The new year is well underway, and we’ve got a bundle lined up for you here at Cult of Mac Deals that will help you make the most of your Mac over the months to come. And the best part is that you’ll get all 8 of these time-savings apps for free as part of The Mac Freebie Bundle.
I did something really dumb in Vegas last month — I forgot my sunglasses in a Starbucks. A couple of hours after trapsing through a mall, I realized what I’d done, and panicked; they weren’t cheap. I anxiously retraced my steps, ending up back at the cafe. Some fabulous Samaritan had turned them in.
If I’d left my phone behind instead — or something else large enough for a FinderCodes tag (sunglasses aren’t) — the good guy (or girl) could have easily FedExed it to me anonymously.
The Tumblr iOS app updated about three hours ago, stating “small bug fixes” as what’s new in the app. This move comes shortly after 500px app was pulled from the app store, only to return with a 17+ rating, and Twitter-owned Vine got some flack as well.
What’s not listed in the App description is that version 3.2.4 of the Tumblr app is now rated for people 17+, and users will need to click through a dialog that says they are old enough to use the app. Because that totally works.
For all those unilingual schmos who’ve thought they were telling some lucky foreigner “hey, I like the cut of your jib” in another tongue, but instead said something like “you chicken dance the burning planets,” I sympathize. And also laugh. To make up for the laughing, here’s a tip — a trick app to pull out next time: Sendboo. It’s a free app that automatically translates your “hey, baby” to “olá, bebê” — or into 29 other languages besides Portuguese. Fantástico.
The iOS 6.1 jailbreak is dropping within the week. A group of hackers known as the Evad3rs have been working on it for months, and when it’s released, all current iOS devices will be compatible (with the exception of the third-gen Apple TV).
While we’ve known that a new jailbreak is coming, details have remained relatively scare. Until now. An official home has been given for the iOS 6.1 jailbreak: evasi0n.com
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – The doors of Macworld/iWorld open up tomorrow morning, but we’ve already taken a quick tour of the Moscone center to get an early look at the action.
Exhibitors are rushing around trying to put the finishing touches on their booth, but it looks like some of them will be burning the midnight oil as a lot of booths still need a ton of work. We’ll be back tomorrow morning to cover all the cool new products and TechTalks, but for now, here’s what it looks like behind the scenes of Macworld/iWorld 2013.
Apple has released a new SMC firmware update for the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air. “This update addresses a rare issue on some Apple notebooks where a battery that has accumulated more than 1000 charge cycles may unexpectedly shut down or stop functioning,” according to Apple. This applies specifically to older batteries, but the update is recommended for all MacBook models.
You can find this new firmware update in the Mac App Store or download it directly from Apple’s website.
Source: Apple Support
Apple released iOS 6.1 Monday, and users are upgrading to the new software at a rapid pace. In under three days, just over 20% of Onswipe’s 13 million+ monthly active iOS users have updated to 6.1. Onswipe does touch-optimized website layouts for mobile devices. When iOS 6.0 came out last year, it took a week for around 44% of users to update, according to Onswipe’s data. Chikita reported similar numbers after the iOS 6.0 release.
Cult of Mac’s mobile site happens to be built by Onswipe, and the platform has brought us a 240% increase in page views on the iPad. Onswipe has seen a lot of growth by partnering with sites like ours in recent months, so their sample data is likely much more diverse this go around.
These adoption numbers aren’t exactly indicative of the entire iOS user base. The devilishly handsome and smart people who read sites like Cult of Mac are prone to update to new software quickly. And that’s because you’re awesome.
Source: TechCrunch
Despite the fact that she uses an iPhone, Alicia Keys joined BlackBerry’s CEO onstage today to announce her new position at the company as “Global Creative Director.” After giving a creepy analogy about her and BlackBerry “exclusively dating,” Keys skirted a question about what phone she used before her BlackBerry. That’s probably because she was a self-proclaimed “iPhone junky.”
The idea of a famous artist/non-technology expert like Alicia Keys getting in bed with BlackBerry may seem weird, but this isn’t something new. For years struggling tech companies have been using faux-celebrity partnerships and endorsements as a desperate plea for attention.
RIM’s European managing director, Stephen Barnes, was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 this morning about the new BlackBerry 10 system and phones coming down the line.
The host of the interview repeatedly asks direct, clear questions about what RIM has learned from Apple’s iPhone.
Barnes hilariously refuses to even acknowledge the word iPhone, let alone that RIM has obviously taken several pages from Apple’s smartphone book. Even, worse, he sounds scared.
Ok, get it out of your system. I’ll wait.
Ahem. So, by one-handed reading, I’m really talking about being able to hold your iPad mini or iPhone in your left or right hand, much like you can with a dedicated eReader device, like a Nook Simple Touch or a Kindle. The ones with buttons on them allow you to hold the reader in one hand, like you would with a paperback while lying in a sun chair by the pool, or in bed at night.
Here’s how to make your iPad or iPhone work more like that.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the U.S. government open access to electronic information stored by non-US citizens on US-based servers, like a host of cloud services available today. iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and other popular services are all subject to this law, passed in 2008 by the Bush administration and recently re-authorized by the Obama administration for another 5 years.
What this means is that any data stored by non-American citizens on cloud servers here in the US is able to be looked at in entirety by various agencies in the US federal government, including the NSA, FBI, and CIA.
Apple’s Find My iPhone led San Francisco police on a 90MPH car chase last night which ultimately led to the arrest of three suspected armed robbers.
My normally sleepy neighborhood in San Francisco has been plagued recently with a string of violent and scary armed street robberies.
For the last week or so, a gang of violent perps have been robbing people of gadgets like their iPhones at gunpoint. But last night, an iPhone hit them back.
That new Apple TV that went through the FCC last night? Apple says not to get too excited, it’s just a small tweak: it won’t be physcally smaller, nor will it feature any new functionality.
Kanex’s new DualRole will be pretty much essential for hotel-hopping MacBook Air owners the world over. It’s a little pocket-sized box which hooks up to the MacBook’s USB 3.0 port and turns it into three ports plus an Ethernet jack.
Yes, it costs $70, but you can expense that, right?
It’s official: the BlackBerry Z10, the first smartphone to ship with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, and what many believe is the last chance for BlackBerry (formerly RIM) to save itself from complete irrelevance.
The early reviews of the Z10 aren’t bad, but aren’t great, pretty much agreeing that the smartphone is just good enough to buy BlackBerry some time. But how does it stack up, spec-for-spec, against the iPhone 5 and some of Android’s top phones? We’ve put together a chart for you to see for yourself.
The headline pretty much says it all: beleaguered smartphone maker Research In Motion has rebranded itself as BlackBerry, naming the company after it’s most popular product.
So now we have two fruit companies making smartphones: Apple and BlackBerry. And just like in the grocery aisle, one is going to sell by the droves, while the other will be largely rejected by shoppers at large until it collects mouldering funguses and is eventually thrown in the big dumpster behind the supermarket… I mean, gadget store.
Remember Siri Eyes Free? First announced back in June 2012 as Siri’s next frontier, the functionality allows car makers to install kit in their vehicles that allows iPhone owners to perform a whole host of tasks using Apple’s intelligent assistant — like taking calls, calling up directions or creating reminders — without ever taking their hands off the wheels.
Siri Eyes Free sounds great, but we’re still waiting on cars to actually ship that support the feature. 2013 looks like it’s the year that it’s going to happen, though. Following Hyundai and Chevy’s announcement that Siri Eyes Free was coming to their car now comes word that Honda will be offering the functionality in the new Accord and Acura.
Problem: You use Lightroom for your fancy photos from your fancy camera, and you want to put the best of those on your iPad.
But you also shoot a ton of pictures on your iPhone, and you want to back those up to iPhoto on your Mac, and send the best of those to your iPad too.
It sounds like a mess waiting to happen, right? Thanks to two little features, though, you can do all of this without breaking a sweat.
Have you head about Bang With Friends? It’s a Facebook app that checks out your friends list, asks you which friends “who are down for the night,” then “makes the connection” if any of your friends feel similarly.
Bang With Friends is coming to the iPhone next.
If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of running Windows on your Mac, you’ve probably asked yourself which is the right virtualization software for you: Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion. Both have their vigorous defenders, but which one gives the best performance?
The guys over at MacTech have put together an incredibly throrough series of benchmarking tests, comprised of over three thousand tests. The result? A 9,200 word piece they are calling a treatise that — at least in my view — conclusively crowns Parallels as the king of virtualization software.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is the anti-Steve-Jobs: a sweaty, tongue-lashing ogre of a corporate figurehead who exudes a sort of Ben-Grimm-like lovability through his orange, scaled outer shell. He often says foolish things, and that’s okay, because we love him anyway.
This morning, Ballmer’s talking to Bloomberg Businessweek about the just-released Office 2013 (not to be confused with Office 365, Microsoft’s online productivity suite). In the interview, he talks a little bit about Office for iPad, and then bizarrely decides to slag off Dropbox for a spell.
Want to know why a carrier like Sprint is willing to promise Apple almost $16 billion to get the iPhone on their network, or why carriers put up with paying astronomical subsidies just to get a single iPhone customer on their network?
As usual, it all comes down to the crisp, president-branded cabbage. According to a new study, almost 60% of iPhone users spend more than $100 a month on their wireless plan, compared to only 53% of Android users.
Digitimes, every Mac lover’s least reputable rumor site, is now saying that Apple has cut its iPad display orders by 50%. You probably shouldn’t read too much into it, though, from the mouth of Tim Cook himself.
What if the history books have it wrong? What if the tool is the master of its maker? Did Mac create Man?
Project Genesis, a short film about a world populated only by old Apple computers, has arrived. The computers have issues. And they have spoken:
We have always looked at our world with a single point of view: with resignation, limiting ourselves to survive. We were wrong! From this moment on, everything changes: new unexpected ways open up in front of us, the world we knew now becomes more accessible, simple, within everyone’s range.
With “Project Genesis” we open the door to our dreams: now we only have to start living, as we truly mean it
Cue the spotlights. Cue the fanfare. Today on Cult of Mac, we present the International Premiere of this groundbreaking short film by Italian director Alessio Fava. It was worth the wait: