Cult of Mac

In his interview today at the AllThingsD D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to questions from Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg about Apple taxes. Relating his time with the congressional subcommittee this past week, Cook, said that he felt strongly about how the company was portrayed by lawmakers.

Cook said that he wanted to be a catalyst for a discussion, coming to the hearing with a proposal rather than a defense, one for a revenue-neutral and major overhaul of corporate taxes nationwide.

Cook said that he felt simplicity was good, and how Apple approaches everything. The current tax system, he said, results in a two foot high tax return every year. When asked what he would like to do with it, he replied, “I would suggest we gut it.”

Tim Cook just took the stage at All Things D’s, D11 tech conference to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Cook was asked for his opinion on wearable technology, and despite his belief that wearables could be a “profoundly interesting area,” Cook said he has a hard time believing Google Glass will find success with a mainstream audience.

Regarding Google Glass specifically, Cook said the following:

Tim Cook’s appearance at the AllThingsD conference (D10) last year was his first as the main man in charge of Apple. He talked about Apple’s role in the invention of the tablet form factor, the increaseing relevance of the Apple TV, and cleverly avoided other topics. The highlights of his chat can be found online, as well.

This year, he returns to D11, kicking off the conference with another interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

The iPhone 6 probably won’t be released until 2014, which means there’s still plenty of time for the rumor mill to churn out ridiculous specs and other ideas on what Apple might toss into the mix.

Today we’ve got a new iPhone 6 concept video that dreams of an iPhone with an edge-to-edge 4.8-inch curved display, along with an 8 megapixel 3D camera. We’ve yet to see 3D implementation in smartphones take off, which is probably a good thing. But if anyone could pull it off it’d be Apple right?

Check out the concept video below and tell us what you think:

Apple has agreed to pay $53 million to settle its class-action lawsuit from customers. The iPhone maker used faulty moisture indicators in both iPhones and iPods that resulted in customers’ warranty claims getting denied.

Depending on which iPhone model you’ve own, you may be eligible to receive $300 in damages from Apple, according to the federal court documents that were filed in San Francisco.

There are a lot of privacy concerns surrounding Google Glass, but that’s not deterring developers from making Google Glass apps that are even more invasive than Google’s dorky looking computer glasses.

Lambda Labs in San Francisco has created a facial recognition app for Google Glass that will launch in the next few days. The app is a facial recognition tool that is capable of recognizing someone in a picture you’ve taken with Glass, but it only works once you take a picture of them a second time with Glass.

I really enjoy Apple’s own Reminders app, especially as it integrates with Siri. Recently, however, Evernote has added its own Reminder system. As I use Evernote for a ton of my daily tasks, I thought it might be something to try out.

If you’re looking to remind yourself of the things you keep in Evernote, or are just looking for an alternative to the Reminders app in iOS, here’s how to create and manage them in Evernote for iOS.

Anyone who believes that still believes the iPad and other tablets are just a fad are in for a bumpy ride. A new forecast from IDC found that tablet shipments are expected to surpass ‘portable PC’ shipments by the end of 2013, and total PC shipments will get surpassed by 2015.

IDC found that tablet shipments are expected to grow 58.7% year-over-year in 2013, for a total of 229.3 million units sold. That figure is up from just 144.5 million last year, and if growth continues at the same pace tablet sales will be more popular than PC sales of both desktop and portable computers combined in 2015.

I love it when hardware integrates with iOS devices, endowing them with new powers they never hoped to possess. The Withings WS-50 smart scale, paired with their very good iOS app, does just that.

By connecting to your Wi-Fi and sending your health stats to the cloud, the Withings WS-50 smart scale allows you to effortlessly track your weight, body mass index, indoor air quality, and even your heart rate. All you have to do to make it work, is step on the scale from time to time, then boot up their app to see just how fat or cut you’re getting.

While Apple is working to cut the price of iPhones and iPads to appeal to more consumers, vintage Apple gear keeps getting more valuable by the minute. This weekend a vintage Apple I computer, made in 1976, was sold at an auction for a record $671,400.

The auction beat the previous record price for an Apple I that was set at an auction house in Germany last November when someone snatched up a working Apple I for $640,000.

The more I travel, the more I take photos with my iPhone. I’m getting better at it with every trip, which means I’m getting results that might even be considered worthy enough to display on my wall at home. In the past I’ve taken my photos to brick-and-mortar shops that specialize in it – and their prices are just as “special” – which means that if a less costly way to get canvas prints came along I would be all over it.

Enter CanvasPop.

CanvasPop allows you to create your own 16″× 20″ print – and thanks to Cult of Mac Deals you can do so for only $49 – and that includes shipping within the continental USA and Canada. CanvasPop is even willing to throw in an extra $30 voucher for you to use on your next print.

Dark Sky, our favorite micro-weather app for iOS, has just gotten a beautiful update to the big three-point-oh. Dark Sky’s just as simple as it ever was, but gives you a little more information about weather farther than an hour away, the ability to submit a personal weather support and meteorological data for our friends over in the U.K. Neat!

Wouldn’t it be great if your iPhone automatically increased its speaker volume when you pulled it away from your ear, or decreased it as you moved it closer? According to a new Apple patent recently published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, this could be a feature of future iPhones. 

Real Racing 3 fans have yet more content to look forward to in a new update that promises a new track, new cars, and new events. EA announced the release, which will introduce twilight racing at the Dubai Autodrome, on the company’s official Facebook page.

The iPhone 5’s call speaker is pretty good, but there are times when it could be a little louder — like when you’re in a crowded place. As always, the jailbreak community has a solution to that problem. It’s called Volume Amplifier, and it’s a new tweak that promises to amplify your iPhone’s call speaker volume by 200%.

Blockbuster has today unveiled a new iOS app that allows customers who still subscribe to its traditional disc rental service to manage their rentals on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The app also allows you to check stock availability at your local Blockbuster store, and more.

Many of us have old MacBooks and PowerBooks collecting cobwebs and dust bunnies in the back of our closets. It seems an ignominous end to a computer that we not only loved, but probably spent a lot of money on. Did we waste our cash on something little better than a dust collector?

That’s what TNW co-founder Patrick de Laive wanted to know, so he ended up asking himself what would have happened if he’d bought Aple stock back in 2003 instead of spending $3,299 for the 17-inch PowerBook G4 back in April of 2003. The answer is that today, he could buy a starter home with the money he’d have earned on AAPL, while a PowerBook G4 on eBay can be had for under $50. Woof.

Source: The Next Web

We’ve already heard one crazy rumor about the iPhone 5S today, and now we have another, even more ludicrous one, about the iPad. Apparently, Apple is planning to launch a bigger “iPad maxi” in early 2014 which will step up the tablet’s fight against ultrabooks and other small notebooks with a 12.9-inch display.

Quora is a fantastic site in which members ask questions of experts in various fields, and for the past year or so, there’s an absolute fantastic thread going asking about how Apple keeps its secrets… and it contains not only some fantastic insight there on what lengths Apple will go to be secretive about new products, but about how information on new products leaks… like, say, the time the Pentagon leaked the 1998 iMac to the world.

The old rainbow Apple menu had a function that let you find recent documents, along with the ability to place folders in it for quick and easy access. This was replaced in Mac OS X with stacks, a visual way to do a similar thing, but from the Dock. You can drag a folder into the right hand side of the Dock and have it open as a Stack, of course, but did you know you could get a list of Recent Apps, Documents, or Servers, as well as Favorite Volumes or Items as a Stack, as well?

You can, with a little Terminal magic. Here’s how.

Although we’re excited about the iPhone 5S, we’re not expecting it to be vastly different to the iPhone 5. We at least expect it to look largely identical. But according to a new rumor that has surfaced in China, the device could come with thinner bezels and a new display that offers twice as many pixels.

Back In The Day™, when men were men, cars were cars and boys were forced to work to support their families before their stupid brains were even half developed, we fixed automobiles by kicking their tires and sucking our teeth.

Fast forward to the Space Year 2013 and cars now repair themselves. All you have to do is take it to a repair shop, where they plug it into a computer which sucks the money from your bank account while you take a spin in a “courtesy” car.

But what if you want to tinker? If you own a Ford and an iPad, and don’t mind getting your hands (literally) dirty, then you’ll be happy to hear that there’s a (concept) app for that.

As Flickr is to Instagram, so 500px is to Flickr. 500px is a photo-sharing site that focusses (huh…) on showing only your best pictures. To this end the website and various apps bring beautiful hi-res images to your iDevices (it’s especially good on the Retina iPad), and the account upgrade options are geared towards professional portfolios.

But the quality of the official apps hasn’t deterred the folks behind ISO500, a brand-new iPhone app which brings a super-minimal interface to the 500PX site. And, like 500px itself, the app is free. Mostly.

This is the Bridging Book, and it “bridges” the gap between reality and virtual reality by combining an iPad app with an actual paper book. The concept is simple and yet looks to be very effective, if the smiles on the kid in the video are anything to go by: The iPad detects page turns made in the book using magnets. Yes, frikkin’ magnets.

Quick question: How do you feel about 60˚? That’s the angle, not the temperature. Do you like it? Still not sure? Then let me put it another way: Are you a fan of tilting things back by 30 degrees?

If so, and if you don’t like to adjust things, then the ChillTab2 might just be the perfect stand for you.