Has using Gmail in Apple’s default Mail app on OS X Mavericks been nearly unbearable? If you’re like me, your inbox rarely fetches new mail or completely skips downloading certain messages at random. Deleting emails from my Gmail account in Mail has also been incredibly frustrating, as they magically reappear three to four times in my inbox after I delete them. My unread message count is almost always inaccurate as well.

Today Apple finally released an update to the Mail app in the Mac App Store that is supposed to fix all of the problems with Gmail. Hallelujah!

Apple acknowledge last week that some of its new 13-inch MacBook Pros with Retina display units were experiencing issues where the trackpad and/or keyboard became unresponsive after a few minutes of use. Any new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro purchased after Apple’s October 22nd iPad event  may have been potentially affected by the glitch, but Apple announced today that it has published a fix for the problem.

MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update V1.3 can be downloaded via the Mac App Store and promises to fix any glitches where the users trackpad and keyboard stop working on the late 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina models.

Source: Apple

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the Maclocks Lockable Cover for Retina MacBook Pro, and although I had a lot of praise for it, I mentioned it my verdict that there was another Maclocks lock I preferred. That’s the Wedge Lock Bracket, which is the closest you’ll get to an integrated lock for your Retina MacBook Pro.

Older MacBook Pros — those that don’t have a Retina display — have a Kensington lock built-in, but in an effort to save space and make the new models really thin, Apple did away with that, as well as things like FireWire, traditional hard-disk drives, and the optical drive.

That poses a security risk. If you work in a public place, or you frequent to Starbucks to get stuff done while on a caffeine high, then you need a way to prevent your MacBook Pro from being stolen when you leave it unattended.

And I think the Wedge Lock Bracket, which screws into the bottom of your MacBook Pro and almost looks like it’s a part of it, is the best and most elegant solution.

You can join Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas, and (of course) Boromir as they get the Lego treatment from TT Games, the developer of a ton of other Lego-fied video games, including Lego Harry Potter, Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones.

Warner Bros. and TT Games announced Thursday the release of Lego The Lord of the Rings to iOS. In the game, the Fellowship travels to Mount Doom to destroy The One Ring and save the land from utter Lego-style destruction. You’ll get to unlock more than 90 different LoTR characters by exploring Middle-earth, solving puzzles, and battling with the bad guys from Lego Sauron.

Google released an update for its Google Drive iOS app this morning that finally adds iOS 7 support to the could storage app.

The Google Drive update also includes multiple account support so you can switch between personal, work, or any other Google account, similar to what Google has already implemented in its web products. The Dropbox alternative now comes with a Single sign in too so you’ve automatically signed into other Google apps on your iPhone too like YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome and Google+.

The free update is available in the App Store now.
Here are the release notes:

Roman Ruins HD — Reference — $4.99 (special launch price; reg. $9.99)

If you’re a fan of ancient Rome — and who isn’t? — but can’t justify the expense to actually go and look at its old buildings, you might want to have a look at Roman Ruins HD. It’s a new iPad app that collects a wealth of high-definition pictures, virtual tours, and/or 3D overhead shots of over 350 sites. You can read all about the places, and some locations also use the app’s cool Google Street View integration to let you pretend you’re walking through them. But you’ll have to provide your own bored, screaming children, tired feet, and sunburn for the full experience.

Roman Ruins HD

Your school experience might have differed from mine, but I remember one day in Industrial Arts (read: Shop class) when the teacher announced we would all be designing and building bridges. And at the end of the week, we would see whose construct could hold the most weight.

Now, I’m not a trained bridge-maker — in fact, none of us were because we were ninth-graders — so I knew that the next week would be among the longest of my young life because all I knew about structural engineering was something vague about triangles. Triangles are good, I think. Anyway, my bridge sucked. If I remember correctly, it snapped in half and then somehow caught fire.

And I’ve never felt that same sense of personal failure again … until I played Project Peon, an iPad game hitting the App Store today.

I had a jokey book trailer made to promote my new book about Jony Ive, Apple’s head designer. And Apple’s had it pulled off YouTube!

The video wasn’t even public. It was unlisted. I offered a sneak peek to readers who pre-ordered the book, which is being released next Thursday November 14.

The video pokes fun at Jony Ive, Apple and myself. But last night I got an email from Google saying that it had been disabled because of a copyright claim from Apple.

I had hoped that the video was protected by fair use. The rules of fair use are ambiguous, but in general, you are allowed to remix and re-use previous material, as long as the resulting work is “transformative.” If it adds “new expression or meaning” to the original, then it’s fair use. I think the book trailer did. It’s a classic remix of several previous Apple product videos. A parody. And parody is a form of expression generally protected from copyright claims.

If there’s anything today’s Bluetooth speakers desperately need – it’s more bass. Too many of them sound too trebly, which often translates to too tinny. That’s not cool. Thankfully, the guys at Soundfreaq have brought back the beat with Sound Stack – a true audiophile’s dream.

With enhanced Bluetooth, docking for 30-pin connected iDevices and innovative audio enhancements, the Sound Stack speaker is a powerhouse. Fill any room with full, accurate sound thanks to Soundfreaq’s proprietary DubSub™ system, a unique 2.2 speaker configuration that pairs two Kevlar-reinforced drivers and two active subwoofers. Combine that with a tuned, triple-ported housing and their UQ3™ spatial sound enhancement technology and you’ve got an acoustic force to be reckoned with.

And Cult of Mac Deals has the Sound Stack for just XXX during this limited time offer — including free shipping!

RunKeeper, one of the most popular fitness trackers for iPhone, now boasts a number of cool new features that take advantage of the M7 motion coprocessor built into the iPhone 5s — thanks to a new update that hit the App Store today. The app also supports AirDrop, allowing you to share your workouts with nearby friends.

Apple has topped the list of world’s most valuable brands for the third straight year in a row, and is now worth almost twice as much as any other brand on the planet, Forbes reports. The Cupertino company is now valued at $104.3 billion, up 20 percent over last year, which puts it way out in front of Microsoft, Samsung, and even Google.

When Everpix announced its shutdown this week, the Internet Sadness Factor spun the dial up to its highest point since the original demise of Del.icio.us, and the euthanization of Loren Brichter’s Tweetie for iPad. I was a lover of the service, and now I, like you, am searching for an alternative.

The good news is that there are plenty of services trying to solve the same problem as Everpix: how to organize your overwhelming mountain of digital photos. The bad news is that none of them is as easy to use as Everpix.

If you want a great head-to-head comparison of the alternatives, take a look at The Verge’s article from the end of August. This article won’t be a feature-for-feature rundown. Instead I’m going to look at some of the good and bad points of the remaining competition. Hopefully I can help you to find something you’ll like.

According to Reuben Engel over at Tips and Tricks in Mavericks, there’s a potential bug floating around in the latest Mac OS X.

Some folks have been reporting that they have to enter an iCloud password each and every time they open the Mail app. This might be only the folks who used Mail prior to the upgrade, but if one of them is you, here’s a possible solution.

Tiny Tower, Nimble Bit’s effortlessly charming 8-bit tower sim from 2011, has come to a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, a tongue-in-cheek game set in the Star Wars universe that, for some reason, features characters like Yoda, R2-D2, Jabba the Hutt, and Boba Fett, all living in the Death Star forever. Pretty sure that’s not canon, but who cares? This game is super cute.

I’ve always loved Lego’s series of video games. They aren’t exactly deep examples of game design, but they get charm and quick pick-up-and-play, all-ages fun down pat. I’m delighted to see, then, that just in time for the next Hobbit movie, Warner Bros. and Lego have unveiled Lego Lord Of The Rings for iOS.

Back when AT&T first started rolling out its nationwide LTE network in late 2011, it was at least a year behind Verizon. In fact, when the third-gen iPad launched with LTE last year, we were hard pressed to recommend an AT&T model simply because LTE coverage was so lame compared to Verizon.

But things have changed. Thanks to aggressive pushes into new markets, AT&T and Verizon are now pretty much nose-and-nose when total number of LTE markets is compared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrJ4LNZrIkM

I’m a genuine believer that even if you have an iPad, there’s room for an e-ink Kindle in your life if you love to read. No one is questioning the design or hardware superiority of the iPad, but the truth is, it’s the distinction between a general use device and a specialized device. An iPad may game, check email, play video, and more, but a Kindle is perfectly suited to the one task it’s meant for — reading books — in a way that the iPad never really can be.

It’s hard for me to really get too bent out of shape about Amazon’s newest ad for the Kindle Paperwhite (a fantastic e-reader), showing users trying to read books on the iPad and Kindle in bright outdoor light. The iPad is criticized for the constant glare bouncing off the screen, while the Kindle is praised for being easy-on-the-eyes.

That’s all true. The iPad kind of sucks at outdoor reading compared to the Kindle. But in the dark, it can do so much more.

IFTTT has gotten a big update today in the form of proper Reminders and Photos integration for iOS. Before, you could have it do some clever automatic thing when you added a new photo or reminder to the respective iPhone apps, but now IFTTT can create reminders and add pictures to any album. It’s pretty sweet, and would be awesome but for one big gotcha.

The question of whether there exists such a thing as an objectively perfect work of art remains the stuff of artistic scholarship and debates, but one particular artist feels they’ve cracked the question of how to improve a time-honored masterpiece — by adding in a number of Apple products.

If you’re a user of the new, improved GarageBand 10 for OS X, you may want to head over to the Mac App Store to download the latest free update.

Instapaper was once the king of the read later services, but was usurped by fuller-featured upstarts with better features and more liberal sharing policies (Instapaper, unlike Pocket, has no IFTTT triggers for instance). But it is slowly pulling itself back into the future, and this latest iPad update adds support for video and a new Browse function.

Is this enough to pull me back to Instapaper from Pocket? Actually yes, but not for the reason you think.

Apple has clashed with comic creators over its decision to ban Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarsky’s Sex Criminals from selling on the iOS version of Comixology. The title, published by Image Comics, tells the story of two people whose orgasms give them the power to stop time (!).

Somewhat confusingly, at time of writing Apple was still selling the comic via its iBooks storefront.

Doxie has filled a gap in the market with its new Flip, an oddball flatbed scanner that has a see-through bottom so you can flip it over and scan anything, even the wallpaper or carpet. It works a lot like a book-sized piece of electronic tracing paper.

Sorry bird-lovers, this post isn’t about reversing extinction — rather, it’s about DODOcase’s custom case builder coming to the iPad Air.

DODOcase’s book-like cases are pretty spiffy — they’re apparently distinguished enough even for presidential use — so being able to build one to fit any taste makes sense.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple went from being chump of the tech world to champ, and what was the product that turned it all around?

That was the question posed to a panel of ex-Apple designers at a special event here in the city.

The answers might surprise you.