app (which I imagine most iPhone owners don’t know exists) and changing your iPhone’s settings to use iBeacon (which most iPhone owners don’t know how to do) and granting permission to get in-store promotions (which most iPhone owners probably have no interest in).
Once all that happens, iBeacon interrupts you to nag you about trading in your old iPhone, and offers help like Microsoft’s Clippy when you’re looking at a specific section of the store: “I see you are looking at iPads? Would you like to know more about the iPad?” (I made up the wording, but the intent of some iBeacon messages is identical to that.)
As a result, iBeacon in Apple Stores mostly annoys. I can think of a hundred scenarios where iBeacon could be incredibly great. But the greatest of these: My house.
If you’re looking for a secure online backup solution, look no further than Carbonite.
There’s a reason they’re a leading provider of cloud backup solutions for home and business users in over 100 countries. And with one free month of unlimited online backup from Carbonite courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals, the files on your computer – photos, documents and music – will be backed up automatically and accessible at any time no matter what device you’re using.
This time on the CultCast: pro television editor and motion graphics artist Mike Gaines tells us the pros and cons of Apple’s new Mac Pro. Plus, Darth Vader has an iPhone 4; Apple makes your face your password; new patents tell a tale wireless charging for your Mac and iDevices; and we pitch our favorite new apps on an all-new Faves ‘N Raves!
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.
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Have you ever wanted to dive into the world of mobile game developments? Then this Cult of Mac Deals promotion is going to be something worth checking out.
In this Mobile Game Development With Corona SDK training course, expert author J.A. Whye teaches you to how to build games for iOS and Android devices utilizing the powerful tools available in the popular Corona SDK. There’s no time like the present to tackle this realm, as Cult of Mac Deals has it available for 49% off the regular price – just 49.99!
The iPhone is a great travel tool, but making your smartphone travel actually smart isn’t about packing it up with dozens of apps you never use or that won’t get you out of the plane seat next to the loo on a crowded holiday flight.
Enter Cult of Mac Magazine. In time for your holiday travels (or maybe escaping from your loved ones for some beach or ski resort time?), we sounded out dozens of road warriors to learn what they really find necessary for the daily commute or continental flight. These black tees and easy-to-launder socks of the app world, if you will, include some surprising picks, many of them free.
If your travel is mostly of the four-wheel variety, you’ll want to read what happens when reporter Alex Heath took smart-driving app Automatic for a month-long spin. (Can it reform his gas guzzling, donut-making driving style?)
In our exclusive Ask an Apple Genius column, we answer your questions about how to get your Mac repaired on the road and how to handle assistance when you live in a town without an Apple store.
You’ll also find our picks for the best in apps this week and what’s really rocking the iTunes store when it comes to books, movies and music.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Apple touts its new iBeacon technology as a boon for retailers, but my first experience with the sensor system left me asking, “Is that it?”
The company activated its iBeacon tech, which uses Bluetooth low-energy, to track users’ iPhones as they roam an indoor space, at 254 U.S. Apple Stores this morning. I visited the Scottsdale Quarter store to see what Apple can do with the technology on its home turf. While you would think Apple would pull out all the stops for a truly spectacular iBeacon debut, I left unimpressed.
The native calendar app on your iPhone or iPad is pretty great, and since it’s built right into iOS and the info is on your iPhone, not the internet, you have access to all your calendar events even when you’re offline or can’t find a network signal.
Now, many of us use Google Calendar to schedule our stuff. Personally, I like that I can sync my calendars across the web and my iOS devices, and share events with other Google Calendar users. But I’ve always wanted to have my events on my iPhone’s Calendar app, too, for the whole “can’t find a network” reason above.
It’s pretty easy, really, to get it all to sync together.
If you’re looking to upgrade your Mac with a high-capacity solid-state drive (SSD), this 1-Terabyte Samsung EVO-Series SSD on Amazon is a great deal. Normally $849.99, it’s just $514.99 and free shipping.
Leather Smart Case byApple Category: Cases Works With:iPad Mini Price: $69
The best iPad case I ever had was the red leather Smart Cover for the iPad 2 (and iPads 3 and 4). It looked and felt great, and only ever got better with age. It’s sturdy (the Lady is still using it on her iPad 3), and while the metal hinge has worn a shiny pattern into the iPad’s edge, it grips way better than the plastic-hinged covers for the Air and Mini.
In short, I loved the leather. To get an Apple-made leather cover for the iPad mini, though, you need to buy the Smart Case, which is a case, and regular readers will know I’m not so hot on cases thanks to their usual bulk and weight.
So how does the crazily overpriced Smart Case shape up? Pretty damn well.
There are a bunch of apps out on iOS for kids, from educational apps to sports apps and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.
We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.
Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of apps on the App Store that they’re using.
This week, it’s a game about an acrobatic hedgehog, Wide Sky from Marcus Eckert. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter Nadine thinks.
Sometimes the name of an app is a woeful understatement.
Cake Ideas doesn’t contain “ideas” so much as the most complicated baking projects I’ve ever seen. Some of the recipes contained within include lists of things you must pick up at a hardware store because the cakes in question are so badass that they have freaking skeletons. It won’t show you how to make all of them — instructions for the one shaped like a wedding gown would probably melt your phone — but if you’re planning a wedding or just like looking at fancy cakes, prepare to be impressed.
The universe has a problem: It has all these planets lying around with no life on them. So obviously, the solution is some kind of forced cosmic osmosis to spread vitality throughout the void.
Abductor Pro by Delicious Toys Category: iOS Games Works With: iPhone, iPad Price: $2.99
That’s the premise of Abductor Pro, anyway. It’s a new iOS title that puts players in the space boots of Antaris, a green alien tasked with grabbing humans from Earth for transplantation to other, less human-y planets. But the planets are picky, and possibly racist*, and they’re very particular about who gets to live on them.
Your job as Antaris is to make sure the right people get to the right place.
Upgraded to the iPhone 5S or 5C but still have a speaker dock with a 30-pin connector? The folks at Auris feel your pain. That’s why they’ve designed a way for you to enjoy your music without ever worrying about dock compatibility again.
The Auris freeDa is a small Bluetooth® receiver that connects to any speaker system via 30-pin connection (old-gen Apple devices) or auxiliary input – providing an elegant, compact way to wirelessly play and control your music from any Bluetooth-enabled device. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $44.99 during this limited time offer.
When you launch Safari these days, you’ll get the Top Sites page, showing all the sites you visit most frequently in Safari. If you’ve disabled this default view, you can get to it with a quick Option-Command-1 in Safari.
Did you know, however, that you can rearrange these Top Sites more to your liking? You can even delete sites you don’t want appearing there, as well.
Steve Jobs introduces the smartphone that changed smartphones. Photo: Apple
Here’s an idea: take one subject like tech with a massive built-in fanbase, and another — like Broadway musicals — with a similarly rabid audience.
Put them together and what do you get? Well, the hope is obviously for a hit, but right now the specific answer is “Nerds” — a new musical from the Philadelphia Theatre Company, telling the oft-repeated story of Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs.
Yesterday, AT&T announced new Mobile Share Value plans that were pitched as making subscriber’s monthly rates cheaper if you already own a smartphone.
It seemed like a pretty honest move. Most carriers bill you a set monthly that includes a fee designed to pay off your smartphone’s full prive over a two year period, which is common knowledge. What isn’t common knowledge is that on most carriers, even if you bring your own smartphone to your contract or fully pay off your device, the carrier will continue to bill you for that smartphone subsidy in perpetuity. It’s super sleazy, so AT&T’s move seemed like a refreshing dose of honesty.
Apple has filed a patent for a “smart dock” which greatly extends the range and capabilities of Siri to give it a far bigger role in your home life.
Entitled “Smart Dock for Activating a Voice Recognition Mode of a Portable Electronic Device” the patent was filed in May last year, but only published now.
Right now, Apple has over $156 billion in its war chest, prompting investors like Carl Icahn to pretty much riot to try to get at some or all of it.
Compared to $156 billion, $16 million is a drop in the ocean of Apple’s money, an amount so small that Tim Cook wouldn’t think twice to even sign the check. But when it comes to Samsung, Apple’s intellectual property arch rival, Cupertino wants to wring out every drop of money it can.
Many of the stats we have about iOS marketshare and demographics come from third-party companies, most of whom are tracking ad impressions within their network. As such, their stats have the potential of being inaccurate, and need to be taken with at least a little bit of salt.
Looks like online ad network Chitika can be trusted though. Earlier this week, we reported that Chitika was now tracking 74.1% of all devices as running iOS 7. Now, Apple is backing those numbers up, and it makes Google look pathetic.
Good news, my friends! If you want to get someone in your life an iPhone 5s in time for Christmas, or just splurge on a new iPhone yourself, good news: in the United States, Canada, and several other countries, you can now get an iPhone 5s shipped to you in just 1-3 business days. Even in gold!
Ah, to be ten years old again — and arrested for stealing £400,000 ($654,000) worth of Apple products.
That is the news coming out of Coventry, in the UK, where a dawn raid saw police arrest a boy and a 37-year-old man for their part in a series of commercial and domestic burglaries.
The Rumor: Retina iMacs really are on the way soon, according to some info in Apple's new Xcode 6 program.
The Verdict: Looks promising. WWDC came and went without a single hardware announcement, meaning Apple has gone over 8 months without a significant new product. Based on code found in the Yosemite beta, it looks like we won't have to wait much longer for sharper iMacs to land on our desks, thanks to a file that lists scaled-up resolutions for such a display. The structure of the list is identical to resolution listings for the Retina MacBook Pro, making this rumor feel more like a sure-thing now.
A new report from analysts Park Associates has placed Apple at the top of the list for most desirable brand in the desktop computer category.
Apple has previously topped the survey for most desired brand in tablets, smartphones, MP3 players, and streaming devices — but this adds one more platform to the list.
