Cult of Mac

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Back in 1986, Apple asked Roger Ebert & Gene Siskel to host an event in which they gave At The Movies style reviews to all of Apple’s latest TV commercials. I’m not sure this is riveting, hard-hitting criticism — even by the standards which saw Ebert give Garfield: A Tail Of Two Kitties three out of four stars, this is clearly more of an endorsement deal — but gosh, do I wish that Siskel & Ebert were around these days to rake Apple’s Siri or Designed in California ads over the critical fire. Two thumbs up!

Video: YouTube

Scarcely a day goes by that Martin Hajek does not open up AutoCAD and feverishly model something he thinks Apple might be working on, and today, it’s the colorful box of Apple’s so-called “budget” iPhone, the equally so-called iPhone 5C.

Pretty snazzy, although I’m not sure I think much of the Lomo filter! These are renders, Martin, not 1970s-era porn movies.

Source: Flickr

The iProp is so basic in its design that it’s obvious the designers worked very hard at it. When I first opened the bag it came in, I wondered what the big deal was. So what? It’s a beanbag with an iPad stand on it. Big deal.

Then I tried it out for a few days. I used it on my coffee table, on the arm of my recliner, and in my lap. I took it to the coffee shop and to a friend’s house. I started to get used to it. I started to like it. I wondered where it was when I didn’t take it with me.

Now that’s a well-designed product.

Despite the cornucopia of different smartphones available to consumers, the battle for global smartphone domination comes down to just two companies: Samsung and Apple.

Samsung posted record results in Q2 and even though a new iPhone hasn’t been announced, Apple still managed to beat Wall Street’s iPhone sales estimates last quarter, leaving Nokia, HTC, LG, and all the other major OEMs with nothing but table scraps to feast on.

Source: Benedict Evans

Via: BGR

With competition around the iPhone at an all-time high, Apple could use a huge boost in sales numbers, so Tim Cook made another visit to Beijing this week to recruit the world’s biggest mobile carrier, China Mobile, to bring the iPhone to its network.

China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua was on hand Tuesday to meet with Cook, and according to the Chinese firm, the two discussed ‘matters of cooperation’ between the two companies, which means they were probably talking about how much money they’d both make if China Mobile sold the iPhone 5C.

Arguably one of the best things about Google Glass is the ability to view maps and get directions while you’re driving without ever having to take your eyes off the road ahead. But that’s not the case for those in the U.K., where using Google Glass behind the wheel is banned by the government.

Your Mac is a finely tuned, intricate machine. Just like a car, every aspect of your Mac plays a crucial role in your computer’s overall performance. But you need to have something that will help you get your Mac running at optimum levels. That’s where this offer from Cult of Mac Deals comes in.

xScan has been specifically designed to help you monitor the behavior and health of your Mac in a simple and straightforward manner. This is the same software many professionals use to diagnose technical issues with Mac operating systems and now you can get xScan for a third of its original price – just $9.99 – during this limited time offer.

The Adobe Ideas app for iOS has today been updated to add support for stroke smoothing, and the pressure sensitive Pogo Connect stylus. The release also adds new sharing options, including the ability to send your artwork to other iOS apps, such as Photoshop Touch.

FileMaker has announced it will discontinue Bento, its database client for Mac and iOS, on September 30. The company will increase focus on the FileMaker product line going forward, with the aim of creating “an even better experience for these customers.”

Starbucks has always been a last-ditch sanctuary for the connected in a largely-still-wireless world, but the free WiFi you can get there is often bloated with dozens of slackers, choking up the pipe with inappropriate Netflix streaming and large downloads.

But WiFi at Starbucks is about to get orders of magnitude better. Google has just announced that they are taking over WiFi at Starbucks, and will be the new exclusive provider of sweet, sweet Internet at over 7,000 Starbucks locations in the United States.

Do you get frustrating iMessage spam from people you’ve never met, or companies you’ve never heard of? You’re not the only one. Until now, you could either make friends with them and save yourself from loneliness on those cold winter nights, or you could ignore them and hope that they don’t text again.

But now you can report them to Apple, too.

Do you like to Bang With Friends? The Facebook app, I mean, which lets you arrange hookups with your Facebook friends if both of you are anonymously up for banging. One rarely bangs with enemies, and even then, only under a “keep your enemies closer” mantra.

Well, if you do, bad news, chum. Zynga — the avatar of all that is unholy about mobile gaming — is suing Bang With Friends. Why? Because the “With Friends” part is similar to many of their game app titles, like Chess With Friends and Words With Friends.

Apple has reduced the price of the refurbished Apple TV to $75. That’s $10 cheaper than its original price tag, and $24 cheaper than a brand new model. It’s believed the drop may have been made in response to the Google Chromecast, which has been selling fast since it went on sale last week for just $35.

Sometimes, when you’re tapping away at a calculator, it helps to hear what you’re typing in. It’s like a second stream of information for your brain, and it helps keep things more accurate. There are a variety of talking calculators on the market, and a bunch of iOS apps that do the same thing.

Did you know, however, that you can make the calculator bundled in with OS X talk to you, too? Me neither.

Here’s how.

Developer tap tap tap just announced the details on its latest Camera+ update for iPhone and iPad. The folks behind one of the best camera app replacements out there add the ability to layer effects in editing, letting you quickly and easily add and remove a multitude of effects per photo, stacking and re-arranging the order of the effects to attain your own unique look and style.

If you’re not into doing all the micromanagement, Camera+ is also releasing two new filter packs.

Kanex’s MeDrive looks like an essential bit of kit for anyone with an iDevice and a whole mess of media files. It’s a personal file server, only unlike most solutions we’ve seen, it lets you hook up any USB drive to share and access its contents.

There’s something that happens to a certain kind of person when it comes to hobbies: The acquisition of gear becomes more important than the hobby itself. Take photography, for instance.

One short trip to the Internet will fill your browser with awful, pointless photos taken by men with cameras that cost them a fortune. You’ll see truly lame family snapshots taken on an $8,000 Leica Monochrom, posted with notes about the tonality and the bokeh, as if the gear makes these snapshooters into great photographers.

And you’ll see accessories. All kinds of crazy accessories that do little but fuel the need to upgrade to ever more specialized and expensive models.

Back when I worked a Saturday job in a camera store, we’d joke about the men who’d spend so much on a camera that they could only afford the cheap off-brand film. For these folks, there’s the Artisan Obscura shutter release, a tiny, $30 circle of wood that screws into a camera’s shutter release.

Cobook has updated its contacts/address book app, adding some long-overdue features, some neat new tricks, and – finally – a store, so you can give the company some money at last.

I got talking to an old man with a long beard yesterday. It was almost down to his jewel-studded belt. And he told me that “back in the day,” “where he comes from,” gentlemen would try to fill their living rooms with ugly black and silver boxes covered with flashing and pulsing lamps. They’d lay rope-like cables around the rooms of their homes, and the “coffee table” – as he called it – would be covered with smaller, button-covered boxes.

These gentlemen would argue with their ladies, who “just wanted to relax and watch a bit of TV for God’s sake WHATS WRONG WITH YOU.”

“Back in the day” was of course “the 1980s and 1990s,” and these boxes were stereo and home theater gear. Now we live in an enlightened age where these things are as beautifully integrated into our homes as, well, as baskets of potpourri, I guess.

Just like the Sound Spot.

You might – as I did – laugh at the idea of a solar-powered keyboard for the iPad. And then you will remember that independence from power supplies is one of the iPad’s main features. And then you will take a closer look at this aluminum and plastic slab and see that it looks a lot like my favorite iPad keyboard from Zagg.

All Panasonic’s hopes of a surprise launch of its GX7 camera have been dashed. The Micro Four Thirds body has now been fully leaked, with what look to be official pictures and specs. And what a camera. If you have had your eye on one of Fujifilm’s retro-styled but ultra-modern x-series cameras, but already own a clutch of Micro Four Thirds lenses, then this camera may well be for you.

Autodesk has a rich history of offering stunning, free iOS apps that do some pretty spectacular things. Their latest app, Homestyler, lets you virtually redecorate your house with remarkable detail.

It was a bit of an odd moment when Incase — which up to that point almost exclusively focused on bags and cases — announced a couple of years ago that they’d started making headphones. Even more surprising was that the headphones really, really rocked.

Of the four models, the best deal was probably the second-most expensive of the bunch, the on-the-ear Reflex: velvety looks, a rugged build and sound quality that many gadget sites, including us, thought beat out headphones twice as expensive.

Still, the Reflex didn’t generate as much buzz as perhaps they should have, and at $90 they were one of the most underrated headphones on the market; then Incase cut the price to $60.

And now they’re on sale at $30, which makes them, well, completely irresistible.

You know how camping is all about roughing it and rusticity? Forget it. Goal Zero teamed up with Eddie Bauer to design a solar-powered tent.

Elevens is a solitaire card game in which players lay down cards, face-up and in a grid of 3X3. They then remove the cards in groups when they add up to eleven, and go until they can go no more.

Cassandra’s 11 is based on this game, in that you must tap cards from a grid when they add up to eleven. Tap a Nine and Two card, for example, or a Five, a Four, and a Two. What takes this universal app from developer Plexonic to the next level is the puzzle aspect.