Cult of Mac

There are several truths about cables:

1. Despite having a rats nest of cables in the back of your closet, you can never find the one you actually want.
2. All cables – ALL OF THEM – are self-tangling. And “tangle-free” cables are the worst.
3. Try as you might, you have never managed to come up with a good way to organize cables and have them look good.

This is one reason I like the look of Brit Morin’s cool DIY project. The other reason is that it’s not just for cables but for several other things I have too many of: sunglasses, neckties, straps (just kidding about the neckties).

This somewhat blurry image of a game controller built by Logitech is believed to be one of the first Apple-approved controllers for iOS 7 that will join the “Made for iPhone” program. It’s built for the iPhone 5, and it’s been designed to meet Apple’s new guidelines for Mac and iOS game controllers.

OS X Mavericks (named after a hot surfing spot in California) was released last week, and even though it may have been overshadowed by the iOS 7 announcement at the same time, there are bound to be some new things in the operating system we can tip you about.

Remember, though, that as with all beta software, OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version–it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that when it’s released this fall, all the devs with apps on OS X will have had time to make tweaks to their current Mac software, and start integrating Mavericks stuff into their next bits of software.

That said, let’s take a look at how to enable the new Do Not Disturb toggle in OS X Mavericks beta.

Bonzart’s Ampel is a cool-looking — and cheap — digital camera styled on the TLR (twin-lens-reflex) cameras of old. But the retro case design isn’t just a gimmick: the Ampel actually packs some great featurres into the old-fashioned shape, including a dedicated tilt-shift lens.

Instagram is gearing up to take on Vine by offering a new video sharing service, according to a source familiar with the plans. The move is expected to be announced on Thursday, June 20, during a mysterious Facebook press event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

It looks like iOS 7 adds a digital zoom to the video-camera app. You’ll need to be running it on an iPhone 5, but if you are, you can zoom in 2–3x as you shoot. Plus, it doesn’t appear to be the crappy digital zoom used for stills.

You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking it’s been three whole days since I posted about a wooden iPhone case. And since the last one before that was maybe at the beginning of last week, I’m thinking it’s about time for another one. So here it is: The Colors Handcarved Wood iPhone 5 Case.

Lightroom-using, iPad-owning readers might remember an app called Photosmith. It promised to let you sync your photos ’twixt iPad and Lightroom and let you add tags, keywords and metadata, as well as selecting picks and rejecting the crud before syncing everything back again.

The trouble was, it was confusing as hell, and crashed every few button taps. Now we have version 3.0, and it is everything the original tried to be. In fact, it’s pretty great.

Apple has issued a statement which explains its commitment to customer privacy and how it handles government requests for data following the PRISM scandal. The Cupertino company has reiterated that it did not know about the PRISM program until June 6 when it was first contacted by the media, and that it does not provide government agencies with direct access to its servers.

Remember when the iPad first appeared and everyone said “it’s just a big iPhone”? They were right. From the lock screen to the multitasking tray to the awful, awful clock app, the iPad really was running a blown-up version of the iPhone OS.

Now, though, it looks like Apple has finally designed iOS to sit properly on the iPad’s bigger screen. These screenshots, taken from X-Code’s device emulator, show what the iPad looks like when it’s running iOS 7.

Are you looking to up your audio editing game? Then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is definitely going to sound good to you!

DSP-Quattro is the do-it-all audio editing program for Mac. Simple yet powerful, this program is great for novices and professional musicians alike. This most recent version – DSP-Quattro Version 4 – is the best yet. It can handle everything from standard audio editing and recording to more advanced audio mastering. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for a limited time for just $39.99!

Most audio software is either too difficult to use or too weak to enhance the music, but DSP-Quattro is easy to master and yet still packs a powerful punch. It’s the perfect combination of power and ease rolled up in an audio editor.

How cool would it be if some big consumer electronics company that is really great at hardware design sold a smartwatch you could buy for under $100 that was open to any developer’s firmware?

That would be amazing, because as an open platform genius software developers could compete with each other to create the ultimate smartwatch experience, and they wouldn’t need to fuss with designing and manufacturing a physical hardware smartwatch.

Well, it’s happened. Sony this week announced an Open SmartWatch project that invites developers to create and flash their own firmware for the Sony SmartWatch.

This is bigger news than it sounds. 

In May 2012 several U.S. carriers started rolling out a nationwide wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system for wireless subscribers. The free service is intended to share information about natural disasters and other location-centric news, like AMBER alerts.

Over the weekend AT&T announced that it is bringing WEA to its iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S owners across the country. The service will be enabled via a carrier firmware update that has started rolling out to subscribers on iOS 6.1 and higher.

Having the ability to easily edit a PDF is a great thing, especially if you’re trying to go as paperless as possible. This Cult of Mac Deals offer boasts one of the best PDF editors for the Mac on the market in PDF Converter for Mac.

The software’s ease-of-use really sets itself apart from other PDF editors and its powerful features allow you to efficiently edit and share PDFs in a flash. If you’re been hunting for a great piece of software that allows you to simply edit and share PDFs, PDF Converter for Mac is right up your alley – and at the featured price of $49.99 it’s more attractive than ever.

My first impression on seeing iOS 7 on my iPhone was: What is this, a My Little Pony theme?

But after scrutinizing, analyzing, deconstructing and living with the new version, I’m ready to declare iOS 7 an unambiguous masterpiece, a stroke of genius, really.

That may sound like a weird thing to say about a fruity, copycat platform that crashes constantly. But it’s true, and I’ll tell you why.

Have you ever had the chance to play with a remote-controlled helicopter? If you haven’t…you’ve been missing out.

The Robocopter GST Special Edition with Hyperbrain Controller (aka – the iHelicopter) is the go-to remote control toy for the 21st century. From Extreme Fliers – the leading brand of remote-controlled toys – comes a remote-controlled Helicopter. But this toy’s remote is your iPhone!

The fun begins here at Cult of Mac Deals, because we’ve got the iHelicopter for just $49.99.

I’ve tried multiple Mac menubar apps for accessing Facebook, and they’ve all been ugly and clunky when compared with Moment, a recently released OS X app from Tapmates.

Moment sits in your Mac’s menubar and gives you quick access to sharing on Facebook and viewing notifications. It’s beautifully designed, simple, and unobtrusive.

A new Android theme mimics the design of iOS 7, Apple’s newest mobile operating system. The theme is a combination of custom icons and the Nova Launcher home screen replacement for Android 4.0+. 

Instagram is in desperate need of an iOS 7 redesign. The current interface looks very outdated and overly textured compared to the rest of Apple’s newest OS.

To be fair, iOS 7 won’t ship to the public for months, and I’m sure Instagram’s talented designers are working on an update right now. But in the meantime, the above concept looks great. The navigation buttons and typography meshes perfectly with iOS 7, and I would totally use it on my iPhone.

The design is by Michal Vasko on Dribbble. What do you think?

Source: Dribbble

iOS 7 looks totally different than iOS 6, and most App Store apps are going to have to undergo a big design overhaul to fit it. Gone are the rich textures and deep garnishes. Corinthian leather has been replaced with Gaussian blur. A lot of iOS 6 apps look instantly out of place.

There are, however, quite a few popular apps that look like they belong in iOS 7. Whether it’s by coincidence or intentional forethought, these 16 iOS apps fit in with iOS 7 very well already:

Going to see Man of Steel this weekend? Then check out the official iOS game by Warner Bros. You fly around as Supes and beat on General Zod and his posse.

The gameplay looks decently fun for an iOS title, although the graphics leave much to be desired.

This is another small but great feature in iOS 7: you can now scrub through songs from the lockscreen if you are playing them through the official Music app. This doesn’t work with third-party music apps, like Rdio, and in practice in the first beta, it can be a little difficult to scrub (the touch target is too small). Still a very nice addition indeed.

Via: Reddit

The  MiniDrive is tiny caddy that lets you hide a microSD card entirely inside the SD card slot on your MacBook Air (or any other Mac with an SD slot). The idea is that you can cheaply add storage to your SSD-equipped Mac.

When I first wrote up the MiniDrive as a news piece, a whole bunch of readers got in contact to tell me how much it sucked, mostly because it didn’t fit properly into the SD slot on their Macs.

My experience has been fine, so I’m putting down those bad experiences to being the first wave of Kickstarter order fulfillments. That’s no excuse, clearly – if you sell something it should work – but I can only review what I have to review. And so I will.

UPDATE: This MiniDrive has nothing to do with the Nifty Minidrive I saw at CES. Sorry for any confusion.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA Collin Donnell wants app developers to learn from his mistakes.

Donnell, a full-time iOS developer  since 2008 whose app credits include Pinbook for Pinboard, shared some tips to a packed room at AltWWDC, which we have been all over like an snuggle iPad case. He divided them into practical and philosophical, but they sort of blend together.

The new Mac Pro is probably going to be one of the most insane piece of desktop hardware ever created.

We know all that horsepower is going to be used to create some really great creative content, but there are some altnative uses for the Mac Pro that you’d never even dream of, like a beer keg.

Here are the best alternatives uses for the new Mac Pro: