Cult of Mac

While the iPhone has been slowly making its way to carriers all over the world since its release in 2007, there are still a number of major operators that are yet to offer it. One of those is China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier with over 800 million subscribers; and another is DoCoMo, a Japanese carrier that serves almost half of the country’s mobile market.

But DoCoMo isn’t at all concerned, even though it’s losing customers to other carriers that do offer Apple’s device. A company executive has acknowledged that the iPhone is an “attractive” device, but points out that it also comes with some disadvantages, and insists that the latest Android-powered offerings are just as good.

We already know that Google is preparing to bring Google Now notifications to the desktop through its Chrome web browser; the first trace of them appeared in an early Chrome Canary release back in March. But it appears that the feature is nearing closer to its public release.

Chrome users are now being presented with the option to enable Google Now cards on Mac and Windows.

You can already check in to a flight online, so why can’t you check your luggage? With a new luggage tag about to be trialed by British Airways, you can. And you can do it with your smartphone.

This is the Handleband. It’s a band for your handlebars, but it’s also a great word to roll around your mouth – handleband… handleband – rattling it through your teeth and wrapping it around your tongue. Haaaandlebaaaand.

In the right hands, the iPhone Makes a great camera. And in the wrong hands, even the best DSLR or rangefinder will spit out crap. This is the truth behind the SunTimes/DarkTimes Tumblr, a blog which highlights the terrible photos that the Chicago Sun Times is publishing ever since it fired all its photographers and let the writers snap pictures with their iPhones.

The result is clearly shown above.

Everpix 2 has launched, and it takes everything you love about the all-photos-everywhere service and makes it easier to use. It also introduces the comedically inaccurate Explore feature which mistakes breakfast for human faces.

And no, it still doesn’t work in portrait orientation.

Las Vegas isn’t the easiest town to get along with when something big is going down. Case in point: During CES back in January, I was shocked to see the nightly rate for my hotel room skyrocket by roughly 600 percent — pretty much matching my entire budget — during the show’s high-water mark (understandable, since the hotel was an easy stroll from the LV Convention Center, where the show squats).

I panicked for a few minutes, swore, then sat down and fired up the Hotwire app I’d just installed. Within an hour I was at the lobby of a swank joint, just off the strip, with my own suite — for a fraction of the rate of my old room (which, frankly, was a craphole).

And today’s release of the Universal Hotwire app dismisses the only real complaint I had: Having to use the iPhone-only app on my iPad.

At this point, Withings has to be the most complete biometric suite in existence outside of a hospital or Langley. The outfit began with a scale (which also measures body-fat percentage), added a separate blood pressure cuff and then snuck an air-quality sensor and a pulse meter into their scale.

The latest addition is the a wearable activity tracker that adds a feature unique, at this point, to activity trackers: a pulse meter (which explains why they’ve named it the Pulse).

Google made a big splash into wearable tech with Glass and even though they haven’t sold a single unit in stores yet, Google already has its sights on making a smartwatch – similar Apple’s rumored iWatch – and a videogame console powered by its Android operating system.

The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that Google is developing the products on its own in an effort to combat the rumored iWatch and the possibility of an updated Apple TV that could support third-party apps. 

Apple may or may not be making a smartwatch, but that’s not stopping its partner, Hon Hai Precision Industry – better known by it’s trading name, Foxconn – from making an iPhone compatible watch of its own.

Hon Hai unveiled it’s first smartwatch today at a shareholders meeting. The device can connect wirelessly to an iPhone and provides data on users’ vitals, such as heartbeat and respiration. The smartwatch can even check phone calls and Facebook posts.

Oh, and remember how the iPhone 5S might be getting a fingerprint sensor? Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou said they’re working to add that to their smartwatch in the future along with some other health features.

Instagram’s new video feature has taken off like wild fire as more than 5 million clips were uploaded in the first 24 hours alone. Many of those new 15-second Instagram videos are all over Twitter, but depending on the Twitter client you’re using, you might not be able to view them.

Tapbots announced today that it has added Instagram video support to its popular Twitter app, Tweetbot. The update is available on both the iPad and iPhone apps which run $2.99 a piece in the App Store.

Source: iTunes

Whether you love or hate iOS 7’s new parallax’d, flat and layered look, there’s no denying that most apps will need to undergo some big redesigns to fit in with the new UI Jony Ive’s presented.

iOS 7 doesn’t come out until later this fall, giving developers plenty of time to update their UI to the new vision. Rather than wait to see what developers come up with for iOS 7, one Tumblr account has started collecting iOS 7 redesign ideas for some of the most popular apps on the App Store.

Here are what some of your favorite apps might look like once they get an iOS 7 makeover:

Twitter’s #music app for iPhone is supposed to become one of the best ways to discover new and popular music. To help users fine tune their discovery needs, Twitter updated #music today to include  a new Genres feature for its charts.

The new Genres feature expands the number of areas users can select to search for music. You can now browse for music in country, hip-hop, pop, R&B and more. Twitter’s also included new categories for Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearth and Hunted charts.

Here’s what’s new:

iOS 7 beta brings with it a host of surprising features, one of which is the new way in which the mobile operating system handles multitasking. In iOS 6, a double click on the Home button on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch brings up a multitasking bar along the bottom of the screen. On iPhone and iPod touch, it only works in Portrait mode. On the iPad, it works in both Portrait and Landscape screen orientations.

That’s the same in iOS 7, but the visual look of the multitasking system is quite different. Instead of a small bar sliding up from the bottom, you get full previews of each app in the multitasking list. You can swipe left and right to move between apps at will. Also different in iOS 7 beta is the way you force quit apps, to start them anew or prevent certain ones from running in the background.

“Wow, this is cool.” That was my first thought when I saw CamRanger controlling a full-size DSLR for the first time, then wirelessly beaming picture previews to an iPad 15 feet away.

From ISO, to shutter, to aperture, white balance—-even live view and touch-to-focus—-the CamRanger gives you amazing control of any compatible DSLR from your iPad or iPhone. All it takes to get the magic going, is the tiny CamRanger unit and their free iOS app.

AOL launched a new iPad app today that gives users access to the company’s wide-variety of content for news, mail, weather and video. The magazine style app is similar to Flipboard in that you can choose from a wide variety of topics to customize your own news stream, except there’s a ton of junk in-between because hey, it’s AOL.

The app is iPad only right now and can be downloaded from the App Store for free.

Here are the full release notes:

The Cult of Mac team used Glassboard to help coordinate our reporting efforts at this year’s CES back in January. It was quick, simple, tied us all together and made the show a little less crazy.

This time around, maybe we’ll dump Glassboard for Anchor, released today. It’s an app with the same basic idea — hanging out and communicating with all your teammates through your iPhone — but with a heavy slant toward fun. And if anything is a great antidote for crazy, it’s fun.

There are two things people care viscerally about in the San Francisco Bay Area: food and tech.

There’s always someone with an iPhone Instagramming dinner or squinting over health scorecards for those taco trucks on Yelp. (See also: “Foodies The Musical,” a local hit.)

But a lot of these apps don’t deliver what food lovers really hunger for, says the organizer of a new app contest.  The 8-Hour Food App Challenge wants local residents to sit at their kitchen tables and concoct new apps about all things culinary on Saturday, June 29.

“The kind of food content that makes you salivate isn’t the kind you find in apps designed by engineers,” says Pietro Ferraris, founder of Map2app and sponsor of the Challenge, told Cult of Mac. “Most apps made by engineers about food are pretty boring, so we hope to change that.”

Verizon Wireless has been hard at work rolling out LTE on its network over the past three years or so, but the company announced today that the nationwide 4G LTE rollout is ‘substantially complete.’

With support for over 500 LTE markets, Verizon’s 4G LTE network now covers 95% of the U.S. population. Verizon Wireless CTO Nicola Palmer says the company isn’t totally done just yet. As reported by PC Mag, Palmer says the company plans to add more services to LTE over the next few years and open new markets:

Apple’s new “Designed by Apple” commercials, which boast about the impact of its Mac and iOS devices, are being considered a flop in comparison with previous ad campaigns from the Cupertino company. Fans have criticized the way in which Apple has bragged about itself and the lack of joy in each video.

Ever dreamed of being a train conductor? If so, then this deal is just the ticket you’ve been waiting for because we’ve got Trainz Simulator – the best simulator on the market – for only $14.99 during this limited time Cult of Mac Deals offer.

Jump into the conductor’s seat, where you can create, edit, and operate all kinds of different railroad. Trainz Simulator is unparalleled in realism and flexibility.

The official Skype apps for iOS have been updated today to add free and unlimited video messaging, which previously required a $4.99 per month Skype Premium subscription. The updates also bring a number of other improvements to things like photo sharing and call stability.

This post is brought to you by Wondershare Software, creator of PowerCam.

There are so many times when I wanted to zoom my iPhone camera on some distant object, play with the focus, take full panoramic shots, and most of all, snap myself from a greater distance than my arm’s length! But I couldn’t. The iPhone camera, despite all the tech loaded into the rest of the device, is little more advanced than a pinhole camera made from an Oxo box. But now, PowerCam is a new app that allows you to turn your humble iPhone camera into a much more versatile device….

Apple will pay music labels more than Pandora for its new iTunes Radio service, according to terms reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. In addition to a set fee, the Cupertino company will also cough up a cut of its net advertising revenue every time a song is played.

The developer behind Reeder, one of the best Google Reader clients for iOS, has confirmed that the app’s development will continue after Google Reader is closed on July 1. The app will soon receive an update which will bring support for a number of Google Reader alternatives, and if that wasn’t enough, it’ll be free on the iPhone starting today.