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Siri Hates Being Compared To Google Glass

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Google may have won a lot of new admirers thanks to its fancy Glass headwear, but Siri isn’t impressed one bit. In fact, if you try to talk to Siri about Google Glass she will just give you the cold shoulder.

A recently discovered easter egg in Siri spits back frustrated responses when you use the Glass prompt, “Okay Glass.”

Here are some of Siri’s other responses:

Eight iPhone Apps To Help You Survive Burning Man

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48,000 people are about to descend on Black Rock City, Nevada to join in the Burning Man festival experiment. There’s going to be art galore, crazy events, weird costumes for days, and the brutal Black Rock Desert meting out its hellish punishments on each and every Burner.

Making the trip to BRC is easy, but surviving is entirely different, so we’ve found eight great apps that will help you get out of the desert alive:

Hammo Stereo Headphones: High Definition Audio That Looks As Good As It Sounds [Deals]

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Every time I see someone wearing over-ear headphones out in public, I can’t help but think of the scene in the “Starsky & Hutch” film where Ben Stiller is running along the beach listening to “Old Days” by Chicago. There’s something odd about over-ear headphones being worn not only in that situation – but really in any public situation. To me, earbuds or in-ear headphones work best in public. And that’s not because of sound quality. It’s because they are a lot more discreet.

That said, if you’re up to wearing over-ear headphones anytime and anywhere, then Cult of Mac Deals is offering Hammo Stereo Headphones for 43% off the regular price for a limited time.

Will The iPhone 5S Be 64-Bit? [Rumor]

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When last we heard about Apple’s 64-bit aspirations, a notable CPU designer was saying that Apple couldn’t outrun Moore’s Law, and that the earliest Cupertino would manage to swing a 64-bit A7 processor was by 2014.

According to a new report by Fox News reporter Clayton Morris, though, Cupertino might have been juicing. A 64-bit A7 processor could be included in the iPhone 5S.

Enable The Web Server In Mountain Lion [OS X Tips]

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It used to be a no-brainer to enable the Apache web server included with Mac OS X. You’d hop into the System Preferences, fire up the Sharing preference pane, and then you’d be good to go.

Starting in Mountain Lion, however, Apple hasn’t given a user-friendly checkbox as in previous OS X releases. Instead you need a little bit of Terminal magic.

Here’s how to enable and start the Web Service in OS X Mountain Lion.

Plex For iPhone, iPad Drops To $1.99 For A Limited Time [Deals]

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Two of the best streaming media apps are coming to the new Apple TV.
Two of the best streaming media apps are coming to the new Apple TV.
Photo: Cult of Mac

You know what everyone should do if they have an Apple TV? Install Plex, the incredible media server that can stream any digital media file on your Mac to your Apple TV, no jailbreak required.

I’m dead serious: Plex is awesome, and installing it on my Mac has been a total game changer in regards to the way I watch media in my own house. From my Apple TV, my MacBook Air, my iPad or my iPhone, I can stream my entire video library anywhere with no hassle.

Smartphone Spy Lens For Sneaky Snapper

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It’s actually pretty easy to shoot sneaky pictures of people using the iPhone. You can pretend you’re doing something else as you point the camera at your unwitting/unwilling subject, or you can just hold the iPhone up to your ear, walk past them and snap a picture using the volume button.

Now there’s a third way: the Smartphone Spy Lens, an add-on that lets you shoot sneaky shots at 90-degrees to the camera’s own axis.

Is This The Secret 4th Color Of The iPhone 5S?

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Right now, the iPhone 5 comes in white-and-silver and black-and-slate. When the iPhone 5S debuts on September 10th, there’s every reason to believe that Apple will supplement the traditional two color choices with a third option, a golden color (champagne gold, rather than ingot).

Is that it, though? Not according to new leaked images suggesting that the iPhone 5S will actually come in four colors. The last one? Graphite.

Japan’s Largest Carrier NTT DoCoMo In Talks To Get The iPhone 5S, 5C? [Report]

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In every country, there’s the holdouts, the also-ran carriers that haven’t inked a deal with Apple and so soldier valiantly on, selling Android and (gasp) Blackberries to their sad clientele. In Japan, this also-ran carrier happens to be the nation’s largest, NTT DoCoMo. But eventually, even the holdouts come around, and shares of NTT DoCoMo are up this morning following reports that Apple is in talks to bring the iPhone to the network.

MeCam, A Cute Clip-On Life-Logging Camera

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You know how it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the photos you take with your iPhone, iPad, and your regular camera? Imagine if you had another device that clipped to your clothes and captured video and stills all day long. It would be a nightmare of organization, right?

Then again, if you’re, say, a photographer who regualarly gets harrassed by police and “security” “guards,” then having an always-on camera capturing the 65-degree slice of life in front of you might actually turn out to be rather useful.

How This Award-Winning Pixar Director Told Off Steve Jobs

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Pixar's Brad Bird and Mark Andrews working on The Incredibles. Picture courtesy of Pixar.
Pixar's Brad Bird and Mark Andrews working on The Incredibles. Picture courtesy of Pixar.

San Francisco, CA — Steve Jobs revered Pixar for its blend of artistry and technology, as Walter Isaacson detailed in his 2011 biography, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he actually apologized to one of the artists working on the 2004 film “The Incredibles” after he criticized some of the design in the film after a screening.

RayFlash’s RingFlash Adapter Goes Universal At Half The Price Of The Original

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RayFlash’s new ringflash adapter is called the Universal, and it is. Well, almost. There are actually two different sizes, so you’ll have to choose the “Universal” model that fits your camera.

I kid. Kinda. The Universal part of the name actually refers to the flash-hole, which can now accommodate pretty much any flashgun, not just the handful of Canon and Nikon strobes that the old RayFlash supported.

Quick Look Plugin Adds Pixel Dimensions To Pictures

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In my tireless efforts to inform and entertain you, I find myself wrangling a lot of pictures for posts here on CoM. And now that many people are coming at us from Retina-screened devices, we try to use big pictures whenever we can. But how big is a picture?

Clicking the image and tapping the spacebar will give you a preview, but it won’t give you the image’s pixel dimensions. Not unless you install QuickLook plugin qlImageSize.

Beautiful Desk Lamps Made From Old Camera Gear

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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.

The Sony MDR-X10 Headphones: Absolutely The Best Bass Bang for Your Buck [Review]

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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.

MDR-X10 by Sony
Category: Headphones
Price: $200

The Google Glass Interface is Awesome and Should Go Everywhere

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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.

2 Ways To Avoid Losing Your iOS Data [Deals]

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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:

STFU, Critics! Apple’s Spaceship Campus Is Pure Awesome!

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Apple's building a new office in San Jose.
Photo: Apple

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. 

The Short Life And Death Of The iGadgets We Love, This Week On The CultCast

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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.

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Get More Tools For Adobe Photoshop With The Ultimate Photoshop Layers Bundle [Deals]

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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.

Little Galaxy Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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Little Galaxy iOS Game of the Week

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 Releases Mac Pro Cinema Teaser Ad To YouTube

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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:

iOS Hackers And Devs Gather For JailbreakCon 2013

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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 Experimenting With Smarter App Store Rankings That Focus On User Ratings [Report]

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Apple has lost its third appeal for ownership of the term App Store in Oz. Photo: Apple
Apple has lost its third appeal for ownership of the term App Store in Oz. Photo: Apple

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?