Some carriers don’t appreciate the simplicity of the iPhone and iOS, and they slap big ugly carrier logos in the status bar that just look nasty. I use my iPhone 5 on Vodafone in the U.K., which is guilty of this very thing. Thankfully, there’s finally a way to change your iPhone’s carrier logo without jailbreaking.
Hackulous has announced that it has shut down Installous, the one-stop shop for “cracked” or pirated apps and games on iOS. The team blames “stagnant” forums and the difficulty in moderating them as the reason behind its decision to kill the service, which will undoubtedly be a huge victory against iOS software piracy. At least for now.
Zynga has announced that it will kill off 11 of its social games as part of a new cost-reduction plan that aims to improve its profitability. Many of the titles have already been closed and removed from app stores, while others will be shuttered in the coming weeks and months. PetVille, FishVille, and Mafia Wars 2 are three of the titles on the hit list.
Thanks to affordable offerings like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, Android tablets continue to increase their market share and claw away at the iPad’s lead. However, Apple’s tablet remains king of the web, accounting for a whopping 87% of tablet web traffic in North America.
New Year’s Eve, the night when alcohol-fueled confusion reigns. But unlike this self-inflicted bamboozlement, which can only be cured with time and a hearty breakfast, the confusion you feel when you start thinking about camera exposure can be fixed right now, using this excellent resource from Exposure Guide.
LaunchBar is a smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life. Whatever you want to get done on your Mac – with LaunchBar, it’s only a few keystrokes away. It’s simply the must-have Mac app for getting stuff done.
And right now Cult of Mac Deals will help you save time and avoid headaches with a deal on LaunchBar – it’s only $26 for a limited time!
We’ve had many deals of note here at Cult of Mac for quite some time, but this is one is “noteworthy” in the most literal sense of the word!
The Ultimate Music Mac App Bundle offers 8 top music mac applications (including TuneUp Media Lifetime) for a fraction of the regular price. You’d normally pay $355 for all of these apps, but Cult of Mac Deals has it for you for a mere $39!
How would you radically improve the iPad? You’d give it more powerful processing, enabling more powerful apps.
How would you improve the 27-inch iMac? You’d make it 37 inches.
How would you create an Apple desktop computer for business? You’d make it work like an iPad, but double as a boardroom device for presentations and video conferencing.
And how would you improve TV and make it Applish? You’d build in a computer, Apple TV-like functions and give it a remote.
If you think about it, these obvious improvements are not moving these four product lines away from each other, but toward each other — resulting in a single super product that does it all.
What if Apple’s next iPad, iMac, business PC and TV set are all one iDevice?
You’ve seen iPhone home button cufflinks and on-button Mac cufflinks. Now, at long last, iPhone cufflinks are on the market.
They’re $29.99 on Amazon.com.
(Via Shut Up & Take My Money!)
Two-man Detour Games wants to give the casual crowd a hardcore game, with RAW, a game currently in development. It will hopefully get funded as a Kickstarter project, too.
RAW will be a 2D action platformer/runner on rails for Android, OUYA, and desktop computers, and hopefully on iOS as well, if the project meets its stretch goals. In it, a cyborg juggernaut named RAW must keep running to stay charged up.
Feeling a bit secret agent lately, and looking for the ultimate in protection for your Macbook Pro or Macbook Air? The folks over at ViVAX think they have the solution, with their completely sealed, impact-proof laptop case using a variety of cutting edge technologies. Made completely in Italy, the developers behind the project claim this is the first Italian-based Kickstarter project of its kind, and they’d like you to help fund their dream goal of producing and eventually selling this amazing case.
Got that? The latest Apple ad in which a young girl plays “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to her grandfather via FaceTime on an iPad mini has been one-upped. This video shows a young woman playing and singing the same tune on an iPad mini. Only this time, she’s using the iPad app, Futulele, to play the song right on her magical device.
Ever wanted to check your email in your car, or while cooking? Running? Eating? Now you can with Talkler, a new app from Talkler Labs LLC. Talkler is out now in the App Store, ready to get you checking and sending email without using your hands or even your eyes.
All you need to do once you’ve installed the app is say, “Hey Talkler,” and you’ll be able to listen to your email, and reply using your voice. You can navigate through all your email with your voice, as well.
Apple and Samsung have been raging a legal war against each other across the globe. While Apple won a $1 billion lawsuit against Samsung in the U.S. earlier this year, the two giants have exchanged blows in Europe as well, but neither side has come out on top yet.
However, a new report claims that Samsung might be facing a serious blow from the European commission that is seeking to impose some huge fines on Samsung for trying to get Apple products banned in Europe.
We’re all concerned about online privacy issues in some form or another. Some of us are obsessive about it while others are a bit more cavalier. Regardless of how you feel about online privacy, there are tons of websites that have your personal information.
Why? Because of data brokers.
Data brokers collect your personal information and sell it online for background checks and marketing. Even social networks can expose sensitive details about your life that you thought you were only sharing with friends and family – and many of them can because of what their terms of service allow.
With today’s Cult of Mac Deals offer, you can finally fight back – with a one year subscription of Safe Shepherd for just $29!
There have been a ton of great tweaks released for jailbroken iOS devices in 2012. Innovation in the jailbreak community is far from dead, and ideas are continuing to evolve alongside iOS itself. What makes jailbreaking great is the sheer amount of customizability it unlocks. Sometimes a simple idea gives way to a crazy amount of potential.
That’s what this top 10 list of 2012 jailbreak tweaks is about: pushing the limits of what your iOS device can do. Here are the very best quality jailbreak tweaks from the past year:
There were a lot of happy people in the world on Christmas Day. Millions of lucky people received and activated a record number of smartphones and tablets on Christmas Day this year.
According to Flurry, more than 17.4 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas Day, which was a 332% increase above average.
For the last few decades, developers have always flocked to Microsoft’s operating system while Apple’s Mac OS X has been an afterthought. In the post-PC world though the tables have turned.
Apple’s App Store has the highest quality apps for iPhones and iPads while Microsoft has been struggling to get developers to come over and make apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. In an effort to sway the tide of the battle, Microsoft is now trying to woo popular iOS developers over to Microsoft.
On our brand new CultCast, we talk rumors of a new iPad 5 and mini in March and the features we think Apple needs to build into iOS 7, but we couldn’t help wrap the show with our favorite movies of 2012. Why? Cause it’s just that slow of a news week! What better time to have an episode where anything goes?
So we get crazy on this week’s CultCast, even talking about burlesque dancing and whether Xbox or Playstation is the right system for you.
It’s an all-new Mad-Maxian new episode of CultCast! Subscribe to on iTunes or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Games! They’re awesome. There are a ton of them released every year, making best of lists like this one fairly difficult. In the interest of our space and your time, we’ve narrowed the field down to ten, with what we feel are the best of the best games out there for Mac as well as for iOS. All of these games were released this year, and while all of them may not be blockbusters you’ve seen on other end of year roundups (this is on purpose), they’re all of them worth your time and money.
So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following top ten games for iOS and Mac.
Over at DesignBoom, they’ve put up an incredible gallery of early Apple II and Macintosh product designs that never saw the light of day by Hartmut Esslinger, a designer who founded Frog Design, the company that Apple partnered with through the 1980s and 1990s. There are even some products that Apple never made, like a stylus-controlled smartphone from the early 80s called the “MacPhone,” a precursor to the MacMini called the Baby Mac, and what appears to be a Mac with dual flatscreens.
We’ve picked some of our favorite designs and put them after the jump, but by all means, head to Designboom for more.
Want to know an easy way to predict a new Apple product release? Follow Digitimes‘s winning formula!
Australian earphone-maker Audiofly was just a fledgling outfit with scarcely a handful of models and a shaky toehold in the earphone market when I first encountered a year ago at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. After I had a chance to spend some quality time with what was then the company’s flagship set, the fantastic AF78s, I was pretty certain that, if the company did eventually fail, it would be in spite of the brand’s quality — not because of it.
But they didn’t fail. Now here they are, a year after debuting at CES, with a trio of new, more expensive additions — all decadently equipped with multiple drivers and balanced armatures — that shove the AF78 into the middle of their lineup.
Apple has been having problems with Chinese writers suing for unlicensed eBook distribution in the App Store. After a group of writers asked Apple for 10 million yuan in damages for unlawfully distributing copyrighted works in certain Chinese apps, the court has forced Apple to pay a smaller settlement fee of 1.03 million yuan, which is only about $165,000.
Designer and photographer Andrew Kim runs a great blog called Minimally Minimal, and he recently posted a gallery of fantastic photos after one month with the iPad mini.
I love Kim’s product shots, and he graciously gave me permission to share them with Cult of Mac readers. Check out the gallery below: