Cult of Mac

Why is it that some people can walk into their local Apple Store with a broken MacBook and walk away with a free replacement, and other people are turned away, with Apple claiming the repair is due to user error… even if it isn’t?

It has less to do with whether or not you actually voided your warranty than if Apple thinks they can prove you voided your warranty. And the most important tool Apple uses to prove you’re responsible for the damage to your own machine? It’s a tool that inspects dents.

Google Glass is probably one of the most interesting pieces of technology you’ll see this year, so it’s no wonder people are scrambling to get their hands on a pair. Unfortunately, it seems Google’s in little rush to get them out the door, but you don’t necessarily have to wait for them to hit Best Buy before you can buy your own.

All you need is an eBay account and a hoard of cash you have no use for.

For the many years I lived in Berlin, one of the perpetual frustrations I had was that there was no Apple Store in the city to shop at. A few weeks after I moved, Apple leased a historical theater in West Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm and started renovating it to be the country’s biggest Apple Store.

Now the scaffolding’s coming off, ahead of the official launch, and iFun.de not only has some great pictures of the process of the newest Apple Store being revealed… there’s some video of the inside. Video after the jump.

Having problems accessing Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and other Google services this morning? Don’t worry — you’re not the only one. Google is currently suffering a partial service outage which is making these service inaccessible for some users, but the company assures us that it is working on resolving the issues as quickly as possible.

The iPad mini is still less than six months old, and already demand has dropped as fans await the second-generation model. That’s if you take any notice of DigiTimes, which is reporting that iPad mini shipments will decline by as much as 30% during the second quarter of 2013 due to dying demand.

I don’t know about you, but I find that displaying the battery percentage alongside the battery indicator in the iPhone’s status bar takes up too much room — particularly if you use tweaks that provide status bar symbols for outstanding notifications. I usually use Springtomize to remove the battery indicator altogether, leaving just the percentage.

But a new tweak called Live Battery Indicator gives you the best of both worlds — without taking up too much space.

By now you know that Alfred does a lot more than just launch apps, right? You can directly command your Mac OS X system from Alfred as well as launch stuff without ever taking your hands from the keyboard, the true power user position.

Did you also know you can send emails, with or without attachments, from Alfred as well? You need to purchase the £15 PowerPack (~$23 USD) to make it happen, unfortunately, but it seems like a pretty good price for such great functionality.

Apple’s App Store has been included in a list of websites and app stores that have been investigated for providing pornographic content in China. The list, published by state-owned newspaper People’s Daily, comes just a month after a government regulator named the App Store as a source of “obscene pornography,” despite Apple’s strict policy against pornographic apps.

The DeskRail is a desk-tidy for the digital age. Whereas I spent hours in my school shop class cutting, glueing and painting acrylic tubes to hold pens, paperclips and other desktop detritus, the DeskRail is made to organize the junk we use today.

And by junk, I mean Moleskines, USB cables, iPhones and… hipster plastic-framed glasses?

I have used Mailplane on and off for years. I love that it turns the great Gmail interface into a proper desktop app, complete with drag-and-drop attachments, notifications and an icon in the dock and tab switcher. But I never liked its super power of spinning the CPU of my Mac at all times, even when supposedly idle.

Now v3.0 is out, and it seems to have solved the latter problem, while adding a few new features.

Got a few minutes to read something? Not sure which of your saved Read Later article to pick? Then you need Readtime, a new iPhone app which picks articles based on the time you have available. Dial in the length of your coffee break or the average time taken to clear your bowels in the morning, and Readtime will return a list of appropriately-long articles.

Who knew there was room for yet another iPhone currency converter in the store? The folks behind Currency, that’s who, a conversion app that is as minimal as its name.

It’s gotten to the stage that I’m so loaded up on cloud storage for my photos that I could toss my iPhone into the toilet and not lose a thing (well, apart from the action shot of the toilet bowl framing my shocked face as the iPhone shoots its last photo). But while Dropbox and Everpix are great, sometimes you just want to rock an old-school USB stick and transfer photos to and from you iPhone with a stick of plastic.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, all compact cameras looked like the Ricoh GR. they might not have been as sleek-looking, but they had big finger grips, a giant full-frame sensor (35mm) film and a fixed wideangle lens.

Now, proving that large sensors are the new black, the GR is packing a DSLR-sized APS-C sensor into its tiny body.

The time has come. Funny or Die’s Steve Jobs mockumentary featuring Justin Long has arrived. iSteve is available for streaming in non-Apple-friendly-Flash on Funny or Die’s website. The “biopic” lasts about 80 minutes.

Warning: It is not as hilarious as we thought it might be. In fact, it’s pretty bad. It’s also historically inaccurate in many, many ways. I barely made it through the first 10 minutes. Kudos to you if you can finish. Ashton Kutcher’s JOBS is starting to look a lot more legitimate.

Source: Funny or Die

Messaging alternative MessageMe just updated today with several new features, like the ability to chat in landscape mode if that strikes your fancy.

The iPhone app won’t save chat doodles to the camera roll by default anymore; you’ll be able to save them if you like, or turn the feature off completely, saving valuable space on your iPhone should you so choose. The Voice Notes feature has been improved, and you can search for other MessageMe users using their email.

Audio now works for messages with video, and you can save videos as well in the new version. There’s also other “minor fixes and performance improvements” to be found.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek is at it again. Apparently his own trips to Apple’s Asian suppliers are leading him to predict that the rumored iPhone 5S, which has yet to be announced by Apple, will most likely be delayed. His delay timeline is based on earlier predictions that the iPhone 5S would come out in July, which would in itself be odd, since Apple has typically released iPhones on a yearly cycle, putting a new one sometime in September or October.

He’s also on record as predicting that an even-more-rumored low-cost iPhone will also be delayed until the fourth quarter of this year, and that the iPhone 6 won’t actually happen until 2014.

After being fired from his post at Apple for the Apple Maps fiasco last year, Richard Williamson has found a new home at one of tech’s other superstars – Facebook.

Richard Williamson played a key role in the development of the iPhone’s software under Steve Jobs. After working at Apple for more than a decade, Williamson was put in charge of the Apple Maps team that replaced Google Maps in iOS 6.

Apple just released a new software update for its popular iPhoto app today. iPhoto 9.4.3  contains bug fixes, along with some new features for Photo Stream, like the ability to delete photos by dragging to Trash, and exporting Photo Stream photos through the File Menu.

There was another update released for Aperture as well. The Aperture 3.4.4 update also has some improved Photo Stream features, along with several bug fixes.

Here are the full notes for both iPhoto and Aperture:

There has been an unprecedented amount of drama surrounding the removal of AppGratis, a popular app discovery tool Apple recently pulled from the App Store. An online petition with over 800,000 signatures begs for Apple to bring AppGratis back into the App Store’s good graces. Heck, the French government is pissed. What’s all the fuss about?

Apple said that it pulled AppGratis for sending app promotions to iOS users via push notifications. The discovery service coordinates with third-party developers to offer discounts for paid apps. Apple also said that AppGratis behaved too much like the App Store itself.

It looks like AppGratis’s sins run deeper.

According to a leaked document, AppGratis was charging developers large sums to get their apps to the top of the App Store’s charts.

Android’s reputation as a nest for malware isn’t likely to heal anytime soon, thanks to a new report from Symantec.

According to the security company’s research, Android is still the main target when it comes to mobile malware writers, but iOS is technically a more vulnerable platform.

Back in 1983, Apple took a retreat to La Playa Carmel, a popular Californian resort. During that retreat, Apple’s employees rioted, skinny dipping and drinking and throwing what was later called a “college beer bash.” As a result, Steve Jobs and co. were banned from La Playa Carmel forever. But La Playa Carmel has new owners now… and they’re ready to welcome Cupertino back with open arms.

One of the central conceits of new iOS mail client, Mailbox, is getting to Inbox Zero, a zen state of pure joy, in which you feel much better having dealt with all your email. The way the app does this is with swipes. Swipe partway across an email to the right and you archive it with a pleasant green checkmark. Swipe completely from left to right and you send the offending email to the trash. It’s lovely, and easy, and oh so nice.

But what happens when you make a mistake and long swipe to Trash when you really meant to short swipe to Archive?

There are a ton of Bluetooth headsets on the market today, and because I prefer talking hands-free, I’ve tried a lot of them. But as a Bluetooth enthusiast (yes, we exist), I’ve been continually frustrated. That’s because all the headsets I’ve tried thus far have missed the mark, especially when paired with an iPhone, delivering callers’ voices as muddy and hard to decipher, or making me sound like I live under the sea (I don’t).

So when I got my hands on the Plantronics Voyager Legend UC, with its promises of excellent audio, call routing touch technology, and the ability to work on both my Mac and iOS device, I was dubious. Not anymore. This little Legend hasn’t just proved my first impressions wrong, I’m now convinced it’s the best Bluetooth headset I’ve ever used.

As more cable subscribers start to embrace the idea of ditching cable for services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, cable companies are quickly trying to entice subscribers to stay by offering TV everywhere on every device.

Time Warner Cable announced today that starting tomorrow, TWC subscribers will be able to stream live TV to their Apple devices for the first time ever. An update for TWC’s iOS app should roll out  tomorrow that will make 11 live national news, sports, and entertainment channels available to subscribers outside of their home, via an iPhone or iPad.