If you stayed in any but the most flea-bitten of hotels in the last few years, you will have seen an iHome dock on the nightstand, ready to be mostly ignored until you need a place to charge your iPhone at night.

And as you eyed the clock/radio/speaker you may have chuckled to yourself and muttered something about the poor hotel owner, who just wasted like tens of thousands of dollars on now-obsolete 30-pin connector-equipped boxes.

If only he's waited, he could have had this new Lightning version, which also works with older models.

Admit it: When your iPhone/iPad/camera lens/spectacles get greasy fingerprints all over it, you don't reach for a microfiber cloth,right? Nope. You do exactly what everyone else does, and polish off the dirt with a corner of your shirt.

But what if you could continue with your filthy (if rather popular) habit, but with the magical results of microfiber? Thanks to the Voy Voy Summer Oxford, you can.

Wondering what iOS 7 will look like running on an iPad? Then look no further than this video from Russian blogger Rozetked, which shows just that.

If you haven’t played Torchlight, yet, you’re missing out. It’s essentially a Diablo-style dungeon crawling hack n slash game, which is no surprise considering that Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II, were on the team that made it.

Today, and for the next 48 hours, Torchlight is free to download and own on GoG.com, formerly known as Good Old Games, one of the best ways to get older games for your Mac without any digital rights management (DRM) mess.

That’s some seriously worth it for a download, but wait, there’s more!

Louie Mantia is a renowned icon and visual interface designer in Silicon Valley who has worked at big companies like Apple and Square. He was involved in designing many of Apple’s pre-iOS 7 app icons, like Trailers, Remote, Garageband, and iBooks. He even designed the Starbucks and Obama campaign app icons, for crying out loud.

The point is that this guy knows good icon design. He’s posted the above iOS 7 concept on his Dribbble, and I think it looks fantastic. He did the same thing last year for iOS 6. This time around, I think he’s nailed it better than Apple.

“Today, I revisited that original task and took about a day to understand the new style,” said Mantia. “Simpler, smoother, subtler. While I don’t employ the grid they created (and while I instead use the colors I chose), these feel interesting and balanced. Vibrant and bold, but not overbearing.”

Indeed. Please hire this guy back, Tim Cook. He gets it.

Source: Dribbble

Simple, a great bank I’ve been using for the past several months, has brought its “Goals” budgeting feature to the iPhone. If you haven’t checked out Simple as a banking alternative yet, then go do that now because it will entice you. The whole service is exquisitely designed on web and mobile, and the customer support is top notch (there’s an open ticket to chat with a real Simple employee right in the app, if that says anything).

While Simple still has some growing to do, it got better today. Goals helps you manage your money on the go so you don’t go broke buying overpriced lattes and such.

Hitcase Pro, like Tony Stark’s iron suit, is the penultimate protection for your iPhone 5, even when it’s flying through the air.

That’s because, like the red Avenger, Hitcase Pro isn’t just a suit of armor, like so many cases before it. No, this one’s built for action, with some special mounting and lens capabilities that encourage you take your lovely iPhone on adventures you ordinarily should not, all so you can use its camera to record the chaos and prove you survived.

Following the rising success of Twitter’s video sharing app Vine, Facebook is set to bring video to Instagram at a press event this Thursday. According to a report from AllThingsD, Instagram’s “video product” will revolve around quickly sharing short clips, although the allowed length of clips isn’t yet known. Vine lets you record up to six seconds per share.

Facebook just came out with version 6.2 of its iOS app. The update includes a new feature that allows users to add icons to status updates that show what you’re feeling based on a number of categories.

To use the new icons feature, just draft a status update in the new app and tap the new emoticon icon. The new icons screen is divided into 7 categories: Feeling, Watching, Reading, Listening to, Drinking, Eating, and Playing. You also change who can see something you’ve shared and start new conversations with photos.

What’s New in Version 6.2

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Max Payne 3 will be available for Mac later this week, on Thursday June 20th: https://t.co/4CsJE3Njmv

— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) June 18, 2013

Max Payne 3 was released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Windows during the Summer 2012, but Rockstar Games just announced that the company is finally porting the game over to the Mac on June 20th.

The third-person shooter received a lot of praise from console gamers for its shooting mechanics, graphics, and new bullet-time features. Rockstar says the Mac version will feature scalable high-resolution textures and character models, DirectX11 features, multi-monitor support and 3D.

Here are the recommended Mac specs:

Just like we said yesterday, remember that any of the iOS 7 beta features and tips we share with you could change before the latest mobile operating system from Apple hits the streets this coming fall.

Also? Be sure that you’re not using a beta iOS 7 on an iPhone you need to get work done on–Apple has provided it without guarantee for developers to start working with, not for you to use on any mission critical tasks.

That said, let’s take a look at a new feature in iOS 7: Smart Mailboxes. In OS X, you can create a mailbox with a bunch of filtering rules to help you gather together just email you’re interested in into one place.

iOS 7 beta doesn’t let you create your own smart mailbox, though. Rather, it has four or five new “mailboxes” that filter your incoming email into new categories, like Flagged email, email with attachments, or others. Here’s where to find, and ultimately enable, these new mailboxes in iOS 7 beta.

Twitter’s video sharing app, Vine, just got a new update that makes sharing your favorite Vines easier than ever.

Vine version 1.1.3 comes with a new share button underneath posts on your feed that allows you to share Vines to Facebook and Twitter or get the embedded code so you can post it on your own blog. The update also includes a number of interface improvements and bug fixes.

You can pick up the new version of Vine from the App Store for free right here.

Source: iTunes

Apple hasn’t even announced a price tag or release date for the tiny new Mac Pro machines that were unveiled at WWDC, but that’s not stopping one company from creating a Mac Pro server rack that will turn Apple’s new pro machines into a supercomputer.

The new cylindrical design of the Mac Pro makes it perfect for linking to other Mac Pros to form a supercomputer, and MacStadium announced that it has created a rack that can hold 270 Mac Pros but only occupies 12 square-feet of floor space.

Imagine cramming an entire iPhone stand, not just into your pocket, but into a credit card slot in your wallet.

That’s what the Pocket Tripod 360º does. It’s an ingenious little design: a small plastic card that unfolds into a sturdy dock that can keep your iPhone 5 propped up at literally 360 degree angles.

By default, when you turn on a new Mac or open a new user account under OS X, your Mac’s System Preferences icon will be sitting in the dock. It’s pretty easy to right-click on the icon to quickly navigate to whatever Settings panel you need, but how about a prettier option?

Preferences Quick Launch is a small tool that lets you add individual preferences to your Dock or Mac launchpad. Basically, it’s a set of 27 tiny applications, each of which launches a different Systems Panel pane. You can not only pop them individually into your Dock or Launchbar to access commonly used Settings panels, you can even drop the entire folder into the Dock to access the entirety of your System Preferences no matter where you are on your Mac.

Preferences Quick Launch is a free download for OS X 10.8. You can grab it here.

Source: Weebly
Via: Lifehacker

The Clock app in iOS 7 has been updated so that users can choose whether they want time to be displayed in a traditional clock face or switch to a digital clock.

If you’re not quick on the draw with your clock face reading skills then you’ll love this neat little feature. To switch clocks in the app all you have to do is tap anywhere on the screen.

Here’s a GIF of how it works:

You really had to hope that Apple would be more above board than other companies about who has access to our iData. We love them so much: half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple device. They’ve sold us on documenting our growing kids, cooking for our families and debuting new haircuts with iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Instead, Apple initially denied any involvement in PRISM, the National Security Agency’s massive e-spying program. Then, like Facebook and Microsoft, the Cupertino company issued a statement meant to clear things up but the numbers released by all three companies just confuse and minimize the issue.

So if they all did it, why am I seeing red about Apple? We deserve more from a publicly-traded company that has built its reputation on products that aspire to “enhance the life it touches” as in the above two-page ad timed to appear in the Wall Street Journal the day of the PRISM statement.That statement, headlined “Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy,” seems about as phony as this Android iPhone clone.

The demand for 4G LTE connectivity has never been higher, and companies are pulling all the tricks out the bag to try to fulfil the high demand. Last night, Sprint announced that it has turned on high-speed 4G LTE data in 22 new locations. The announcement was made in a single press release on the U.S. carrier’s website.

Paper for iPad creator FiftyThree has today announced that it has secured $15 million in funding to build a suite of “mobile tools for creativity.” It’s quite an achievement for an app startup, particularly one that isn’t a smash-hit game, but if FiftyThree’s upcoming apps are anywhere near as successful as Paper, the investment will surely pay off.

Chatology is a brand new tool for searching Messages on the Mac without the headaches. If you’ve been experiencing bugs, random crashes, and a lack of search functionality in Apple’s chat software, then this new app is for you.

Adobe has today made its complete Creative Cloud suite available to all as it migrates to a compulsory subscription-only model. It’s been a controversial move that a lot of Adobe users aren’t happy with, but as of today, the only way to use Adobe’s apps is to bite the bullet and sign up to the $50 per month plan.

Eddy Cue is at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in lower Manhattan testifying in the Department of Justice’s e-books antitrust case, and he’s been sharing more information on the work that went into developing iBooks prior to its launch in 2010.

Cue reveled that Steve Jobs, then Apple’s CEO, chose to give away a free copy of Winnie-the-Pooh not just because he liked the book, but because its colorful illustrations showcased the capabilities of digital e-books in the iBooks app.

With the iPhone 5S shaping up to be pretty much an identical device to last year’s iPhone 5 except a marginally faster processor and (fingers crossed!) some cool new fingerprint sensor technology, eyes are on the so-called “budget iPhone” as 2013’s new hotness.

Although the ‘budget iPhone’ will address the mid-market, it’s still an exciting device, rumored to be the first iPhone to come in an iPod-palette of colors. Otherwise, though, we don’t know a lot about what it looks like.

Far East case makers might, though. MGM Corporation, an Asian casemaker, has posted a first look at a case for the budget iPhone. It doesn’t show much, except that the budget iPhone is about 2mm thicker than the iPhone 5, and has rounded corners instead of the iPhone 5’s square shape.

Here’s some video, showing it from all sides.

I play the street life
Because there’s no place I can go
Street life
It’s the only life I know
Street life
And there’s a thousand cards to play
Street life
Until you play your life away

So go the lyrics to Randy Crawford’s fantastic Street Life, which is not — as far as I know — the official song of AT&T and Goal Zero’s new “collabo” Street Charge.

Street Charge is a new scheme which will see AT&T deploying solar charging stations throughout New York City.

In October of last year, Apple underwent an executive shake-up that saw Scott Forstall’s head rolling down the Cupertino aisles and Jony Ive being put in charge of both software and hardware design in Apple… but his title, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, never changed.

Now that iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks have been unveiled, Apple has apparently formalized Jony Ive’s new role, giving him a new title, Senior Vice President, Design. The smouldering look on Jony’s pretty face is the same as it ever was, though.

Thanks: Rachel C.