Look, all these great tips for saving your iPhone battery are not very useful if they don’t apply to you. Your iPhone use is uniquely your own, and you really ought to get a handle on how your battery is affected as you apply the various strategies to help conserve power when you need it.
Otherwise, why bother, right? Here’s how to check your battery usage stats right on your iPhone, as recommended by Apple.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers conference is right around the corner, dear brethren, and on this episode of The CultCast, we’ll ponder the new hardware rumors surrounding the big event, like whispers of new MacBooks with dramatically extended battery life and even more power; Airs with retina displays, and why that’s now very possible; updates to the long-neglected Mac Pro; Intel’s powerful yet power-sipping Haswell chips; and soooo much more!
Join us and Gizmodo Chief New York Wired Editor Joe Brown for an extra long CultCast all about our WWDC expectations, hopes and dreams. Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Show notes up next. Namaste.
Bluelounge’s new MiniDock really is mini. It’s a tiny little dock which perfectly matches the cuboid charger that came with your iPhone or iPad mini, and turns it into a wall-mounted dock. The device is as portable and effective as it is handy, especially if you never use a case. I have one here in Cult of Mac’s Spanish HQ, and I have been putting it through its paces in our Extreme Test Lab.
How much interest is there in Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference?
Enough to stage an alternative free five-day conference with over 40 speakers and hands-on labs that WWDC attendees may want to check out for all the topics Apple isn’t likely to cover. For the second year running, AltWWDC will be hosting the have-nots (as in have no WWDC tickets) for a gathering cloned from the official conference.
Just a few blocks from Moscone Center at the San Francisco State downtown campus, devs from around the world will be hanging out and helping each other out. There will be a volunteer lab to tackle things like crash debugging as well as talks on game development and “marketing you won’t hate.”
Around 1,500 people have signed up, meaning, yeah, even free/freewheeling AltWWDC is technically “sold out.” No worries: if you don’t have a ticket, as long as there’s room to plant your laptop, you’re in.
Cult of Mac talked to Rob Elkin, a London-based software engineer and one of the four founders of AltWWDC about what constitutes an “alt” keynote breakfast, talks Apple doesn’t want you to hear and sponsors.
The finishing touches are being added to Moscone West as WWDC 2013 draws closer. In just three short days Tim Cook and company will take stage at Moscone West to reveal a redesigned iOS, new MacBooks, and possibly a new iPad.
Apple’s WWDC keynote is slated to start Monday, June 10th at 10AM PST. Don’t want to miss all the juicy details as they’re unveiled? Well, here’s a handy infographic so you know what time to hop on and check the Cult of Mac liveblog for the full scoop on everything that goes down at WWDC 2013.
Image: Twitter
Apple has been busy decorating Moscone West all week in preparation for WWDC 2013, but until now we haven’t see any iOS 7 banners.
Apple just unveiled one of the iOS 7 banners for WWDC that seems to be a pretty clear indicator that iOS 7 will have a new minimalist design. The banner simply features a huge ‘7’ against a perforated background.
We’ll keep you update with new pictures as more banners are posted up. Make sure to come back Monday morning for Cult of Mac’s liveblog of the WWDC keynote.
Source: MacStories
If you’ve been looking for a bundle of UI assets that will empower designers at any level to create professional looking sites with a world-class interface, then this offer from Cult of Mac Deals will do the trick. From frequently used UI elements to iPhone App templates & email newsletter templates, The UI Design Bundle has it all – and for just $39!
Whether you’re an established designer or just starting out this is the perfect addition to any design resource toolbox.
LEGOs and Apple products go together like celery and peanut butter. Tons of LEGO/Apple hybrid creations have graced the front page of Cult of Mac, but now there’s a small Taiwanese design group that created an iPhone 5 LEGO adapter that will allow you to morph you iPhone into a new LEGO creation.
The adapter plugs into your iPhone 5’s Lightning port and allows you to link your own LEGO bricks together with your iPhone or iPad, perfect for building your own LEGO iPhone case.
Here are some of the creations you can create with the LEGO adapter:
Apple has been praised by Chinese environmental activist Ma Jun for its “aggressive” adoption of progressive environmental policies in China. The Cupertino company, which initially refused to cooperate with the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), has gone further than any of its peers in the technology industry, Ma said.
Yesterday, The Washington Post broke the story that the NSA, according to a leaked presentation, is “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies” to collect information on users, including e-mail, chat, photos, videos, and social network details. Basically everything, in other words.
The program is called PRISM and Apple is one of the many companies that a leaked presentation notablyclaims is involved.
Apple is denying that they have participated in PRISM, or even heard about it. That would seemingly end matters, except for one thing: even if Apple was part of PRISM, they would be required by law not to admit it if asked.
Arrrr! Avast, ye scurrilous sea quims! Why are you even reading this? Go download Scurvy Scallywags right now! It’s hilarious, addictive, cheap and the best game to come to iOS in recent memory.
We’ve been hearing reports for weeks now that Apple has been slowly signing deals with the three major music publishers to launch their new streaming music service, iRadio. There was just one conspicuous holdout. Sony. But now, the deal has been inked.
SwiftKey creator TouchType will be closely watching Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, hoping that the Cupertino company opens up its iOS platform to third-party keyboards for the first time. The SwiftKey keyboard has been exclusive to Android since its inception, but the company is itching to bring it to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.
Mac OS X is full of great accessibility features to help those with differing abilities access their Macintosh, whether they have visual, hearing, or motor challenges. One feature, Full Keyboard Access, is set for those who can’t use the mouse reliably. You can use it, too, if you just want to keep your hands on the keyboard, focused on the task at hand.
Here’s how to activate it and make it work for you.
The famous Macintosh Picasso logo was developed for the introduction of the original 128k Mac back in 1984. A minimalist line drawing in the style of Pablo Picasso, this whimsical graphic implied the whole of a computer in a few simple strokes. It was an icon of what was inside the box, and became as famous as the computer it represented.
The logo was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Mac development team. Originally the logo was to be a different concept called The Macintosh Spirit by artist Jean-Michel Folon, but before the release Steve Jobs changed his mind and had it replaced by the simple and colorful drawing by Hughes and Casado. It’s been beloved ever since, and the graphic style has endured across decades.
Hulu has unveiled a brand new Hulu Plus app for that’s been completely redesigned to focus on “discoverability, efficiency, and our overall user experience.” The company hopes that the change will make it easier for users to find their favorite shows and discover new ones.
Oh man, does Mischief ever look amazing. It’s a Mac (or Windows) drawing app which feels like it uses pixels, but stores your strokes as vectors. This means that you can daub away with your favorite pressure-sensitive stylus, but enjoy the infinite zooming and tiny file sizes of vectors. Adobe Ideas does something similar on iOS, but this is a whole lot bigger.
Gameloft has today release Gangstar Vegas for iOS, the latest title in its open-world, Grand Theft Auto-inspired series of action games. The title takes you on a dangerous adventure through the “City of Sin” as you play as a mixed martial arts fighter through 80 action-packed missions.
EA’s latest SimCity game was scheduled to arrive on Mac next week, but the company has announced that it will be delayed because it is “not ready for primetime yet.” Mac gamers won’t see the title until August now, with EA working to provide “a great experience” for those on OS X.
You’ve all used those personal guided museum tours, right? The ones that use a button-covered box and a pair of filthy headphones to tell you all about the painting/sculpture/diorama in front of you?
Well, imagine that instead of a stupid box and worn out headphones you got to use your own iPhone. And instead of having to tap in a number to hear the guide, you just relied on GPS to know what you’re looking at. And finally, imagine that instead of being a guide to a dusty old museum, the “museum” was instead the whole of New York.
That’s Urban Wonderer.
Tall Chess might as well have been called “LetterChess:” it’s like a cross between the amazingly addictive Letterpress and actual, you know, chess. It’s an iPhone 5 game (hence the “tall” part – it uses the whole of the iPhone’s screen to show the board), and it lets you play the great game against folks you’ll find on Game Center.
Booq’s new Fibre Snapcase is yet another shell-style iPhone 5 case, but this one at least has the distinction of using the neat linen-y material also found in Booq’s excellent Mamba device bags. I kind of like the look of it, but I wish that it had gone little further.
Today the story broke about PRISM, a supposedly top-secret program at the US National Security Agency (NSA) that has been in operation since 2007.
According to The Washington Post, current intelligence reporting increasingly relies on PRISM as its main source of raw data and is used in almost 1 out of every 7 intelligence reports these days.
Here’s the basic breakdown of what’s happening so far in the story, who’s involved, what’s being looked at, and more.
Today, the fourth day of the Apple e-book anti-trust trial taking place in New York, Google’s director of strategic partnerships testified as a government witness. Thomas Turvey, under cross examination from Apple lawyer Orin Snyder, told the court that while the publishers named in the original suit had told him that they had moved to an agency model due to deals with Apple, he also acknowledged that his lawyer had helped him draft his own statement for the court, and that he was unsure of the details within the statement.
In other words, the exact opposite of what a credible witness says.
The Washington Post has reported that the NSA has created a $20 million spy program called PRISM, that has been allowed to directly access citizens’ private data on Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple servers – the company joined the program in that order as well..
Both Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have all denied any involvement in the PRISM program, however, the Washington Post’s story alleges that the companies “participate knowingly in PRISM operations.”
PRISM was started in 2007 when Microsoft became the first corporate partner. Apple demonstrated the most resistance to the program and held out for five years before joining in 2012.
Here’s what data PRISM collects, according to the Post: