Cult of Mac

If you take a trip to the local laboratory supply store, and then follow it up by dropping into the vintage camera shop (or just a thrift store) then you could make your own beautiful lamp, just like those fashioned from dead photo gear by the Taiwanese Ystudio. It sure beats the usual crap you get from Ikea.

Anyone dismissing the Sony MDR-X10 headphones as simply yet another bombastic, over-the-top, celebrity-designed fashion statement for teenage bass junkies would be wrong. Easily forgiven, but wrong.

While most of those descriptive terms ring true — the big, lurid cans apparently received design input from none other than big, lurid entertainment personality Simon Cowell, and they’re definitely aimed toward the bass-obsessed — the X10s differ significantly from their brethren, and actually stand out prominently against an ocean of boom.

In other words, if you’re looking for bass-heavy headphones, this is your first stop; but even if you’re not, the X10s are so good they might win you over anyway.

I love the Google Glass interface and I think it should be everywhere.

This interface is similar to a blog in that the basic organizing principle is time. When you tap the side of the Glass headset or tilt your head up, you’re greeted with the “right now” screen, which literally shows the time right now.

Scrolling to the left takes you into the future (today’s weather, directions to places Google Now thinks you might want to go, today’s birthdays, today’s weather highs and lows, your calendar and at the very end, Settings for Glass).

Scrolling to the right takes you into the past. The first item you encounter is the last thing you did — the last picture or video you took, the last message that came in, that sort of thing. The second card is the next-to-the-last thing that happened, and so on into the past.

Each of these items, of course, is a “card,” which has its own behavior when you tap and drill down. For example, if you’re looking at a photo you took, taping the touchpad offers up the options to Share or Delete. If you choose share, you’re given people and Google+ circles, again in reverse chronological order from the most recently used.

The interface is wonderful because it’s highly compatible with human psychology. We tend to organize discreet events in our lives in terms of time, both future and past. The human mind loves linearity based on time. That’s why blogs and social networks are popular.

This, combined with voice, through which we can conjure up anything out of time sequence and thereby insert it into the timeline, is a truly great user interface, and should be on many devices.

Since we’re so reliant on our iPhones and iPads – especially as iOS becomes more prevalent – that we need to give thought on things beyond security on these devices. We need to think about what to do in order to keep our data safe from accidental deletion — including looking at software solutions beyond what’s included with our Mac.

With that in mind, here are 2 things you can do to make sure the chances of losing your iOS data is as slim as possible:

Apple is still moving forward to build its $5 billion, 176-acre campus Cupertino “spaceship” Campus 2 headquarters, expected to open in three years.

Critics have been attacking it since Steve Jobs first proposed it to the Cupertino City Council.

And since that poignant moment, which was Jobs’s last public appearance, the campus project has evolved and changed and, as I write this, the old HP buildings on the property are being demolished.

Here’s what we know about the spaceship campus so far, and also what the critics have been saying. 

Rumor has it that Apple might soon get a gold member… of the iPhone family. But on this week’s CultCast, we’ll ask the important question: why would anyone want a gold iPhone?! We’ll ponder the color choice and rumors of a big bump in 5S storage space. Then, Kyle Wiens from iFixit.com joins us to discuss why Apple is purposely building devices only a Genius can fix, and the toxic wastelands where our iDevices go to die.

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this 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 audio adventure begin.

There’s a lot of power under the hood in Photoshop. One of the keys to that power is layers – and it’s important to use them in order to get even more out of Photoshop. With layers you work on top of (or on) copies of that photo, and – ultimately – have more control in terms of blending, opacity, and masking.

The bottom line is that layers are a tremendous asset. And Cult of Mac Deals is offering you a ton of Photoshop layers for just $20 with The Ultimate Photoshop Layers Bundle.

This one caught me off guard this week as I played through the new offerings on the iOS app store, looking for choice games to show off to you.

Little Galaxy is surprisingly captivating, encouraging yet another try to beat my previous high scores, or–in a recent round of the game on the couch with my daughter–trying to beat each other’s score.

Needless to say, she won.

Apple began running its Mac Pro teaser ad in theaters before showings Jobs last week, but now that no one is up to seeing Kutcher doing his worst Steve impression, Apple’s pushed the ad out onto YouTube.

The ad is essentially the same as one that was shown during the Mac Pro announcement at WWDC, except they’ve added some new cinematic-styled text at the end.

Here’s the full teaser:

As the public release of iOS 7 looms, momentum behind the world of jailbreaking has stalled. There hasn’t been a big jailbreak release in months and there likely won’t be one for many months to come.

But a mid-year funk hasn’t stopped talented hackers and developers from gathering yet again at JailbreakCon, the world’s only convention dedicated solely to the jailbreaking community. 

Apple has been experimenting with how it calculates chart rankings in the App Store, according to a new report from Fiksu. In the past, where an app sat on the top charts was related to its sheer amount of downloads and the daily velocity of those downloads. Now Apple is incorporating user ratings to determine rankings.

The obvious question to ask: why?

Apple’s iTunes Radio service doesn’t launch in the U.S. for a few more weeks, but Rdio’s been pumping some awesome updates into its iOS app to get ready. The latest Rdio update for iOS today added the much needed Station Tuning that’s been available on desktop since the launch of You FM earlier this month.

The Rdio 2.3.1 update also comes with a redesigned view for Collection that features a new album art view. Some UI tweaks and bug fixes were also tossed in for good measure along with improved search.

Here are the full notes:

When last we left the Department of Justice’s e-book antitrust case with Apple, things weren’t looking good. After Apple was found guilty of price fixing, the DoJ dismissed Apple’s rebuttal. Apple is on track to lose the ability to sell e-books in the iBookstore for several years. Third-parties like Amazon are also to be given back the ability to sell their e-books directly to iOS users within their apps. The outcome of this case will likely be a blow to Apple’s business and an even bigger blow to its pride.

Today the DoJ filed a revised remedy proposal for Apple. Besides reducing the amount of time Apple has to stay out of the e-book market from ten years to five, there are no other major changes. The most interesting tidbit is an email between Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller from 2010.

What the hell is wrong with wireless SD card makers? They manage to cram an entire Wi-Fi router into an SD card, along with the memory that’s already in there, and yet the software looks like they got their idiot cousin to write it in a weekend for like $100.

Toshiba’s FlashAir is a great example. The hardware is sound, and has some really great features. But the software is awful. Truly, breathtakingly terrible.

Rovio just released two new videos on YouTube. Above is the actual teaser trailer for the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars II, itself revealed last month.

In the trailer, the dark side Emperor pig is seen making a recruiting video of sorts for all the young piggies who need new weaponry to fight those upstart Jedi birds. It doesn’t go as well as planned, of course; this is Rovio in the director’s chair, not George Lucas.

The cool thing here is that the Emperor is voiced by none other than Ian McDiarmid himself, the actor who plays the Emperor in the real Star Wars films.

1Password has been one of the most essential Mac apps for years, but it hasn’t seen a major upgrade since November 2009. Agile Bits is hard at work on the redesign of 1Password 4 for Mac, but they sent us a sneak peek of the reengineered password management app that’s been in the making for over a year.

Here’s what’s new:

This week has been filled with offers from Cult of Mac Deals that aim to get you back to school with all the tools you’ll need to make the year a success.

Whether it’s been the ideal backpack, an app to fill your task management needs, or some games to help you escape the books from time to time, there’s been no shortage of offers through the Deals portal. You can check out all of the deals we’ve delivered during Back to School Week here.

But we’re not done yet.

We’re big fans of Loop Attachment here at Cult of Mac — they make some really awesome accessories for iOS devices. And this week they’ve made their terrific Mummy case available to pre-order for the full-size iPad. We reviewed the iPad mini model back in April and found it to be one of the best silicone cases available for the device.

The iWork for iCloud beta, which allows you to use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote inside your web browser, is now available to all at iCloud.com. You do not need to be an existing iWork customer to take advantage of the apps, but if you are, you can now access all of the iWork documents you’ve stored in iCloud from absolutely anywhere.

Microsoft has today announced that chief executive officer Steve Ballmer will retire “within the next 12 months.” Ballmer will continue to carry out his role while the company seeks a successor, aiding its transformation into a devices and services company — but he will depart once a suitable replacement is found.

Sure, there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts to navigate Spotlight, making it more of a power user tool than you’d think.

Did you know, however, that you can reveal found items in the Finder using Spotlight? Me neither. So here’s how.

In all likelihood, the iPhone 5S and 5C will be released in the United States on Friday, September 20th. What about Apple’s second most important market, though, China?

Well, if you’re a Chinese Apple fan, we’ve got bad news for you. You’re going to probably have to wait a lot longer for Apple’s new smartphones than the rest of us. A new report says the iPhone 5S and 5C won’t be released in China until November 28th.

One of the key patents in Samsung and Apple’s neverending patent dispute was ‘381, the so-called “bounce back” patent. As you might recall, the patent describes the way in which an iPhone, when inertially scrolling a document, will bounce back when it reaches the top. It’s a little detail, but it’s one of the few patent infringement verdicts Samsung hasn’t been able to weasel its way out of.

Not that that has stopped Samsung from trying, but it looks like the dispute over the famous bounce back patent is finally over. On late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh denied Samsung a motion for a new trial regarding the ‘381 patent. Finally.

Gearing up for the school year, Apple has just launched a newly redesigned “Apple and Education” page on its website, featuring a simplified design and fresh categories showing how iPhones, iPads and Macs can make a difference in the classroom.

A couple months back, Apple updated the MacBook Air line with Intel’s new, power-sipping Haswell processors, leading to a doubling of battery life across their lineup of ultraportables. No joke, Haswell’s like a miracle: my MacBook Air gets better battery life than my iPad these days.

Despite the fact that Haswell’s such an incredible boon to battery life, Apple still hasn’t rolled it out to the MacBook Pro line. A new report suggests that will change in September.