Cult of Mac

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a way out, the coolest app name ever, and some intimidating cakes.

Here you go:

Official 100 Pushups — Health & Fitness — Free

Recently, I realized that I didn’t even want to look at myself without a shirt on. So I downloaded the new official 100 Pushups app, and it claims it can do something about this whole … situation I have going on here. It’s a six-week program with three sessions per week, and it will send you reminders so you don’t “forget” to exercise. First you show it how many pushups you can do, and then it assigns you to a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced program. Somehow, I’m not so out of shape that I didn’t qualify for the Advanced tier.

…ladies.

Official 100 Pushups

Cake Ideas — Food & Drink — Free

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.

Cake Ideas

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.

Emergency Exit

Verticon — Productivity — $0.99

If you need to know how how many inches are in a meter or talk to your non-American friends about the weather, Verticon can help you out. It’s a quick conversion tool that you can use to easily calculate equivalent values for weight, speed, length, time, temperature, and pressure, and it all happens inside a super clean and uncluttered interface. You just pick your units and enter a number for the starting figure, and it spits out the converted number at the bottom. You can also switch between the two with a single tap.

Plus, its name sounds like a Bond villain’s evil supercomputer or a new kind of Transformer, and that’s just straight awesome.

Verticon

Shops! — Utilities — Free ($1.99 for full unlock)

I have reason to believe that some of the people reading this have some shopping to do. And if you’re looking for a way to organize what you need to buy, Shops! is here to help. It’ll let you set up individual lists for different stores, and then you can check them off as you pick them up. And if you’re feeling especially tech-crazy, you could even use it alongside BestRoute Free to make every part of the trip as efficient as it can be.

Other than that part where you have to park and be around all those people. We don’t have an app to make that suck less, yet.

Shops!

For a recent Sotheby’s auction to benefit Bono’s Product (RED) charity, Apple’s Jony Ive and Marc Newson designed a handful of unique products, including a red Mac Pro that sold for 977K and rose gold Earpods that sold for 461k.

The winners of the auctioned items haven’t been publicly disclosed, but it appears that Tony Fadell, the creator of the original iPod and Nest thermostat, may have been the highest bidder for both the Mac Pro and Earpods.

Developer Crytek, known for top-shelf console and PC games like Far Cry and Crysis, is coming to the mobile space with its first free-to-play game for Android and iOS, The Collectables. The game is published by mobile powerhouse DeNA, using its Mobage mobile games platform which allows the game to release on multiple mobile devices and systems.

The game is coming soon for free on Google Play and the iTunes App Store, and it’s based on Crytek’s proprietary CryEngine graphics technology, bringing a new level of visual performance to the mobile gaming space. The Collectables has both tactical and action-based mechanics, letting you lead a squad of unlikely heroes on missions around the globe.

If you wreck a house during a party,someone has to clean it up. House Cleaning has a kind of warped, hoarder-ish perspective on tidying up that will have your kids shoving all their misplaced mess into boxes. But it might encourage children to try to clean up after themselves if all other forms of parenting fail.

After a totally awesome bash, the cutie cleaners in House Cleaning realize they can’t just leave books and CDs scattered throughout the garden of their friend’s home. So, you must dutifully help them sort out the garbage from the decent items before they can move onto another section of the post-party warzone. Plus, they’ll even do a bit of magical yard work when you’re done.

The Elder Scrolls Online, from Bethesda Software, is coming April 4, 2014, and not to the hot new consoles, oh no. The hotly-anticipated online sequel to one of the hottest role-playing games of the past few years is coming to Mac and PC before releasing to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 the following June.

Imagine that–a huge gaming title coming to your Mac before your console-loving friends can get their hands on it.

Throughout 2013 Apple has turned Apple TV into more than just a hobby by beefing up its lineup of channel offerings, but it looks like the company isn’t quite done yet with its new additions for the year.

Apple added four new channels to the the Apple TV this morning including Bloomberg TV which includes free access to a live stream of the company’s coverage as well as access to shows like Bloomberg West, Charlie Rose and many more.

Shops! — Utilities — Free ($1.99 for full unlock)

I have reason to believe that some of the people reading this have some shopping to do. And if you’re looking for a way to organize what you need to buy, Shops! is here to help. It’ll let you set up individual lists for different stores, and then you can check them off as you pick them up. And if you’re feeling especially tech-crazy, you could even use it alongside BestRoute Free to make every part of the trip as efficient as it can be.

Other than that part where you have to park and be around all those people. We don’t have an app to make that suck less, yet.

Shops!

Assassin’s Creed IV launched on consoles this fall and offered all the ship-on-ship action gamers required. Developer Ubisoft, not one to let a good idea go un-reused, has now released Assassin’s Creed Pirates, a sidestory about one man’s rise from prisoner to fearsome buccaneer captain. It ditches the main series’ free-running in favor of a completely seaborne experience.

Does Pirates rake in the booty, or does it walk the plank to plunge the briny deep to Davy Jones’ Locker? Could that last sentence have been any more forced?

You’ll find the answers to these questions and more after the break.

As expected, Spotify has today announced a new music streaming service for Android and iOS that won’t cost you a penny to enjoy. It’s not traditional Spotify streaming as you know it, though; the new “Shuffle” feature lets you pick an album or artist then delivers tracks in a random order.

Ok, sure, this is more of a tip for those with a Macbook Pro or Air, or any other Apple laptop in the last few years with the fantastic tiny power brick design to it.

I know that I’ve struggled for years on the best way to tuck the two pieces of the power cable away. I’ve generally settled on wrapping the thin part of the cord around the included flip-out handles and then wrapping the larger cord around my hand. Sometimes I separate the two cables and do the same thing, so they fit better in a flatter bag or backpack.

This new tip, though, from Twitter user J Cornelius, just plain astonished me when I saw it. Why didn’t I think of that?

Ever feel like the fact that using a tablet during takeoff and landing was banned for passengers — while allowable to pilots — was a bit of a safety double-standard?

Ages ago, my Cult of Mac brother in arms John Brownlee argued as much — and now it seems that European safety watchdogs are on his side, too.

Smartphones are deceptively affordable. If you buy an iPhone 5s unlocked, it will cost you $649 upfront for a 16GB model, yet if you bundle that same phone with an AT&T contract, it will cost you just $199 upfront. The rest of the balance is subsidized by your carrier upfront, and paid off over the next 24 months in monthly installments.

It’s a decent system that results in massive profits for carriers, but at the cost of an upfront payment to Apple. Go figure, though, AT&T would rather just rake in massive profits without that upfront payment… which is why CEO Randall Stephenson is now saying the are “unsustainable.”

Apple’s Stonestown Galleria retail store in San Francisco, will reopen at 8am PST Saturday, December 14 — following an expansion that has increased the size of the location to 7,690 square feet.

Keanu Reeves is coming to Infinity Blade III. Confused yet? So were we. But it’s all part of a special in-game event that will be used to promote Reeves’ new samurai film, 47 Ronin.

One of Apple’s product manufacturers is in the news again for possible workers’ rights violations — and this time it’s not Foxconn.

Instead, the company being investigated is Taiwanese manufacturing firm Pegatron, which earlier this year undercut Foxconn to “steal” a number of Apple assembly orders.

Apple is being called on to investigate the deaths of several workers at the Shanghai factory — one of whom was a 15-year-old who died of pneumonia after working on the iPhone 5c production line for just one month.

Nothing makes a better gift than an iPhone, but if money’s an issue this Christmas, consider going to T-Mobile. Just in time for the holidays, T-Mobile is dropping the upfront price of an iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c to just $0. You can afford that, right?

Between Downcast, Instacast and even the official Apple app, there’s no shortage of great podcasting apps on iOS. For one specifically tailored to iOS 7, though, give Castro a try. At the very least, it’s a beautiful piece of work.

As per Steve Jobs’ much referenced “reality distortion field”, Apple seemingly isn’t subject to many of the rules which govern other companies.

As a tablet-fueled holiday price war is breaking out among laptops, Deutsche Bank has noted that Apple is staying out of it entirely — and the strategy seems to be paying off.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple a patent, describing a means of manufacturing curved touchscreens.

The patent, which was filed back in November 2010, may lend credibility to the rumors that Apple is working on an iWatch with curved glass display to fit users’ wrists, as reported earlier this year.

During the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial, Apple industrial designers revealed that the company had a “strong interest” in featuring a curved glass display for its iPhone as far back as the first generation model — although it abandoned the idea at the time for reasons of cost.

Two years after the rumors first started swirling, and months after the company began recruiting retail staff, Apple has confirmed on its official website that a new Apple Store is indeed opening in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The Apple Store — which will be Germany’s thirteenth — will open its doors for the first time this Satuday, December 14 at 10am local time.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”009A1KAfeSsxSsNx51HnfarKDZc4RINC”]

The myLIFTER is a Kickstarter project for a small-yet-powerful, Bluetooth-enabled winch controlled by an iOS app — and it’s loaded with all kinds of other ingenious features, like programmable distances and the ability to link a chain of myLIFTERS together to lift heavier stuff.

Here’s something you don’t see often: It’s an Android phone sporting a 30-pin connector. Blasphemy! Heretical! Nonsense. PhotoFast’s i-FlashDrive, which allows fast transfer of files between Android and iOS, is here to promote peace and understanding between all — even the heathenish Windows.

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”sM3dAOANKy7ED6ehuGcq8LbhqZYSUDtv”]

Pinning, posting or tweeting one’s way through a wilderness adventure always seemed a little antithetical to me; isn’t one of the reasons for going out into nature to get away from all this artificial electronic junk anyway? Yes, of course, I too am guilty of the odd flirt with Facebook from the bush — but I always feel so dirty afterward.

Yonder, a free app that creates a social circle for outdoor enthusiasts, won’t change how I feel about Tweeting from the trail — but at least it might push me closer to an equilibrium by turning the tables by inspiring me to get out there (boy, are those pictures gorgeous), and putting the outdoors in my social media instead of the other way around.

Facebook Messenger, the standalone app for the social network’s chat system, was updated Tuesday night. The new version of the chat app, which also includes the now-standard bug fixes, adds two new features that can be accessed with a tap to a friend’s chat icon.

All you need to do is tap on a profile picture in any conversation in Messenger to view their Timeline on Facebook. The other option is to call them using Facebook’s voice chat for free.

Today Twitter released version 6.0 of its official iOS app, a pretty substantial update that adds the ability to send photos in DMs. The design of the app has also been “refreshed” with a swipeable timeline interface, making it smoother to switch between Home, Discover, and Activity.

When sending a DM, there’s a new photo icon that allows you to take a picture or choose one from your Camera Roll. Placing such prominence on DMs makes it clear that Twitter is just as serious, if not more so, about messaging as it is discovery.