Cult of Mac

One of the newest Apple Stores in the world opened up just a few weeks ago in Palo Alto, just a stone’s throw away from Apple HQ in Cupertino. The new store is supposed to be a sort of prototype for future Apple Stores and features a glass facasade that allows passersby to view the entire store from the street.

It’s a fabulous new building, except for one thing – customers have started to complain that the store is just too noisy and loud for their liking. One Palo Alto blogger/resident even tried to go all scientific on Apple by measuring the decibel levels in the store so his complaints would be totally legit.

Wonderful Day is a different sort of one-dollar reminders app. It’s there to remind you of the things you’d like to get done, not the things you have to do. Although it sports an attractive visual design, it suffers from a handful of crucial failings that make it less useful than it could be.

We think the design of the iPhone 5 is pretty stinkin’ gorgeous. Only problem is that its anodized aluminium casing has a tendency to scratch up very easy.

Once you’ve accrued a few scratches on your iPhone 5 you might mourn the loss of its brand new look, or you could just scratch it up even more to make it look totally awesome. It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s what one YouTube user did and the results are pretty awesome.

Take a look at the video below to see the result –

After being stripped of his position as senior vice president of iOS software, Scott Forstall will now server as an advisor to Tim Cook until he leaves Apple in 2013. While we can’t be certain why he’s really leaving the Cupertino company, rumor has it he’s been axed for refusing to apologize for the half-baked Maps app in iOS 6, and his fiery personality that often upsets others in the Apple camp.

However, Michael Lopp, a director at Palantir and a former senior engineer at Apple, believes firing Forstall was a big mistake. Lopp believes that Forstall “was the best approximation of Steve Jobs that Apple had left.”

Every so often, an iOS developer attempts to make a quick buck by creating a simple app, naming it after a hugely popular jailbreak tweak, then releasing it in the App Store with the same logo and screenshots. That’s exactly what JB Solutions has done with IntelliScreenX, a $0.99 app that promises to be the ultimate notification center for your lock screen. In reality, it’s nothing more than a nasty alarm clock.

The Protex iPad from Higher Ground cover looks to be just about ideal. It’s a regular-looking TPU rubbery rear skin, but it packs a bunch of features to a) stop you from dropping it and b) protect it when you do. And as a bonus, it also has the best, most minimal demo video ever.

When Hurricane Sandy left millions of people across the East Coast of the United States without electricity, portable, battery-powered devices like smartphones and tablets were all they had to rely on. Not only did they provide a means of entertainment, but they also allowed those affected by the storm to follow the latest news and weather information.

With that being the case, Sandy had some interesting effects on app statistics. Compared with the preceding week in New York City, use of navigation apps more than doubled, while those in the finance category saw a 74% boost. Photography and news apps also became more popular, while, surprisingly, weather apps remained closed.

Try to make a reservation for the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store for a problem with your iPhone, and you’ll now have to complete an important step before you’ll be allowed to see a Genius: you’ll need to turn your iPhone off then on again and see if the problem goes away.

Writing Kit, the app with which I write each and every Cult of Mac post for your daily enjoyment, has received an update. And it’s a big one. If you never use the app much, it might at first appear to have changed very little. But if you’re a regular writer, then the changes are huge.

The iconic Mac startup sound has evolved over the years, but it is a distinctive part of being a Mac user. Sometimes, though, you just want to boot your Mac up silently. You can keep it from sounding out if you hold down the audio mute key on modern Macs (it’s that F10 key on my Macbook Air), but what if you want to disable it completely?

You can drop into the command line to do just that, it turns out. Here’s what to do.

Samsung has dealt Apple a nasty blow by increasing the price of its mobile processors — the ones built into every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — by 20%. According to a person familiar with negotiations between the two companies, Apple initially disapproved the price hike, but was forced to accept it with no replacement supplier available.

We’ve seen waterproof Bluetooth speaker that replace your Jambox when you go to the beach, bit what about a waterproof case that lets you take your actual Jambox to the beach? That’s the Vault, a rugged, water-shrugging case which will keep any small, candy-bar-shaped speaker safe and dry wherever you take it.

Following the supply problems Apple has faced with the iPhone 5, the Cupertino company is reportedly woking to ensure that it is better prepared for the iPhone 5S by trialling production way ahead of the handset’s public release. According to one Chinese newspaper, it will begin production of up to 100,000 iPhone 5S units this December.

Apple has released two additional iPad mini TV spots following the release of its first “Piano” ad for the mini. “Photos” (shown above) focuses on viewing photography and editing pics in iPhoto on the mini next to the 10-inch Retina iPad. At the very end of the ad, the larger iPad slides out of frame so that the mini can be featured as its replacement.

The second spot, called “Books,” demonstrates reading in iBooks on the mini compared with the larger iPad:

Not everyone wants to code.

Whether that’s because of time constraints or simply because of a lack of interest, it’s a fact that coding isn’t going to be on everyone’s agenda. But what if you want to build a powerful and beautiful website without having to have some coding knowledge? This is where this Cult of Mac Deals offer comes to the rescue.

We’re offering RapidWeaver 5 – which can do exactly what you’re looking for – for just $49! And we’re throwing in the Nobility Theme for good measure, meaning that your newly built website will look great as soon as you publish it.

With the absence of Steve Jobs looming in the background, Tim Cook and his team faced a mountain of questions as they marched into 2012. Who would be the visionary now? Would the iPhone continue to be successful? What’s going to happen to the Mac now that the iPad has become a beast of its own?

The most important question Apple faced going into 2012 was whether they could maintain their supremacy. With competitors closing the gap, Apple doesn’t have Steve Jobs’s vision, charisma, or negotiating prowess anymore, and 2012 has been the year to prove that Apple can endure. The challenges and adversaries Apple is facing in 2012 has made this single year the most important one ever for Apple, and yet they’ve been able to come through in the clutch and blow us away with an army of incredible products and strategic moves.

Microsoft’s awesome Xbox app for iOS got a major update this week, and it’s kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by another great update to Clear, a terrific list-management tool; plus a nifty counting app for iPhone, and a new photography app that lets you apply awesome effects to your photos.

After years of battling in courtrooms around the world, Apple and HTC have reached an agreement over patent licensing that will be in effect for the next 10 years. Both companies have spent millions of dollars in ongoing lawsuits relating specifically to smartphone patents for the iPhone and HTC’s Android devices.

HTC was sued first by Apple back in 2010 with more than a dozen iPhone-related patents, and HTC then sued Apple a year later with infringement claims relating to not only the iPhone, but also the iPad and Mac.

Apple’s joint press release with HTC today announces the end of a long and tedious battle over patent litigation:

The weekend is upon us and when a blustery Autumn day hits, so does weather that is less than inviting. It’s times like these that are no better times to plunk yourself down and get your game on with some quality recreational gaming time.

The Mac has become a far better platform for gaming in the past few years, and this soon-to-end Cult of Mac Deals bundle puts on display some of the top-notch games you can play on OS X today. The Mac Gamer Bundle assembles games like Call of Duty 4 and Civilization V – along with 4 others – into one sweet package…and we’re offering it you for the low price of just $30!

As you might have guessed, Rovio’s latest App Store release, Angry Birds Star Wars, kicks off this week’s must-have games roundup. It’s accompanied by a gorgeous action RPG called Wraithborne, a new word game from EA, and a great side-scrolling platformer called Storm the Train.

Apple’s current “hobby” — also known as Apple TV — doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the living room.

It’s a good product under the right circumstances. But five years from now, living rooms are going to be transformed by all-encompassing systems that turn TVs into video phones, gaming systems, home automation control centers and artificial intelligence assistants.

Does Apple have what it takes to compete in the living room? 

When you’re coding or writing text, you want the app you’re using to get out of the way so that you can get things done rather than impede your progress. In many cases, less is more when it comes to text editing software, and our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is for Nuggit, an app that has done away with any of the features that aren’t all that necessary so that you can be more efficient.

And this deal gets you Nuggit for only $5!

Lucky Frame made one of my favorite games on iOS ever, Pugs Luv Beats. It’s no surprise, given the game’s focus on my favorite dogs of all time and a wicked-cool beat-making mechanic, adorable graphics, and a spin-off app, Pug Synth. They put out Bad Hotel, next, a quirky and innovative take on the castle defense genre that has the games studio’s signature graphic style and musical theme.

Now they’re taking a similar electronica vibe and marrying it with a two-button, arcade-style side-scrolling game on iOS called Wave Trip. And it looks a beaut.

A couple of days ago, Cult of Mac reported that Apple had been successfully sued by an internet security software company, resulting in a $368.2 million damages award due the patent holders. Apparently, that award sum just wasn’t enough, as VirnetX has filed another complaint, claiming that Apple willfully infringed four patents.

As if another suit isn’t enough of a craziness, these are the same exact patents that were involved in the first suit. This time, the suing company says, they complaint includes the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the latest iPod touch, products that were not yet released when the initial complaint was filed.

Mike Schramm writes about technology and games for Joystiq and TUAW during the week. He’s also a pretty decent guy. He also finds it fun to code on the weekends. I know, it makes no sense to me, either.

Schramm has just released his second iOS game to the iTunes app store, and it’s called Benediction. Actually, the full name is Benediction – a game by Mike Schramm, a name most likely necessitated by the many other apps out there with a version of the word ‘benediction’ in the title.

Benediction has three things going for it. Those three things got me to download the game, then play the game, then continue playing the game until I was forced to set my iPhone down and actually do some work. This is a great game, and you’ll be sad if you don’t check it out for yourself.