Cult of Mac

Bill Karas isn’t your typical biker. Yes, he’s got the type of facial hair that would make ZZ Top proud. He’s even got his own custom shop where he can build you anything your bike or hot rod needs.

But behind all the facial hair, metal music, and hot rod loving exterior, Bill Karas and his crew at Karas Kustoms have found something far more exciting and lucrative than building hotrods: making iPhone cases.

How does a group of bikers go from building custom steering columns to iPhone cases? It was pretty much a compete accident, but it starts with a pen and Kickstarter.

Alfred 2 makes its debut today, delivering a whole host of improvements and new features to the best launcher utility available on the Mac. Users can now enjoy an app completely rebuilt from the ground up to introduce things like Workflows, the ability to apply new themes, and improved search.

Google has separated the mapping and commerce unit headed up by executive Jeff Huber in a “two-part management shift” that also saw Android chief Andy Rubin leave his position on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Huber will now join the Google X unit run by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Our fearless commander-in-chief Leander Kahney is a strange cuckoo. He is, of course, a dashing and famous technology journalist par example, while his family is inexplicably a bunch of Luddites.

So check out what happened when Leander tried to coach someone in his family how to set up an extra Airport Extreme base station over the phone. No matter how many times he explained how to do it, it wouldn’t work… so Leander drove over to see what the problem was. This is what he saw.

What’s the most ridiculous tech support problem you’ve had to solve for a family member? Let us know in the comments.

Okay, this is interesting: Apple has published a patent for a Smart Cover with a battery inside, that would wirelessly charge an iPad when it was connected to it or used as a stand, and could also potentially wirelessly charge, say, an iPhone when rested on top of an iPad.

Rovio and DreamWorks Pictures have today launched The Croods, a new mobile game based on the upcoming motion picture. The free title throws you back into the Stone Age for a “pre-hysterical” adventure in which you’ll have to hunt and gather through colorful landscapes in a bid to survive.

This photograph of a Foxconn line worker working on what appears to be a yellow iPhone 5 is doing the rounds, with the suggestion being that Apple slipped up and accidentally leaked an upcoming colored iPhone on their System Reliability page.

I have no idea if Apple will colorize the iPhone 5S, but I can comfortably say that Apple’s not that stupid, and isn’t going to leak a photo of an upcoming product on their own website. That’s not a urine yellow iPhone 5S: it’s an iPhone 5 with a yellow protective coating to keep the bezel from being scraped or chipped during manufacturing.

Apple’s latest iMac can’t be mounted to a wall like its predecessor can, at least not if you buy the regular version. However, the Cupertino company has today updated its online store to add new iMacs that come with a built-in VESA mount adapter for an additional $40 fee. The feature is available on both the 21.5- and the 27-inch models.

BlackBerry has today announced that it is extending its gold standard security service that provides complete separation of work and personal data on your mobile devices to Android and iOS.

Called Secure Work Space and managed through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, the service includes secured client apps for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, and more to allow you to have one device for both work and personal use without compromising security.

Remember the days pre-OS X, when you could hit the Spacebar on your keyboard as your Mac started up, giving you access to the Extensions Manager? Man, I surely do not miss those days. Startup items are now called Login Items, and they just happen, right?

OS X really doesn’t give us much choice in how these apps and features that we blissfully add to our Macs launch on startup, though, does it. If you want to have some control over the Login Items, check out this free little app, Exhaust.

After more than 14 months of watching the clock in tense anticipation, today I finally downloaded Super Stickman Golf 2, the sequel to the fantastic physics puzzler/golf game Super Stickman Golf.

If you are a fan of the original, you’re likely hitting the App Store link right now. If not, read on.

You may have figured that the rhythm game genre was finished, what with nary a Rockband, Tap Tap Revenge, or Guitar Hero game to grace the App Store in recent months.

You’d have figured wrong, at least as far as the devs behind updated iOS game, Duck & Roll, are concerned. WildFactor released Duck and Roll last November at a premium price. We can only assume that after several price drops and price increases, they weren’t finding much success.

Luckily, free games can attract an audience. Even more luckily, this one is pretty darn fun.

Goodbye Google Reader, we hardly knew ye.

In an official post at the Google Reader blog and the Google blog, the search giant has announced today that it will retire Google Reader, a fantastic RSS service in its own right, shutting it down on July 1, 2013.

Whenever rumors about a new product from Apple begin to pop up, so do the concept drawings, 3D renders, and mockups. The latest rumored Apple device to get the mockup treatment has been the iWatch, Apple’s supposed foray into wearable computing.

Already, I’ve seen no less than half a dozen concepts illustrating what people think the iWatch might look like. Some play heavily off of the design of iOS, others take design influences from the iPhone and iPad, and others yet attempt to emulate the 6th generation iPod nano, the closest thing that Apple has made to a watch so far. While all of these designs take influence from what Apple has already created, none of them take into consideration the external influences that shape the way Apple designs their own products.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, has called out Android multiple times recently. It’s only been a few days since Schiller warned Android users to “stay safe out there,” and now he’s gone on the offensive in a brief interview with The Wall Street Journal.

None of Schiller’s comments are particularly surprising, as Apple executives (Schiller included) frequently make jabs at the competition from the stage of a new product keynote.

Last year, Twitter acquired a small music discovery service called We Are Hunted. The site was shut down, and now Twitter might be ready to use it in a big way.

A new report claims that Twitter will launch its own music discovery app for iOS called Twitter Music. If things go well, we might even get the app as soon as this month.

The PopLock is a new iPhone 5 case from NutKase that does more than just protect your beloved smartphone from scratches and scrapes. Its built-in, pressure sensitive kickstand pops out with just a push, allowing you to stand your iPhone for FaceTime calls and watching movies.

The stand is also designed to be a clip, which lets you fix your iPhone 5 to almost anything that’s sturdy enough to hold it, such as a computer monitor or an air vent in the car. The PopLock is made from a durable polycarbonate that promises to absorb shock, and it provides you with access to all of your ports, buttons, and cameras.

The case is available in grey and black, and it’s priced at $22.99. Here’s what I think of it after testing it for a few weeks.

Martin Hajek creates concepts of imaginary Apple products that I always think look pretty good, but have no thought given to usability. For example, his iWatch concept the other day, which basically shrinks an iPad mini to the size of an inch and doesn’t even try to imagine how such a design wouldn’t suck… but hey, it has a leather band!

His new iTV concept for Dutch site iCreate is a similar affair. The black, chamfered design of the device looks very beautiful, but nothing after that makes any sense. It’s like this guy has never even used a television before, right down to the fact that he envisions the iTV as having a Camera app (why?) but not one for either TV or Videos.

More pictures after the jump. I advise Apple to perhaps take the look, but not the UI.

I hate taxis. I hate having to find one. I hate having to talk to the driver. I hate paying them, and then worrying about how much I’m supposed to tip them (presumably spending the entire journey chatting to their cousins via Bluetooth headset counts as “service.”) So I’m very happy to have Taxi Turvi in my arsenal. It’s a weapon to be wielded against dodgy cabbies.

NBA hoops legend, Shaquille O’Neal – or as his friends call him, ‘Shaq’ – is used to dominating foes on the basketball court, but when he went up against Steve Jobs he got a heavy dose of his own medicine.

The Big Artistotle has come out of the closet. He’s a geek. In fact, he says he was a geek before geeks were cool. Back when the original iPhone was announced, Shaqtus knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew Steve Jobs. Rather than waiting for the iPhone to be released, Shaq Fu called up Steve Jobs multiple times and begged him for an iPhone, but El Jobso wouldn’t budge.

It was one of the first, and only times, that The Big Maravich has been denied. Don’t feel bad for him, though; Shaq Diesel has a bright rapping career ahead of him if the geeky iOS development stuff doesn’t pan out.

Here’s a video of Wilt Chamberneezy retelling the story to Bloomberg:

There has been an ungodly amount of talk in recent months about how Apple is losing its edge to Samsung. Even some of Apple’s most faithful analysts have said that Samsung is more innovative now than Apple, but is that really true?

In the Cult of Mac chat room this afternoon, we found this video of Gene Munster saying Samsung is innovating faster than Apple. Some of us agreed with him, while others didn’t. What followed was a great discussion of what innovation really means, and whether Samsung is beating Apple. Rather than composing it into an article, we’re just going to post our chat and see what you guys think. Does Samsung really innovate faster than Apple now?

Piikki is a fairly average receipt-scanning app with a couple of standout features: One, it auto detects the receipt in the camera frame and then – once it has a lock – auto-snaps it. And second, you can have the result uploaded directly into your Evernote notebook of choice. I would suggest the “receipts” folder, but I’m not so original.

Last year, Apple was hit with an antitrust case from the U.S. Department of Justice over the pricing scheme of e-books in Apple’s iBookstore. Since that time, 11 executives at Apple have already been deposed over the issue, but the Department of Justice is demanding Tim Cook be involved, and they just got their way.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote granted the Justice Department’s request to get Cook to testify on the ebook antitrust case for four hours.

These days my desk is my lap. My work machine is an iPad, and my iMac is hanging on the wall, acting as little more than a BitTorrent machine and photo store. I still have a desk though, but it is useless for most of the year thanks to a marble top which sucks heat from my hands and wrists like a prisoner sucks on a cigarette after a week in solitary confinement.

Fortunately, there’s an accessory for people who – like me – love both felted wool, and their carpal tunnels. It’s the Desk-Pad Classic, and I will probably have ordered one by the time you finish reading this post.

Google CEO, Larry Page, just announced that the godfather or Android, Andy Rubin, has decided to step away from Android and pursue other projects.

Rubin was a co-founder of Android Inc., which was eventually purchased by Google in 2005. As the Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content at Google, Rubin has been responsible for turning Android into the most widely used mobile operating systems today.