Cult of Mac

Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this morning. He was just asked about whether or not Apple will make an iPhone with a bigger screen. Of course Timmy wouldn’t just spill the details on Apple’s future plans, but he didn’t say Apple wouldn’t make a 5-inch iPhone either.

“The only thing Apple will not do is make a crappy product,” Cook explained. Maybe he hasn’t heard of Apple Maps and Siri, but we digress. Cook explained that the only thing that matters to Apple is the customer experience, regardless of how big the screen is.

Continuing his remarks at Goldman Sachs’ conference, Tim Cook made a series of comments in regards to whether or not Apple had reached its limit. His response?

“Apple has made products for years that people didn’t know they wanted and now they can’t live without. We don’t believe in limits.”

Speaking at Goldman Sachs today, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked how Apple intended to address market share in emerging markets, in regards to a cheaper iPhone.

Cook’s response didn’t spill any secrets, but did make it clear that Apple wasn’t interested in just hitting a price point for market share. Apple solves pricing problems by inventing entirely new killer products.

During today’s Goldman Sach’s Technology and Internet Conference, Tim Cook was asked whether there’s something in Apple’s culture or business model that turns it against large acquisitions.

Some analysts speculated that Apple might be interested in buying Dell or Nokia, but Apple never decided to buy either company and has instead focused on buying smaller companies. Tim Cook says that Apple isn’t against buying big companies, but none of them have passed Apple’s tests.

Speaking at today’s Goldman Sachs Tech Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked a series of questions about the recent controversies involving Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, who believes Apple wants to eliminate preferred stock and is suing the company over it.

Cook’s answers were candid, saying that the issue was widely misunderstood, and that he viewed the lawsuit as a “silly sideshow” that wasted the money of investors.

The SplashSak is a water-repelling pouch for your iDevice, which simultaneously protects it from everyday spills and also disguises it as a lunch or a wad of papers or just pretty much anything other than an iPad.

It also has the best name ever.

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s remarks at Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference have just started. This is the second time Tim Cook has spoken at the Conference, and last year a number of interesting remarks emerged.

We’ll be live blogging Cook’s most interesting comments, but if you want to hear the whole thing as it is broadcast, you can hear it here.

Vodafone U.K. has told iPhone 4S users that it’s okay to update their handsets to Apple’s latest iOS 6.1.1 release. The carrier had previously warned that updating to iOS 6.1 could cause connectivity problems, but it has now confirmed that those issues are fixed in the latest release.

Here’s an illuminating chart by Horace Dediu. Check out how big Apple’s iTunes and iPhone accessory revenues are, compared to the entire mobile phone revenue of pretty much every smartphone manufacturer except Samsung. It easily dwarves them. Maybe these guys should stop making smartphones and start making iPhone accessories?

Source: Asymco

Literature and videos can only take you so far when learning. Code School incorporates hands-on coding practice in an actionable video course that will have you creating front-end CSS you can be proud of. And the best part: it’s free thanks to Cult of Mac Deals.

What if you could go to university and learn the basics of photography for just $5? And what if that university specialized in the camera you actually have: the iPhone? If that prospect gets you jazzed, then welcome to Photojojo University’s Phoneography 101, a course that’ll learn ya to take pictures more better.

CultofMac reader, Ashwin, asks,
“I wanted to know if there is way to use an USB stick as a password for my Mac. One of my friends has it for his Windows (machine). So, is there a way to do it for a Mac?”

The concept here is fairly simple: you install a program on your Mac, and then use it to take any USB stick you have and turn it into a secure password device for your Mac.

Oh man. Writing any kind of text on iOS is easy thanks to Markdown and the profusion of plain text editors in the App Store. But revising that text? Making edits and tracking them between author and editor? You need Microsoft Word for that. You need a computer for that.

But what if there were a Markdown-like markup syntax for plain text copyediting? You know where I’m going with this don’t you? That tool is here, and it’s called Critic Markup.

Germany-based game studio, Fishlabs, today announced the development of Galaxy On Fire – Alliances, a continuation of the Galaxy On Fire brand, to be released in the third quarter of this year, 2013. The new game is meant as a spin-off from the premium Galaxy on Fire, Galaxy On Fire 2 and their expansion packs, and will use a free-to-play model that includes massively multiplayer capabilities like alliances, player-vs-player combat, and alliances.

Greenlight Capital is suing Apple in an effort to get Apple to send back more of its $137 billion cash reserves in the form of shareholder dividends. Apple took this fairly seriously, and issued a press release explaining where they were at on the issue, including the fact that the Cupertino-based company has already given shareholders $10 billion of a planned $45 billion in cash.

Today, however, a judge in the US Court for the Southern District of New York approved a request by both parties in the suit to move the timetable for a response, with Apple planning to file by the end of the day this coming Wednesday, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Apple released iOS 6.1.1 today. Interestingly, the software was only made available as a critical update for the iPhone 4S. All of Apple’s other iOS devices are still on iOS 6.1. There were bugs in iOS 6.1 relating to cellular connectivity and battery life, but the concerns were specifically related to only the 4S.

Jailbreakers will be pleased to learn that Apple has not yet patched the untethered iOS 6 jailbreak in 6.1.1. It has stayed safe through 6.1.1’s beta stage. But that doesn’t mean the jailbreak won’t be broken with Apple’s next iOS release.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will be rubbing shoulders with the Obama family at the U.S. State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 12th. First Lady Michelle Obama has invited Cook to sit in her box while President Barack Obama gives his speech.

Few apps have managed to generate as much hype as Mailbox, a new email client for the iPhone. The company behind Mailbox, Orchestra, first teased the app late last year. Mailbox made its triumphant debut in the App Store this past week. Our own John Brownlee gave it a glowing review and called it, “a flawless execution of a great idea that will completely change how you deal with email.” Sounds promising, no?

Most apps do private beta testing until they’re ready to be unleashed on the world. Orchestra, the app company behind Mailbox, has done things differently. You can download Mailbox in the App Store, but the vast majority of people can’t actually use it right now. There’s a reservation system in place that shows where you are in line and how many people are behind you.

There are currently over 800,000 subscribers to Mailbox, and the vast majority are still waiting to be let in. Frustrated you can’t use Mailbox right away? There’s a good reason you have to wait.

We’re huge fans of Orchestra’s email inbox management app, Mailbox, here at Cult of Mac. Less popular around here? The extraordinary queue that Orchestra forces you to sit in before they’ll let you into the app.

The reason Orchestra has set it up this way is to prevent demand from crushing their servers, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying (for more info on Orchestra’s rationale, see this article). When we download apps, we expect to be able to use them right away, not sit in a queue for an indeterminate amount of time.

We can’t help you get to the head of the Mailbox queue, but we can tell you roughly how long you’ll have to wait based on how fast Mailbox has let people into the app in the past. Here’s how.

I have a love-hate relationship with Spigen’s line-up of Glas.T screen protectors.

On the one hand, they just feel great. If there’s any truth to the notion that screen protectors are to smartphones what prophylactics are to sex, the Glas.t feels like wearing nothing at all. The extra millimeters of glass help protect your screen from scratches, but still feel like you and your iPhone are going bareback.

The problem? Glas.t screen protectors are made of glass, and so they crack, they chip, and they break. The glass is tempered (hence the ‘t’) so they never downright shatter, but they do tend to break in other ways fairly easily. If you’re invested in keeping your screen protector pristine as well as your iPhone display, replacing Glas.t’s can become expensive quick.

Now, here comes the Glas.TR, Spigen’s new and improved glass screen protector for the iPhone 5. The ‘R’ at the end stands for “Rounded,” and it stands for rounded corners, which Spigen says makes the new Glas protector much more resilient than they were before. But what’s the truth?

Apple has released iOS 6.1.1 for the iPhone 4S following data connectivity concerns with iOS 6.1. This morning we told you that European carriers warned iPhone 4S users not to update to 6.1 because of cellular bugs in the new software. Many users have also complained about poor battery performance after updating to 6.1 as well.

According to Apple, 6.1.1 “fixes an issue that could impact cellular performance and reliability for iPhone 4S.”

Ever post an Instagram that receives dozens or even hundreds of likes? If so, that sounds like it would be the perfect piece for your living-room that everyone is sure to love. With this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you can hang “insta-memories” on your wall with the professional-grade canvas options provided by Instacanvas – and you can do that starting at only $28!

Look, folks, it’s Valentine’s day coming up this week, and you know what that means. Either you’re a full-on V-Day fan and you’re out to get the best gift and/or date for your significant other, or you’re one of those haters who sees this as nothing more than a crass attempt to pry even more money out of your pocket in the service of an outdated social ideal.

Either way, though, you can better yourself. Here are several apps that will make you a better person to attract that special someone through your attention to personal grooming.

Bill Gates is doing an IAmA on Reddit right now. Basically, he’s telling everyone what it’s like to be a super-rich philanthropist who wants to rid the world of polio and other diseases. Bill’s a pretty cool guy. He likes to tour garbage dumps and missile silos with his kids. He loves Weezer. And he even liked Pirates of Silicon Valley.

One thing you didn’t know about Bill Gates, though, is that he uses a ginormous touchscreen computer. Like, yeah, he’s got a Surface Pro, but that’s not enough for him right now. Look at the size of that beast in the picture above.

I just got my Surface Pro a week ago and it is very nice. I am using a Perceptive Pixel display right now – huge Windows 8 touch whiteboard. These will come down in price over time and be pervasive…

So while we’re all over here happy with our new 7.9-inch iPad mini screens, Bill is living it up on a touchscreen that’s bigger than your living room wall. And you know what? For a guy who’s trying to rid the world of HIV and reduce carbon emissions, we think he deserves every pixel on that humongous display.

iOS 6.1 has already been out for a few weeks, but we’re now seeing reports that it’s causing problems for a lot of upgraders.

Multiple users have taken to Apple’s iPhone support forums to report that their battery life has dropped significantly since the iOS 6.1 upgrade. Others have claimed that iOS 6.1 has given them a slew of problems when trying to connect to 3G networks, and Apple has yet to respond.