Apple has a well documented history of banning everything that has anything to do with pornography, even if it’s only remotely related. It’s nice that Apple wants to keep the App Store clean, but their obsession with eliminating porn from computing has a lot of collateral damage.

In its latest push to get porn off your computer, Apple now deletes all iCloud emails that contain the phrase ‘barely legal teens.’ It doesn’t send the messages to spam, or flag them, it just straight up deletes them, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

There are a couple of different ways to protect your MacBook from abuse, but this is a new one to us. A Reddit user decided that he was tired of the dings and scratches on the front of his 2008 MacBook, so he grabbed a can of Plasti-dip and gave it a nice plastic coating to cover everything up.

It’s either the most brilliant way to cover up your MacBook’s scars, or the absolute worst. We’re not sure. Plasti Dip was originally created to help people rubberize the grips of their tools, but people have started putting it on everything from car bumpers to pieces of art.

Once you’re tired of the plastic coating you can just peel it off, but we think a protective case would be a better idea so you don’t get plastic in your USB port.

Here’s what the MacBook looked like after its final Plasti Dip coating:

Last summer we went hands-on with the Leap Motion, a futuristic controller for the Mac that lets you interact with OS X apps like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It was a stunning experience, and it made the mouse and trackpad feel suddenly obsolete.

Developers have been flocking to the Leap platform since last year, and now Realmac Software has a big announcement to make.

The folks at Realmac have been testing the Leap Motion controller with their most popular app, Clear. The Mac version of the task manager will be fully compatible with the Leap Motion when it ships to the public.

Yesterday we showed you the ZTE Open, the first entry-level smartphone running Mozilla’s new Firefox OS. Other companies, like Sony, are planning to release Firefox OS phones as well. Mozilla has been trying to get the word out at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

During a recent talk at MWC, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs touted Firefox OS as a new platform to disrupt Android and Apple’s hold on the industry.

Keeping a cable on you at all times to charge your iPhone is a pain in the ass, mostly because the wires get all tangled and they take up too much space.

Last summer we saw the nifty Kickstarter project called ChargeCard that aimed to put an iPhone charging cable in your wallet. Well the project got funded and is now ready to make its way to your wallet.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – It’s not all announcements of exciting new Android handsets with fractionally faster processors here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Oh no. You’ll also find rose-tinted spectacles. Yes, Elecom – maker of some of the most accessorial iAccessories ever – now makes some specs that will stop your eyes from being ruined – ruined! – by blue light.

Last week a Staples Exec gloated that the office supply chain superstore had struck a deal to sell Apple products very soon. At the time, we didn’t know which Apple products Staples would sell, but for now it looks like they’re just selling accessories.

If you want to buy an Apple TV, Magic Mouse, Smart Cover, EarPods, or any other Apple accessories, you can now purchase them from Staples’ online store for the U.S.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Excito is an AppleTV-a-like puck which hooks up to your home network and lets you stream TV, music and movies to any stereo or screen in the house.

So what, right? The Apple TV already does that? The difference is that the Excito only uses your phone as a remote, and streams the content either direct from the internet, or from your own local media server. Oh, and it costs around half the price if the already-cheap Apple TV.

Be careful what you request on Apple’s website. While you might think you’re passing on the opportunity to get something beautiful engraved on your iPod, you might actually be requesting it.

That’s what happened to one unfortunate redditor who swears he totally didn’t want Apple to engrave anything on his iPod. This joke has been around for years, but it’s still funny, right?

Source: Reddit

Via: Gizmodo

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – You’re stuck in the dessert. You are thirsty, hot, and – worst of all – your cellphone is dead. You discover that you have a teaspoonful of water that you had previously overlooked. Do you a) Drink it? or b) use it to recharge your phone.

What?

Ken Segall has a long history with Apple. He worked with Steve Jobs for over 14-years as the creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day. Segall is the guy who came up with the ‘Think Different’ campaign, literally put the ‘i’ in iMac, and he’s even got his own book about Steve Jobs.

When it comes to Apple, Ken knows what he’s talking about, and right now, he’s not happy at all with how Apple’s been approaching their ads. In Ken’s opinion, Apple is getting beat up by Samsung because Samsung is producing great ads, and Apple isn’t.

You ever do that thing where you have to move your mouse around, jiggling the little thing just to find the dang cursor? I do it all the time these days, with my smaller screen Macbook Air and the Mac Mini that’s connected to the HDTV across the room from me, since there’s so much going on onscreen that I often lose track of it.

There’s an easy way to fix this problem, and it involves the Accessibility options that come built right in to your Mac OS X system.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – Here’s something I wish would come to a future iPhone, or — even better — an iPad: e-ink. Imagine being able to switch to an e-ink version of the tablet and read in bright sunlight. Or turn off the various radios and enjoy a battery life measured in months, not hours.

That’s what the e-ink phone can do.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS –

RadBlocker might sound like some lame anti-skateboarding device from the 1980s, but it is in fact an Israeli company dedicated to keeping your brains unscrambled. And nestled amongst its RF-denying belt holsters (for Dad!) and laptop trays is this amazing pair of headphones: Echo Tubez.

Well, it may be past the officially announced February 22 date, but Canadian game developer Beamdog just sent us an email announcing the availability of Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition for OS X. You can buy it now via the Beamdog site, or wait for the Mac App Store version, which the devs promise is coming soon.

Going paperless is a goal of mine. I’d love to be able to keep all my important documents, like banking paperwork and medical records, all safely and cleanly tucked away into the digital ether. And, while productivity apps are fairly common in the Mac App store, when Apple made document-organizing app, doo, an Editor’s Choice app this week, well, it certainly piqued my interest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3H2hF0dmEE

Yep, note the date at the end of that trailer above? It’s February 25 right now. And, as such, you can grab yourself a copy of Awesome Games Studio’s latest indie game release, Yet Another Zombie Defense, on the App Store today for a mere $0.99, half off the regular $1.99 price. Don’t wait too long, though, as this remake of the popular XBox Live Indie Game will only be on sale for a week.

Apple has finally settled a 2011 lawsuit with parents whose kids spent insane amounts of money on in-app purchases. A group of parents originally sued Apple after their kids raked up enormous iTunes bills on apps that were downloaded for free from the App Store.

One of the world’s most outspoken telecom CEOs recently talked about how he has seen Apple change under the guidance of Tim Cook. Stephane Richard runs Orange, a leading French carrier and longtime Apple partner. During Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Richard spoke to reporters about how he has seen Apple become “more flexible” and “less arrogant than they used to be.”

Apple has been historically fickle about how it lets marketers and developers track iOS users through apps downloaded from the App Store. After all of the privacy concerns were raised about the UDID device identifier back in 2011, a better solution never presented itself.

Apple eventually introduced its own Advertising Identifier for iOS device tracking purposes, but marketers still favored the unique, permanent nature of the UDID. The UDID worked so well because it was a device-specific identifier that could never be changed. Athough developers were technically banned from using the UDID to track iOS devices more than a year ago, many, many apps still use the deprecated method today.

Apple is reportedly starting to reject apps that use web cookies to track user activity in iOS. Could this mean a reinvigorated push towards the Advertising Identifier again?

The popular method for listening to music online has shifted from $0.99 paid downloads to subscription services like Spotify and Rdio. Bigger tech companies like Samsung have tried to claim their piece of the music subscription pie, and Apple is rumored to be entering the space with some sort of ‘iRadio’ product.

That’s why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Google is working on its own music streaming service too.

Otterbox is known for making really durable iPhone cases that are designed to survive all kinds of calamities. Now Otterbox is taking the next logical step: screen protectors for the iPhone and iPad.

The company has unveiled four different screen protectors, and each one has its own distinct appeal.

I’ve been driving a lot lately, and have been wanting to listen to ebooks on my iPHone as I do so. It’s fairly simple to turn on VoiceOver and have what sounds like Siri read my books to me, but honestly? She’s a terrible narrator. The VoiceOver voice is heavily robotic, and it’s difficult to understand what’s being read to me most of the time, so I end up giving up or contemplating purchasing an audiobook from iTunes.

But I’d really like to just continue the ebooks I already have on my iPhone while I’m driving. That way I can listen to them while in the car, but actually read them when I’m not. NaturalReader just might be part of the solution I’ve been looking for, so I figured I’d share it here with you.

It’s only been a few weeks since the first lockscreen hack was discovered on iOS 6.1, but some researchers have already discovered a new way to bypass the iPhone’s lockscreen without entering the security PIN.

The bug was found in iOS 6.1 by Benjamin Kunx Mejri, and it follows some of the steps as the last exploit but has some variation in the steps, and it allows an attacker to access all your data by plugging your device into a computer’s USB port.