Cult of Mac

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.

This is the Unu Enerpak Vault. It’s an excellent spare battery pack for any of your portable devices, and it is even powerful enough to almost (almost) charge the thirsty, thirsty Retina iPad.

But what it does the most (apart from get you out of pretty much any charging emergency) is show the amazing difference between the batteries inside out iDevices.

Why should you buy an iPhone 5 over a Samsung Galaxy S III? Well, besides the fact that the S III is for jerkfaces, the iPhone 5 is nearly 300% more reliable and less likely to break than your average Samsung phone. Ouch!

Want to harness the power and flexibility of Apple’s Mountain Lion Server? Whether you are setting it up for a school, home network or business, with this Cult of Mac Deals offer you will learn the most effective way to use everything Apple’s Mountain Lion server has to offer.

For only $39 you can take home more than 9 hours of actionable content and over 110 lectures of informative instruction.

Google’s crazy new Project Glasses look awesome. So far only a few people have actually got to try them out, but the reviews have been very positive, even if it does look weird to have a computer on your face.

While Google hasn’t announced an official release date for Google Glass, they’re already let a number of developers preorder a unit for $1500. A new report says that the Glasses will actually be released in 2013 though, and they’re going to work with the iPhone.

Apple devices are a popular target for the thieves of New York, so much so that the NYPD now has a team of cops dedicated to recovering stolen iPhones and iPads, according to the New York Post. Every time an Apple device is stolen, detectives work with the Cupertino company to identify their location and then recover them.

We’re huge fans of the new SurfacePad case from TwelveSouth. It’s just like a Smart Cover, with just one drawback: it doesn’t turn your iPhone on and off automatically when you open it or close it.

We hated that, so we figured out a way to turn the SurfacePad, or any other wallet-style iPhone case, into a working Smart Cover just like the iPad has. The hack doesn’t take much work, and you’ll save yourself from having to unlock your iPhone every time you just want to check something really quick.

Here’s how to do it:

On Sunday, Cult of Mac and Cult of Android will be kicking off our Mobile World Congress 2013 coverage.

The Android side of the Mobile World Congress will be — as ever — an orgy of new handsets and tablets of every conceivable screen size. Apple stuff will be limited to accessories and apps, and Killian Bell will be covering that for us over at Cult of Android.

But what is there to get excited about for Apple fans? I’ll be looking for Mac and iPhone-related news, and I wonder what the hell there’s going to be this year.

Since nobody wants to know what I think is coming next week in the world of iPad cases, lets take a look instead at how the rest of the mobile world could (or might not) predict the features of future iDevices.

Cult of Android will soon be on its way to Barcelona for this year’s Mobile World Congress — which kicks off Sunday, February 24 — where we’re expecting a whole host of announcements regarding new smartphones, tablets, apps, and accessories. More than 65,000 people will attend the event, and they’re all there for one thing: to see what’s on the horizon in the world of mobile for 2013.

We’re expecting new devices from Samsung, LG, ZTE, Huawei, Nokia, Asus, and more — and you can follow all of our coverage from here. In the meantime, here’s what you can look forward to.

Throughout the Samsung vs. Apple patent trial, Judge Lucy Koh has been a stern and sardonic overseer that has more often than not resembled a fight between children than an actual lawsuit. Now Koh is speaking up again, telling Samsung and Apple that, once again, they are wasting everyone’s time throwing a million and one allegations at one another, and that they need to “focus and streamline” their cases against one another.

When you buy your iPhone 5, you have tons of options to choose from. Yes, there are different storage sizes, but you also have the two color options, and then have to get the right iPhone for your carrier. In the U.S. that means you have 18 different models to chose from if you don’t have a carrier preference.

If Apple could just manufacture one iPhone that works on all the LTE carriers, then they’d be able to simplify their supply chain considerably. Luckily, Qualcomm announced a new wireless chip that might make that possible.

The latest commercial for the Optimus G Pro starts as a homage to Apple’s iPhone 5 ad, “Cheese!”, which famously advertised iOS 6’s Panorama functionality.

Man, though, does LG one-up Apple in this advertisement, not only showing how the Optimus G Pro can create a 180 degree panorama of a scene… you can actually use the camera to stitch together a full 360 panorama as well, which LG calls a VR Panorama.

In addition to forecasting that Apple would double existing investor dividends to 6% by borrowing low-interest cash domestically. Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty walked away from her recent meeting with another conviction: that a cheaper ‘iPhone mini’ aimed at emerging markets was extremely likely

With AAPL stock in decline, investors are rioting to get a piece of Apple’s $137.1 billion cash horde. Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, of course, has been making waves with his lawsuit against Apple and his proposal that Apple issue an ‘iPref’ preferred dividend to investors; now, Morgan Stanley Katy Huberty has come out of a meeting with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, apparently convinced that Apple will more than double its existing dividend to investors to 6%.

With 60 episodes, over 1,000,000 downloads, and more appearances as an iTunes top tech podcast than we can count, we celebrate our first year anniversary on our newest episode of The CultCast! Join us as we remember our favorite episodes and guests, and tell the story of how CultCast almost never made it on the air.

But first, true to form, we discuss this week’s best Apple news and stories, including the new iOS features Sony is introducing into their just-announced Playstation 4; the honor Jony Ive just received that’s even better than a knighthood; and Woz says Apple is close to losing its cool—we disagree!

Get a fun weekly dose of all things Apple, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Street View is a new $0.99 iOS app from FutureTap that promises to bring Google Street View back to Apple’s Maps app on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Once installed, you’ll be able to access Street View from within Apple Maps with a series of simple taps. It’s not seamless, but it works.

Google has updated its Google Maps SDK for iOS to version 1.1, opening up its API to all third-party developers who now have the ability to build iOS apps with Google Maps embedded. The update also adds support for ground overlays, gesture controls, and more.

Notes on Mac OS X is like Notes on iOS: a basic, skeuomorphic note taking app that lets you type notes, format text, and add images from either operating system, and have them sync up if you’re using iCloud. There’s nothing super tricky about the app on OS X, but the default font size might be a bit too small for you.

If you want to change the size of the text that appears when you just start typing in Notes, here’s what to do.

Now that you’ve upgraded to the latest iOS devices, you’re probably wondering what to do with all your old 30-pin speaker docks. You could get a $30 Lightning to 30-pin adapter from Apple and continue to use them, but for just $15 extra, you can get the auris and turn them into wireless Bluetooth speakers.

The official Call of Duty Elite app for iOS has today been updated to version 2.2.0, which adds a number of handy new features. Players can now compare their statistics with those of their friends, and track their progress during clan operations and challenges.

If you’re a true music aficionado your time has come to upgrade to one of the best-designed sets of headphones on the market. This Cult of Mac Deals offer features a headset that is designed specifically for anyone looking to enhance their audio experience.

If you’ve considered buying high-end headphones such as Beats by Dre, these ETZ Headphones from 3EIGHTY5 AUDIO have arguably better sound quality with more luxury and style for half the price – just $129!

We told you that LEGO The Lord of the Rings was coming out this week, but if you were waiting for it to show up on Steam, you might be as disappointed as I was when I went to check it out tonight. The Steam store entry for the video game only shows PC compatibility, making my poor Mac-loving head sad.

Luckily, though, you can purchase LEGO The Lord of the Rings via the Mac Game Store as well as directly from Feral Interactive, the studio that ported the game to Mac in the first place, for the same $30 as it would cost you on Steam.

Maybe you’ve never played what is, inarguably, the best series of empire-building games ever created, and want to see what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you’ve been meaning to try that Vikings expansion pack. If any of the above fit, now is the time: Aspyr has cut the prices of all their Civilization titles by half to coincide with the release of the Civilization V: Gold Edition.

The French have a history of coming up with some pretty fascinating ideas. Some don’t work out too well. Some are ingeneous. The VEA Buddy watch looks like it fits in the latter category. What makes it different than the deluge of other smartwatches that have recently arrived: It might actually be brilliantly (French word, by the way) practical.