Cult of Mac

Gaming on the Mac has become increasingly popular, with the advent of services such as Steam (highlighted in a recent Cult of Mac Deals offer for Borderlands 2) and the renaissance of the Mac as a primary household computer. And with games on gaming consoles hovering around the $50 mark, gamers are looking for other opportunities to “get their game on” withoutbreaking the bank in the process. The Mac has become another platform where this exploration can be done – and Cult of Mac Deals has an offer where the impact on your pocketbook will be absolutely zero.

That’s because Cult of Mac Deals has assembled The Freebie Gamer Bundle, which is available for a very limited time.

Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner has been welcomed as a “major step forward” by Biometrics expert Philip Smith, whose company pioneered the technology a decade ago.

“It’s a huge milestone in bringing fingerprint-based biometrics to the mainstream,” he said. “I’m thrilled to see this.”

Of course a biometrics would welcome an advance like this. But Touch ID has already set off a firestorm of controversy among privacy advocates who say there could be lots of Big Brother implications, especially following revelations by Der Spiegel Online that the N.S.A. already has the ability to capture photos, GPS data, contacts and texts from iPhones.

This is absolutely adorable. Mike McCue, the co-founder of Flipboard, bought his 14-year old son a new MacBook Air for his birthday. The kid wasted no time in setting it up, creating a new Apple ID and entering his birthday when prompted. Then this happened: his MacBook Air gave the junior McCue a birthday cupcake, complete with candle, to wish him a Happy Birthday. It really is the little details that Apple gets right, isn’t it?

Via: Finer Things

Do you remember this story, about how China’s network of scalpers were booking up all of Apple’s Genius Bar appointments en masse and then re-selling them on the black market to the highest bidder?

Well, Apple’s figured out a way to partially thwart it: they’re now asking you to sign in with your Apple ID if you want a Genius Bar appointment.

Over the past few years, Apple has always told people when they can start preording the next iPhone after it has been announced. This year, though, Apple is allowing preorders of only the iPhone 5c, and not allowing preorders of the iPhone 5s at all. And even on the iPhone 5c side of things, Apple is being a little obtuse, not actually clarifying when on Friday, September 13th preorders will begin. But now, thanks to the big mouths of Apple’s carrier partners, we know exactly when.

Good news for everyone: battery life for both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be better than the iPhone 5, if new FCC filings are anything to go by.

Remora is a super-simple “case” for the iPhone 5/s which does two things:

1. Protect your iPhone from drops onto its corners (as long as it hits one of the two corners covered) and
2. Holds two credit cards.

Actually, there might just be a third thing – the Remora looks a lot like the tire levers I carry in my bike-repair kit, so maybe it could be used to get the tires off your bike?

Basil, still hands-down my favorite recipe app for the iPad, is going 2.0 just in time for iOS 7. And man, if you thought the original was clean, slick and easy to use, then you’re going to be blown away by v2.0, which developer Kyle Baxter tells me is “basically an entire new app.”

Blur is a universal iOS app which does one thing: blurs your pictures for use as wallpapers. But it’s single-function design doesn’t mean that it can only be used for one thing.

Looking forward to OmniFocus 2 on your iPhone? Then you can also look forward to ditching OmniFocus 1 and paying full price for the update. And if you do want OF1, then you’d better buy it now, as it’ll be disappearing as soon as the new app is launched.

OmniGroup, the developer behind OmniFocus, OmniOutliner and OmniEverythingElse, has laid out its plans for dealing with the lack of upgrade pricing in both of Apple’s App Stores. And they sound completely reasonable.

To the surprise of no one, Samsung’s co-CEO, Shin Jong-kyun revealed that the company is already working as hard as it can to make its own 64-bit processor to match the iPhone 5s’s new A7 chip.

What happens when Brian Holmes of Pad&Quill decides to make actual bags for Macs and iPads? You get Intrepid Bags, leather satchels for “him and her” which are made with an almost absurd attention to quality. There are two models right now: the Journeyman (For Him) and the Lillium (For Her).

Apple is well known for its gorgeous retail stores that draw impressive crowds on launch days, but the actual work that goes into the construction of each Apple Mecca is pretty impressive in its own right. An internal Apple video has been published on YouTube highlighting all the details that went into the construction of Apple’s pop-up store at SXSW for the launch of the the iPad 2.

Check it out:

We’ve already seen Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious prank with the new iPhablet iPhone, but Conan O’Brien just released his own video about the mastermind behind Apple’s latest design improvements,  and why the gold iPhone is the BEST! BEST! BEST!

RSS isn’t dead yet. Version 2.0 of Reeder, the highly anticipated sequel to the popular RSS app, has launched in the App Store as a universal download for the iPhone and iPad.

We’re living in a post-Google Reader world now, so Reeder 2 features support for some of the most popular paid and free syncing services: Feedbin, Feedly, Feed Wrangler, Fever, and Readability.

More details have surfaced on Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor built into the iPhone 5s’s home button. Apple briefly demoed the feature onstage at Tuesday’s keynote, and now we know a little more about how it actually works.

Security is obviously a hot topic for Apple, and the company is stressing that Touch ID is a more secure form of authentication than simply entering a password.

Well look at that! Just one day after Apple announces that it’s going to replace the iPhone 5 model with not one, but two new iPhone models, the iPHone 5c and the iPhone 5s, RadioShack has jumped into the fray with a new trade-in program.

Cult of Mac got an email today from the electronics retailer, which said it wanted to share the current trade-in values, as well as discounted prices, for older model iPhones. All you need to do is visit RadioShack’s Trade and Save website to check on the value of your own device, and then bring it in to the nearest RadioShack (or send it in via an online process) for trading.

Despite the fact that Apple’s stock value has taken a more than 5% dip since the company’s unveiling of the iPhone 5c and 5s yesterday, key shareholder and billionaire investor Carl Icahn has bought “quite a bit more” stock today.

In an interview with CNBC, Icahn described AAPL as a “no-brainer” and repeatedly insisted that now is the time to buy.

Have you ever thought about how a company like Apple manages to ship millions upon millions of unreleased devices around the world before a new product launch? Bloomberg has a great piece today detailing Apple’s extensive operations for getting new iPhones off the supply chain in Asia and shipped to customers on all corners of the globe.

A rumor surfaced right before Apple’s iPhone 5c/5s keynote yesterday saying that secret shipments of Apple TVs were arriving in the U.S. AllThingsD quickly squashed the report saying that Apple was not planning on unveiling new Apple TV hardware this month, and based off yesterday’s event, that certainly looks to be the case.

A big software update for the Apple TV will reportedly arrive on September 18th alongside the release of iOS 7. But that’s the only Apple TV news that has been on the horizon, until now.

https://youtu.be/oprUI6nupfc

Jimmy Kimmel has been well known to make fun of an Apple fanboy or two, so when Apple announced the new iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s yesterday, the late-night TV show host hit the streets to get people’s reactions to the new Apple device. The catch: the pedestrians were handed an iPad mini but were told it’s the new iPhone. Of course they bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and the results were hilarious as ever.

AT&T has decided that it wants to make its 4G LTE service available to over 270 million Americans by the end of 2013, but with limited wireless spectrum available in the areas it needs to improve, the company has decided to strike a deal with its archenemy Verizon.

To expand its coverage AT&T has purchased $1.9 billion worth of Verizon’s lower 700MHz band B block wireless spectrum. The extra wireless spectrum will give AT&T access to cover 42 million people in 18 states.

I watched the Apple iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c special event yesterday. I went in skeptical, not planning on wanting any of the new iPhones. I never upgraded to an iPhone 4S, so why would I want a 5s?

Turns out, I kind of do. I want a better camera. I want Touch ID and a fingerprint sensor. I want a five times faster CPU, a motion co-processor, and up to 40X faster graphics. Yes. Yes I do.

So I did what any self-respecting first-worlder does, I checked for upgrade availability. You see, here in the US, at least, we’re all kind of stuck on a two-year contract system. To get the subsidized prices, we purchase our phones on a two-year cycle.

If you’re not sure whether you are able to upgrade to a new iPhone 5s (or iPhone 5c) when it’s available, here’s where to look.

Apple seeded the iOS 7 GM to developers yesterday, and while it didn’t have any major new features – unless you cream your pants at the mention of new wallpapers and ringtones – Apple actually removed one of iOS 7’s most anticipated features from the beta: iCloud Keychain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jf7byLNKaNs

One of the few surprise announcements from yesterday’s keynote was that iOS 7 will come with a completely new set of ringtones and alert tones. That’s right, Marimba is finally in exile after annoying the living shit out of us for six long years.

The new ringtones and alert tones were included in the latest iOS 7 GM that was seeded to developers yesterday afternoon, and while Marimba and its old ringtone buddies are still available under the “Classics” options in iOS 7, the new ringtones and alert tones seem to fit better with the new iOS aesthetics.

You can listen to all the new ringtones in the video above, or check out the new alert tones in the video below: