The improved Notifications in OS X 10.9 are great. Not only can you respond to notifications as they appear on your desktop, but the new Notification Center also lets you know when your peripherals are about to die.
Now when your keyboard or mouse is getting low on juice, OS X Mavericks will display a notification alerting you that it’s almost time to change the batteries. The days of getting caught with a dead mouse during a presentation may finally be over.
This time on The CultCast: Microsoft disses Siri but becomes her go-to search; Apple TV gets better with new apps; new Airport routers get even better; Anchorman 2 gets classier; we answer your Facebook questions; we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Faves N Raves; and… WHEW! Just press play already.
All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and may the shwartz be with you.
Show notes up next.
Disclaimer: Seriously, folks, iOS 7 beta is a pre-release version of iOS. Don’t use these tips as proof that anything will be in the final release, or that they’ll work past the beta. We’re providing these as a fun way to explore Apple’s new mobile OS, is all.
The iPhone’s built-in navigation system has profoundly changed my life. No longer do I need to plan extra time to get to a meeting so I can deal with my ability to get lost on even the most benign route in my own hometown, since I can use turn by turn spoken directions to get me to my destination.
When walking however, I’m the guy who’s usually staring down at his iPhone, waving it around in some weird figure eight pattern to resolve interference, and generally bumping into things along the way.
No longer, though, as iOS 7 beta has turn by turn walking directions. Here’s how to use them.
You know who thinks I look hot when I wear this bag? Everyone, that’s who. From the young hipster laydeez to the local barrio ne’erdowells, everyone steals a glance at me when I sashay down the filthy dogs hit covered streets of my dirty Barcelona neighborhood. “Who is that guy?” their eyes seems to ask. “And why is he wearing that short-strapped red leather bag with those pink shorts?” their eyes continue, before rolling momentarily in what I like to think is ecstasy, but which is probably just exasperation.
The bag, though, is worth the attention, and it probably also worth more than its contents. At €180 ($240) it’s not cheap. But then, it’s pretty gorgeous.
Foxconn has an iPad mini production plant inside Brazil but Apple still hasn’t made the iPad mini available in the country, even though it launched eight months ago in the U.S. Brazilians won’t have to wait much longer though, as a new report claims that Apple make the iPad mini available in Brazil starting next Tuesday.
Following the release of a teaser clip back in January, the first full trailer for the new Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher has been made available—and yes, it features a song by Macklemore.
The movie was originally supposed to hit theaters in April, but the premiere has been pushed back to August 16th due to a need more more marketing.
Early reviews were mixed for Jobs, but most seem to agree that the movie isn’t going to be that great. What do you think of the new trailer?
Kanye West and Kim Kardashian have had their baby, and word on the street is that the name is “North West.” KimYe’s creation may very well be the most popular baby on earth right now, but no one has seen it yet. Well, no one except… wait for it… Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
In what is probably the most random connection between celebrities in recent memory, the Woz has been chilling with Kim, Kanye, and baby North West.
Do you have an easier time remembering faces than names? Have a ton of contacts with the first name “Mike” but want to reach a specific one that you know by seeing him rather than hearing his name? If so, Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that is going to help you deal with your contacts with that sensibility in mind.
Ensoul is the easiest way to create perfectly sized wallpapers and full-size contact images for your iPhone, and Cult of Mac Deals has it for a limited time for the low price of only $5.
Nokia has a new ad out for its latest Lumia 925 smartphone, and it attempts to praise the handset’s camera abilities by depicting iPhone owners as brain-dead zombies who have to use flash to take photos in the dark. Yeah, it makes no sense to me, either. Check it out below.
Every year Apple does a summer camp for kids at its U.S. retail stores. The free workshops teach 8-12 year olds how to make movies and music with iMovie and Garageband. Camp sessions begin around the middle of July and last through the beginning of August in some cases. There are two workshop days that culminate with an Apple Camp Film Festival.
I like smartphones with big displays, which is why I’m a fan of the Samsung Galaxy Note, so I’d certainly be in line for an iPhone “phablet” if Apple ever decided to release one. With rival smartphones getting bigger by the day, that seems like only a matter of time.
But how big could the iPhone go? A recent report claimed Apple has been considering iPhones with 4.7- and 5.7-inch displays, and the concept video below shows what the latter might look like.
Virgin Mobile has today announced that it will be launching the iPhone 5 on Friday, June 28. The handset will be available on its Beyond Talk plans, which offer unlimited 3G and 4G LTE data and unlimited messaging for $35 per month. Prices for the iPhone 5 itself start at $549.99.
A Tokyo court has today found Samsung guilty of infringing an Apple “bounce-back” or “rubber banding” patent that covers the popular scrolling feature built into its iOS platform. Apple has been using the patent against Samsung in a number of courtrooms all over the world, but back in April, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office deemed it invalid.
Best Buy has today begun a new nine-day deal that gives you $150 when you trade-in any working iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S. That’s enough to cover the cost of a brand new 16GB iPhone 5 on a two-year contract with a $50 instant rebate, which means there couldn’t be a better time to upgrade.
Apple has begun charting iOS adoption figures to help developers establish the percentage of users running different versions of iOS. Google has been doing the same thing for Android developers for some time, and Apple’s chart only highlights the massive difference in fragmentation between the two platforms.
Google has today updated its official YouTube app for iOS to introduce annoying suggestion overlays that offer recommendations on what to watch next over the top of the video you’re currently watching. The update also adds closed captions for live streams, and more.
I no longer have to bother with the swapping of lenses since I traded in a box of the things for the fixed-lens Fujifilm X100S, but when I did I found that I never had enough hands to do it (for the record, I have the usual number of hands: two). If I’d been desperate enough, then, I might just have opted for the Spider Holster Large Pro Lens Pouch, a dork-tastic accessory which is nonetheless very practical.
Readers with long memories for frustratingly future-distant Kickstarter projects might remember the Halopad. It was a “universal” iPad stand which I described generously as “like a pub ashtray with the bottom cut out” and – with even more generosity – “not ugly.” And now that the stand is finally for sale, I stand by both of those gushing endorsements.
Here’s a practical case for you. It’s called the Corduroy Clip Case, and — while only half of its name is true — it does appear like the perfect way to both carry your iPod and make yourself look like a kind of creepy, Robin Williams-esque man-child.
Imagine that you took the aluminum frame from the inside of, uh, something that has a small, iPhone-sized metal frame. Then – still in the garden of your mind – imagine that you chopped the cover off a fancy leather bound book and glued the flat flap to the pre-scavenged frame. Now open your eyes and look at the picture above. Uncanny right? It’s exactly what you imagined.
If you’ve used an iPad for any significant amount of time, you know that after a while, it can get rather unwieldy to hold and use, especially with one hand. Gripping it on the side bevel is a decent sort-term solution, but the larger iPad just gets too heavy to make that a tenable stretegy for long, and even the iPad mini, with its significantly smaller bevel size, can be a challenge to hold.
There are probably a metric ton of iPad and other tablet cases out there that try to remedy this, adding bulk and unwieldy solutions along the way. In addition, cases that strap around an iPad can’t be used for other tablets or eReaders at all; they’re specifically tailored to each device’s measurements.
Two designers from Simi Valley, California aim to change all that with the HandTab, a medically-safe handgrip for the iPad and any other tablet you might own.
Apple’s beautiful new wave wallpaper for OS X 10.9 Mavericks can now be enjoyed on your iPhone too. iOS designer and developer, AR7 published two great wallpapers for the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S this morning that are a redesign of the Mavericks wave.
Here are the download links: iPhone 5 | iPhone 4S
Source: Twitter
If you’re growing tired of the way iOS 6 keeps your photos together in one big shoebox of sorts, only letting you categorize photos and create albums manually, there’s a new app out that will help you do much more than that, and it’s free to boot.
Photoful is a new, free app that offers something of what you can expect to find in the upcoming iOS 7 version of Apple’s own Photos: an elegant, good-looking, well-designed app focused on helping you organize and display your camera photos in a better way.
I remember when I got my first computer, ever, at the age of 24. It was a Macintosh Performa 638CD, and it came with this sweet little 14.4 baud modem that was my entree to the whole of the internet, which really wasn’t that popular back then.
I remember finding this cool little icon on the Mac with a little hand-drawn person on it, called eWorld. Hmm, I wondered. What the heck was eWorld?
Clicking through, I found an adorable little electronic village, all in that hand-drawn, gentle style. Oh, this must be like Compuserve, or Prodigy, right?
Well, yes and no. The softer, gentler world of eWorld was only for Macs, and it was my favorite place to go. Never mind that it was kind of empty; it was beautiful and I loved it.
HBO Go and ESPN recently got added to the Apple TV, but only if you pay a hefty, monthly sum to a cable or satellite company for a bunch of other channels you never watch. The TV industry is evidently broken. You can have unlimited access to stream HD content for the price of a couple cups of coffee each month, but you can’t pay for HBO a la carte.
The Apple TV is slowly but surely becoming a more formidable media player with the addition of apps like HBO Go. But developers still can’t create apps and submit them to an Apple TV App Store; Apple handpicks partners to work with.
