Cult of Mac

Add another mark in the “winning” column for Apple today, as a judge from the US branch of the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple did not infringe any of the four patents brought before the commission by Samsung.

Judge James Gildea posted his ruling in a short notice on the court’s website. He also found that Samsung was unable to prove that it had a “domestic industry” that used the patents in question. This last bit has to do with a requirement of the ITC that the patents being brought before the court must actually be used in the same country as that court. This ruling is preliminary; the full ITC panel will review the ruling early next year.

Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, an updated release of the venerable Dungeons and Dragons role playing game coming from Bioware, has been delayed until November 30, 2012, according to the company’s forum. The Mac and iPad version was scheduled to release in September, sometime soon after a September 18 PC release date.

Now, all three versions will ship at the end of November.

During the onslaught of iPhone 5 news that’s been circulating this week, a tethered jailbreak for the final iOS 6 Golden Master (GM) was released. The iPhone Dev-Team announced the update yesterday.

While iOS 6 will be unleashed for the public to download on September 19th, hackers have already been working on finding exploits to create a public jailbreak release.

Shipping estimates for iPhone 5 preorders slipped to 2-3 weeks only a few short hours after they were made available this morning, and initial stock continues to dwindle as the day wears on. Apple is expected to shatter the previous preorder sales record it set with the iPhone 4S, and demand for a new iPhone has never been higher.

Although specific preorder sales numbers have not yet been released, Apple has said that it’s “blown away” by how well the iPhone 5 has done so far.

As of next week, when Apple starts shipping the iPhone 5, the standard earbuds supplied with its portable devices will be superseded by the new EarPods. From the outside, these look a lot like the iconic white buds they replace. But yank them out of your ear and you’ll see that the design is quite unlike any earbuds you’ve ever seen.

The product blurb tells us that they’re resistant to sweat, and that they sound as good as headphones many times the price. It also says that they tenaciously hold on to your earholes, even when doing sports, and that they do this while remaining comfortable. So how do these claims hold up?

I don’t know about you, but I spend too much time waiting for the Camera app shutter to open so I can take a photo with my iPhone. The problem with that, of course, is that I miss a lot of shots that way, even when I’m using the lock-screen camera swipe.

Luckily, there’s a simple way to make things move a lot faster when trying to take a quick action shot with your iPhone.

Every time Apple launches a new iPhone they use a lot of fabulous adjectives to describe how incredibly mind blowing it is. They usually use the same adjectives over and over to beat it into your small feeble brain that this new iPhone is revolutionary, fast, and cool.

The guys at Buzzfeed made a ridiculously amazing video full of a video editing precision that contains all the adjective Apple has used to describe the iPhone over the last five years. It’s glorious, so watch it below.

When the original iPod nano was introduced on September 7, 2005, it was one of Apple’s greatest design achievements. In a bold move, Apple decided to replace their iPod Mini with the unbelievably small iPod nano, even though the 2nd-gen Mini had only been on the market for eight months and was the popular iPod.

Over the last eight years, the iPod Nano has experienced more design changes than any other Apple product. It’s gone from metal to plastic, tall to fat, and click-wheel to touch, with more color changes than a chameleon. 

Instagram: Probably the best thing to happen to photography in recent years. InstaStory: a slick and simple little app which turns your Instagram photos into slideshows, and adds music. If you have an Instagram account, and you have an iDevice, then you should be downloading this free app right now.

Looks like T-Mobile’s serious about getting you to come to their network with your unlocked iPhone 5, even if they still don’t have a deal in place to sell them directly. What you see here is that T-Mobile is already ordering nano-SIMs, and you’ll be able to slap them into an unlocked iPhone 5 starting in mid-October. You won’t get LTE, of course, but if that doesn’t matter to you, you might save a few bucks.

Source: TMO-News

If you are one of the many who were holding off on buying a new smartphone until after Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, it’s now time to make a decision. You’ve seen what the iPhone 5 has to offer and now it’s time to compare it to what’s available on Android. I’ll show you a few options, how they compare to the iPhone 5, and then you can decide what’s the best option for you. Ready to explore?

The parts for the iPhone 5 only cost Apple $167.50, according to new estimates. The estimate makes puts the iPhone 5 parts price tag about $36 more than iPhone 4S parts were.

UBM Techinsights released their estimates on how much each iPhone 5 part costs this morning and as usual, it’s shockingly cheap. The $36 cost difference between the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S is attributed to the larger Retina screen, 4G LTE chip, new A6 chip, and the new sensors and mics.

Here’s a chart with the full price breakdown of each component:

The iPhone 5 will probably be my first iPhone. Up until now, I have gotten by with a combination of dumb phones (and recently something even worse), an iPod Touch and an iPad. I have also tossed a camera into my bag more often than not upon leaving the house. Why? Because I almost never never make phone calls. Because I don’t want to sign a cellphone contract. And because my other gadgets do the job just fine. So why am I buying an iPhone now, after five years of holding out?

If you didn’t sell your iPhone 4/4S before the announcement of the iPhone 5, you’d better do it soon before its value drops considerably. Reports have already come in that iPhone trade-in prices have started to drop on most major iPhone trade-in sites.

In the two days since Apple announced the iPhone 5, values on used iPhones have already dropped as much as 8%. Once the iPhone 5 hits shelves next week, values are expected to drop even faster.

If you’re down in the dumps about not being able to buy the iPhone 5 right now, we have the most amazing solution you’ve ever seen. It’s the Magical iPhone 4 Life Extension sticker. Basically it’s just a sticker that makes your iPhone 4/4S look like the two-toned back plate of an iPhone 5.

Place the sticker on the back of your iPhone 4, and then hold it a little higher in your hand and everyone will think you’re totally cool and have the new iPhone 5.

Source: Reddit

Since the iPhone 3G, Apple’s smartphone has suffered from one annoying little problem: it’s too slippery. Place it down on the arm of your couch, on the dash of your car, or on any other surface that isn’t perfectly flat and you can almost guarantee that your iPhone will be face-down on the floor within about 20 seconds.

This wasn’t such a problem with the original iPhone, because it had a matte aluminum back. So, will the iPhone 5 spell the end of slippery iPhones?

Poster is a brand-new iPad blogging app for posting to WordPress sites. It works with hosted WordPress.com sites, as well as with self-hosted WordPress sites like Cult of Mac.

It seems like just a few months ago the choices for blogging from the iPad were limited in both quantity and quality, with the best apps (like Blogsy) often heavily flawed, and the worst apps (the then-available WordPress App, for example) being unusable.

Now, we have an embarrassment of options. And ironically — for WordPress users at least — you can now post images into articles direct from mobile Safari (in iOS 6), meaning you mightn't even need an app after all.

PowerPC-based Macs have long been considered dead and buried by Apple, but the company just put a few more nails in the coffin to prevent any corpse risings. With the release of iTunes 10.7 this week the ubiquitous media control center becomes Intel-only, requiring at least a Core Solo processor and Mac OS X 10.6.8.

In a related one-two punch, Apple has also stopped providing online Software Updates for Mac OS X versions 10.0 through 10.3, as well as Mac OS 9. These items are now available only by direct download from Apple’s support website.

With the 30-pin dock connector on the brink of extinction, you’re probably wandering how you’re going to hook your iOS devices up to your TV without the help of an Apple TV. Your old HDMI and VGA adapters won’t work, and Apple didn’t announce any new ones at its iPhone 5 event. So does that mean AirPlay is the only option?

Thankfully, it does not. Apple has confirmed that Lightning-compatible HDMI and VGA adapters will be arriving for your new iOS devices “in the coming months.”

Upset that after almost a decade, Apple is finally changing the Dock Connector with the new, smaller Lightning Standard? Redditor Ima13X puts it in perspective.

The image makes a great point: Samsung’s had a million proprietary connectors for its devices over the last decade, while Apple’s only had two. However, it’s worth noting that it’s this very consistency in proprietary connectors that allowed Apple to build up a massive third-party “Made for iPhone”, “Made for iPad” and “Made for iPod” licensing business… a business that Samsung’s never managed at all.

So changing the 30-Pin Dock Connector to Lightning is a big deal. The ramnifications on Apple’s accessory ecosystem are huge. As long as Apple doesn’t get in the habit of changing this connector frivolously, though, and has built Lightning to be as future proof (or more so) than the 30-Pin Dock Connector, this changes means fresh billions earned, not just for Apple, but its accessory partners.

Source: Reddit

With the new Lightning Dock, Apple has ruthlessly ditched a lot of the cruft of the 30-pin past, leaving a lot of existing accessories less functional than they were. Although you’ll still be able to use audio-out and charging functionality in your iPhone 5 using older iPhone accessories using the Lightning to 30-Pin Adapter, Apple’s ditched video out and iPod out this generation.

But the new Lightning Adapter, while closing some doors, also opens some new possibilities. A new report says that Lightning gives USB host abilities to the iPhone 5.

If you woke up late and missed your chance to pre-order the iPhone 5 from Apple before shipping estimates slipped, then don’t worry; there’s still a chance you’ll be able to get a handset delivered to your door on launch day. At things stand, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are still promising iPhone 5 delivery on September 21, but you’ll have to be quick.

Sony has launched a whole new range of cameras at the Photokina camera trade show, including the new full-frame A99 SLR with 24MP sensor and a translucent mirror, the NEX 6, with 16MP sensor and Wi-Fi, a 35mm camcorder with interchangeable lenses (the VG900) and several others.

But we're not going to talk about them, interesting as they are (nice launch strategy Sony — burying your own products). We're going to look at the RX-1, the high-end, full-frame mirrorless camera. Why? Because I want one, that's why.

So, you’re a longtime Growl user, and now you get some alerts from Growl, and a bunch of other ones from Notification Center, and your inner OCD-child just wishes it could all come through Notification Center? I mean, Growl 2 will send stuff right to Notification Center, anyway, so why not get a head start on the process?

With the help of a third-party app called MountainGrowl, you’ll be fashionably ahead of the curve once again, you hipster, you.

When you pre-ordered your iPhone 5 this morning, and you decided to pick up a Lightning to 30-pin adapter for all your old accessories, you may have noticed that Apple’s website promised you a free adapter with your purchase. As it turns out, Apple made a mistake, and it will not be sending you a free adapter after all.