Cult of Mac

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The square cropped photo has never been more popular thanks to Instagram. There are a lot of benefits to being challenged to shoot within the confines of Instagram’s square — plus square photos make for easier browsing — but a lot of times cropping down to a square cuts out a lot of beautiful shot.

Even though Instagram forces users to upload square pictures, there are lots of ways to get around it. Not only can you post oblong pictures at whichever aspect ratio you want, you can also crop images into circles, triangles, and all sorts of other shapes.

Here’s our guide on how to break out of Instagram’s square:

This just in: your iPhone (and iPad or iPod touch) is a marvel of engineering and does some amazing things, keeping you connected to the rest of the world with its super amazing technology. All that connectivity, though, can come with a price.

Push services are there to let you know when you have stuff to do, or emails to check. It’s pretty handy. However, when you need to conserve your battery, it’s probably time to turn them off. Here’s how, straight from Apple.

We’re spending more and more time on the go with our mobile devices, and watching video on them is becoming increasingly popular. Converting your videos to watch on mobile devices can get a bit unwieldy, though.

Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that will make your day – and converting videos for mobile a breeze…and it won’t cost you a dime.

Thanks to our friends over at Digiarty, we’re able to hook you up with MacX Mobile Video Converter – their new mobile video converting Mac app – for free!

I reviewed the Acase Collatio for iPhone 5 back in May, and I mentioned it was one of the best leather wallet cases I’d tested to date. It looked terrific, its build quality was excellent, and it was nicely priced. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Acase’s leather iPad mini case, then.

I have to be honest, I’ve had it stashed away in a cupboard for a while. I got it not long after the iPad mini was released, but I had so many cases to review at the time that I ended up forgetting about it. Reviewing the Collatio reminded me it was there, and I’ve been using it on my iPad mini since.

Like the Collatio, the iPad mini case is made entirely of leather, and it has a front cover that folds over to protect your display. When you’re using your device, the front cover doubles as a stand for typing or watching movies.

Magnets inside the front cover wake your iPad when you open it, then put it back to sleep again when you close it. They also ensure the front cover stays closed when you want it to.

The case provides access to all of your iPad mini’s ports, buttons, and cameras, and it comes in black, chestnut, and vintage brown, with a $39.99 price tag.

Following word that Apple’s iAd team is being restructured to allow for tighter integration with iOS 7’s new streaming music feature, iRadio, a new report talks just about how the ads on iRadio are going to work, how Apple’s going to make money on iRadio, and how much Apple’s paying the labels to make it happen.

A few weeks after the 11.03 release the brought iTunes a redesigned MiniPlayer comes iTunes 11.04, an incremental bug-fixing update that fixes a problem that can cause iTunes to quit if you switch between wired and wireless syncing, and an issue where the iTunes Store keeps on asking you to login to your account ad infinitim.

You can grab the update through Software Update or the Mac App Store now.

Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone and iPad got a great update today, which adds a couple of much needed features.

First, you can now set line spacing for your ebooks between three options: loose, normal and tight. Kindle has allowed you change the margins on e-books for a while, but this new option makes it even easier to change the settings for optimum readability.

A smaller change, but a welcome one, is that you can now highlight long passages that span multiple pages. I rarely use this functionality, but that’s still a level up.

You can download Kindle for iOS here.

Wearable tech has really started to take off over the last two years thanks in part to fitness trackers like the Nike Fuelband and FitBit. But while those companies are worrying about humans, a new company called Whistle is launching a new fitness tracker specifically for mans best friend.

The Whistle Activity Monitor is a little on-collar device that will track all of your dog’s activities, including rest, walks, playtime, and other activities. It’s kind of like a FitBit for dogs. The device comes with a slick iOS app too that lets you check in on your dogs stats throughout the day no matter where you are.

Sounds kind of crazy to buy a pet its own activity tracker, but when you consider most people only take there dog to the vet once every 3 years, Whistle will probably help you keep your pet in shape and enjoy a couple extra years together.

Here’s a video of how Whistle works:

We told you about Ulysses III when it first hit the Mac App Store back in April, and we called it “the best text editor ever” in our review. And it’s even better with its latest update, which brings a whopping 117 changes based on user feedback.

Apple has been using ideas that originated in the jailbreak community for years. A jailbreak tweak called MobileNotifier enhanced push notifications in iOS 4, and Apple hired the guy who made it and released Notification Center in iOS 5. Jailbreakers were doing multitasking and tethering before Apple too.

Looking ahead at iOS 7, I honestly have no idea what to expect from Apple. Jony Ive has never really been a big fan of skeuomorphism, so flatter and more minimalist graphics wouldn’t surprise me. Some truly innovate ideas for enhancing the iOS experience have arisen in the past year, and I think it would be foolish for Apple to not at least draw inspiration from these three.

The New York Attorney General has called for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to invent new ways to curb the ongoing smartphone theft “epidemic.” Eric Schneiderman wants meetings with representatives from all four companies, and he has urged them to “be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live.”

Analog for Mac from Realmac Software has today received all of the pretty filters that were introduced with Analog Camera for iPhone last week. It has also been reduced to just $4.99 until Sunday evening.

When the iWatch comes, could it be called the iсмотреть instead? Perhaps not, but a new report suggests that Apple has already registered a trademark for iWatch within Russia.

The popular Plex media player that allows users to stream content from their computer to another device is now available on the Apple TV. The new app called PlexConnect is compatible with second- and third-generation devices, and it does not require a jailbreak for installation.

It used to be so easy to remove items from the sidebar of OS X Finder windows. You’d simply click, drag, and poof! The offending item would disappear like a well-heeled Dock icon in search of greater opportunity in the world.

Today, however (and for quite some time, really) you can’t just click and drag the sidebar items away without giving it a little more thought. That’s where this handy keyboard shortcut comes in.

Sure, you could use the right-click (Control-click or two-finger click on a trackpad) to bring up a contextual menu, but where’s the fun in that?

A hacked carrier update that has the potential to deliver improved data speeds is now available to iPhone 5 users on Sprint. The modified update, which has previously been made available to devices on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, does not require a jailbroken device — just a Mac or PC with iTunes.

Still using that Ikea wind-up kitchen timer to take your time-lapse videos? Ditch it, because somebody has finally come up with a purpose-made iPhone motion rig that is cheap, fits in your pocket and can do double (triple?) duty as a panoramarator[1], and a passive sound-amplifying iPhone dock.

Shelfy is a new iPhone app which lets you quickly and easily keep a record of the books you have read, and the books you want to read. And unlike apps like Delicious Library, it doesn’t assume that you have a stack of physical paper books to scan: Input is strictly via search, and all the better for it.

Dispatch is the iPhone e-mail client I have been looking for for years. It’s kind of like Drafts for email, only in reverse – the emails come in from pretty much any service you like, then you quickly triage them. Then, you send the results off to another app or service on your iPhone.

Remember the Wally iPhone wallet? It was Kickstarted back in the misty far-off days of February, and is now a fully-available product that you can, like, buy. Don’t remember it? Then let me jog your memory: The Wally is a minimal and lightweight leather wallet that sticks to the back of your iPhone using hi-tech future adhesives. And the good news is that it’s currently shipping at 20% off – just $40.

Angry Birds fishing! Nope, it’s not the name of an awesome cross between Angry Birds and Ridiculous Fishing. Instead, it’s what you could do IRL with these ridiculous Angry Birds fishing lures. That’s right: Angry Birds fishing lures.

Camera Noir is just about the most basic B&W photo app I have ever seen. And yet, miraculously, it seems to have included just the right features. I can tell you in two words what you can tweak: almost nothing. And yet the results are fantastic.

Time Warner Cable is in talks with Apple to sign a video streaming deal for some of its content. After the successful launch of its TWC TV app on Roku devices this past March, Time Warner Cable announced that it’s trying to get ink more deals.

Speaking at an investors conference in London on June 4, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt told investors that the company wants to strike deals with Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung:

Thunderbolt really hasn’t taken off yet, even though Apple’s included the the tech in Macs since 2011. Intel is still plowing through with new updates for Thunderbolt though, and the company revealed some new details about the next generation of Thunderbolt.

Intel has officially named its next-gen high-speed data port ‘Thunderbolt 2’ and it will double the speed of first-gen Thunderbolt by supporting 20Gbps directionally on one connection. On a company blog post, Intel posted the following info on Thunderbolt 2:

According to the latest report on smartphone subscriber market share from comScore, Apple still tops out over Samsung for market dominance, with both companies showing decent gains. HTC, Motorola, and LG are also in the top five smartphone makers, but lost market share this past quarter.