Cult of Mac

If you’ve ever heard a snatch of a song in a bar and found yourself tormented for not knowing who it was by, you should probably know about Shazam, an awesome iOS app that analyzes music around you and tells you who the heck it’s by and how to buy it.

Are you one of the 300 million users who already knows about Shazam? Great! Shazam’s just announced some mean new updates to its iPad app, including much faster tagging with automatic resubmissions, better sharing features and Shazam Friends interactions, a revamped home screen, and more.

For his girlfriend’s birthday, Alex and some of her friends all chipped in to get her a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

The finishing touch, though? The piece de resistance, as it were? A brilliant custom birthday card that apes the style of an official Apple product announcement.

That’s a hell of a gift, with a hell of a personal touch. Alex’s girlfriend better marry that guy.

Via: Reddit

Jake Marsh is the designer of the stunning, minimalist iOS weather app, Conditions, which costs just $0.99 on the App Store. But because some people are so lame that they would rather go through the trouble of pirating a good app that they like than give the developer a buck for it, Jake decided to program a special ‘Pirate Mode’ into Conditions, in which users who pirate the app always get a weather report of 666 degrees in which fire and brimstone literally hails down upon them.

The prevailing conditions? “ARRRmageddon.” Absolute genius.

Via: Twitter

If you were expecting Samsung to unveil the Galaxy S4 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, prepare to be disappointed: Samsung has instead sent out invitations to a press event in New York on March 14, where they will debut their much-anticipated (and iPhone 5 challenging) new smartphone.

As email continues to be fairly ubiquitous, especially in business settings, there’s a ton of information floating around in your Mail app that may or may not be useful to you to save and archive. Mail hides a lot of the complexity of email, and as such, it can be less than intuitive to grab all the info you might need from a given email, like headers, message text, the subject, sender, and recipients’ information, and so on.

If you want to save the info from your emails, Mail Clips just might be the answer for you, especially if you use Apple’s built-in Mail app in OS X, as it integrates right there.

In an attempt to go head-to-head with the likes of iMessage and BBM in emerging markets, social network Facebook has just announced that it will be allowing users of its Messenger app to send messages at free or heavily discounted data rates.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – The iPad mini weighs just 308 grams. The NEC Medias Tab weighs even less: 249 grams (forgive me for not converting to ounces, but this is 2013).

And yet despite this relatively big difference, the Tab doesn’t really feel much lighter.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Good news for iPod touch-owning photography fans. Well, apart from the great camera Apple finally put in your 5G device. Now you can also get in on the add-on lens action iPhoneographers have been enjoying for so long. Behold: the Olloclip for the iPod Touch.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS -Mobile World Congress 2013 is now underway here in Barcelona, and there’s one device we couldn’t wait to get our hands on: the Galaxy Note 8.0 — Samsung’s answer to the iPad mini. In addition to its 8-inch display, the device boasts a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and of course, the Note’s trademark S Pen.

But can it give the iPad mini a run for its money?

As the company is known to do during high profile TV events, Apple aired a new ad during tonight’s Academy Awards. The ad was appropriately themed for filmmakers. Various iPad apps were shown off with the taglines “lights,” “camera,” and “action.”

This ad is very similar to the two iPad TV spots Apple aired last week, “Alive” and “Together.”

Source: YouTube

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Pssst… don’t tell anyone, but I just saw Mophie’s new Juicepack Air for the iPhone 5. After months of abusive complaints in forum and comment threads the world over, the Air is now finally… almost… available for the slim new iPhone.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Zagg, who you surely know better for its excellent iPad keyboards, also makes a speaker. Or two speakers, to be precise. This is the Zagg Origin, and it consists of a pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker which docks into a desktop mothership.

One of the biggest challenges with new businesses is acquiring customers. It can be a nightmare when it comes to getting that first customer to buy something on your site or walk in your doors. But thanks to this offer from Cult of Mac Deals, you won’t need to worry about that anymore.

This interactive, step-by-step guide isn’t simplistic courseware or general sales tips, but a comprehensive, real-world process for implementing a successful customer acquisition strategy. You can apply the key tasks unveiled in this guide to your business strategy and start honing your customer base as early as today. – and you can get what you need to do it for only $18!

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – There mightn’t be anything more telling of the iPhone’s world takeover than this shot of the new Aving mobile video setup.

Anyone who has visited any tech trade-show will have seen the Korean guys in Aving vests hefting huge, shoulder-mounted video rigs and shooting anything and everything (this year at CES Aving put out 1,000 videos).

Now, those rigs have been replaced by the iPhone setup you see above.

While home automation enthusiasts have been enjoying home automation for years, the vast majority of people don’t have it because it has always been far too expensive and complicated.

But, as we know, Moore’s Law cures all. Suddenly, it’s clear that major Silicon Valley companies are now interested in getting into the home automation space.

It’s all the more interesting because this home automation will be developed as part of the so-called “living room” experience, where every home will have a server that controls not only the all-important DVR recording of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but also controls the automated sprinkler system, the heating and cooling systems, the home security system and all the lights.

Although there are literally dozens of specialist companies most of us haven’t heard of doing home automation, it’s more likely that the big companies we’re all familiar with will battle for the future of home computing: Microsoft, Apple and Google are the leading contenders.

The Apple iWatch and Google Glass are both coming soon, apparently.

We don’t have all the details on either product. And we can’t even be 100% sure that the Apple wristwatch is going to happen at all. But most knowledgeable tech fans are expecting both and looking forward to seeing, buying and using them.

Excitement is warranted. No, I mean serious, pure geek joy is definitely called for. But not because of the iWatch and Google Glass products themselves.

There’s a much, MUCH bigger reason to be excited. 

When you’re trying to get fit, a boot camp is one of the best ways to get started on that path. So we’ve brought back a popular video boot camp that will set you on the right path to becoming a top-notch developer.

These 6 video courses are great in that they cover everything from web development to design to Photoshop – and tons of things in between – and they can be accessed when you want so that you can learn at your own pace. But the best part about this Cult of Mac Deals offer is that you can have it all – valued at over $900 – for just $99 for a limited time.

Apple accessory manufacturer MiniSuit thinks they know what the iPad 5 is going to look like. After getting the specifications of the new iPad’s design from what it believes to be a reliable source, the manufacturer has already created a case for the unannounced product.

This afternoon MiniSuit sent out images of their iPad 5 case to show the differences between the size of the iPad 5 and iPad 4. According to their case models, the design of the iPad 5 will be more akin to the iPad mini, with a narrower bezel and slimmer profile.

Delver’s Drop is an upcoming 2D physics puzzler role-playing game (RPG) with strong visual and gameplay inspiration from NES-era games like A Link to the Past and Secret of Mana. However, it’s also a fully modern game that uses the latest in gaming technologies. The developers created a Kickstarter project to finish this labor of love, and to be able to bring it to Mac, PC, and Linux platforms, with some hopeful plans to be able to bring the game to iOS and Android in the future, and in another Kickstarter campaign.

Google announced its first computer yesterday, the ChromeBook Pixel. Yes, they’ve had ChromeBooks for a few years now, but this is the first computer product that was made solely by Google.

Over the past few years we’ve seen service and software oriented companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon venture into hardware development. It’s left many people scratching their heads, as we wonder why these companies want to shift their focus to hardware when they’ve dominated by just offering great services? Asymco’s Horace Dediu is pretty sure he knows the answer, and it all comes down to money.

Facebook has pushed out a pretty big update to its iOS app that brings a notable new feature: free voice calling for users in the U.S. and Canada. The same feature was brought to the Facebook Messenger app last month.

Other additions to the app include redesigned buttons for liking, commenting, and sharing posts in the News Feed.

A New York judge has ruled in favor of David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital and blocked an AAPL shareholder vote that would limit Apple’s ability to give preferred stock options to investors. The ruling comes after Greenlight held a meeting yesterday with shareholders to explain the ideas behind its “iPrefs” stock proposal.

Apple shareholders were scheduled to vote on limiting preferred stock next Wednesday, but a preliminary injunction has been granted that stops the vote from taking place.

The iPad mini would be perfect, if only it had a Retina display. Many have assumed that Apple will bump up the specs on the iPad mini display this year, but other than a rear shell, we haven’t seen any solid hardware leaks yet.

According to a new report though, Apple is definitely going to add a Retina display to the iPad mini this year. In fact, they’ve ordered the initial units, and mass production of the mini Retina displays has already begun in full force.

There’s few better ways to extend the capabilities of your Apple TV 2 than installing XBMC on it, but after the latest Apple TV 5.2 software (iOS 6.1) dropped, there was just no way to do it. Thankfully, XMBC has been updated, and will now stably supercharge your second-gen Apple TV just as well as it did before.

To do the install, it’s as simple as following the instructions over on the XBMC wiki. It’s pretty easy, although it does require some command line delving and a reboot. Power through all of that, though, and you’ll have an incredible, open-source media center running on your Apple TV 2 that can play pretty much anything. Nifty.

Source: XBMC

Ebooks are all the rage these days, and your iPad is a perfect device for reading them. Textbooks, too, are becoming de riguer for many students in college and even high school, as educators, schools, and publishers find a greater demand for electronic instructional materials.

But studying from a book requires interacting with the text at a greater level than just reading it, of course, as students need to keep track of specific passages, or comment on them as they relate to their learning or lecture notes. Most eReading apps, like Nook and Kindle, have these features as well, but iBooks definitely has the most well designed, so let’s take a look at how to use it to study with your electronic books.