Cult of Mac

You just got a new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed. The new UI is beautiful, but you’re confused. Everything’s weird. You can’t find any of your files and apps. Things don’t work the way they have for the past 20 years. It’s a nightmare and you just want the old Windows back.

Don’t worry, there are Microsoft Certified Professionals out there who will help you out. And by help you out, I mean they will charge you $125 to downgrade your PC to Windows 7 so you don’t have to have Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system. This can’t be a good sign for Microsoft.

Source: Michael Jurewitz

If you’ve ever wished you could stream audio wirelessly to your car or home stereo, Blue Ant’s Ribbon ($69) might be just the gadget for you. Ribbon, tiny as it is, adds Bluetooth streaming to any set of headphones or any device with an auxiliary input. But, as you might’ve surmised from its unique shape, its abilities don’t stop there.

When Steve Jobs debuted the iPad back in 2010, he probably didn’t realized that the tablet would one day be used by Orangutan Outreach in zoos around the world. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo has adopted the “Apps for Apes” program, a totally nonfictional initiative that hooks monkeys up with shiny iPads.

Zookeepers let the orangutans play with different iPad apps and the zoo “hopes to connect its orangutans with those at other zoos using video conferencing platforms.”

Apple will announce its quarterly earnings for the 2012 holiday season tomorrow, and investors are nervous. The company’s stock has been on quite the roller coaster ride since its $700 high back in September 2012. AAPL is now trading right around $500, which is the lowest it has been in more than six months.

Recent reports have said that demand for products like the iPhone is faltering. That’s why it may come as a surprise that Wall Street expects Apple to have its best earnings report ever tomorrow. So is it a good time to sell AAPL? Now may actually be the best time to buy.

iOS and water usually don’t play nicely with each other, but if you freeze it, then it’s a heck of a good time. Gamago’s got a new ice tray that will turn your H2O into little iOS icon ice cubes, so your next beverage can be cooled by iOS.

Google just announced its earnings for Q4 2012, and guess what? They made a ton of money. We’re shocked.

Actually, Q4 2012 was really great for Google. The company earned $14.4 billion in revenue, which is 36% better than what they did last year. While we tend to think of Google as an American company, only $5.99 billion of that revenue came from the U.S. while the rest was made in international markets.

The debate over illegal immigration isn’t just about adults hopping the border. Oftentimes, children are caught in the middle: kids who were brought to the United States illegally when they were young, and who are now facing being deported as adults, having never known any other country besides America?

Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is now trying to put a face on this side of the immigration debate. To help her promotion of the Dream Act, she has launched a new website called The Dream Is Now.

There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks about how Apple is failing. That the iPhone isn’t cool anymore, and that basically Apple is just too old and stubborn to be successful.

We won’t know until tomorrow how many iPhone 5s were sold last quarter, or if there’s any truth to the claims that Apple is stumbling, but if Verizon’s financial report is any indication, Apple’s probably doing just fine right now.

Apple has pulled the apps of popular photo-sharing site 500px over concerns that it is too easy to search for nude photographs within the app. This, despite the fact that 500px’s method of dealing with searches for nude images is even more prohibitive than that of the official Flickr iPhone app. Could Flickr be next?

The first Microsoft Surface RT tablets were supposed to be Redmond’s answer to the iPad. They have a cool design, with a fancy keyboard and an innovative new operating system to boot. Sales have been abysmal. The reviews were bad. And we weren’t too impressed either.

Microsoft swears that the Surface Pro is going to be way better though. It’s going to actually run a full version of Windows 8, meaning it will have access to a lot more apps than its Windows RT counterpart. It’s totally going to compete with the iPad 4 now, except the problem is the Surface Pro is going to cost nearly as much as a MacBook Air.

Apple hasn’t updated the Mac Pro significantly since 2010, much to the dismay of professional Mac users. That’s why there’s keen interest in the future Mac Pro: Apple has reiterated its committment to the beefy desktop powerhouse, yet it’s the only Mac to not undergo a major redesign in the last couple of years. Eager eyes look to the future of the Mac Pro line to see what’s next.

A new series of concept images by Peter Zigich have been doing the rounds today, and they are getting a lot of buzz. The images describe a Mac Pro that isn’t just significantly smaller and more power efficient than the existing Mac Pro, but that eschews Intel’s server-class CPUs in favor of custom-built A-series chips.

Darrell Etherington over at Techcrunch says that while “obviously a flight of pure fancy, ” Zigich’s concept is “one that takes serious the question of what comes next for the standalone desktop PC in a mobile-first world.”

It does nothing of the sort. Zigich’s concept isn’t just a flight of fancy, it’s nonsense. Here’s why.

Shared calendars keep things running smoothly around my home, letting various folks in my life what’s going on with me and my family so that everyone is up to date on the latest information about our whereabouts. It used to be that I had to hop onto the calendar on my computer or via a web browser to share them with specific people, but no longer.

Here’s how to share an iCloud calendar with others, right from the comfort of your iOS device.

This is the Anti-Loneliness Bowl, and it is designed to hold your iPhone close so that you need never experience a single second of solitude, even while slurping down some cheap noodles.

Apple has put up some marketing material for Valentine’s Day, February 14th. “There’s more than one way to say I love you,” and to Apple that means iPad. There are no actual product discounts for Valentine’s Day, so don’t get too excited. Apple suggests that you send your sweetie a new iPod with some gift wrapping. You can also get iOS devices custom engraved with all kinds of cute, cuddly messages. Gross.

Source: Apple Store

At the end of last year the blogosphere got all excited about Mailbox, an upcoming iPhone app that promises to reinvent the way you do email. Developed by Orchestra, the app is finally coming in a few weeks, and it will be totally free. Demand has been so huge that everyone won’t be able to use Mailbox the day it launches in the App Store; you’ll need to activate it separately.

When you are finally able to download Mailbox in the App Store, a message will show you how many people are in front of you in line. A code will be texted to your iPhone’s phone number that gives you access to start using the app. It may seem unnecessary, but the folks at Orchestra are trying to guarantee that their servers stay up and running as more and more users jump on. Mailbox’s servers compress incoming emails so they arrive faster than normal on your iPhone.

If you’ve just realized your iPhone takes better photographs than your dedicated point-and-shoot, but you miss a traditional viewfinder, check out the new iPhone Viewfinder from Photojojo. Using a screw-on suction cup, the Viewfinder sticks to your iPhone’s display and allows you to block out the rest of the world while you’re taking snaps. It sounds crazy, and at $30, that’s exactly what it is.

In my childhood home, a Dust Donut was what we called and cake or cookie that had gotten lost down the back of the sofa or under an armchair, only to be rediscovered weeks or months later, covered in (you guessed it) a layer of dust and lint.

However, the Dust Donut we’re talking about today is a simple aftermarket weather seal for your Canon SLR lenses.

AMD has made two big re-hires, one being Wayne Meretsky, a former technical lead for OS X at Apple. Another is Charles Matar, a former employee who went to Qualcomm and has now been made AMD’s vice president of System-on-Chip Development. Both men bring chip design expertise, which AMD sorely needs if it hopes to remain competitive with the likes of Nvdia.

Meretsky worked on the Mac back in the 90s, and he is now AMD’s vice president of Software IP Development. This isn’t the first time AMD has hired from Apple’s talent pool.

Pocowool for iPad is the big brother to the Pocowool iPhone case, a minimal felted-wool taco which doubled as a clutch bag/purse. The iPad version draws more than a little inspiration from the Don’t Panic, another wool-and-leather case for the iPad, but opts for a slightly simpler design.

Amazon has today announced that its in-app purchasing service, which is already available on the company’s Kindle Fire tablet and other Android devices, is coming to Mac, PC, and web games. This will allow developers to take advantage of Amazon’s service on those platforms to provide their customers with a new way to purchase additional content using their credit card or virtual Amazon currency.

While Amazon isn’t the first company to offer an in-app purchasing system, its service does come with some advantages that developers may not get from its rivals. One of those advantages is that their content will be available via Amazon.com.

New on the App Store today from Lucky Frame is a fantastic musical adventure called Wave Trip. And what a trip it is: a trip into amazing.

Over the weekend, a rumor from overseas claimed that Apple will announce a 4.8-inch iPhone “Math” alongside a 4-inch iPhone 5S. But it didn’t stop there; the same sources also said that a third iPhone model with a 12-megapixel camera is set to debut “before Christmas” this year. Sounds farfetched, to say the least.

What seems like a good bet for Apple’s 2013 iPhone plans is the prospect of a less expensive model geared towards emerging markets like China. According to a new rumor today, Apple is readying two 4-inch iPhones for 2013 with in-cell display technology. But what about the iPhone Math?

Thread is a contacts app for the iPhone and iPad which follows the current trend in flat, minimalist interface design. If you’re a fan of the latest Twitterific, or Letterpress, then you’re going to love the look of Thread.

Apple celebrates the Chinese New Year by offering its fans in Asia one-day “Red Friday” deals, similar to the Black Friday sale it holds for customers in the United States. And the Cupertino company has today begun teasing the event via its online store with a big red advert that promises “great gifts for everyone on your list.”

Although Mozilla has stated that it won’t produce hardware for its upcoming Firefox OS, the company has teamed up with Spanish startup Geeksphone to offer a pair of developer devices. Called Keon and Peak, the devices are designed to provide developers with the opportunity to “tap the future of mobile” and get to grips with the platform that will soon be trying to steal marketshare from Android and iOS.