Cult of Mac

Narrated running is probably the best way to describe the new Story Running feature embedded in Runtastic’s updated app, but the outfit’s new Libra scale is more interesting.

Apple is continuing to build its manufacturing presence in the U.S. with a new plant in Mesa, Arizona. The project is projected to bring 2,000 local jobs and the building will be completely powered by renewable energy.

Sapphire glass will be made at the Mesa plant in conjunction with GT Advanced Technologies. Apple uses sapphire—a material that is incredible durable—in small parts of the iPhone, like the protective glass over the camera sensor. The Touch ID sensor in the iPhone 5s is also made of sapphire.

Finnish developer and all-around success story Rovio Entertainment announced Monday a new cross-over collaboration with Korean-based GungHo Entertainment, the makers of the almost as highly successful match-three mobile game, Puzzles and Dragons.

The pissed-off avians will show up in the popular role-playing/color matching mashup as an Angry Birds-themed dungeon from November 18 through December 1 of this year. You’ll get to challenge the Angry Birds as enemies in the dungeon, in contrast to their hero role in the Rovio-produced titles.

If you’ve always wanted to immerse yourself as a Jedi in the Star Wars universe, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is poised to deliver The Force your way. In these two epic intergalactic adventures – Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast – you’ll get the chance to use The Force time and time again. And you’ll get to do so for only $6.99 – a savings of 65% – with The Star Wars Jedi Knight Gaming Pack.

Western Digital has been emailing customers and warning them about hard drives “experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks.” The problem seems to effect multiple kinds of drives, including the company’s popular MyBook lineup.

According to Western Digital, the incompatibility with Mavericks isn’t a hardware-level issue, but something to do with the software that is shipped with the drives it sells.

When the iPad Air went on sale, it was discovered that T-Mobile was offering 200MB of free data per month to customers who bought the tablet on its network. What a steal! On top of that, you can walk into T-Mobile and pay $0-down for a 16GB iPad Air. T-Mobile all of a sudden looked like a much more attractive carrier choice.

But if you think you can just walk into a T-Mobile store, pay nothing up front, and walk out with a new iPad and free data plan, you are sadly mistaken.

While Apple hasn’t released any official sales numbers for the iPad Air yet, AT&T is reporting that it saw over a 200% increase in iPad activations during the last three days.

One of the better ways to see what’s coming up in any calendar is the list view. It’s a handy way to see, at a quick glance, the major events of the next few days.

Unfortunately, Apple has taken this view from its new iOS 7 Calendar app and hidden it away.

Here’s how to get it back.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for a dramatic Blade Runner-style soundtrack, but this new shooter from publisher Crescent Moon Studios and developer Tasty Poison Games (Pocket RPG) looks pretty darn exciting.

First person shooters are hard to do well on iOS, especially with a lack of physical buttons, but if anyone can do it right, these folks can. Of course, with the possibility of a physical controller due to Apple’s new controller code in iOS 7, things can only get better.

Check out the trailer to see the game in action.

Most developers have had their iOS 7 apps ready for weeks but Apple is still racing to update all of its own apps to mesh better with iOS 7’s new look. The Remote app for iPhone and iPad is the latest Apple app to get the iOS 7 treatment as Apple just published version 4.0 to the App Store.

The updated app comes with an all new iOS 7-style look as well as support for iTunes 11.1 but there’s no mention of new features in the release notes so it looks like we’re just getting a facelift for now. iPhone and iPad owners can use the device to control Apple TV as well as remotely access computers on the same Home Sharing account to play music, queue up additional songs, create playlists and more.

The new update can be found in the App Store for free.

Source: iTunes

I’m a big fan of physics-based puzzles, but the trouble is most of them relate to altering an object’s trajectory as it falls rather than manipulating things.

Drei by Etter Studio GmbH does away with falling oranges and rolling balls and offers instead increasingly difficult building block puzzles that require you to balance objects, shapes, and negotiate with other players.

While Apple has aimed to keep the design of the iPhone consistent over the last six years – same screen size, same form factor, same metal band antenna on the outside – Google has managed to keep fans excited by providing different variants of its flagship Nexus device every single year.

Sure, all those different screen sizes and hardware changes have helped push the state of horrific fragmentation in the Android market, but at least fandroids get new design choices every year. To celebrate the release of the Nexus 5, our friends over at GadgetLove created an awesome GIF  GIF showcasing how the Nexus has evolved over the years.

Check it out below:

Coloring Pages for Zane — Education — Free

Coloring Pages for Zane is a simple app that contains coloring-book-style pages you can send to your AirPrint-enabled printer with just a few taps before you let your little ones loose on them with all the crayons. It’s so simple, in fact, that the kids can run it themselves, and that’s by design. The developer made it for their autistic son so that he could easily print out his own pictures and get right to the important business of coloring them in. It launches with a selection of images; additional pictures are available via in-app purchases. But that warm feeling you’re getting in your heart right now is free.

Coloring Pages for Zane

We’ve barely had the iPhone 5s in our hands for more than a month, but is it too early to start dreaming up what the next iPhone will look like?

Recent rumors have claimed Apple will beef up the screen size on the next iPhone to 5-inch, so one of our favorite concept artist, Martin Hajek has released some new concept images of a golden iPhone 6 that sports a 4.8-inch screen by upgrading to an edge-to-edge display so that the size of the iPhone doesn’t get bigger as well.

The mockup is missing Apple’s fancy new Touch ID feature which will undoubtedly be available on the iPhone 6 and future iPhones, but the all-metal backing and thinner design would be excellent improvements to go along with a bigger display, even if you hate that its dipped in gold.

Here are a couple other looks at Martin’s gold iPhone 6 concept:

Developer Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien quickly became one of my favorite games this year when it launched for consoles and PC back in February. It had a lot of personality, precise gameplay, and was just challenging enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to be frustrating.

The iOS port, Bit.Trip Run!, keeps the original’s levels, fantastic graphics, and entertaining narration from voice actor Charles Martinet (the voice of Nintendo’s Mario). So it’s mostly the same game. But it drops the necessarily accurate button controls in favor of taps and swipes for the mobile platform, and that really cuts the game down a few notches. I’d almost say that it makes it unplayable, but that’s not quite the case.

But it does take a great deal of patience to play well.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer puts high-speed 4G LTE Internet access in the palm of your hand!

With the Freedom Spot MiFi you can take internet connectivity with you wherever you go – all at blazing fast LTE speed. Connect up to 10 of your mobile devices at once to surf, stream, game, and update with no restrictions. With speeds up to 25mbps, you can even stream HD videos from Netflix. And Cult of Mac Deals has this revolutionary device for only $199 for a limited time – including free shipping! Now, Sprint’s recent upgrade to Spark LTE, this device will be faster than ever.

Last week, we reported that Samsung had beaten Apple and claimed the top spot in J.D. Power’s latest tablet satisfaction survey. On closer inspection of its findings, it was unclear how the South Korean company had earned first place after its tablets received lower ratings than the iPad in so many areas.

J.D. Power has since explained why that’s the case.

Google has tightened security inside the latest Chromium build for Mac, blocking access to all of your saved passwords until you’ve provided your system password. Under previous releases, users simply had to enter a special address to access all of the login credentials they had saved inside the browser, providing access to anyone who uses your computer.

BlackBerry has today announced that it has scrapped plans to sell its hardware business, and that it will be replacing current CEO Thorsten Heins instead. The Canadian company has also secured $1 billion from a group of investors led by Fairfax Financial, and its CEO, Prem Watsa, will become lead director.

You may know that your Mac can send you notifications via the native Notifications Center, introduced in OS X Mountain Lion. You can get notified via a pop up badge or alert window for various activities, like iMessages, Calendar events, FaceTime calls, or Game Center achievements, just to name a few.

In Mavericks, you can even get these messages when your screen is locked with a password via the Privacy system preferences option. Your notification alerts will show up on top of your lock screen.

But what if you want to preserver your privacy when you lock your Mac’s screen but you don’t want to enable Do Not Disturb mode?

The iPad Air might be almost a third lighter than the iPad 4, but Apple insists it gets all the same battery life as previous generations, and it looks like the evidence proves it: not only does the iPad Air get the same 10 hours of battery life in general, but it also gets an incredible 24 hours as an LTE hotspot.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has hit out at the National Security Agency (NSA) over claims that it has spied on Google’s data centers to gain information about its users. Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal that the allegations are “outrageous” and potentially illegal if true.

Apple’s design patterns are pretty much set at this point: every other year, they radically overhaul the look of the iPhone or iPad.

Next year’s iPhone 6, then, will be a major departure from the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s, and designer Federico Ciccarese of Ciccarese Design has a good idea of what to expect: a slimmer device that looks a lot more like an iPad Air or iPad mini called (yup) the iPhone Air.

Not many of us have 4K devices yet. A 4K Ultra HD TV would pack about 33 million pixels, more than six times the resolution of even the MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

Yet 4K is coming, and when it drops, Netflix CEO Reed Hasting doesn’t want his service to be caught with its pants down, saying during a recent earnings call that he hopes his company will be “one of the big suppliers” of 4K by the time it launches in 2014.

To make sure they’re ready for the crush of 4K Ultra HD TVs next year, Netflix is already streaming some 4K content.

iOS 7 was a major reinvention of Apple’s mobile operating system, but despite all of the new colors, animations, and fonts, it’s still just a grid of apps in a day in which every other smartphone OS has moved on.

Nepalese designer Sangam Bhandari thinks Apple can — and should — further. In his latest concept, he imagines a new home screen that is more than just an app launcher, but something like a mash-up between Notification Center and the current Home Screen.

We think it looks great. Check it out after the jump and tell us what you think.