Cult of Mac

Yahoo is talking to Apple about how it can integrate more of its services in iOS, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Apple currently uses Yahoo to provide weather, stocks, and sports information. But Yahoo reportedly wants to play a more “prominent role on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices.”

An obvious change would be making Yahoo the default search engine in Safari, but that won’t be happening anytime soon. Microsoft’s Bing engine currently provides results for Yahoo search, which complexes things. Google also has a deal in place with Apple that gives it the default search position in Safari. Apple would obviously want to cut Google out if possible. Siri already avoids using Google search for a lot of queries.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

So many apps are designed first for the iPhone, and the iPad is more or less an afterthought. Not so with Status Board, a brand new app from Panic that is designed meticulously with the iPad’s larger display in mind.

If you know Panic’s pedigree (Coda, Transmit, etc.), then you know what kind of app to expect: something incredibly powerful, focused, and impeccably designed. Status Board is no exception. And although the app won’t appeal to most iPad users, it is perhaps Panic’s most consumer-friendly app to date.

Looks like Brian K. Vaughn’s Saga isn’t the only digital comic getting warned off by Apple’s terms against material it deems to be pornographic lately. French comic app portal app, Izneo, has also been affected by a recent Apple warning to remove a ton of the comic books from its app offerings that Apple deems pornographic, and thus in violation of its Terms of Service.

Hardcore Vault Hunters may have noticed that the opportunity to venture forth with their PC-based comrades — a huge boon that arrived in an update almost two months ago — was no longer an option as of early this month, when the latest Borderlands 2 patch hit PCs, throwing the two operating systems out of sync again.

But the two platforms are now synced again, thanks to Aspyr’s lightning-fast release of a Mac-side patch. They’ve also brought us the $5, Steam-only Ultimate Vault Hunter’s Pack DLC, which raises the level cap and adds a “super-rare line of weapons.” Yeehaw.

I’ve never had much luck with Google Goggles; it’s a fancy feature tacked on to the Google Search iOS app that’s supposed to return search results related to any item or text photographed from within the app. But it’s sent me shopping for dresses after I’ve snapped a picture of speakers, and  tried to conduct searches using text it thinks it’s found — when their wasn’t any.

Brand-spanking-new CamFind attempts more-or-less the same trick — only it’s better at it.

To stay on top of its prediction game, analyst firm Piper Jaffray’s just finished its 25th bi-annual teen survey to find out what all the cool kids are doing with tech and what do they want next.

The survey found that Apple is the most desired tech brand by teens, but Google has made some improvement compared to last year. Yet while analysts are still busy predicting the demise of Apple, 48% of teens in the survey say they own an iPhone, and 62% say they plan to buy one next.

Barely a week has passed and Apple already has a new update for the OS X 10.8.4 beta. Apple just released build 12E30 of OS X 10.8.4 to developers.

The seed’s release notes don’t contain anything significant, but devs will surely find new stuff once they get to digging through the OS. Apple does note for developers to focus on Graphics, Drivers, Safari, and WiFi.

OS X 10.8.3 was released to the public a couple weeks ago after going through 13 beta revisions over a period of nearly 5 months. The next version of OS X should premier at WWDC this year, if not before.

Having a hard time sending iMessages to friends recently? You’re probably one of those that are affected by the current iMessage and FaceTime outage.

Word of the outage quickly spread across Twitter this afternoon that users are experiencing outages with iMessage. A FaceTime outage quickly followed and Apple just updated its support page to acknowledge the service outage.

We’ll let you know once things are back on.

Update: Looks like everything is back up and running.

AppGratis is a popular App Store app that’s used by more than 12 million iOS users. The company consists of 45 employees and recently raised $13.5 million in funding. AppGratis offers promotions and discounts for popular paid iOS apps in conjunction with third-party developers, and the company has continued to thrive over the last few years.

Everything was going great until Apple threw down the hammer over this past weekend. Without much warning, AppGratis was suddenly pulled from the App Store for violating some developer guidelines. Poof. Gone. Now it’s a matter of working with Apple to try and fix what caused the problem. The app’s removal came as a shock to AppGratis and has left the CEO wondering how the App Store review team “could have possibly changed their minds overnight.”

Another publisher is feigning surprise about Apple’s App Store policies today, claiming that Cupertino has “banned” an upcoming issue of a digital combic book from being sold in any iOS app due to “two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex.”

The Big Jambox is pretty much the rockingest portable Bluetooth speaker you can get, but at $299, it’s not cheap. If you don’t mind a couple of minor aesthetic blemishes, though, you can now get a Big Jambox for about the price of the regular Jambox: around $158.

The deal is being made over at All4Cellular, which is offering the Big Jambox speaker (refurbished) for about half off in Graphite Hex and White Wave colors. They might come with a few dents and scratches, but they’ll sound just the same and come fully covered with a 90 day warranty.

We’ve previously reviewed the Big Jambox and loved it, with one caveat: it’s best when you’re cranking everything up to 11.

Source: All4Cellular

Google has been stepping up its game with app curation in Google Play. TechCrunch has discovered that a record 60,000 apps were pulled from the store in February alone. Coincidentally, Google just launched a major redesign of Play today that focuses on highlighting great Android apps.

While not all of the bad apps are being pulled by Google directly, many of the deletions are related to spamming and other Google Play terms of service violations. You don’t normally think of Google when you hear about an app being pulled, but Apple isn’t the only one who regulates its app store—the two companies just do things differently.

If you’ve ever handed your phone over to someone to let them use it as a (gasp) telephone, you’ve felt that moment of frisson where you wonder, “oh, man, what if they see that certain app? What will they think of me?” I’m not going to judge you; we all have apps we’d rather not have people see.

Luckily for all of us, then, that there’s a couple of neat ways to hide those apps on our devices, using Apple’s built in Restrictions system. Here’s how.

Even though it’d probably be pretty cool, we’ve concluded that a touchscreen MacBook Air or iMac probably wouldn’t be fun to use for an extended period of time, thanks to gorilla arm syndrome.

But what if Apple made an iPad/MacBook Air hybrid? It turns out that Apple has been considering the idea of it for sometime, and based on its patent filings, the iPad/MacBook hybrid would look a lot like some of the PC options that are already on the market.

Google Chrome is the best third-party browser for iOS, and it just received a healthy update that features a number of new improvements that makes it even more of a crime that Apple won’t let any other browser but Safari act as default browser under iOS.

Rechargeable, portable, and built to live on or under your Mac or iDevice, the Sound Cylinder (SC) speaker is a first from audio maker Definitive Technology (DT), who usually focuses their acoustic talents on high-end home theater equipment.

But can Definitive Technology, with its years of experience engineering coveted boutique audio, create a portable speaker that usurps the top spot of the much-loved and most-excellent sounding Jawbone Jambox?

Spotify has released an update to its desktop app that adds a new “Follow” tab on the left sidebar. This feature started slowly rolling out to users late last year, and now it should be available for everyone. Opening Spotify on the Mac should cause the app to want to install a new update and restart. Then the Follow tab will be available.

Services like Spotify and Rdio take great pride in helping their users discover new music, and Spotify’s Follow tab is meant to change the way you find new jams and interact with other users. It replaces the useless “People” tab with friends to follow and tailored recommendations.

Google Glass looks like the coolest piece of technology since the invention of the iPhone. Even though a ton of businesses will probably ban it, we can’t wait to try Sergey Brin’s new eyewear out.

Google Glass seems like it came right out of Star Trek, but the way this technical masterpiece works is actually pretty simple. Martin Missfeldt created the following infographic that lays out all the details on how Google Glass works so you can impress your friends with your scientific knowledge. Take a look:

Panic makes some of Cult of Mac’s favorite apps for the Mac. Transmit, Coda, Unison… they’re all classics of Mac app design, and recently, Panic has made the leap into iOS apps with Diet Coda and Prompt.

Now, rumor has it that Panic is about to release a brand new app for the iPad…. and it looks like it’s going to be a super-sexy dashboard app.

Since 2011, Cory Moll has been in charge of the Apple Workers Union, an initiative that has worked to help improve working conditions for thousands of Apple Store employees around the world. Moll has been an Apple employee since 2007, and today is his last day at the company.

There have been some absurd Apple rumors that hit the web this morning, but here’s one that actually has a chance of happening in the real world.

Apple will be updating its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro line of laptop just in time for Worldwide Developers Conference this June. 

When you’re a designer, you can never have enough icons. This Cult of Mac Deals offer delivers icons galore!

Simply put, this massive bundle of 2500 professional-quality icons is a must-have for any designer. With The Ultimate Icon Bundle, you’ll have all the icons you could ever need for all your design endeavors – and you’ll have them right at the tip of your fingers for only $39.

Topeka Capital analyst Brian White received some criticism last week when he revealed in a note to investors that he expects Apple’s much-anticipated television set to come with a “mini iTV” tablet and an “iRing.” But rather than going into hiding until the whole thing is forgotten about, White has revealed his predictions for the iPhone 5S.

The device will be available with “at least” two screen sizes, White claims, giving those who might switch to Android for a larger display a reason to stick with the iPhone.

One thing that we really hope Apple adds to iOS is the ability to toggle certain settings right from the homescreen. There are a number of jailbreak tweaks that let you do it, but we’d love a Cupertino-brewed solution.

Ran Avni has a new iOS 7 concept that solves a lot of the problem with toggles. With his tweak you’d be able to adjust brightness, change songs, turn on Bluetooth or Wifi, and change your device orientation, all from a simple menu on the lockscreen. The UI isn’t perfect, but we’d love it if Apple put something similar to this in iOS 7 so we’d have one less reason to jailbreak.

Source: YouTube

It’s hard to believe that the man behind the glass-eyed animatronic freak show of Chuck E. Cheese is the same person who founded Atari, and that both these men are the same person who discovered that diamond-in-the-rough, Steve Jobs. But it’s true: Nolan Bushnell incarnates all of his men. And in his most recent book, Finding The Next Steve Jobs, Bushnell talks about his experience finding Steve.