Cult of Mac

The jury’s still out on what effect the firing in August of some key players at Hipstamatic will have on the app itself — but the toy-camera simulator is still pumping out the FreePaks, those cute virtual lens-and-film pairings that often tie in with some pop-culture reference. This time it’s based off the star-stuffed Gangster Squad flick, set to be released early next year. Oh, and they’re giving away a Canon 5D Mk III in a contest, if you’re interested.

If you haven’t gotten enough of Robert Kirkman’s uber-popular Walking Dead series, you’ll love this. On his Twitter feed today, Kirkman posted a link to the the website for new, also episodic, iOS game, The Walking Dead: Assault.

It looks much more like the comic than the recently finished season one of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game, and allows you to play as one of the characters from the original series of Eisner Award-winning comic books, published by Image Comics.

Ah, youth. Fond memories abound for classic boardgame, The Game Of Life, what with its iconic spin wheel, car-shaped tokens, and branching path game board that took us through what the game makers decided was a life worth living. Would you be a college student, on your way to become an astronaut? Or would you choose the more direct route to fame, fortune, and business success. It was just like life!

Now you can relive the classic gameplay on your Mac with The Game Of Life, published by PopCap Games and available for the Mac at the Mac Game Store for a incredibly low price of $6.99.

Griffin is officially the first legit accessory maker to sell third-party Lightning-to-USB cables. Several Lightning-compatible accessories have already come out, but no alternative sync cables. Griffin will start selling Apple-authorized Lightning cables during the first week of December in four different lengths.

Lightning isn’t cheap, so you’ll be paying a minimum of $17 for the shortest cable Griffin offers.

The 4 measurements: 2 feet for $17, 3 feet for $19, 4 feet for $25, and a healthy 3 meters for $30. All come in black and the 2 footer is coiled. For comparison, Apple sells its 3.5-foot Lightning-to-USB cable for $20 and in white only.

These cables should be available on Griffin’s website towards the beginning of next week.

Source: Griffin

Apple CEO Tim Cook has given his first major TV interview to NBC Rock Center’s Brian Williams, and the exclusive segment will be aired Thursday, December 6th.

NBC has a short video preview of what to except:

Today Facebook launched its new Photo Sync feature for all users of its mobile applications. So if you have the official Facebook app on your iPhone, you now have Photo Sync. It’s been added to the app without an accompanying update in the App Store.

Photo Sync automatically uploads the pictures you take on your device and stores them in a private Facebook photo album. You can then choose to share, file away, or delete the photos within the Facebook app.

Black Friday is over – and that means The iStack Mac Bundle won’t be around forever. In this worthy sequel to the original bundle, we’ve got 10 killer apps (and a bonus e-course for the first 3000 buyers) lined up at a massive savings of 93% off the regular price you’d pay for them separately.

That’s right…you’ll get this Cult of Mac Deals offer for only $49!

You got a brand new baby. Congratulations. Your baby is probably the greatest thing ever. It probably even smells like love. Being a parents is amazing. I mean, I don’t really know what it’s like, but I imagine it’s pretty cool to watch a little person come out of another person and then raise it into a full-grown human like yourself and teach it cool ninja moves and stuff.

Now that you have your new baby you’re probably struggling with a name for it. All the cool ones are probably taken, and it doesn’t help that Beyonce and Jay-Z are doing pompous shit like trademarking their baby’s name. But please, PLEASE, don’t even think about naming your baby after an Apple product.

If you’re one of the many folks that own and still use an older iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, you might notice a slowdown when using the more recent web apps out there. Many of these rely on Javascript, which can slow down older devices when browsing those sites.

Luckily, it’s fairly easy to disable Javascript on mobile Safari. Here’s how.

When I bought my first iPhone last month, there was one accessory I knew I wanted – the Olloclip lens. I actually kept the Olloclip site open in a Safari tab on my Mac so I could check every day to see if the fantastically popular iPhone 4/S accessory had been updated for the new iPhone.

I have been playing with this review unit for a couple weeks now and it’s just as great as I expected, although there are one or two things I don’t like. Let’s take a look…

Over the last year Apple has been trying to cure itself of its dependency on Samsung, but that’s been pretty hard to do. Samsung makes Apple’s RAM, some displays, and is the sole supplier of processors for Apple’s mobile devices.

There has been speculation about where Apple might go to supplement or replace Samsung, and one of the top contenders Apple might turn to is Intel. According to a new rumor Apple is already in talks with Intel about using them to replace Samsung.

One of the coolest new features in iTunes 11 is the ability to take a picture of an iTunes gift card on a Mac and have it instantly redeemed in the store. It’s a heck of a lot quicker than manually typing in a 16-character string.

One of the developers who helped work with Apple on iTunes 11 has explained the incredible efforts behind creating this new feature.

Maybe you’ve never heard of mineral oil but it’s an amazing liquid that let’s you perform all kind of magic. You can do neat crap with it, like take apart your perfectly good MacBook Pro, dump the components in a vat of mineral oil, and it’ll still work.

I don’t know why you would want to waste a perfectly good MacBook Pro, but one Reddit user decided a liquid cooled MacBook would be the bee’s knees, so he built it himself.

Here’s how he did it:

Apple started selling its all-new iMac online this morning, and shipping estimates for the 27-inch models have already been pushed back to 3-4 weeks. 27-inch models were shipping in 2-3 weeks only a few hours ago, but demand is already starting to put a strain on Apple’s first batch of inventory.

The 21.5-inch iMac is still shipping in 1-3 business days, but it looks like you may not be getting a 27-incher in time for the holidays.

Apple CEO Tim Cook warned us that the new iMac was going to be constrained in a “significant way” out of the gate, mainly due to the complicated manufacturing process it takes to put together such a sexy piece of machinery. After December, the iMac should start shipping faster in both screen sizes.

Source: Apple Store

As long as sports have existed, so have sports-related injuries. One injury in particular that has managed to capture the spotlight over recent years, is of course, the concussion. Head injuries, particularly concussions, have become a serious issue in both professional and youth sports.

Apple exerts more control over cellular networks than any other technology company on the planet. If a carrier wants to sell the iPhone they have to pay Apple a heft subsidy. Before getting the iPhone 5 to run on their LTE network, Apple has to come around and make sure it doesn’t suck before they enable LTE on the iPhone or iPad.

The reason behind Apple testing carrier’s networks before enabling 4G is pretty simple – Apple doesn’t want it’s users to have a crappy experience. But no other smartphone maker in the world has a policy where they get to test a carrier’s network before turning a feature on, it’s usually the other way around, and some carriers think Apple is getting a little too big for its boots.

We’re entering the time of year of giving, and a great way to give is to offer protection to your devices so that you can have peace of mind in the case that one of them goes missing. Well, there’s technology out there that won’t only help you track down your lost or stolen devices – but will give you the ability to provide the police with the exact location of your device (along with pictures of the thief in the case of theft). And we’re giving you a great deal on this technology here at Cult of Mac Deals!

Prey is open source software that gives you a 24/7 tracking and recovering capabilities so you can recover your lost or stolen devices. It keeps track of your laptop, phone, and tablet whenever stolen or missing — easily and all in one place. The best news about Prey? Cult of Mac Deals is offering it for just $49 for a very limited time!

New on the store this week is Etsy for iOS, and it’s beautifully done. Taking cues from apps like Flipboard and sites like Pinterest, Etsy is an exceptionally neat way of browsing and buying from the site that’s full of interesting hand-made things.

We’ve been waiting a month to see Apple’s beautiful new iMacs in the wild, and while the 27-inch models won’t ship until late next month, the new 21.5-inch units are not available in stores. Along with a sleek new body, the iMacs also feature Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors which should make them markedly faster than last year’s iMacs.

Geekbench scores have already been compiled for the new 21.5-inch iMacs. When compared to 2011’s high-end 27-inch iMacs, the new 21.5-inch iMacs stand their ground and outperform last year’s models by about 10%.

It’s been 40 years since Atari released the first Pong game, and to celebrate the milestone, the company just released the first official Pong game for iOS. Called Pong World, the title delivers a new way to play the classic arcade game, in addition to a colorful new look and a whole host of new features.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is making its way to Android and iOS on December 6, and I couldn’t be more excited; it’s my favorite title in the series, and I’m looking forward to playing through it again. To celebrate its release, Rockstar Games has just launched a new Vice City trailer. If you’re a fan of the game, you have to check it out.

Doubtless by now, you’ve seen a few notifications on your Mac when there are software updates to be applied. They’re easy to temporarily get rid of, either by clicking ont he Close button, swiping them to the right, or disabling notifications for the rest of the day. This allows you to update your software when you want to, on your own schedule, with a lot less nagging.

But what if you want to not be bugged at all about a specific software update? With the first solution above, the notification comes back in a little while. If you turn notifications off for the day, they’re back at nagging you tomorrow. If there’s a particular bit of software you’d like to not update, or just are tired of being bugged, here’s how to keep it from re-occuring.

Apple has issued a press release announcing that the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the fourth-generation iPad with Retina display will be arriving in China next month. Both iPads will be available on December 7, while the iPhone 5 will be available on December 14.

iTunes 11 might just be the best version yet, with a beautiful new user interface and a plethora of great new features that we love. But with everyone these days streaming all-you-can-eat music from excellent apps like Spotify and Rdio, we had to ask—is it too little too late? On our all-new CultCast, we’ll tell you which iTunes 11 features we love most, but which one feature it really needs to stay relevant in the world of music.

Then, we ponder a new gold-plated iPhone accessory so ridiculous, it might just be genius.

All that and a brand new Faves & Raves on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes and to learn how you could promote your product or service on one of our future episodes.

Apple loves to hide little surprises, or “easter eggs,” within its software — such as the memorable quotes inside its OS X icons, or the temporary date (Jan 24, 1984 — when the first Macintosh was unveiled) given to apps downloaded from the Mac App Store. A new one has been discovered that’s sure to please Lord of the Rings fans.

Typing a simple comment into Terminal reveals a Lord of the Rings timeline that Apple has hidden in OS X. Here’s how to access it.