Cult of Mac

Apple’s new Lightning connector is freaking teeny tiny and incredibly awesome. Apple managed to shrink the connector down to just eight contact pins and give it the ability to insert it in either orientation. While some users may have wished for Apple to use micro-USB, the Lightning connector is full of amazing little pieces of tech that make it a lot better than other options.

Rainer Brockerhoff has been doing an autopsy on the Lightning connector all weekend and has discovered some really cool features. For instance, did you know that the Lightning connector has the ability to detect which types of devices it’s connected to and re-assign pin functionalities for each situation?

Oh sure now Apple decides to improve their ear buds! I haven’t tried them, but I’m not convinced. Regardless of the hype around the new Apple earbuds (I’ll have to try the new design, right now my Apple ear buds are purely “backup” when all other options aren’t available), I think it’s worth checking out earbuds from folks who just do earbuds.

We’ve had BodyGaurdz here before, but I think this is the first time we’ve had a pair with a mic—BodyGuardz Moxy Earbuds With Mic—which is a must-have for me. See I don’t want to carry a set of earbuds for music and something else for calls (or worse have to use the iPhone or iPad mic for calls when using earbuds). It’s about having a compact kit, you know?

 If you ever lose your iPhone 5 and have to track it down using iCloud.com’s Find My iPhone web app, you can at least rest assured that you’ll have the best mapping data available to track it down, because iCloud.com is still using Google Maps.

Even though Apple has switched the Find My iPhone iOS app to use Apple Maps, their website is still using Google Maps to provide location information on lost devices. Users can log in to iCloud.com and go to Find My iPhone to see where their devices are located on a Google Maps app rather than Apple’s new map app that users have complained about.

You're in a hotel room, and you want to hook up to the in-room Wi-Fi. And guess what? It sucks, just like at every other hotel you ever stayed at. So Instead you dig out your MacBook and hook it up to the hotel's Ethernet cable, and use internet sharing to generate your own wireless network.

Wait… The newest MacBooks Air don't have Ethernet ports. But don't worry: you can pick up the $60 mySpot from Kanex, a little dongle which takes an Ethernet connector and turns its sweet network payload into a wireless cloud, ready for all your iDevices and your non-Ethernet MacBook Air.

 The iPhone 5 is an incredible smartphone. I’ve been using mine since it arrived on my doorstep at 7:48 p.m. the day after launch day (after a painfully long wait), and I love it. It’s spectacularly thin and light, it’s beautiful — like most Apple products — and that larger display is such a welcome improvement. If you’re upgrading to a new iPhone, you may want to check how Apple purchases can now be migrated between accounts for a seamless transition.

I chose the white and silver model — I’ve had white iPhones for as long as they’ve been available — and I think it’s the prettiest gadget I’ve ever owned. It’s also powerful, and noticeably faster than my already snappy iPhone 4S. Its battery life is excellent, and so is the camera.

Overall, I have a long list of positive things to say about the iPhone 5 — the hardware is just unbeatable. But I think there’s one thing letting it down, and that’s iOS 6.

We already know a few details about the A6 chip thanks to iFixit’s immaculate teardown, but there’s still a lot to learn about how much hard work Apple put into custom designing their A6 chip.

iFixit teamed up with Chipworks to dive into Apple’s A6 processor to find out what makes Apple’s new chip so special. To their surprise, the team found out that Apple manually laid out each of the Dual Arm Corse, making it the first manual layout chip to hit the market in several years.

Some gadget accessories just keep coming back, getting useful again after they've been sat at the back of a kitchen drawer of a closet for a few months, or even a few years. I have an acrylic business-card display thingy which has done duty as an iPad 1 stand, a speaker hook, a phone charging station and –right now — an iPad 3 movie-watching stand. And I thought €8 was expensive for a piece of bent Perspex.

The ItFits looks like that kind of accessory. It bends to fit almost any small phone-sized gadget, and acts as both a stand and a clip. Let's take a look:

Twelve South has today announced a new height-adjustable stand for iMac called HiRise, which claims the be the first adjustable stand to offer a built-in storage bay — the perfect place to store your external hard drives, cables, discs, and even your wallet and keys.

We’ve had scrollbars nearly since the invention of graphical user interfaces. At first they were bulky, ugly, eyesores that took up precious screen real estate. But now they’re elegant and simple. The image above shows some of the major scrollbar changes throughout UI design, and sure does make us glad we’re not stuck with the Apple Lisa scrollbars anymore.

Source: Reddit

While the vast majority of us couldn’t be happier with our new iPhone 5s, a number of users who decided to purchase the black & slate model have noticed that its anodized aluminum finish is prone to chipping and scratching. Unfortunately, it’s not an isolated issue affecting a certain batch of black devices, either — it appears to be affecting them all.

Could this be an issue Apple quickly needs to address? No. Apparently not. According to the company’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, those chips and scratches are “normal.”

It seemed like Apple was coping well with the iPhone 5 demand, despite it being the company’s fastest-selling iPhone to date. Sure, pre-orders sold out within the first hour of availability, but those who were told they wouldn’t get their new smartphone until October have already begun receiving shipping notifications.

But iPhone 5 production may have hit a stumbling black. The handset’s new 4-inch display, which boasts in-cell touch technology that allows it to be incredible thin, it reportedly causing “significant production constraints” that mean Apple cannot produce the device fast enough.

Adobe has launched new, simpler versions of its Elements editing apps for the desktop: Photoshop Elements (photos) and Premier elements (video). These are already cut-down versions of Photoshop and Premier, and are already simplified, but the newer versions go further still.

While I was researching an OS X Tips column for later this week, I came across a .sit file. Now, if you’ve been working with Macs as long as I have (my first Mac was a Performa 638 CD, just before PowerMacs showed up), you’ll know all about .sit files and how to open them.

For those of you new to Macs, especially Mountain Lion, which only seems to handle .zip file archives, you might be a bit stumped as to how to open a .sit file. Well, luckily this old guy is here to tell you how.

Speaking at a company event in Sydney, Australia, this week, Apple co-founder and everyone’s favorite geek Steve Wozniak spoke out about Apple’s new Maps service, which got its public debut alongside iOS 6 last Wednesday. Like most of us, Woz says he’s disappointed with the new app, and that Google’s Maps service is better. However, he doesn’t feel that the issues users have been experiencing are “that severe.”

After months of rumors and speculation, the iPhone 5 is finally here, featuring a thinner, lighter design, a taller 4-inch display, LTE, the new Lightning connector, redesigned EarPods, and more. It’s the first major iPhone redesign in twenty-seven months, and the first iPhone ever to change the aspect ratio of the device, to have LTE, to use a new connector or to have new headphones, but despite this, many have criticized the iPhone 5 for being boring.

What’s the truth? Is the iPhone 5 dull, or is it a major leap forward for Apple’s most iconic device? We’ve spent the weekend reviewing a 64GB white-and-silver iPhone 5 on Verizon’s LTE network, and put it through its paces. Here’s what we thought.

As a massive soccer fan, I love EA Sports’s FIFA Soccer series. So imagine my delight when I opened up the App Store this morning to find FIFA 13 staring back at me. This is the FIFA game I’ve been waiting for for iOS. Why? Because it’s the first to boast online multiplayer, allowing you to play against your friends over the Internet.

With Google Maps gone from iOS 6 in favor of Apple’s own solution, many are hoping Google will bring its own Maps app to the App Store — as it did with YouTube a couple weeks ago. A recent report claimed that it was already on its way, but according to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, that’s not the case at all. In fact, Google hasn’t even submitted a Maps app to Apple for approval yet.

Having a tough time remembering your iCloud password? Do you rely on iForgot a bit too much? Well, according to a new post at MacRumors, you may be in for a world of hurt should you try and call Apple to get your iCloud credentials reset.

In the wake of the Mat Honan hack last month, Apple responded with both temporary and more permanent security rules to make sure users aren’t taken advantage of in a similar way again. However, according to some Apple customer support representatives who spoke to MacRumors, this is making it hard on legit users, too.

Valve’s continued support for Mac games is laudable. Including Mac gaming in their offerings continues to prove to naysayers that Macs are a viable gaming machine, and deserve to be treated well, with support for games, developers and, of course, publishers of Mac games.

Steam Greenlight is a new initiative from Bellevue-based Valve Software aimed at allowing the growing Steam membership a say in the process of choosing what games to produce for the popular multiplayer and online digital distribution system, Steam.

In a research note from KGI, a financial analytics group out of China, oft-cited analyst Ming-Chi Kuo places the responsibility for the shortages in new iPhone 5 connectors squarely on the shoulders of a shift in the specific supplier of the connector from Foxconn (Hon Hai) to Foxlink (Cheng Uei), due to lower yield rates of the new unit type from Foxconn.

AppleInsider also reports sources saying that Apple has requested Foxlink pick up the slack and dedicate more workers and production lines to the Lightning cable production line.

We’ve seen how fanatical the people at Rokform — an offshoot of Southern California-based motorcycle aftermarket outfit Two Brothers Racing — is about building the ultimate device case; back in 2011 we tested their aluminum Rokbed iPhone case and came away with the impression it was a hyper-engineered beauty.

For their new Roklock v3 iPad case, they’ve ditched the alloy in favor of polycarbonate and added more mounting options than…well, you read the headline.

With every major release of iOS and a new iPhone, Apple typically offers its official user guide online for free. What’s odd is that Apple doesn’t promote this resource at all, yet it’s still available. Each iOS device purchase comes with a little booklet to help familiarize a new customer with the basics of the device and iOS itself, but the full user guide is much more thorough and extensive.

Apple has an official user guide out for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. The 365 page guide is available for anyone to view on the web, and Apple has also made it available for free in the iBookstore.

Companies like Google and Samsung aren’t exactly known for making the best anti-Apple propaganda, but the latest attack ad from Motorola has a particularly painful amount of truth to it. Everyone knows that Apple’s Maps app in iOS 6 sucks right now, and competitors are obviously going to latch onto any negative Apple press they can. That’s why Motorola’s ad says that the “DROID RAZRM M” (serious name) promises to not get you “iLost.”

While most of these Android ads have been pathetic attempts at calling out the iPhone’s flaws, I can’t really fault Motorola (who is owned by Google) for going with the Maps angle. It’s no surprise that none of the recent iPhone 5 ads mention Maps at all. If Apple doesn’t fix the negative inertia its generated with Maps in iOS 6, it could have a serious PR problem on its hands.

To Apple’s credit, iOS 6 Maps is being compared to Google Maps, a decade-old, matured platform that Google has invested thousands upon thousands of man hours into. Apple’s Maps will get there, it’s just going to take a little time.

Source: Android Central

Mmm coffee. I start my day with a triple Americano that I make at home (Nespresso FTW), but weekends I often make a pot of coffee. Maybe a nice French press pot or the classic auto-drip. There is one thing for sure, you can’t make a good pot of coffee if the coffee you buy is crap.

We all have our favorite coffees we buy as a treat to ourselves, how about finding and trying some new ones for a few months! How about a sample of four coffees a month for you to try? I’m craving another mug myself just thinking about this deal—Sample Delicious Coffee With MistoBox: Get 4 Micro-Roasted & Fresh Whole Bean Coffee Samples Delivered to Your Doorstep Every Month for 4 Months

JailbreakCon kicks off this weekend, and Cult of Mac will be there!

Scores of hackers are expected to gather for JailbreakCon in South San Francisco Conference Center on September 29th.

Jailbreaking, the process of circumventing Apple’s restrictions in iOS, has become a cultural phenomenon in recent years. In response to the mainstream interest in jailbreaking and everything it has to offer, JailbreakCon gathers the greatest hackers, developers, and users together in one place to learn and share new ideas.

Whether you’re a diehard jailbreaker or an interested onlooker, there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff going on at JailbreakCon this year. The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 will be hot topics, and there’s a good chance we’ll hear news regarding a jailbreak for Apple’s newest smartphone.

Cult of Mac will be at JailbreakCon as an official media partner, so stay tuned for breaking coverage from the convention floor! Here’s what to expect: