Back in 1997, Michael Dell famously said that if he were Apple, he’d “shut the company down and give the money back to the shareholders.” Now, Dell’s taking at least part of his own advice, having worked out a deal fifteen years later with Microsoft and Silver Lake Partners to buy back his company from shareholders and go private again.
Don’t get too excited, though. It’s not official yet.
There are seventeen rare earth elements in the periodic table: fifteen lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium. About nine of those elements go into every iPhone sold… and if China were suddenly to disappear from a map tomorrow, Apple would lose about 90% of those elements.
Those nine rare-earth elements are used in all sorts of things to make your iPhone, including providing the LCD display, help polish the glass, build the speakers, make the phone circuitry and even allow your iPhone to vibrate on silent mode. But they are also an environmental nightmare to actually claw out of the earth, which is why China — which doesn’t care much about such issues — has a stranglehold on them.
You know what surprised me last week? That the iPad mini is almost as capable a work computer as my Retina iPad. The screen isn’t quite as readable, and you have to wait for Safari to reload pages and for apps to cold boot more often thanks to the lack of RAM, but as a machine to write on, it works amazingly well.
Which is why Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard for the Mini is a very welcome little accessory.
Yesterday, we spent some time with Terminal commands that tweak the Finder in different ways. Today, we’ll look at some commands you can issue in the Terminal to mess around with the user interface. Let’s get started.
The new 128GB iPad with Retina display is now available to order from the Apple online store. The device is priced from $799, and it’s currently shipping in 1-3 business days. You’ll also be able to find it in your local Apple retail store.
We told you about Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, the new hack-n-loot game from American McGee’s Spicy Horse Studios that got greenlit on Steam just a while back. The game has now hit its Kickstarter goal of 200,000, so the team has posted some news about its plans for the game in the coming months.
The highly anticipated Evasion jailbreak was released earlier today for all iOS 6 devices, including the iPhone 5. The release saw incredible success with over 100,000 downloads in the first 10 minutes of availability. As we said in our official guide to jailbreaking with Evasi0n, this really is one of the smoothest jailbreaks of all time.
But every jailbreak has its initial quirks, and the main issue with Evasi0n is how it affects Apple’s stock Weather app in iOS 6. On the iPhone, the app instantly crashes. However, the iPad is a different story. Apparently Apple has been hiding a Weather app in the iPad this whole time, and Evasi0n reveals it.
In the United States, Apple vigorously protects their treasured founder, Steve Jobs, from the sort of jackals and graverobbers who want to steal his likeness, name or other rights to make a quick buck. Let’s hope Apple has the same pull in Turkey, because someone there has managed to slip a “Steve Jobs” trademark through the Turkish patent office.
Sometimes when you’re shooting a video with your iPhone, you might want to snap a quick still photo of whatever you’re recording, right? You might think you’d need to stop recording the video, tap on the toggle button to switch the iPhone back to still photo mode, and then snap, but you’d be wrong (I was, when I thought that.)
Turns out you don’t need to do anything so convoluted. Here’s how.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – After my article last year about Macworld booth babes, I expected to find lots of models again this year at the show. But to my surprise, there were none to be found.
The reason surprised me, but makes total sense.
Looking to jailbreak your iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, Retina iPad, iPad mini or other iOS Device under iOS 6.1? It’s easy! Here, we walk you through jailbreaking your iOS device in a little over two minutes.
Need more comprehensive instructions? Check out our illustrated step-by-step guide here.
If you’ve got your music stored in the cloud, then streaming it to your iPhone might be difficult. Depending on which service you use, you may need to find a third-party app — one that actually works well, and is designed specifically for music playback. AudioBox is exactly that.
Compatible with a whole host of cloud-based storage services — including Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, and Dropbox — AudioBox ensures that you can take your entire music library with you on your iPhone.
There’s nothing worse for your productivity – or your sanity – than trying to find that elusive document you need right at that moment. This Cult of Mac Deals offer will set you up so that you never come across this again – thanks to iDocument. And you’ll get this document organization tool for just $25…but only for a limited time!
The Evasi0n jailbreak has been released for all devices capable of running iOS 6, including the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. You can download the free Evasion tool for Mac, Windows, or Linux. The jailbreaking process takes all of five minutes in most cases, and once completed, you have full access to Cydia.
Ready to get your jailbreak on? Here’s how to jailbreak your iOS 6 device with Evasi0n the right way:
Now that you’ve jailbroken your iOS device running iOS 6, it’s time to check out some tweaks and apps in Cydia, the jailbreak alternative to the App Store. There’s a lot of stuff to try in Cydia, and sometimes it can be hard to weed out of the very best tweaks from the rest.
We’ve gathered some jailbreak tweaks you need to take a look at on iOS 6:
The official iOS 6.1 Evasi0n jailbreak tool has been released for iOS devices. Evasi0n will jailbreak all iOS devices capable of running iOS 6.0-6.1, including the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. The only current device that is not supported is the third-gen Apple TV.
The Evad3rs, a group of prominent iOS hackers behind past jailbreaks, have released their free tool for iOS 6.1 online. There are Mac, Windows, and Linux versions.
The next big jailbreak is about to drop, and it will unchain nearly every iOS device Apple sells running the newly released iOS 6.1. We’re only a few days away from the 6.1 jailbreak now, and most bets are for a Sunday release.
There are a couple things you need to do before you jailbreak your device. Good thing Cult of Mac has you covered. Here is everything you need to know to get ready for the upcoming iOS 6.1 jailbreak:
It’s a bad time to purchase one of Apple’s latest iMacs if you’re living in Europe. Shipping times for the all-new, all-in-one have slipped for the second time in under a month, and customers are now facing lengthy waits for both the 21.5-inch and the 27-inch models. The former currently has a 3-4 week shipping delay, while its bigger brother will keep you waiting 4-6 weeks.
Cult of Mac’s favorite iOS Twitter client, Tweetbot, has just received a sweet new update that adds link support for 1Password and Chrome, as well as embedded previews for Flickr and Twitter’s new video service, Vine.
If you’ve already jailbroken an iOS device running the latest iOS 6.1 software using the tethered jailbreak, then you won’t need to restore it and perform the whole process again to get an untethered jailbreak later today when evasi0n drops. Although this is recommended, you will be able to convert your existing jailbreak into an untethered one using a simple tweak available through Cydia.
I have a history of losing money when I bet on my own predictions, so if you’re smart you should probably ignore this one: Vine – Twitter’s video-sharing app – will wither and die. Animated GIFs, on the other hand, have already managed to outlive MySpace and GeoCities, so it’s a safe bet (even for me) that they’ll keep on keeping on.
Which is all a rather roundabout way of introducing VineGifR, a Mac app which will take your futureless Vines and GIF-ify them.
Lavalier: When I first heard the word I though it was a kind of horseback warrior who would also come soap your back when you were showering, but it turned out to be a handy clip-on remote mic. And now Rode (or RØDE, as it somewhat annoyingly insists on being called) has a lavalier mic which works with your iOS device. It’s called the smartLav, and it doubles as a self-cleaning toilet. (Kidding!)
The Terminal app is like a window into the inner workings of your Mac. It accesses the Unix core of your Apple computer directly and without any muss or fuss. It can feel pretty daunting at times, but it’s really the way to dig in and make your Mac work the way you want it to. The Finder can be hacked a bit using the Terminal, of course, so we figured we could show you a few tricks, too.
Here’s how to hack up the Finder a bit to make it work better for you.
This post is brought to you by Inervit, creator of Dr. Smith’s Music Factory.
What mood are you in? Do you feel like capturing your mood or situation in a song? Dr. Smith’s Music Factory allows you to record your moods forever in musical pieces which you can share with people everywhere. Whether you feel like Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands or Shiny Happy People, Dr. Smith shares your moody blues or good vibrations All Round The World!
Apple has introduced new short URLs for the App Store, making links to iOS apps and games much simpler to remember, and easier to read. Like its short URLs for the iTunes Store, you can now tell which app you have been linked to before you’ve even clicked on it. The new system has already been put to good use, making its debut during a Super Bowl commercial for the Star Trek app.