Cult of Mac

John C Dvorak, Leo Laporte, and a couple of other folks involved in This Week in Tech (TwiT) had a meeting together at the Apple campus at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino this past Monday, and they ended up having an informal battle of the navigation apps in the three cars they were each driving. TWiT CEO Lisa Kentzell and marketing guy Glenn Rubenstein were in one car, using Apple Maps, while Laporte was using Waze, Dvorak using Google Maps.

Dvorak wrote the story up over at PC Magazine, and claims that Apple Maps got the TWiT folks to the Apple campus faster than either Waze, which came in dead last, or Google Maps. We can count on this being the truth of their experience, as anyone of Dvorak’s stature might have a hard time admitting that he lost a race.

The interface designer behind the Auxo app-switcher concept (@Sentry_NC) has come up with another fantastic idea, this time aiming his attention at the Lock Screen of iOS. In this new concept, iPhone and iPad users would be able to swipe over from the right hand side of their device screen, revealing a host of settings that typically require launching the Settings app for.

I sure hope Apple implements something similar.

Frayed charging cables are nasty, and they can shock you. Over the last couple days, there has been a lot of discussion on Reddit about the best solutions to keep Apple’s new Lightning cables from fraying.

Some people go to some crazy lengths to keep their cable’s in tip-top shape. One guy coils the end of his cables with a paperclip. Another redditor actually dips his Lightning cable in Plasti Dip. But my_clock_is_wrong has the best solution of all, grip the cable at the proper spots. It’s fool proof.

Source: Reddit

It’s always nice to be able to split the cost of something with a group of friends, except when it comes time to actually pay up. There’s always one or two people that suck at paying on time, but GroupMe’s got a great new feature for the app to help out with that.

GroupMe just released version 4.1 of their iOS that adds a couple of great new features, including the ability to split a bill with friends.

Dropping your iPhone is a horrific experience. You don’t know if your precious slab of glass and metal is going to shatter or just walk away with a few scratches. If you’re the type that is always dropping your iPhone, you should consider paying $20 for this iPhone 5 tether.

Prepare to riot. Facebook — the social network you obviously spend every single second of every single day upon — is about to change their Newsfeed… and it’ll never be the same again! Up is down! Left is right! Zig is zag! Ahhhhhhh!

Just kidding. It’s not that bad, although those who fear change won’t be fond. The new design is “mobile-inspired” and is basically aimed at making it easier for you to filter the kinds of things your friends are sharing with you, and making them look better and less cluttered when you do.

Even though Apple and Google hate each other now days, that hasn’t stopped Google from making some really great apps for the iPhone. Google’s latest creation just hit the App Store today and it’s focused on local discovery.

Field Trip has previously been an Android-only app, but Google is bringing it to the iPhone today for free. The app is kind of like Google Now. It runs in the background and then automatically alerts you of interesting information in your area based on location data.

Intel and Apple, teaming up to make A-series chips for the iPhone and iPad? That’s what the rumors are saying, with a recent Reuters report going so far as to claim that executives from both companies have actually met to discuss the possibility of the x86 maker pumping out ARM chips custom designed by Apple!

“Intel Once Again Rumored To Be Working On iOS Device Chips With Apple,” read our headline this morning. But would Intel really cash in on its x86 heritage to make ARM chips? And if Apple did switch, would that really be a win for everyone?

The short answer? Yes, Intel would make ARM chips for Apple. But no, it probably wouldn’t be a win for either company. Here’s why.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem with Apple Maps in its current iOS 6 incarnation, but many people have. Now that Google Maps is out for iOS, though, there’s an easy way to get around using Apple Maps, using the transit option.

Here’s how.

For the longest time, there were no Lightning docks available for iPhones or iPads, and it looks like Apple will never make one. I have some thoughts on why that might be, but we’ll get to that in a bit. For now, we’re going to take a quick look at the seemingly crappy dock I picked up from Amazon last month. It’s called the “White Wave Lightning Dock Docking Charge Station for Apple iPad Mini/ iPad 4G/ iPhone 5/ iPod Touch 5G/ iPod Nano 7G,” which should give you some idea of the kind of SEO-mad company behind it.

We use Skype a lot to keep in touch with everyone at Cult of Mac, so we’re always happy to see some solid updates come out for the app.

Earlier today, Skype released version 4.6 of their iOS app, which brings a couple of new features as well as some bug fixes and general improvements. Like some previous versions of Skype though, this one doesn’t work with jailbroken iPhones so not everyone will get to enjoy the glory.

As Apple continues to ramp up development on its new music streaming service, negotiations with record labels haven’t been going well.

Apple’s music streaming service is rumored to be similar to Pandora’s radio service, but rather than settling with the same royalty rate that Pandora enjoys, Apple is trying to lowball record labels into giving them a better deal.

When I woke up this morning, I had a handful of emails waiting for me in my iCloud inbox, and alongside those was a series of delivery error notifications. There was one for every new email I had, and among all the mumbo-jumbo, they all said the same thing: “recipient is not a valid address.”

It’s the error you usually receive when you try to send an email to an address that doesn’t exist, and I know I’m not the only one who’s receiving them; over the course of the morning we’ve had a number of emails from readers who are seeing the same thing, and there are plenty of forum posts detailing the issue all over the web.

So what’s going on with the iCloud mail service?

I shall apologize now for bringing you yet another crowd-funded gadget today, but this is something special. I won’t dilly-dally here: It’s a frikkin’ Star Trek button for talking to Siri.

A new Apple patent application purchased by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office details a new system that may one day allow you to sell or lend on your “used” digital goods, such as iTunes purchases and software you’ve downloaded from the App Store.

Apple details a system that could see used goods sold through their original marketplaces, like those mentioned above, or directly between users.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer will rock your world…quite literally.

That’s because we’re offering the BodyBuradz Bumps (with mic) – a tiny device that pumps out incredibly crisp sound, fantastic treble, and deep bass. The price is pretty rockin’ as well – only $19 — and that includes shipping — for a limited time!

Marvel Unlimited is a subscription service that offers access to a catalog of 13,000+ comics spanning a period of 70 years. After a newer comic has been in circulation for 6 months, it makes its way to Marvel Unlimited in digital form. The service costs $10 per month or $60 for a yearly subscription.

In the past you could only access Marvel Unlimited through an ugly Flash-based reader on the desktop or a clunky HTML5 app. Now Marvel has released a native iOS app for the subscription service. You can also read previews and browse dozens of full issues for free.

The db on these headphones stands not for douche-bag but for Duobuds. And now you’ll have no excuse not to share your music when somebody asks — unless you’re the d-bag, that is.

Check this out: up on the International Space Station, Colonel Chris Hadfield uses an iPad as a teleprompter when recording transmissions for Earth. It looks like the app he’s using is Teleprompt+ for iPad, a $15 app that lets you film yourself via Facecam while reading your lines from the iPad display.

Via: Reddit

Apple has been using Intel’s desktop processors in the Mac since 2005. The next-gen Haswell processor is expected to come in the next iteration of the iMac.

For years, a reoccurring rumor has been that Intel will eventually provide mobile processors for iOS devices. But Apple has been designing its own ‘A series’ of chips for the iPhone and iPad based on ARM. Would Apple really abandon what it’s doing on ARM for Intel, a chip maker that’s been really struggling on mobile?

Now another report claims that Apple and Intel have recently discussed a mobile partnership.

Wall Street has spent most of the last six months hyperventilating about the future of Apple, chomping at their fingernails and openly wondering if Apple is taking too long to innovate in the post-Jobs era.

Over at the Apple Gazette, Robin Parrish has put together a simple graphic, showing Apple’s historic product pillars. Essentially, if you add it all up, the average time between major product pillars for Apple is three years and ten months.

Have you ever written this in a forum, addressed to a software developer: “I have $50 here which I’ll totally give you if you make this app”? No, of course not, because that would make you a thoughtless individual — we all know that software costs way more than that to develop.

Take NumLock, for example. It’s exactly the kind of app that forum-begging is made for. It turns back on the num-lock that Apple removed from its keyboards for seemingly no reason other than the aesthetic. How much would you promise a developer that you’d “totally pay” for an app to re-enable the number keypad? Well, now you can put that money where your, uh, keyboard is, and pitch in to DenVog’s cheap-as-chips Kickstarter campaign.

Do you use icon view in the Finder? Do you often find yourself double clicking folders and using Get Info commands to find out more about the files in your Finder windows? Well, it turns out there’s a View Option which will add a little bit of information to any item in a Finder window, provided you’re in icon view.

Here’s how to enable it.

Samsung has today lost its High Court battle against Apple in the United Kingdom after a judge deemed that the patents the Korean company was using in its case should have never been granted.

Apple has now fended off 24 patent-infringement claims from Samsung, and Samsung’s bid to secure a 2.4% royalty on every 3G-equipped device the Cupertino company sells is looking increasingly unlikely.

Rovio’s original Angry Birds game for iOS has today been updated with 15 new Bad Piggies levels, and is now available for free for the first time ever on both iPhone and iPad. The incredibly popular title was first introduced to the iPhone back in December 2009, and it’s been priced at $0.99 ever since.

But if you’re not one of the many millions who have already downloaded it, now is the perfect time to grab it.