Cult of Mac

Apple just seeded a new development release of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5, build 12F20 on it’s Developer page today. It includes a combo updater, a delta (just changes) updater, and a note describing the changes in the new seed.

The seed note says that the focus areas of this current seed are, like previous seeds, Wi-Fi, Graphics, and Wake from Sleep. In addition, this seed also focuses on PDF Viewing and Accessibility as well as Mobile Device Management.

If you’re a developer working on Mac apps that need to be compatible with OS X Mountain Lion, go ahead and head over to Apple’s Developer page and grab yourself a copy of one of the updaters, and have at it.

Source: Apple Developer

Typically, US iOS apps and games are released into the App Store on Thursdays each week, though some apps of late have been going live on odd days of the week, perhaps to beat the Thursday glut.

Either way, Square Enix’s first Deus Ex game to launch as a full experience on iOS has gone live today, one full day earlier than expected. Deus Ex: The Fall is the highly anticipated new chapter in the Deus Ex franchise, and it’s coming to iPhones and iPads, rather than consoles or computers. This alone makes it something to pay attention to, let alone the gorgeous visuals and brand new entry in the series.

The new Mac Pro may very well be one of the coolest desktop machines we’ve ever seen, but unlike the older Mac Pros, this new one isn’t going to keep your work area all that tidy.

Giga.de created the image above to show just how messy things are going to get when you want to add a few external harddrives, DVD burner, audio interface, Blu-ray player and a video capture interface to your Mac Pro. Too bad you can’t just stuff them all inside that fancy thermal core.

Via: Twitter

Disney announced this morning that it will honor Steve Jobs with a Disney Legends Award at this year’s D23 Expo on Saturday, August 10th in Anaheim, California.

As the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, Steve Jobs became the largest Disney shareholder in 2006 when Disney acquired Pixar. Jobs was also a part of Disney’s board of directors and remained a valuable sounding board and advisor to the company until his passing in 2011.

Disney CEO Bob Iger had the following to say about the award:

I’ll admit it. I really like buying things. I don’t like searching for them, or shopping per se, but I dig the heck out of wanting something, and then buying it. Go figure I end up a tech writer.

One of the ways I keep myself from overspending is to take pictures of items and store them on my iPhone. I do this a lot in book stores, where the number of new science fiction books I want far outstrips my ability to pay for them.

I use a Wishlist on Amazon, too, to track the stuff I want, perhaps later to actually purchase. Who knows?

In iOS 7 beta, you can add any apps you want to a new Wishlist feature, keeping the spending to a minimum, too. Here’s how.

T-Mobile is hosting a big keynote today to announce a couple of new products and features that are coming to the network. So far the most exciting news is that customers can  join the new “Jump” program to upgrade their smartphone twice a year.

Ina Fried at All Things D got the scoop on the other new announcements so you don’t have to watch the event yourself. Here are the Cliff Notes of what T-Mobile will announce:

It’s no secret the the U.S. government enjoys taking certain liberties with citizens’ privacy by wiretapping cellphones, but did you know that each time Uncle Sam decides to peek in someone’s phone records they get a big bill from the carrier?

AT&T charges the government a $325 “activation free” for each wiretap and then they rack up an extra $10 a day to keep the line open. Want the NSA to think twice before tapping you? Then maybe you should go with Verizon as their wiretaps cost the most at $775 per month and then $500 for each month after that.

iPhone cases overwhelm me. There are cases made from wood, metal, plastic, recyclable material, leather, and fabric. I’ve tried nearly every kind you can imagine, but I have yet to find one that I’m happy to wake up to every morning—many probably feel that way about their lovers.

In my quest to find a good looking, functional, minimal iPhone case, I came across an aluminum case for the iPhone 5 by Freeform3, a Craftwerk company. What started as a Kickstarter project has turned into the best iPhone bumper I’ve ever used.

With iOS 7, Jony Ive designed an icon grid that was meant to give developers some guidance on how to proportion their icons so they would look “harmonious” on the new iOS 7 homescreen.

As you can see above, though, Jony Ive has been using a similar mental grid to design Apple’s physical products for a long time. As Reddit user Kepano notes, however, Ive has probably not used this grid as a precise guide to design in the past.

“In my opinion as an industrial designer this image suggests that there are some intuitive similarities between all of Ive’s designs but that the iOS7 icon grid is probably the first time he’s defined those proportions so strictly. The fact that certain shapes match so closely (e.g. the width of the donut shape on the iPod) is probably not a coincidence but a matter of taste. What the image doesn’t show is that these products have radically different dimensions which is why the corner radii are very different from one another.”

Source: Reddit

Instagram has quickly become one of the most popular photo sharing services for mobile devices, but you’re about to start seeing more of it in your web browser.

This morning Instagram introduced new web embedding for Instagram content that will allow you to post photos and video right on your blog or website:

“Now, when you visit an Instagram photo or video page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it gives you and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the photo or video will appear.”

Here’s an example of how embedded Instagrams appear on the web:

Tim Cook isn’t the only one attending the Sun Valley Media Conference this week, a private gathering of over 300 industry leaders in which some of the big media inks get privately worked out. Eddy Cue — Apple’s savvy media dealmaker — is also there, according to Bloomberg reporter Jon Erlichman.

Is an Apple TV deal in the works? Asked if it was shaping up to a big week, Cook would only comment, “We’ll see.”

Via: TUAW

If you’re expecting another record quarter for Apple, you might be the only one. According to Fortune, most of Wall Street expects Apple to barely grow at all year-over-year in fiscal Q2.

Apple has asked the International Trade Commission to postpone an import ban on the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 while a court considers its appeal. The ban is set to go into affect on August 5 — just under four weeks away — but Apple has argued that it will “sweep away an entire segment of Apple’s product offerings” and harm iPhone carrier partners.

Following a lengthy trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has today ruled that Apple conspired to raise the price of e-books. Another trial for damages will follow at a later date, Reuters reports.

Calendar, previously iCal, has had Time Zone support for a while now. The Mac I’m using that runs OS X Mountain Lion let’s my turn on Time Zone Support in the Advanced tab of the Calendar preferences, so I can be sure to be on time for meetings when I travel away from my current timezone (AKDT).

However, when using Time Zone support in Mountain Lion, calendar events that I scheduled in one time zone wouldn’t ever show me visually that they were. OS X Mavericks takes care of this problem with a small visual cue–now events scheduled in one time zone will show that time zone in their title in Calendar. Here’s how to make that happen.

Yahoo! has rolled out a new update to the Yahoo! Mail app for iOS that introduces support for multiple accounts and Yahoo! Small Business email.

I might be a lapsed Englishman, but there’s something that can never be bred out of me wherever I dwell: my love of a nice cup of tea. Unfortunately, even the Brits are getting lax when it comes to brewing God’s favorite beverage [1], relying on teabags instead of loose leaves and even (the horror!) letting the water sit off the boil for whole minutes before pouring it into the pot (I have seen my own brother do this).

It’s enough to get George Orwell turning in his memory hole.

Luckily, there’s an app for that.

Apple made it super easy to upgrade the RAM in its latest 27-inch iMac — so easy that hotels, schools, and corporations are now trying to prevent guests from stealing the RAM from their machines. But thanks to the new iMac lock and security kit from Maclocks, it’s no longer an issue.

For just $50, iMac owners can add a protective plate to the back of their machine that prevents the power cord from being removed, which in turn prevents the RAM panel from being ejected from the machine.

Scott Stefan’s Kickstarter project is an odd one, but more on that in a second. In order not to bury the lede, I am obliged to tell you what the product is right up here in the first paragraph (or “graf” as “we in the biz” call it). It’s called the MaCool, and it’s a beer cooler designed to look just like an original 1984 Mac.

Those looking for a great alternative way to browse their photos on an iOS device might think about Cooliris, an app which has been around in various forms (I think I first saw it as a browser plugin) for some time. Cooliris’ gimmick is its endless wall of photos which you can almost throw around the screen, but recent versions have added so many sources that it might well become your iOS photobrowser of choice.

This week, the app has gotten support for Evernote images, plus more. And it still works great with Dropbox photos.

Evernote for Mac – my favorite I-don’t-quite-hate-it-enough-to-delete-it everything bucket – has gotten quite a big feature boost Not only does it now integrate Skitch, it lets you highlight text files and view files inside the note editor.

The original Apple II was a huge breakthrough for Apple when it went on sale in 1977. And even though the 8-bit computer made Steve Jobs and Woz legends, you’ve got to wonder what Apple’s first big hit would have looked like if Jony Ive got his hands all over it.

A true Jony Ive edition Apple II will probably never see the light of day, but this customized aluminum Apple II some redditor bought off eBay might be the next closest thing. It’s simple, sleek and aluminum – everything Jony loves.

Take a look:

hŌld is an orange plastic taco for your iPAd which makes it a lot easier to hold. Instead of having to grip the thing the whole time, risking a broken wrist from the Retina iPad’s monstrous bulk, you can kind of let it hang on your fingers. And it even works with your Smart Cover attached.

Google has rolled out a major Google Maps update for Android smartphones and tablets, which is also “coming soon” to iPhone and iPad. It introduces a new design that finally boasts a dedicated user interface for tablets, as well as enhanced navigation and new features.

Mailbox, the miracle mashup of mail and to-do lists, has just seen the first fruit of its Dropbox ownership – Dropbox Attachments. Thought the release notes don’t make a big deal of this at all – they read “Dropbox attachments integration,” and there’s not even a new screenshot to show it – it’s actually a pretty great new feature.