Mobile menu toggle

Irish Committee Chooses Not To Grill Apple & Google About Tax

By

post-234423-image-b8db425e1236df47a92c6aa6531fd0be-jpg

An Irish parliamentary committee has dismissed the opportunity to grill Apple and Google over their tax affairs in Ireland, despite requests for a change to the way in which it taxes large multinationals that do business in its country.

The move comes weeks after Apple and Google came under scrutiny for the way in which they use tax “loopholes” or “gimmicks” to avoid paying excessive taxes on international sales. It was revealed that Apple used an Irish subsidiary with zero employees to pay less than 0.05% tax on $78 billion over four years.

iblazr External LED Flash For All iDevices

By

ibla1.jpg

On-camera flash is usually a terrible idea (with just two – maybe three – exceptions I can think of). It lights up your subject, sure, but it totally kills the mood that made you want to take a photo in the dark in the first place.

But if you’re a fan of shiny, overexposed faces, red eyes and disappearing backgrounds then why not grab an iblazr, the world’s first all-lower-case iPhone flash. Kidding. It is all lower cae, but that’s not really its tagline. It’s real tagline is “is the first universal LED flash for smartphones and tablets.”

Lame.

Orée Board Keyboard Could Double As A Cheeseboard

By

Detail-housse2-700x450_1024x1024.jpg

Recently on Twitter, our deputy editor John “pipe and slippers” Brownlee posted a picture of his Mac keyboard, with wooden tiles stuck to the keycaps. It was utterly hideous, and yet completely in keeping with John’s fetish for anything made of wood. It was the real-world equivalent green felt or rich Corinthian leather.

This all-wood keyboard, on the other hand, is pretty gorgeous. It comes from French company Orée, it’s called the Orée Board and it costs a steep-ish €150 ($193).

Get The Cable For All Next Generation iOS Products [Deals]

By

CoM - iOS Cable

There’s nothing worse than having a cable that is too short to be very useful. The 3 foot stock iPhone 5 would be a classic example of such a a cable. This Cult of Mac Deals offer gives you the chance to get a cable that will go a long way to solving that problem.

This lightning fast 10 foot USB 2.0 cable will keep your iDevice charged, updated, and ready for use – and without you having to worry about whether it will reach where you’re at. For a limited time, Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $13.99 – plus free global shipping!

Get Two Months Of Unlimited Access To Next Issue [Freebie]

By

CoM - NextIssue

If you have dozens of old magazines lying around your house then that might be a sign that you need to go digital. Now you can stop having to store and throw away old subscriptions because now you can have your ultimate newsstand right at your fingertips, whenever you want it – with Next Issue.

Next Issue offers all-you-can-read access to over 90 of today’s most popular magazines on your tablet and now you can test it out with 2 free unlimited months of use – a $30 value – courtesy of this Cult of Mac Deals offer!

iFixit Walks Us Through An iPhone 5 Battery Replacement [Video]

By

iPhone-5-battery-replacement

Battery life on the iPhone 5 is pretty good when you compare it to other high-end devices with LTE connectivity, so if you’re having to charge yours more than normal, then you may need a new battery. But don’t worry — battery replacements are relatively cheap, and they’re so easy, you can probably do them yourself.

Teardown specialists iFixit show you how in a new five-minute walkthrough video.

The Capacity Of A 160GB iPod Visualized As A Stack Of Vinyl. Hint: It’s Huge

By

records.jpeg

Do you ever stop to think about how many albums your iPhone will hold? Probably not, as you most likely filled your iPhone or iPod up with music from the iTunes Store, or you stream from Spotify or Rdio. And even if you filled up your iTunes with music by ripping actual physical disks, you almost certainly didn’t do it from vinyl records.

I did fill my first 15GB iPod with music from ripped CDs, so I know just how big the stack was that I had to work thorough. But if you head over to ConcertHotels.com and click the little arrow, you’ll be treated to a stack of vinyl big enough to fill a 160GB iPod. That’s 40,000 songs in total.

Downgrading Your Airport Firmware Is Dead Easy — And May Help Fix Connectivity Troubles

By

airport-downgrade.jpeg

According to the denizens of the Internet, the Airport Extreme you have sitting in your hallway or – nerd! – in your bedroom might be experiencing dropout. According to Marco “I just sold [x]” Arment of Instapaper fame, this problem might have something to do with the latest 7.6.3 firmware. The good news? Downgrading is stupidly easy.

DIY Camera Harness Makes You Look Like A Trigger-Happy TV Cop

By

camera-harness.jpeg

I wouldn’t tell anyone else this, but I’m going to admit it to you: I spend far too many brain cycles pondering better ways to carry my camera and other essentials. Worse, I have a box full of bags and straps leftover from my efforts. So i’m not sure whether this tutorial for making a DIY harness is a great idea of the beginning of another foolhardy adventure. I suspect it might be both.

A History Of Mac Wallpaper Designs

By

capsule.jpg

Did you know that the Mac only got full screen desktop wallpaper in System 8? It sounds amazing until you realize that the first iPhone didn’t have any wallpaper at all – just a black void hanging malevolently behind the home screen icons.

Over at the Egg Freckles blog, Thomas Brand details the history of wallpaper on the Mac. It’s not just a bunch of pictures either. In fact, there are no pictures at all (although there are lots of download links for you). What you get is a neat overview of how the desktop evolved closely along with the hardware it was running on.

And Thomas’ favorite Apple wallpaper of all time? Mavericks’ wave. It’s hard to disagree.

Source: Egg Freckles
Via: TUAW

Feed Wrangler Now Imports Google Reader Folders As Smart Streams

By

feedwrangler.jpeg

Hey RSS refugees (RSS-u-gees?). Did you sign up for a Feed Wrangler account so you could import all your Google Reader feeds and keep using them in something like the Excellent Mr. Reader app? Me too. And did you see that Feed Wrangler pretty much just ignored all your carefully thought-out and painstakingly organized folders, instead dumping all your feeds into one big list? So you thought “Screw this” and used the free Feedly instead?

Me too.

But Feed Wrangler has now tweaked its import engine so all your folders will be converted into Smart Feeds. Better still, you just need to re-import your exported Google Reader OPML file and it’ll fix everything up for you.

Duel Your Friends With Pigeons In Lucky Frame’s New Game, Gentlemen!

By

post-234349-image-f6fd9c6e46adf6aeb52e478ba3886111-jpg

The fine folks at Lucky Frame (Bad Hotel, Pugs Luv Beats) have just announced a brand new game, this one coming to iPad and Android July 16th, with a desktop version for Mac and PC soon thereafter.

While there’s a definite shortage of pugs in Gentlemen!, there is definitely a surfeit of pigeons. This here is a frantic two-player game with a Victorian dueling theme, letting you go head to head on the same iPad or Android tablet. You’ll settle your grievance with bombs, knives, and (duh) deadly homing pigeons. You’ll need to find a balance of technique, cunning, and blind panic to come out ahead of the game, and win the duel. It’s two players, one screen, so if you’re lacking in friends, maybe get your pug to play along.

Rolomotion Brings Wii-Style Tennis To The Apple TV With New iPhone App

By

05

Back in April, we told you about Rolomotion, a new gaming platform for iOS that leverages the iPhone’s hardware sensors to create a Wii-like gaming experience on the Apple TV. Developed by Rolocule Games, the first Rolomotion game is available in the App Store, and it’s called Motion Tennis.

As the name implies, it’s a tennis game that requires an iPhone and Apple TV. Unlike most iOS games, the iPhone acts as a motion-aware controller. While it’s certainly not as polished as playing Wii Sports, Rolomotion is forecasting the future of Apple TV gaming.