Cult of Mac

iOS contact aggregation app, Brewster, updated today and added a feature that might make you wonder why it wasn’t there in the first place: the contacts on your iPhone itself. While Brewster already pulled contact info from your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn profile, Gmail account, and Foursquare contacts, this is the first time its connected directly to the native iPhone contacts you carry around with you every day.

Siri is already pretty smart, but Apple wants to take her to the next level. An Apple job listing out of Cupertino calls for a “uniquely creative individual to help us evolve and enrich Siri, our virtual personal assistant.”

“Siri’s known for ‘her’ wit, cultural knowledge, and zeal to explain things in engaging, funny, and practical ways,” says Apple. “The ideal candidate is someone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment.”

LOS ANGELES — It felt like a wrap party for a big-budget Hollywood flick at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre, complete with fancy food and big names like Pixar chief John Lasseter in attendance. But Disney’s Infinity announcement on Tuesday was a massive project in which Pixar, the Disney-owned digital animation studio that once belonged to Steve Jobs, played only one of the major roles.

As it was revealed, Infinity is an amazing, massive, cross-platform, multiplayer game system based on figurines from the Disney catalog of movies — right now most of them specifically from Pixar titles.

“It will be global, and it will live across all platforms: console, mobile and online,” Lasseter said on Tuesday.

All platforms? Unfortunately not. Perhaps Disney has forgotten that Steve helped build Pixar into the powerhouse it is today; because while a Windows version will be present along with versions for all the major console systems at Ininity’s June launch, there won’t be a Mac version — at least, not at first.

Everybody wants to be Jony Ive’s friend, so he probably gets invited to a lot of the dinners where Silicon Valley’s elite just hangout, scarf down pizza, and get blitzed on wine. We rarely see pictures of such events, but last night a picture was posted of Sir Jony himself hanging out with 11 of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.

The dinner was hosted by Nirav Tolia – a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur – and featured the CEOs of Twitter, Yelp, Path, Dropbox, Yahoo, and other companies. What’d they do besides eat pizza? Did a wild night of karaoke follow over at Marrisa Mayer’s manor? Who knows? Who cares? But we’re glad Jony gets to hangout with people outside the mothership from time to time.

Here’s a list of everyone that was present at the dinner:

Several months ago Black Pixel released the Kaleidoscope 2 for Mac beta. Today the app has been officially released in the Mac App Store and on the web.

Kaleidoscope 2 is a powerful app that compares text, images, and folders in OS X. It’s intended to improve your workflow by helping you quickly review and merge changes between files and folders.

Hearst and Apple have partnered in Newsstand to bring 22 of Hearst’s magazines exclusively to the iPad before any other digital or retail channels. This means that new issues of magazines like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle, Popular Mechanics, Seventeen, and more will be available in Newsstand days before anywhere else.

Instagram has generated quite a bit of negative press in recent weeks since the Facebook-owned photography app updated its terms and conditions with some hairy verbiage regarding content ownership. Things have died down more recently since Instagram clarified its policies regarding how users’ photos can be used in advertisements.

Many assumed that legions of disgruntled Instagram users had jumped ship over the past month, but the social network has released its usage statistics for the first time to squash any concerns.

For a game that’s been downloaded over 170 million times and spawned countless ripoffs, the sequel to Temple Run came as a complete shock. The smash-hit endless runner started sneaking into App Stores around the world yesterday, and it went live in the U.S. late last night. Imangi Studios, the small company behind Temple Run, had no promotional material or teasers leading up to the release.

But now that Temple Run 2 is here, fans of the original can sprint, jump, slide, and fall through a new and improved world. With zip lines, new power-ups, characters, and a mine cart, Temple Run is better than ever.

Steve Jobs used to like Larry Page and the guys at Google, until they went and made their own smartphone operating system by copying iOS. Steve Jobs was livid. He threatened “to go thermonuclear war” on Google over Android, and the relationship obviously soured.

Now that Larry Page is the CEO of Google, he’s got a lot to worry about, but Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear threats haven’t seemed to bother him. In an interview with Wired’s Steven Levy, Page was asked about competition, and Jobs’ threats of war, but rather than going on an anti-Apple rant, Page’s answer was pretty calm, cool, and collected.

I’m guessing you take a lot of photos with your iPhone or iPad, right? I know I do. After taking them all, or saving them from web pages or text messages, they tend to add up. But how do you know how much space they’re taking up, specifically, on your iOS device?

Here’s the short and simple way to figure that out, plus an extra tip to boot.

Brace yourself. This promotion is only 3 days long, so be sure to snag this Cult of Mac Deals offer before it’s too late!

Thanks to Beats by Dre Studio Headphones, you can finally you experience music the way every music fan deserves. And you can experience it for 47% off the regular price. If you love your music, you can’t go wrong, as these headphones are going for just $158 for a very limited time.

If you don’t like to pay for games on your iPhone or iPad then you’ll want to hurry up and take advantage of the promo Rovio is having on their Angry Birds Rio game. You can download Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Rio HD from the App Store for free right now.

Even though it doesn’t have all the crazy new action of Angry Birds Star Wars, or Angry Birds In Space, there’s still a lot of fun to be had in Angry Birds Rio. The app has been made the “Free App of the Week,” so you have a few days to take advantage of the special before it goes back to costing $0.99 and $2.99.

Source: iTunes

You know what I hate? Detangling the cables, chargers, headphones, and other electronic accoutrements that always weave themselves into a ball while stored in my backpack.

Cocoon, makers of the Grid-It “ultimate organizer,” want to solve that problem. The Grid-It ($20), stows your accessories against a flat surface, all held tidily in place with a series of interwoven elastic bands. That sounds a heckuvalot better than what I’m doing. So with Earpods, chargers, and lightning cables in hand, I put one to the test to see how well it works.

It’s been said about 120,386 times now, but holy crap, Ashton Kutcher really does look like Steve Jobs. This latest comparison almost got me excited about his movie. Like, Ashton looks impeccable as Steve Jobs, and because he’s got all those years of modeling under his belt, I’m gonna go ahead and say yes, Ashton is wearing that vest and tie combo better than El Jobso himself did.

I don’t wanna get ahead of myself, but maybe this really is the role he was born to play. Maybe jOBS won’t suck as badly as I claimed it will. If looks alone win you the Grand Jury Prize at Sundace (they don’t), then I think Ashton’s on his way. As for Woz, well, Josh Gad’s portrayal is embarrassing so far. The costume director couldn’t find him a denim shirt so they dressed him up in paisleys?

Here are some other Jobs vs Ashton comparison photos for good measure:

No one likes typing on a touchscreen keyboard. Even after using an iPhone for five years, I avoid writing anything more than a short text message or email on it whenever possible. We know Apple’s been working hard to bring tactile feedback to touchscreen devices from previous patents, but this particular invention is one of its weirder ideas.

It’s a clip-on accessory that fits onto a an iPod, iPhone, or iPad and provides tactile buttons for typing.

Even though we’ve seen some positive news over the past few months regarding Apple’s smartphone marketshare, there’s no denying that Android is the most dominant mobile platform in the world right now.

Apple may continue to grow its marketshare of the world smartphone market for another year or so, but according to one analyst, Apple’s marketshare will peak sometime in 2013 unless Samsung does something really stupid.

Samsung looks to be preparing to take on the iPad mini with the Galaxy Note 8.0, a smaller version of the Galaxy Note 10.1, which is expected to be priced very aggressively. In addition to an 8-inch display, the device will reportedly offer a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera, and of course, Samsung’s S Pen stylus.

This is not Pacman. No. It looks like Pacman, it sounds like Pacman. But it’s called Not Pacman for a reason: it’s not Pacman.

How does it play?

Like Pacman. A bit.

After investing billions into the iPhone, Sprint is trying to play catch with Verizon and AT&T and deliver 4G LTE data across the U.S. They already have 4G LTE in nearly 200 cities, or are in the process of delivering it, but they’ll need to add a lot more coverage if they really want to compete with AT&T and Verizon.

Yesterday, Sprint announced that they are going to bring 4G LTE to 28 additional cities in the U.S. within the next few months. If you’re in one of the new cities, Sprint says that you can actually uses the 4G LTE network during the pre-launch phase as soon as you get a signal.

Here’s a list of all the new places that will get some juicy LTE later this year:

Apple stock took a battering this week when it was reported that the iPhone 5 wasn’t selling as well as the Cupertino company had expected it to, and it appears analysts aren’t going to let it recover just yet. JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz is now reporting that iPad sales won’t meet expectations due to supply constraints during the fourth quarter of 2012.

Buying an iPhone without getting AppleCare+ or your provider’s insurance plan is a bad move. You’re going to break that screen eventually trust us.

If you don’t live near an Apple Store, then you might want to go with your carrier’s own insurance protection plan on your iPhone. AT&T & Verizon already offer insurance for iPhone customers, and Sprint is finally joining the mix too.

Rolling Stone magazine finally makes its debut in Newsstand on the iPad today, two years after the publication’s founder criticized rivals’ premature rush to Apple’s tablet. The digital version of the magazine comes filled with iTunes links that will allow readers to quickly purchase content from featured artists.

The iPad may be the king of tablets in some markets, but Apple’s device cannot compete with the Nexus 7 in Japan. Its premium price tag is causing tablet buyers to opt for Google’s 7-inch slate instead, despite its smaller display and lack of a rear-facing camera. One survey of Japanese electronics stores has found that the Nexus 7 has claimed 44.4% of the tablet market.

The popular Dolphin Browser for Android and iOS has been updated today to introduce a number of handy new features. In addition to one-tap sharing to Facebook and Twitter, users can enjoy Evernote clipping, and the ability to sync bookmarks and tabs between Dolphin and their desktop browser.

USA Today published a couple of new stills from the upcoming movie, Jobs,which has actor Ashton Kutcher playing Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and Josh Gad playing co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The movie will premier January 26 at the Sundance Film Festival and hits theaters in April.