Skype for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has finally been updated for iOS 7. The new release, available to download now from the App Store, introduces a new, “refreshed look and feel,” as well as a number of improvements.
Cult of Mac reader Nancy S. asks, “How can I convert my Appleworks files to Page files. I have many old files that APple didn’t think were important but I could still use them.”
If you’ve been using Macs for a while, chances are that you have a few older documents that you may have created in Appleworks 5 or 6 that you’d like to open on your newer Mac, possibly running OS X Mountain Lion or above.
Here are a few things you can do to try and make this happen.
As you may know, every iOS beta has an expiration date. What happens, though, when you let that beta expire without upgrading to a more recent version? As thousands of people discovered over the weekend, your device gets bricked. If it happened to you, though, don’t sweat it: there’s a fix.
What’s the best selling smartphone in America right now? Duh. It’s the iPhone 5s. And the iPhone 5c? Either second place or third place at every carrier.
There’s something very ironic about an optical drive for the upcoming space-shaped [1] Mac Pro, like adding a fax machine to an iPhone. Better still is the fact that it’s not just any old optical drive, but a bag-of-hurt Blu-ray drive. And best of all is that this USB-connected optical drive is shaped to fit neatly underneath the Mac Pro as if it wasn’t there.
Most of us still don’t have an iPhone 5s, and that’s quadruply true of the hard-to-get gold model, leading to a perception of extremely limited demand. But how accurate is that perception? Not very, according to new channel supply tracking data from Piper-Jaffray. In fact, the iPhone 5s is easier to find two-and-a-half weeks after release than the iPhone 5 was.
Back when the iPhone 5 first came out, there were a surprising number of reports of people whose iPhones suddenly bent themselves. This did not seem to be an issue with accidental damage en masse: most of the people who reported the issue noted that their iPhones bent back at the volume button, and hadn’t been kept in a back pocket or sat on.
It seems with the iPhone 5s, this mysterious predilection towards bending has returned.
Everpix – in case my constant droning on and on about it wasn’t clear enough – is my favorite cloud photo service by far (I’m currently auditioning Picturelife as a possible alternative, but so far it’s not close). Now the web app has been updated to make it even easier to use. So easy and fast, in fact, that you could use it to replace iPhoto on your Mac.
There’s a lot to be said for organizing your photos into folders in the Finder. In fact, if you’re using an app like Lightroom to organize your photos, then you’re already doing this, albeit with a super-helpful cataloging and editing application laid on top.
But you need some sort of organization, right? And that’s where the amazing Dr. Drang comes in, with a couple of shell scripts do the work for you.
This amazing KnowRoaming sticker looks too good to be true, but as it’s from Canada, it must be the real deal. The KnowRoaming is a sticker which covers your existing SIM card and automatically switches your iPhone to a local network provider when you travel abroad, avoiding crazy roaming fees when you travel.
The NewTrent Gladius case isn’t the first iPad case we’ve seen with a grabby handle on the back, but it is the first we’ve seen that uses a leather strap on a plastic case. This also makes it the first case that would let you play a game of “My Little Subway Car.” Just glue the iPad to the ceiling of your bathroom and hang from the strap. For extra realism, piss in a corner a few hours before “embarking” and have family and friends pass through from time to time, asking you for money.
Netflix 5 brings HD video and AirPlay to iPads running iOS 7. You may have thought you had HD video streaming to your retina iPad, but you didn’t. 5 fixes that, and it also lets you throw your TV shows and movies up onto your big screen via Apple TV with native AirPlay streaming.
I love Google Glass, and wear mine almost every day. But Glass could never succeed as a consumer product as is. It’s funky and clunky, fragile and — worst of all — socially unacceptable.
Here are my suggestions the Google Glass team for how to fix all these problems and make Google Glass the killer consumer product of the decade.
I’m always looking for new ways to present my work — whether for live presentations or for showcasing to family and friends. That means finding innovative ways to build slideshows for presentations, and there are times where I’d rather use my own photos than stock photography. And I’m all about efficiency along with effectiveness, so when a tool can offer that then I’m all ears. Cult of Mac Deals has such an offer on the table right now.
If you’re looking for an easy way to create clean slideshow videos out of your photos, it doesn’t get much simpler than Photo Slideshow Maker Pro. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 60% off – only $19.99 – during this limited time promotion.
Apple bought the Google Now-like app Cue this week. The reason has a lot to do with Apple’s strategy to out-Google Google in the coming war over wearable, and also the future of mobile.
Here’s why the Cue acquisition is really going to matter.
We’re hearing a lot more of Laurene Powell Jobs’ name lately, with her new media venture, Ozymandias, various philanthropic efforts, her long-standing involvement with College Track, and more recent involvement in immigration reform.
While her name may be more well known to readers of this site as the widow of the Apple founder and superstar, but as time passes since his death, she has been stepping into the spotlight more often, becoming more visible as the world’s ninth richest woman and an active philanthropist in her own right.
As Saturday is the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing (and we’ve got an entire Newsstand issue to commemorate it), it seemed fitting to take a closer look at the woman who was by his side since 1991.
Having a ton of cables all over your house, desk, or charging station is far from ideal. They get tangle,d they got mixed up, ad sometimes they even get misplaced in the mess. That’s why this Cult of Mac Deals offer is worth looking at – especially if you want to save on clutter, time, and money.
The 3-in–1 Lightning/30-Pin/Micro USB to USB Charging Cable replaces three cables with one that simultaneously charges all of your devices at once. And it can be had for a limited time for only $19!
Gone but not forgotten: this week Cult of Mac Magazine pays homage to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
We speak to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell who knew Jobs back when he was so difficult to be around he landed on the night shift, hear from Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney what it was like to cover tech with such an outsize personality always storming the headlines, share some of the best everyday anecdotes from people who encountered Jobs plus take a look at the best tributes to the man called the Edison of our times.
The latest issue is available in the App Store.
We hope you’ll enjoy it – and keep in touch with comments, questions, shout-outs – we’re listening!
Among his many talents, Steve Jobs was one of the great orators and inspiring speakers of our time. Part sage, part showman, Jobs combined the wizardry of a magician with the skills of a master salesman. On this, the second anniversary of his death, we take a video look back at some of his memorable demos, quotes and speeches.
We begin with one of the most influential demos of all – the unveiling of the Macintosh. While many people have seen the 1984 TV commercial, far fewer saw the event in person. Giving a hint of keynotes to come, a tuxedo-clad Jobs and his magical child steal the show on January 24, 1984.
It’s been two years now, since Steve Jobs passed, so on our newest CultCast, we remember Mr. Jobs, examine how he pushed those around him to their creative bests, and ponder how his absence impacts the company he left behind. And stick around until the end where we’re rebroadcasting, in full, one of Steve’s most special appearances.
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest 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 unadulterated audio enjoyment begin. Show notes up next.
We had the sense that in some ways, we’re talking even more about Steve Jobs than we ever did. Then again, we’re called Cult of Mac and our vision of things has a certain, shall we say, focus.
So we checked out a database called Newsbank to see if our hunch was right. After searching nearly 70,000 U.S. publications from 1999 to 2013 (just up to October 4, mind you) to see how many articles featured Steve Jobs in the headline, we feel pretty vindicated.
Back in 1999, the year Jobs introduced the new Power Mac G3 and the color iMacs and “starred” in TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, the Apple co-founder headlined about 1,000 articles.
The number remained steady with about a thousand articles a year until 2005, when it bumped up to around 2,500. That was the year when iTunes expanded to include TV shows and music videos and Steve unveiled the new fifth-generation iPod that plays music, photos and video.
The number of news articles dedicated to Jobs nearly tripled by 2007, with the advent of the iPhone. In 2011 with his passing, it peaked to over 15,000 articles. That number hasn’t dipped to under 5,000 articles since. And we have a feeling it won’t for some time to come.
There are a bunch of apps out on iOS for kids, from educational apps to sports apps and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.
We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.
Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of apps on the App Store that they’re using.
This week, it’s tons of Disney fun with Disney Infinity: Toy Box, which is free on the app store. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter thinks.
I really hate zombies. They’re gross and smelly and violent, and they get everywhere. So killing them is basically a victimless crime, right? For example: If I were to, say, take a truck and attach a giant mechanical arm to it, and then put a gun on the end of that arm, and then have my buddy drive me around a zombie-infested city so I could sit inside and just fire endless rounds into the undead legion and maybe laugh like a crazy person while doing it, which court in the world would convict me?
No court, is which one.
That’s kinda the premise of Gunner Z, minus the lengthy, sensational trial: You’re the gunner of a suped-up armored truck that drives around shooting zombies and occasionally members of a fringe paramilitary group. It’s an arcade-style, free-to-play shootfest in which you mow down endless waves of zombies in a world gone mad.
And it’s surprisingly dull.
What if you could duct tape your iPhone to your baseball bat, tennis racquet or 9-iron, and use the iPhone’s motion sensors to plot your swing in your favorite sport? It’d be messy, sure, and awkward, trying to adapt your grip over the slab of phone. And then there’d be the hours of scraping duct-tape residue off the screen when (if) you recovered it from where it landed after it flung itself off during that home-run swing. And after all that you’d need an app that actually made sense of all the data.
Forget all that, and keep your iPhone in your pocket. Zepp Labs has come out with a small, light (1-inch square, 6.3 grams) sensor that attaches, via specialized rubber housings, to golf gloves, baseball bats or a tennis racquets; the sensor records your swing in three dimensions, then sends the data directly to a companion app on your iPhone via Bluetooth. The resulting 3D image of your swing can be viewed from any angle, and gets analyzed by the app.
Just as easy-to-use creative apps like iMovie and GarageBand have made it easier to craft music and videos, so AppSeed is poised to make it much easier to build iOS apps. Simply using the app to snap a photo of a rough sketch scribbled onto a notepad or napkin will turn that sketch into working, interactive interface pieces that can be arranged, re-arranged and tested.