I just moved to Germany, which means that I get a lot more weather than when I lived in Spain. There, a quick once-a-week check was plenty to know whether you should get the umbrella from the attic. In Germany, I check every time I want to leave the house.
And now there’s a great app which will will let you customize your own weather notifications, right there on your iPhone.
Imagine Dropbox. That was easy, right? Now imagine that instead of having all your files stored on some NSA-bait server somewhere on the internet, those files are instead stored on a hard drive of your own. And yet they’re still as readily accessible from all your devices via the internet.
That was, admittedly, a little trickier to imagine. But it was worth it, because our collective thinking has somehow magicked the new Transporter Sync into existence.
If, as Tim Cook predicts, “it’s going to be an iPad Christmas” then December 25 has come early to Cupertino, on the back of reports that the iPad Air saw adoption rates of five times those of the iPad 4 following its opening weekend.
Do you like to enjoy the bounties of your own body while you’re on an audio-only Skype call? Who doesn’t, right? And so you’ve probably also “accidentally” enabled the camera and inadvertently revealed your shame at some point, too. What you need, my pervy, flashing friend, is the iShutter, a $15 strip of steel with a hole in it.
If you believe the reports, Apple is currently working on a way of charging iOS devices using solar panels. If you’re not content to wait, however, and want a quick-and-easy means of charging your iPhone or iPad right now, you might want to consider investing in this Indiegogo crowd funding campaign to create a mobile wireless charging solution for Apple products.
Based on the increasingly popular Qi inductive electrical power transfer system, iQi Mobile Wireless is set to bring true, low-cost wireless charging to iOS device. This is done without the fuss of plugging and unplugging wires, since charging is achieved simply by placing your iPhone or iPad on a Koolpuck charger.
Editorially is a web-based text editor that I wish I used. It has a gorgeous interface, lots of great collaborative features, and now it even exports to Dropbox and WordPress, which would let me write pretty much anything I ever need to write in it.
Sadly, I have no need for collaboration, and I swore of writing anything but an email address in the browser years ago after losing work to crashes.
ISkin’s Gravity collection will gather up anything and everything that wanders into its orbit and trap it in its dorktastic embrace. The range consists of two cases, the best of which is the Agent 6 Sling, a utility pack that even an infantryman would find hard to make full use of.
Google’s algorithmically-driven cars may be partially designed to give commuters more time to surf the Internet (using Google, natch!), but if a new report from ABI Research is anything to go by, it’s Apple who have the real early adopter advantage in terms of connected in-vehicle infotainment systems.
ABI Research forecasts that shipments of such infotainment systems, equipped with one or more smartphone integration technologies, will grow substantially over the next five years — reaching 35.1 million units globally by 2018. Of these, ABI projects an impressive 49.8% will be running Apple’s “iOS in the Car”, the standard for allowing iOS devices to work with manufacturers’ built-in in-car systems as unveiled during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference back in June.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has written an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing in favor of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a proposed piece of U.S. legislation that protects against sexual identity and gender discrimination in the workplace. Cook occasionally gives media interviews, but him writing something like an op-ed out from under the umbrella of Apple is pretty significant.
iPads might seem the perfect device for government meetings (if only for a quick game of Angry Birds when things get boring), but not if you’re a member of the UK Cabinet.
This isn’t a review of the Nexux 5. Rather, it’s a review of Google’s new strategy of integration as displayed in the KitKat-running Nexus 5.
You’ll find a gazillion reviews on the Nexus 5 over the next month, some detailing every feature and function. In general, these reviews will tell you that the Nexus 5 is a great phone with a great form-factor and exterior design, incredible screen, good battery life and excellent general performance. They’ll also point out that nothing even comes close to the Nexus 5’s value for money ($349 unlocked). And Nexus5/KitKat has little surprises (such as LTE tethering, even on AT&T).
I’m here not to add yet another review to the mix, but to zero in on what really matters: How Googley is this phone, exactly?
The short answer is: pretty Googley but not Googley enough.
To the extent that Nexus 5 succeeds (is better than other phones), it succeeds with integration. To the extent that Nexus 5 fails, it fails to integrate.
Here’s what I’m talking about.
I picked up one of Apple’s new iPad Airs on Friday. I didn’t think I’d be impressed — but I am. It’s light, fast, and beautifully constructed. Is it the perfect tablet? It’s pretty close. Here’s all you need to know:
And there you have it. It’s almost as light as the iPad mini with the speed and big, beautiful screen of a full-size tablet. Go get one. It’s great.
He may have been misquoted about disliking the new iPads, but Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently had something else to say which might prove even more controversial: that Apple and Google should work together.
“Sometimes I say ‘Go to Joe’s Diner’ and [Siri] doesn’t know where Joe’s Diner is,” Woz told the BBC’s UK technology program Click — adding that, “Usually I find out that Android does.”
Don’t look now, but kids want iPhones for Christmas. Well, a third of them do, anyway.
A survey of 12- to 17-year-olds conducted by Ebates found that an iPhone tops the wishlist. One third — specifically 32% — of those surveyed want an iPhone. (Some 12% want a Samsung Galaxy phone.)
Ho, ho, hold on a second. Is this a good idea? Should children “own” wireless gadgets?
If not, why not? And if so, which one?
Well, I’m going to tell you.
Do you have what it takes to bring Batman back to life?
When Batman is imprisoned alongside Gotham’s most notorious, he must discover Arkham City’s true purpose before it’s too late. Batman: Arkham City is an intense, atmospheric sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum plunges Batman deep into a gothic nightmare from which he will need all his wits, gadgetry and skill to escape. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $14.99!
Here are just some of the gameplay elements that this game offers:
This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine is all about the mobile art revolution.
Thanks to its brilliant touchscreen, the iPhone put a sketchpad in our hands and then the iPad gave us a little more room to doodle. Just a few years on, mobile art has graced the cover of The New Yorker and been hung on the walls of traditional museums.
This issue explores the landscape of mobile art – we profile a host of iArtists on how they bring their work into the real world, take a close look at David Hockney’s iPad works writ large at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and give you tips on how to power up your mobile toolkit with tips on styluses, apps and more.
If you want to get your iArtwork in a museum, in front of kids in a classroom or printed in a book, we’ll tell you how Matthew Watkins, Sumit Vishwakarma and David Scott Leibowitz did just that.
We also bring you the best in new apps, picks from what’s worth your while in books, music and movies in iTunes and our exclusive Apple genius column delves into skirting the store’s EasyPay option and how to escalate to a manager if you need to.
Do you draw, paint, or create fine art with your iPad? Let us know in the comments.
Get your silver bullets and holy water ready dear friends, because our new CultCast: some Dell laptops are emitting a mysteriously pungent smell; iPad Air gets benchmarked, is murderously speedy; our fave photo app brings darkness… out of the shadows; Apple says some 5S batteries are dieing… faster than they should; Tim Cook says upcoming Apple products will blow… your mind; and we chant… aloud our favorite apps so you can vote on which is best… it’s an all new Faves N Graves!
Put down that candy and join us for this 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 and let the spookiness begin.
The fine folks at Gaijin Games released the sequel to their hit Bit.Trip Runner game on Thursday and we can’t seem to put it down.
Originally set to be called Bit.Trip Runner2: Legend of Rhythm Alien, Bit.Trip Run! is a super fun romp through the whimsical environments as Commander Video, the Bit.Trip mascot, of sorts. If you play long enough, you’ll unlock seven other characters, including a pickle, along with 40 different costumes to run with.
Here’s a quick video we recorded to show you the fun.
This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple retail store genius. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.
Answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.
This article first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
It’s easy to think of David Scott Leibowitz, whose work fronts this week’s magazine cover, as kind of a renaissance man 2.0: the artist, app developer and author is a tireless champion of the new when it comes to visual arts.
The iPhone just became much more cost-friendly in the second largest wireless market in the world. India’s third largest carrier, Reliance Communications, has started selling the iPhone 5c and 5s with a two-year contract. Indian customers have previously only been able to purchase the iPhone for its full, unsubsidized price off contract.
India is a key emerging market for Apple, and this move could significantly bolster iPhone sales in the country if it catches on at other Indian carriers.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
Matthew Watkins spends a lot of time fingerpainting, but has also brought his handiwork into the real world on carpets, cars, plexiglass and the more usual prints.
He caught our eye in 2009, when his one-man show went up in an Apple reseller, the first of its kind. His early playful works seemed to dance across the iPad screen or knowingly frame scenes of daily life with his iPhone. Watkins lives in Southern Italy – by way of England and Canada – and has recently been involved in iPad art mash-ups and live fashion shows in Manchester, England and Florence, Italy. He’s also a founding board member of iAMDA (The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists).
We caught up with him to find out what apps have taken over his toolkit, why you should think big when it comes to printing and how he’ll be picking up a shovel for inspiration near Verona, Italy.
Cult of Mac: What have you been up to lately?
Matthew Watkins: 2013 was a year full of travel and fingerpainting, new technology and new collaborations.
In February, I worked on a multi-discipline project with the 154 Collective. I was invited to participate on their two Manchester dates at the Lowry theatre. It consisted of an exhibition, theatrical production (for which we provided collaborative finger painted animations) and concert with live collaborative projected fingerpainting featuring Fabric Lenny, Benjamin Rabe and myself…
March was my biggest show so far. I was given a one-man exhibition at the Verona Natural Science Museum called “Uncontainable Art.”
The show was coordinated by the University of Verona in concurrence with the yearly science event “Infinitamente” (Infinitely) which showcases a new artist every year…It figured four works about three meters high and about 40 medium 50x70cm pieces.
I kicked it off with two days of workshops. It was great to be in such an old institution in an old city. The show ran through June and counted about 15,000 visitors.
CoM: These robotic fossils are a new thing for you. How did that get started?
MW: I was shown the museums collection of fossils from Bolca. It’s the largest collection in the world. Bolca is a very small area about the size of a fair sized pub. A geological fluke of nature with stacked a motherlode of perfectly preserved fossils with unprecedented biodiversity.
Fish fossils have inspired me since I was a child, but this was over the top. I worked on my robotic fish fossils for a couple of months. First I started with robotic fish, then I inserted common everyday elements, including a broken iPhone 3g. Imagining a distant fossilized robotic future juxtaposed with our culture. Maybe 50 to 100 million years from now.
Then a funny thing happened. I got a phone call from the head of the fossil collection at the museum. I went back to Verona and we chatted for two hours about fossils and art. He explained all about the strange origin of the Bolca fossils, and I explained what I was thinking. T
The deeper we got into it the more it seemed like a scientific/artistic collaboration. I had just made stuff up. He told me under what conditions things fossilize and how they might be preserved. For example, a jellyfish is 99% water, but in the right conditions it will fossilize and even retain some of its color.
So I am invited back in November to participate in some digs. I will dig for fossils and inspiration. I hope to be given some samples of Bolca rock from which to make to make my own real, robotic, fossils.
CoM: What else are you currently working on?
MW: Other than the fossils I am painting imaginary cities. I am fascinated by urban decay and architectural artifacts.
CoM: What new tools or apps are you using?
MW: My favorite painting app is by far Procreate by Savage Interactive. It has a perfect painting engine, amazing brushes, awesome resolution and as of recently video playback. Almost all of my recent work is done on it.
Sketchbook Pro is a great app. Paper53 is also a fun app.
Brushes 3 and 4 are no longer supported, but the developer Steve Sprang has made his delightful vector app InkPad open source. This should be interesting. It’s like Illustrator for your iPad. I have used it for a number of logo designs.
One of the coolest apps is Tagtool for doing live shows. It allows you to create looping moving art on multiple layers. You can connect multiple iPads in a session for collaborative work. It’s one of the more expensive apps, but well worth the money. Looking forward to getting my hands on the iPad Air. Sounds perfect for tagtooling.
There are also some fun designing apps like Phoster and Over. You can comp quick fun designs from your art. Sometimes very convincing.
Stylii have improved since we last talked. There are a number of options for a pressure sensitive stylus. I use the Pogo connect. But mostly I just use my finger.
CoM: Any advice for artists looking to get their works off the iPad and into the real world – about printing, finding sponsors, opportunities?
MW: When you create virtual art how you output it becomes very important. I would think beyond letter size glycee prints. Experiment. There are no limitations. Paper, plastics, I have had great results with plexiglass. I have been commissioned to do a glass door, I am looking forward to that.
You should get your work out there, online, social media…make connections. Don’t be timid. People will notice you. Participate in competitions. But mostly, to paraphrase the great cyclist Eddy Merckx, “Paint lots.”
CoM: What are some ways that newbies can become a part of the online community?
MW: Don’t be shy and start uploading. All social media channels are open.
It seems a lot of the community has moved from Flickr to Facebook. It’s a big tribe now with lots of great art and lots of people getting their fingers dirty, so to speak, for the first time.
They are a very sharing lot and you can’t go wrong.
CoM: What mobile art shows or conferences will you be attending in the next six months or so?
MW: The curators at the museum would like to see me set up a show with my work hang side by side with some original fossils from Bolca. I think the result would be intriguing. I think it would make a great story. I am hoping for international interest in this show as the Museum has given me permission to ship the fossils.
I am participating in a show in Phoenix with some of my original core group of fingerpainting friends. That will be nice. The show is to start February 2014 and run for a year.
I am also talking about going back to Bosnia and Herzegovina for another show. I had a great reception last time. I would really like to do workshops and some live painting shows this time.
You can check out more of his work on Flickr or his website.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
Roz Hall is a UK-based artist who employs his iPad as a canvas to create some stunning portraits.
Hall wasn’t always a painter with pixels: he studied Fine Art at the Winchester School of art and is currently at work on a Master’s of Fine Art at the University of Chichester.
He’s worked as a filmmaker and in video production, but his main love since 2010 has been painting, at first on the iPhone, and now on the iPad.
This father, student and self-described beard enthusiast told Cult of Mac about his artwork, the perks of tablet painting and why naked Apple devices are best.
Cult of Mac: What apps do you use, and why? Any apps you started using but don’t anymore? What’s the evolution of your process?
Roz Hall: My two favorite apps are Procreate and Inkpad, and I use them both for two very different things. Procreate is great for recreating that paint or ink feel as it has some wonderful brushes, which are completely customizable if you wish. Inkpad is a vector app, like a stripped down version of Illustrator, but very intuitive to use and awesome if you want to print off something really large! I used to use Sketchbook Pro as it’s a very advanced app and lovely to use, but I feel like the brushes are a little small and I like to start out with a large brush to block in shapes. I prefer to stick to a single brush type for each painting and just adjust the size and opacity, this probably comes from my background as a traditional artist.
CoM: What device do you use? Why? Any covers, cases, or peripherals you prefer?
RH: I started painting on my iPhone 3G but upgraded to the iPad and am now on the 3rd Generation iPad. The screen size is perfect, small enough to paint with on the train without drawing too much attention, and large enough to not feel restricted. I mainly just use my finger but have used a few different styluses.
My current favourite is the Sensu Brush, which has a small rubber tip on one side and an actual brush on the other. I was genuinely surprised at how natural that would feel, as I’d thought it sounded like a gimmick. I have played with a couple that offer pressure sensitivity but couldn’t get on with them, although the new JOT Touch looks promising. I like to have my Apple gear fairly naked as it feels criminal to cover them up, so I just have my iPad in its Smart Cover.
CoM: How do you sell you art work? What are the unique challenges of creating commercially viable artwork on a digital device? The unique rewards?
RH: I have sold a few postcards on Zazzle and have painted a couple of commissions, but apart from that I don’t see it as a hugely commercial venture. I won’t be quitting my day job quite yet. Companies have send hardware to me to use and blog about, including tablets, which is a huge perk.
I was recently flown to New York to attend the launch of the Microsoft Surface 2 and to demonstrate to the press. So if you’re reading this, Apple, I’m available! The art community is getting less suspicious of digital art with artists such as Tracey Emin and David Hockney producing work on the iPad, which is making it easier to get work into serious galleries.
CoM: How do you exhibit your work?
RH: I am fortunate enough to have had work exhibited across the globe but the format changes depending on the gallery requirements. Some like to have your work printed and framed traditionally, where as others like to project or display using LCD screens. The Saatchi Gallery in London exhibited some of my portraits on a large LCD screen but had it in landscape mode, which didn’t look good at all. I have just started to get pieces printed onto perspex glass, it looks gorgeous as the colors are really strong and the glossy look mimics that of the iPad screen.
CoM: What kind of community to you belong to or facilitate for digital artists? Is there an “I make art on an iPad” group you hang out with?
RH: When I started out painting on the iPhone, I got myself a Flickr account and posted them up there. The reaction was incredible and immediate!
That’s what I love about creating work digitally. I have oil paintings which have been seen by maybe five or six people and now just sit in my attic, but when I paint on the iPad, I post up to Flickr and can get 500-600 views in a day. Flickr has a strong community of mobile digital artists, who mainly share their work in groups dedicated to different hardware and apps.
Good ones to check out are iAMDA (The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists), iPad Creative, iPad Art and Fingerpainted. Facebook has iPad Artists and iPad painters Groups, which are great places to share tips and comment on each others work.
CoM: Any advice for artists looking to work on the iPad or other devices? Would you recommend it to new artists?
RH: Painting is a hobby of mine. I have a full-time job, a growing family and I’m studying part time, so if I get an opportunity to paint, I have to be quick. Using the iPad means that I can paint wherever I am and whenever I have a free few minutes. You don’t need to have a room set up with canvases and an easel permanently taking up space. It’s inexpensive too, after the initial hit of the hardware itself, you can realistically paint for as long as you like without having to order in new paint…
You can check out more of Roz’s work at his website.
Getting your website online – and keeping it there – shouldn’t be something you should have to think about once you’ve picked a host. Yet there are circumstances where you have no choice but to think about that. There are a ton of hosting options out there, but one of the most popular is DreamHost because of their reliability, service, and price.
And through this Cult of Mac Deals offer you can get 1 year of DreamHost web hosting plus 2 free domains for 85% off – just $19. That’s one killer deal!
It was pretty clear from the beginning that the iPad was going to be great for drawing. Writing in cursive on a capacitive screen is still an exercise in frustration, but for drawing and painting the iPad is a legitimate new medium, like oils, charcoal or gouache. It even brings something genuinely new to the game: light. Unlike all other painting methods (except perhaps matte painting for the movies), the iPad’s paintings actually glow.
There are many, many painting and drawing apps in the App Store, so here I’ll write about my favorites.
Procreate is the app I use when I paint on my iPad. When I went to a life-drawing class a couple months back in Berlin, I took my iPad mini and my finger along. After getting over the disappointment of a last-minute switch from a female model to an (admittedly hot) male model, and also convincing said model that I wasn’t pointing my iPad’s camera at him, I got some pretty good results.
Procreate distinguishes itself by being easy to use yet powerful. After a brief learning curve, where you discover some of the “hidden” controls (the layers panel was something of a dark art in earlier versions), it all but disappears. The brush size and opacity controls are persistent at the screen edge, and you can long-press to bring up a color picker. Pro tip for all painting apps that have this feature: Paint a few swatches of your colors into the corner and you can quickly sample them with a ling press. This is a lot like having a palette of paints when painting in oils.
Procreate also lets you import images from the camera roll or Dropbox, to use various pressure-sensitive styluses, and to record your paintings so you can play back the creation process step-by-step.
But what really makes it my go-to app is that it’s so easy to use. Head to the settings and you can see a section explaining all the gestures available. Undo/redo, clear layer, zoom; plus a whole lot of gestures to use when doing things like managing layers. This means that you never really have to stop painting and think about the interface. Kind of like a real canvas and paint.
Brushes was one of the first drawing apps for the iPhone, and then the iPad, and it’s still one of the best. Brushes first distinguished itself by great brush feel, and it still has that. The basics of the app are similar to any other painting app, but Brushes has, well, great brushes. The textures are excellent, and the responsiveness is top-notch, and it really is an app you can lose yourself in for hours, painting away and zooming onto the details over and over. I lost many hours to the app when I first loaded it onto an iPad, although these days I prefer Procreate, as the brushes are more plentiful and, well, now I’m just plain used to Procreate, which counts for a lot.
Still, Brushes remains the only app that, as far as I know, was used to paint a New Yorker magazine cover.
All of these painting apps are bitmap apps. That is, a 1000×1000-pixel canvas has 1,000,000 pixels. And if you zoom in past a 1:1 view, those pixels will get blocky or blurry.
If you use a vector app like Inkpad or iDraw, then your strokes are described in terms of length and direction. If you sketch a straight line that is 200 pixels long and 20 pixels wide and runs at 40 degrees from the horizontal, it can be described mathematically. And when you blow the picture up to the size of the building, those same lines and shapes can be mathematically expanded too, redrawn at the new size with no pixel artifacts. This also means that file sizes are usually much smaller, as they don’t need to record every pixel’s color.
My favorite of the two is Inkpad, and it’s also the only one of the pair that has been updated for iOS 7 (iDraw’s last update was way back in February 2013). Inkpad is from Taptrix, the folks behind seminal iPad painting app Brushes (more on that in a sec).
The best thing about Inkpad is that you don’t need to know anything about vectors to use it. Anyone who has had to learn Adobe Illustrator will know how frustrating vector apps can be. Inkpad on the other hand is as intuitive as a bitmap painting app. You can paint strokes onto the canvas, and then, because they’re vectors, you can grab the little Bezier handles and adjust the length, the shape and son on. Everything you’ll need is there, including text tools, layers, blend modes, and tools for arranging all the elements by depth.
You can also import photos (although clearly you can’t do any vector voodoo on them).
But the best part of Inkpad is like the best part of Procreate: ease of use. Somehow the app seems to just know when you want to select a whole shape with a tap, or to just drag one corner of a line over a few pixels. The toolbar can be dragged anywhere, and it runs like a flash (although not like Flash, thank God) even on an underpowered iPad mini, and you can even use the camera to grab quick snaps for reference purposes.
Here’s a radical idea: what about using a pen and paper to draw, and then somehow adding that to your iPad for editing? That’s the idea behind Inkflow. Or rather, that’s one small feature of Inkflow, a note-taking app for the iPad.
Inkflow is a drawing app in its own right, although it’s really aimed more at sketching and handwriting than at full-on painting. There are several brushes, plus colors, zoom and editing features, and even a text tool. But it’s the vector import which makes the app really special.
Draw your pictures or diagrams on paper, using color if you like, and then use the “Inkport” feature to import your sketch using the iPad’s camera. It is converted into Inkflow’s vector format on import, and you can then select and resize the picture as you like. You can’t edit and adjust the lines like you could in an actual vector app, but it’s a pretty great way to mix paper and pixels.
It’s also free, although you’ll have to pay to get brushes, colors and Inkport.
Tayasui Sketches is a minimal sketching app, although that doesn’t mean that it’s missing features. Rather, it offers the usual set of tools, only it does it in a very unobtrusive manner.
The tools are standard – pens, pencils, brushes – but in the same way that Penultimate offered the best iPad ink for a long time, so Sketches has a fantastic painting engine. The airbrush is especially good.
The IAP adds a color-picker tool (long press to bring up the loupe), more brushes and brush controls (wet vs. dry, different tip sizes). Whatever the paid status of your copy, you can export pictures by flicking them into an envelope (it’s pretty cute) and zoom/undo/redo/move with pinches and swipes.
Like many of these apps, Tayasui Sketches is free, and the extras come in the form if an in-app purchase. Many people moan about this, and I would prefer it if I didn’t have to restore my damn purchases every time I reinstall it, but IAPs are the modern equivalent of demo periods, so we should just quit our whining already.