Cult of Mac

Sonos has updated its iOS app and introduced the ability to wirelessly stream music AirPlay-style to your Sonos speaker directly from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Until now, users have had to have a Mac or PC acting as a middleman, but Sonos latest iOS apps remove that requirement.

You know, computers aren’t just for getting things done. They’re also for getting your game on. With that in mind, the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer has packed 10 fun games that are compatible with both Mac and PC systems into one bundle known as The Entertainment Games Bundle.

And for a limited time we’re offering it to you for just $29!

Following Apple veteran Bob Mansfield cashing in $20 million worth of AAPL, Eddy Cue has decided to let go of roughly $8.8 million in stock. Cue, who’s official title at Apple is “Senior Vice President Internet Software and Services,” recently sold 15,000 shares valued at about $583 per share.

Cue only owns 285 accessible shares in Apple now, but he has a treasure trove waiting for him should he choose to stay with the company for the foreseeable future.

I’m an avid Instragammer. And yes, I even take pictures of food, and clouds and all that stupid stuff. It’s horrible. It’s a bad habit. I need to stop. But I can’t. Maybe if the most loathed band in the world would just make a song about how awesome Instagram is then I’d be motivated to kick the habit.

Nickelback still hasn’t worked Instagram into the lyrics of their next mega-album, but CollegeHumor just created the perfect Nickelback video that destroys Instagram and its users with such perfection it’s unbelievable.

Will it keep me from snapping a pic of the French Toast I’m going to eat for breakfast tomorrow? Nope. But I’ll get rid of all my beautiful fingernail pictures now.

Source: CollegeHumor

As Google pushes more and more into the smartphone and tablet market with its Android operating system, it’s a no brainer to figure out that the company previously mostly known for its search business will come into conflict with the other gorilla in the mobile operating space, Apple. The media frenzy that results from these expected differences can be deafening in its fervor at times.

The press, however, has it all wrong, said Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking to the Wall Street Journal. His take? That businesses must be run more like countries, with diplomatic meetings and the like. He said that “the adult way to run a business is to run it more like a country. They have disputes, yet they’ve actually been able to have huge trade with each other. They’re not sending bombs at each other.”

Rayman Jungle Run got an update today, adding ten more levels within a brand-new world for the holidays. The app description mentions, “10 new levels, including a snowy jungle, waterfalls, interactive environments, and a new crazy Land of The Dead challenge.”

There is also an updated character pack available for $0.99 as an in-app purchase, as well. It includes new character Globox, and two new Rayman costumes to use in-game.

LaCie, the fantastic data storage company that was recently acquired by Seagate, has updated its d2 external hard drive with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. It comes in a sleek, minimal, fan-free, aluminum shell that looks great next to any Mac.

With speeds of up to 180MB/s, the only real downside to this drive is that it’s not solid state. LaCie is selling both 3TB and 4TB models.

Netflix’s streaming service isn’t exactly known for having quality content. Their catalog of movies is reminiscent of the bargain DVD bin at your local Walmart. Netflix has been struggling to land any quality licensing agreements and has actually been losing a few. With Redbox Instant on the horizon, Netflix desperately needs to give its members a reason to stick around.

The official iOS YouTube app just got a monumental update in the App Store. Today’s update finally brings support for the iPhone 5’s taller display, AirPlay integration, and a completely new iPad version. Boo-ya!

There are all kinds of services out there that will paint your iPhone into a crazy colored mess, most notably Colorware. But what about taking it to the next level? When each iPhone is made and assembled in a factory, Apple uses a process called anodization to color the device. A new startup called Anostyle will anodize your iOS devices into another color of your choosing, thereby making you infinitely cooler than all your boring black-and-white-iPhone-using friends.

Although using a company like Colorware works fine, it’s often way too expensive and the paint finish is susceptible to cracking and chipping. Not so with Anostyle. The dye is literally charged and fused into your iPhone for all of eternity.

Apple has issued some small updates to its iWork suite in the Mac and iOS App Stores. Pages, Keynote and Numbers have been updated to version 9.3 on the Mac, and a 1.7 update is rolling out to the iOS versions.

The only thing Apple has said about the minor 9.3 update on the Mac is that it adds support for the 1.7 versions of the iOS apps. All updates are recommended for iWork users on both platforms.

Since the iPhone 5 launched in October Apple has limited the number of unlocked iPhone 5s a customer can purchase to 2 units per transaction and only 10 units per lifetime.

Now that Apple’s stock of iPhone 5 units has caught up with demand, Apple has changed its policy on how many unlocked iPhone 5s customers can purchase.

Each month I get my AT&T bill there are usually some small charges hidden away somewhere and I have to hunt through the endless pages of info trying to find out why my bill is off. The cascade of frustration usually results in me calling AT&T asking for an explaination on why this bill is different from last month if I didn’t have any overages.

AT&T customer care is probably tired of talking to people like me, so to make things easier they’re creating monthly personalized videos that will explain all of the charges on your wireless bill.

Here’s an example of what the videos will look like:

Carbon fiber tripods are great, aren’t they? They’re slim on weight, and if they’re built well, are steady as an oak. Problem is, good ones can cost $600-$800 dollars, and unless you’re regularly shooting for cash, it’s hard to justify spending that kind of cheese.

So when Manfrotto asked me to check out their 290-series MT294C3 carbon fiber tripod ($250 legs only, $319 with 3-Way Pan/Tilt Head as I reviewed it) I pointed at them, stroked my mustache, and said, absolutely. Manfrotto’s a known name in the photo world, but would their new series of affordable carbon-hewn tripods be worthy of their pedigree? I set out to see.

This is pure speculation, but I have a suspicion that when Microsoft fired the person responsible for naming the Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, that same person was snapped up by the folks at Ballistic. For how else could you explain the “IPHONE 5 BALLISTIC EVERY1 SERIES CASE,” a case so badly labelled that it even shouts its name?

This is the C.VOX, a coat with a built-in sound system so you can listen to stuff anywhere you go, while you’re going there. It’s kind of cool and kind of weird. I’ve been wearing it for the last wintry week or so here in the UK, and here’s what it’s like to own one.

Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMacs are ridiculously thin and gorgeous. They’re also one of least upgradeable/repairable desktop  computers on the market. It’s possible to swap out the RAM on the new 21.5-inch iMacs, but trying to get an aftermarket SSD into the 21.5-inch iMac might be an impossible task.

Teardowns of the new 21.5-inch iMac revealed that in order to get to the hard drive users will have to separate the display from the main body of the iMac. That task isn’t too difficult, but gluing the display back onto the iMac’s body will be pretty tough. On top of that, once you get inside the 21.5-inch iMac there’s literally no room for an SSD and nowhere to plug it in.

Want to see an amazing chart? It’s right above this post, and it shows the rise and fall of computer platforms (including mobile) as a percentage of overall marketshare from 1975 to 2012.

What does it tell us about the state of the computer industry? Even with iOS’s success, Apple is proportionally selling about the same percentage of computers as it has since the early 1980s. Windows as a platform, though, has fallen from a ninety-six percent share of the overall computer market between 1998 and 2005 to a mere thirty-five percent in 2012.

Why? Apple and especially Android are killing WinTel.

The International Data Corporation has published its most recent mobile market forecast and unsurprisingly, they’re predicting Android to maintain its strong market share lead over the next four years. In fact, there’s really not much surprising about the report at all.

If you have been trawling the internet for an iPhone 5 bike mount which looks like it was beamed forward in time from the 1980s, then stop! Your search is over. Better still, the case even has a numeral-heavy 1980s-style name: The M550.

When you think of hugely successful mobile games, Cut the Rope from ZeptoLabs is right up there with Angry Birds; it’s been a big hit on Android and iOS. With that in mind, we’re super excited about ZeptoLabs’s next game, Pudding Monsters, which it’s now teasing with a brand new trailer.

The iOS lockscreen locks in two different ways. One is by keeping strangers from fiddling around with your iPhone or iPad. The second, though, is to developers: they can’t really do much with the lockscreen except pass notifications to it or make use of the lockscreens built-in music playback controls.

What if developers had full access to the lockscreen, though? What if they could do more than just pass a notification on through? It might look something like this concept.

Around the time that Google bought Sparrow, the Gmail team was given a mission to completely rebuild the Gmail app for iOS. After months of slaving away, the app has just been released on the App Store today and it comes with a number of new features that may have been borrowed from Sparrow, even though insiders such as MG Siegler claim the Sparrow team had nothing to do with the update.

Gmail 2.0 for iPhone and iPad is faster, sleeker and much easier to use. The minimal UI athestetics of Google Now have bled over with some of the popular features from Sparrow. The free update gives users multiple accounts, infinite scrolling inboxes, better search, and more.

Here are the release notes:

Perch is a new way to use your old iOS device. Got an iPod Touch or unused iPhone/iPad laying around the house with nothing to do? Perch is an app which turns it into an always-on portal, letting you just walk up to it and show things to other Perch users in your network.

The idea is to keep this on a wall at home and treat it as a window on your family.

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.