Cult of Mac

If you’re expecting a new iPhone 5 on Friday, and you’re buying it unlocked directly from Apple, you’re going to need a nano-SIM to go with it. Obtaining one is easy if your carrier is one supporting the new device, because you can just call them up and request one. But what if you’re already stuck in a contract with a carrier that doesn’t provide nano-SIMs yet?

Fortunately for you, scissors, some sandpaper, and a pair of steady hands will allow you to cut down your existing SIM or micro-SIM into a nano-SIM.

Complaining about Apple gypping you by changing its terrible, bulky, hard-to-use 30-pin dock connector for the sleek, double-sided Lightning connector? Then take a look at the alternative from Samsung. One of the few things it didn't copy from Apple was the giant connector, but that's not to say it got anything right.

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 last week, the company promised that its custom A6 chip deliver performance twice as fast as its predecessor, the iPhone 4S. But according to the handset’s first benchmarks, this isn’t just the fastest iPhone yet — it’s also one of the most powerful smartphones money can buy.

Oh, it is soooo on. Right after the announcement of Nikon's (relatively) cheap and small full-frame 24MP D600, comes Canon's reply: the 6D, a (you guessed it) small and budget-minded full-frame SLR. And it adds Wi-Fi and GPS.

There was a time when waiting in line for Apple’s latest iPhone meant you were a diehard fan who could think of nothing worse than not getting the device on launch day. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case: Lines have already started forming for the iPhone 5 outside of Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, but the first two people in the queue are not diehard Apple fans.

Instead, they are there simply to promote their own products or services.

Remember Samsung’s dishonest, offensive “It Doesn’t Take A Genius” ad that, as my colleague Alex heath wonderfully put it, tried to proclaim the Samsung Galaxy SIII to be a better handset than the iPhone 5 by making its “contrived spec list” longer?

Well, two can play at that game. If you’re going to selectively leave features off of one phone to make yours look like you can do more at it, well, we’re only a quick Photoshop away from turning the tables.

As a final note, I love what this ad says about Samsung. They still just don’t get it: they’re still playing the spec game when Apple has built its billions upon the true fact that no one gives a shit about specs anymore. The proof is in the experience.

Source: Reddit

FitBit, my favorite fitness and activity-tracking widget, has at last gotten a brother and sister, putting an end to that awkward only-child behavior which surely would have developed otherwise (animal torture; computer programming; you know the drill).

The newborns have been named FitBit Zip and FitBit One, the baby and the smart overachiever of the family, respectively. The One can also sync direct with your iPhone.

In OS X Mountain Lion, you can set a Calendar notification for a repeating event on your iPhone, then get that notification on your Mac. Conversely, you can set a Calendar event on your Mac and get it when you’re out and about with your iPhone. Pretty slick, right? It’s all a part of Apple’s new iCloud integration, and it works pretty well.

But what if you really don’t want to be notified of a certain type of event when you’re on your Mac? In OS X Mountain Lion, you now have a few more options for notifications that come from Calendar.

Apple has issued a press release this morning confirming that iPhone 5 pre-orders topped two million units during its first 24 hours of availability. That’s more than double the record held by the handset’s predecessor, the iPhone 4S, and Apple has warned that while the majority of pre-orders will be delivered on launch day, September 21, “many” are scheduled to be delivered in October.

Canon seems intent on fighting camera phones with Wi-Fi and large sensors. Also: ISO 12,000.

With Apple’s initial iPhone 5 pre-order stock gone within just one hour on Friday, we knew the company’s sixth-generation smartphone was going to be huge. Even Apple itself has said that it has been “blown away” by the demand. It’s little surprise to hear that the iPhone 5 has broken AT&T’s sale record, then, making it the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever sold.

MacHeist 4’s first nanoMission is live as of now, according to an email I just got from the organizers. Solving this one will net you one copy of NetShade, a $30 anonymous proxy software for your Mac that will let you search all those websites privately. While the prize isn’t a slam dunk by any means, it’s a nice little bit of kit for relatively little effort along with a bit of fun. Oh, and you’ll also be helping MacHeist donate 25% of the proceeds to a charity cause, so it’s definitely worth the karma points.

With all the changes in the web and graphic design world, I hope you don’t think for a moment that Adobe has diminished one iota as the king of graphics and layout. Good. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about learning these infernal apps.

I don’t know anyone who uses Adobe apps who doesn’t have even just a touch of a love-hate relationship with the tools. Which makes learning Adobe apps with Adobe Authorized training all the more awesome. Even more awesome when you get get $100 worth of training for less than $50—Learn Web Design With Train Simple

Ticket to Ride Pocket is one of those games whose very existence seems absurd. It’s an iPhone version of an iPad version of an online game that originally gained popularity — massive popularity — as a board game. But the talented people over at Days of Wonder (who publish the entire series) managed, inconceivably, to make a triumph of TTR Pocket through careful execution and attention to detail. And today is your last chance to own it for free, before it heads back up to $2 at midnight.

Veteran iPhone case-maker Incase sent us this image of all four iPhone forms in profile — each covered by a version of their Slider cases, which, as Incase says, has been available since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. We thought we’d share it; simple, yet fascinating, isn’t it. The pace of change has slowed somewhat of late. At least, cosmetically anyway.

Oh, right — the Slider; you can pre-order your $35 iPhone 5 Slider case now, and Incase will ship one to you when they become available in October.

Source: Incase

With iOS 6 right around the corner, Google’s official YouTube app for iPhone couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s a great app — much better than Apple’s built-in YouTube app — and it’s headlining this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by Poster, a great new blogging app; Journal for Evernote, and Google Drive.

Look at that. Just look at it. That’s Samsung’s latest anti-iPhone 5 advert. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Not only is it one of the most slanted product comparisons I’ve ever seen, but it’s got a pitiful message: “Our phone is better because our contrived spec list is longer!”

SAN FRANCISCO — American companies are rightly proud to show off any manufacturing facilities supporting jobs during the current recession, and San Francisco-based Timbuk2 is no exception. This week, the company known for its messenger bags showed us the hangar here in the Mission district where workers cut and sew colorful swaths of material and help contribute to the local manufacturing economy.

As a group of reporters was ushered through the trendy open-plan set-up, it made us think about what a factory tour of Apple’s manufacturing plants would be like. We’ll never know, of course. Tim Cook would never allow a tour like this one.

Our all-new CultCast is an Apple iPhone 5 media event extravaganza, and you my friend, have a front row seat.

Don’t miss this special episode, where we’ll tell you everything you want to know about Apple’s new iPhone 5, iPod Nano and Touch — we even include a discussion on Apple’s new EarPods, the most amazing perfect best earphones ever engineered… PERIOD.

Plus, the feature we’ve all been waiting for is here: the iPod touch Loop! We’ll ponder how we ever lived without this amazing new iLanyard, and what life looks like now that it finally lives among us.

Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes!

You’ve created a great app. Maybe you learned how to code it up through the Learn To Code Bootcamp Bundle, but do you have your website ready for it? I blows my mind how many times I try to learn more about an app (especially when I want to review it) and the website either isn’t complete or just looks…bad.

Let me give you some advice (don’t forget way, way back in the day I was a purveyor of apps too), have a solid, good-looking website for you app. Oh and don’t sweat if you’ve maxed your budget on making the app and can’t hire a web-dev team. That’s why templates were invented—Style Up Your iPhone & iPad Apps w/ Iconnice: Get a Bundle Full of 15 Sleek iPhone & iPad Website Templates For your App

We get nearly all our official information about Apple and its products through occasional announcements or developers conferences, such as the big announcement this week in San Francisco.

As we approach each event, there are things we know, things we don’t know.

During the event, there’s a reshuffling. Some questions are answered during the announcement. And some questions emerge from the announcement itself that remain unanswered.

Here are the 6 biggest questions that were either unanswered in the event, or which emerged from the event. 

Fieldrunners 2 is finally available in HD on the iPad, and it’s headlining this week’s must-have games roundup. It’s accompanied by a terrific new platformer called Apocalypse Mac, Miniclip’s answer to Temple Run, and a wonderful adventure golf game that I can’t put down.

The only people that really need to know all of the iPhone 5’s dimensions down to the nearest hundredth of a millimeter are case manufacturers, and rabid fanboys that can’t devour enough Apple knowledge. Apple posted the blueprints for the iPhone 5 in the developer center, but for some reason they can be accessed by anyone even if you don’t have an account.

The full high-res blueprints show crazy small details, like the degree of the proximity cone for the camera, and the difference in thickness between the antenna band and the display screen. It’s everything you’d need to know to make your own iPhone 5 case. To access the entire high-res blueprint PDF you can click here.

Source: Apple Developer Center

Via: Joel Johnson

So, I’m hanging out on Twitter, basking in the Tweet-flow (you know what I mean, right?), when I start to notice this thing happening. FTL. I see it in a tweet by a game developer I follow. Then I see it in a tweet by another smart person I follow. Then it’s almost everywhere. FTL. FTL. Starship captaining (is that a real word?). FTL.

I think, “For the Loss?” Well, maybe. Or perhaps, “Faster Than Light,” says my inner sci-fi geek. Looking it up on the interwebs, I see that it does, indeed, refer to the speed at which we cannot go, and it is for sure a sci-fi geek’s dream. I also notice that it came out today, which is why everything’s all a-twitter.

Sword of Fargoal 2, an upcoming game for Mac OS X, iOS, PC, and Linux, just launched a fund raising project on Kickstarter. This will be a sequel to the iOS and Mac OS X game that was itself a re-imagining of the original Commodore 64 game from 1980.

The team is high-end, as it includes original developer Kevin McCord, developer Paul Pridham (Saucelifter, Punch Quest), Emmy award-winning animator Charlie Canfield, and British composer Daniel “LittleBigPlanet” Pemberton–all of whom contributed to the highly-reviewed iOS/Mac port from a couple years ago, published by Chillingo/EA.

The Kickstarter campaign was launched to help take the sequel, Sword of Fargoal 2, from 80 percent done to fully done. The extra funding will help the team add new music, animations, and graphics to the game, as well as polish up the game engine itself to ensure fluid movement and controls.