Cult of Mac

It seems a lot of users who upgraded to iOS 7 last month are having issues with iMessage. Apple’s Support Communities forums are full of complaints from disgruntled iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users who cannot send or receive iMessages anymore, and you’ll find plenty of people voicing their frustrations on Twitter, too.

Initially it seemed Apple’s servers were the problem — as they often are when iMessage has problems — but that’s not the case. Instead, it appears to be a simple bug that can be easily rectified with a quick bit of tinkering. Here’s what you need to do.

Today’s the day you’ll probably have to start paying for iCloud storage, folks — if you’re a former MobileMe subscriber, anyway. After giving us 25GB of iCloud storage absolutely free for two years, Apple has now ended the offer and dropped all non-paying iCloud users down to the basic 5GB plan.

If you need more than that, you’ll have to sign up for a subscription from today.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear has been on sale for a number of weeks now, but today the South Korean company lifted its embargo on reviews. If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not you should spend hundreds of dollars on one, then, now’s the time to find out.

To make things a little easier for you, we’ve put together a roundup of the biggest and best reviews so you don’t have to trawl through them yourself.

If there’s one thing PC users have the hardest time with when they use my Macbook Air, it’s the trackpad. What seems completely common and functional to me leaves them baffled and confused.

“How do I click the mouse?” they ask, tapping away in frustration, not knowing that all you need to do is press down a bit and, you know, actually click the thing.

If you’re one of those folks, or you just like to be able to tap the trackpad without actually pressing it down, here’s how to do so.

Clear for iPhone, the wonderful to-do app from Realmac Software, has now been optimized for Apple’s latest iOS 7 software. It features the latest Clear design — which was originally debuted in Clear+ last month — coupled with all of the functionality that makes Clear one of the finest to-do apps for iOS.

What’s more, Clear is now available on your iPad.

As I write this, I’m sitting in Stuttgart airport waiting to take a connecting flight to my new home in Leipzig, Germany. And what is my biggest fear in my new life? The unbearable winters? The fact that smoking is still allowed in bars and restaurants in 2013? Nope. The scariest thing is that I may not be able to use BitTorrent to download the latest TV shows, thanks to pesky German traits like upholding the law.

If only there was a German equivalent of the new BBC download-only iPlayer app.

There are two things I love about these Kransen headphones from UrbanEars. Actually, there are three: that woven cord looks great in red. The other two are cable-wrangling tricks that would be welcome on any pair of earbuds: not that Apple would ever make an accessory so useful.

Pixa is our favorite alternative to iPhoto for the Mac, and it just got a solid v1.1 update. In addition to lots of polish (some of which you will have already seen in the recent 1.0.x updates), Pixa now makes snapping images and searching hem a whole lot easier.

To paraphrase serial sheet-folder Jill Cooper, one of the biggest challenges you’re going to face in your life is to control your cables. And although there’s no Jill Cooper to teach you how fold your cables into a perfect bundle, there are now two new gadgets to make things a little easier. They’re called the Rolio and the CableDrop Mini, and they’re from BlueLounge.

Some lucky folks at Verizon were recently able to upgrade to a new phone without losing their unlimited data plan. Color us totally jealous.

This was the result of a glitch, said Verizon, and not a change in policy like some may have mistakenly hoped for.

Verizon told AllThingsD on Monday that it would, however, honor the unlimited plans of customers that were able to upgrade without the dreaded limited data plan of doom.

Over the last couple of years Samsung has earned itself a reputation for using Apple products as “inspiration” and then copying them in the most blatant ways possible.

The fury of Apple fans was ignited again last week as Samsung was caught shamelessly copying the Apple’s new golden iPhone  creation – the golden iPhone 5s – when the South Korean smartphone maker announced it would be selling a gold variant of the Galaxy S4.  Apple fans were quick to dismiss the smartphone as another copycat move,but Samsung took to its corporate blog to explain that it’s totally not copying the gold iPhone because they’ve made tons of gold phones in the past (kind of).

The new iPhones have arrived and there’s no time like the present to ensure that you protect your new device from wear and tear. Cult of Mac Deals has a great offer lined up for those who’ve picked up an iPhone 5S (or  have an iPhone 5) so that they can protect from even the worst of scenarios.

Spigen has been developing some top-notch products (check out a review of one of its screen protectors here) and for a limited time we’ve got the latest offering from the company: The iPhone 5S Tough Armor Bundle – featuring the Tough Armor case & popular all glass screen protector (GLAS.t). And, we’ve got it for 50% off the regular price – just $36.99.

Remember Lodsys? The small LLC that basically invented the term ‘patent troll’ made news in 2011 when it started going after App Store developers for infringing on obscure, abstract patent filings. It sued small app developers for outrageous amounts because it claimed to own the definitive patents on in-app purchases and the general concept of an upgrade button.

The issue with Lodsys was that its sole business was buying up patents in bulk and using them to sue the pants off devs. Many devs don’t have the resources to finance a legal battle of that nature, so Lodsys would then settle with a lot of its victims outside of court. Apple went up to bat for its third-party devs in court a couple years ago, and today Apple’s motion to intervene was thrown out.

If you’ve been itching to get your hands on a 126GB iPad, Apple has started offering refurbished models at a discount in its online store. The fourth-gen iPad that was released back in January is available in a 128GB WiFi/Cellular configuration that normally prices at $799/$929 retail.

Now Apple is selling refurbished 128GB iPads at a 15% discount of $679 for WiFi-only and $689 for Cellular. That’s a great deal when you consider that refurbs are Apple-certified models that come with a 1-year warranty.

New iPads are supposed to arrive in October, so if you care about having the newest hardware, then it’s best to wait. Otherwise, take advantage of this discount Apple is offering.

Source: Apple Store

Today Dropbox released an update to its Mac app that adds the ability to automatically upload all screenshots you take. The feature is called Camera Uploads in Dropbox’s mobile apps, and now it’s finally coming to the desktop.

Not only can screenshots be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox, but a share link for each image is also pasted into your clipboard as screenshots are taken.

Another addition in today’s update is a new import tool that lets you transfer photos from your iPhoto library to Dropbox.

Source: Dropbox

iOS 7 comes with a brand new set of Siri voices. Here in the US, there’s an updated female voice, as well as a new male voice included in the latest and greatest mobile operating system.

Did you know, though, that Siri is proud of her new voice? Well, just let him know that you like her new vocal apparatus, and you’ll see a few fun new easter eggs as answers.

These days, small, pocketable Bluetooth speakers are de rigeur, but what about the veritable boombox of 80’s yore? What for the man for whom Beats are not enough, but must march across the subway platform with as big a driver as possible pulsating against is ear?

Harman Kardon’s Go + Play Wireless is for the person who wants more oomph than a Jambox, and doesn’t care if it takes up more space as a consequence. It’s for the guy who loves the boombox aesthetic, and thinks all of these pocketable speakers are losing the plot. It’s a beautiful Bluetooth boombox that looks just as good in the living room as it does blasting tunes while camping or at the beach, but a few strange design decisions might make it a tough sell to some, especially at the price.

As the battle for global smartphone supremacy has matured into just a two company battle pitting Apple against Samsung, Cupertino is looking to add more between itself and its archenemy by becoming less dependent on Samsung to build chips like the A7 processor featured in the iPhone 5s.

While Apple can’t totally rid itself of Samsung components just yet, a new report  claims that Apple plans to lean on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to handle more of the manufacturing of the A8 processor next year, rather than giving all the work to Samsung.

The endless runner genre might be in a bit of a rut. You run, run some more, kick that thing, avoid that other thing, jump over that third thing … it’s all getting a little predictable.

Luckily, we have games like Boson X to mix things up a bit. Its developer bills it as a “rotational runner,” and it takes an interesting approach to adding to the genre: subtraction. Boson X doesn’t add new features like lasers or parkour like, for example, Runbot; it’s actually very minimal. And therein lies its strength.

Given that it’s the most popular cross-platform messaging service on the planet, you might have thought that WhatsApp would have a new redesign ready to go when iOS 7 was made available to the public earlier this month, but as things stand, it’s still rocking its old look.

Presumably the team behind it are hard at work on the update as we speak, however, and hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for it. But in the meantime, check out these awesome WhatsApp for iOS 7 concept designs that give us a taster of what might be in store for our favorite messaging app.

The iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c will soon be available on Boost Mobile, according to two promotional posters that have been leaked today. Both devices will be supported by Boost’s Shrinking Payments plans, but their official release dates and price tags are yet to be confirmed.

I spend a ton of time at the computer keyboard, typing consistently as I write post after post. But there are times when I like to get hands-on with another activity that I enjoy: playing guitar.

Now I’m not that great of a guitarist (I can handle myself sitting around a campfire and have learned to play quite a few tunes), so taking some instructional classes wouldn’t be all that bad of an idea. And doing so from the comfort of my home would be an even better idea. It’d be even better if I could take them whenever I wanted.

This offer from Cult of Mac Deals makes all of that possible. With The Complete Guitar Lessons Course you can learn how to play the guitar at your own speed for only $59 – a savings of 70%!

You can now purchase the iPhone 5s from Apple.com and collect your order from your local Apple retail store. The Cupertino has the brought in-store pickup service back to the new device following a very brief stint this time last week — but who knows how long it will last.

When you’re writing up a long document, or even in the middle of a simple one, it’s good to be able to move around and edit in the text without taking your hands off the keyboard. All the little switches from keyboard to mouse and back again take up valuable time, and–perhaps more importantly–force you to change the way your brain is processing information.

Using the arrow keys is a good way to move the cursor around, and of course there are the standard Command key shortcuts, but did you know that there’s some legacy keyboard shortcuts that come to us all the way back in Emacs, a popular text editing program for Unix, the operating system Mac OS X is based?

There are, and here are a few good ones. I’ve tested them in Text Edit, but chances are several Mac text editing programs will take advantage of these.

Samsung has today announced that its cross-platform ChatON messaging service now boasts over 100 million users across Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and Windows Phone. It’s taken just two years for the service to become more popular than BBM, once one of the biggest names in instant messaging, and it continues to grow at an impressive rate.