Cult of Mac

Closed captioning. This wouldn’t have even pinged on my radar if it wasn’t for an email I received from a reader not long ago. Let me tell you about it.

BGR got its hands on an early iPhone 5 unit, and now the first shots of the device’s unboxing are out for everyone to gawk at. Apple is sticking to the classic black outer design for the box itself, and the internal packaging reveals the new EarPods, wall charger, and Lightning cable.

Our own Charlie Sorrel gave Apple’s EarPods a glowing review, and now the fine folks at iFixit have dug deep into the internals of Apple’s latest earbuds to see what they’re made of. It took Apple three years of R&D to design the EarPods, so we’re all hoping they mark a huge improvement over their predecessor.

According to iFixit’s teardown, Apple uses a single-driver setup to power the EarPods, although the Cupertino company claims that the EarPods will perform at the level of higher quality, multi-driver earphones. With a completely redesigned shape that’s been molded to fit the average human ear, iFixit is saying that the EarPods boast “significant improvements in durability.”

I love movie trailers. I can while away a ton of time just tapping through new trailers via iOS’s universal iTunes Trailers app, checking out all the movies I’d like to see. It’s pure eye-candy, and usually contains most of the good stuff from movies, without all the annoying filler (I kid, I kid–sort of).

Of course, one of the (many) guilty pleasures of owning a new iPad is the super high resolution it affords. When playing movie trailers, then, why not be sure to have your iPad default to the 1080p High Definition when you’re watching the latest Cloud Atlas trailer, for example? Why not, indeed! Here’s how.

I’m one of those people that loves background noise. I like listening to podcasts when I cook; I love a running telly while I’m doing chores; and even when I’m in the shower, I’ve either got Spotify or those podcasts going again.

Previously, this love of shower-time bluegrass meant bringing my iPhone into the bathroom, cranking up the volume on its little speakers, then straining to hear its tinny audio through the whir of water and intense loofahing. But the iShower ($100) Bluetooth speaker fixes this problem simply and wonderfully. It brings your iDevice’s audio anywhere where water would usually kill it, like your bathtub, shower, or sink, and works so well, it’s quickly becoming my favorite new iPhone accessory.

I know it’s a slow news day and all. Not like anything was announced or anything…

Anyway, let’s talk Windows. Since we got BootCamp way, way back … and then Parallels and VMWare Fusion (and before that anyone remember the Orange cards you’d install to run Windows on a Mac?) Mac users have been trying to find the best way to run Windows apps on their Macs. Yeah we love our Macs, but sometimes we have to use a Windows app. Personally I’ve always gone the Parallels/VMWare route, I’ve tried Wine a couple times but it couldn’t run the apps I wanted/needed. Now there’s a commercialized version of Wine called Crossover XI and guess what? It’s part of a new bundle we’ve got!

There's one camera accessory which you probably never, ever use — unless you're a professional who carries several cameras: the body cap. This protective plastic disk is most likely in the back of a closet somewhere, waiting inside the camera's box for the day you sell it and the cap is needed once again.

But Olympus thinks that it can tempt you with a fancy body cap. What's more, it thinks that you'll pay £70 for it (around $114). Behold: The 15mm ƒ8 "body cap."

Jeff Benjamin at the iDownload Blog thinks it is. Comparing it to the tiny box shot on the official Apple iPhone 5 ordering page, it looks legit, and also looks as if white iPhone 5s and black iPhone 5s will be shipping in vastly different boxes: all black for the black model, mostly white and light-toned for the white model:

Looks gorgeous. Can’t wait to rip open mine.

Source: iDownload Blog

When the new iPhone 5 is officially released on Friday, it will be powered by Apple’s custom-designed A6 chip, a 1.2GHz, dual-core chip that is the first Cortex-A15 class CPU to market.

How did Apple get to this point? Just four years ago, they made their first step into custom chip design: now they are releasing cutting edge chips that are months ahead of the competition.

Over the weekend, Linley Gwennap, who heads the Linley Group chip consultacy, posted up a brief history of Apple’s chip development. It’s not just illuminating because of how we got here — from Apple buying up P.A. Semi in 2008 to signing secret deals with ARM — but in that it predicts when and what the next-gen A7 chip will look like.

Question: How many iPhone owners does it take to change a lightbulb(‘s color)?

Answer: One. As long as he has installed the LIFX app, and bought the LIFX remote-controlled lightbulb.

No other news agency consistently fails as much as Fox. Take for instance this Fox 5 reporter in NY who decided to head down to the 5th Avenue Apple Store to interview a few of the crazies already lining up for the “most amazing, best Apple product ever.” I was shaking my head until the reporter started listing off some of the new features of the iPhone 5 and let me tell you… I’m packing my sleeping bag as soon as I finish this post!

When Apple releases iOS 6 tomorrow, it will finally allow users to make FaceTime calls over 3G and 4G data connections. But AT&T has decided — unlike most other carriers — that it’s going to charge its customers extra to take advantage of the feature. Understandably, this has annoyed a lot of people.

So much so that the Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute have warned AT&T that they will be filing a complaint with the FCC against the carrier for violating network neutrality rules.

Leica's new M-E looks to be the boutique camera maker's "budget" model, an answer to the Fujifilm X-Pro and the Sony RX1 cameras. Only being a Leica, the company has cut back on an already sparse feature-set whilst keeping a ridiculous price. The M-E will cost you $5,450 for the body only when it goes on sale this month.

The first pictures of a working iPad mini have surfaced ahead of a rumored unveiling next month. The device sports the aluminum shell we’ve seen a number of times in recent weeks, only it’s fully assembled with what appears to be a working display.

OmniFocus for iPad just got a big old update, and it adds two huge features, along with the usual tweaks (and in this case, iOS 6 compatibility).

Now, iPad users can enter tasks using Siri, and everyone can take advantage of TextExpander Touch support.

It reads like some kind of fanboy fantasy: Jony Ive To Design Leica Camera. Only this fantasy is totally non-fantastic. Ive is set to design an ultra-limited edition of one single Leica, and it will be auctioned off by Bono (who else?) for charity.

In what was undoubtedly an ironic coincidence involving Apple’s automated profanity filters, the title of Naomi Wolf’s new book Vagina — which is about how society chauvinistically stigmatizes the female sexual origin into something so profane it can not be talked about — was briefly censored in the iTunes Store.

iNote is an app with one single purpose. And that purpose is such a good one that as soon as I tell you what it is, and how well it works, you’ll be off to the store to drop your $2 on it: iNote syncs your iOS notes with Evernote.

That’s right. Just tell Siri anything you want to remember and — moments later — it’ll be in your Evernote, filed under a new iNotes stack.

Are you still using the official Twitter app on your iDevice nstead of Tapbots’ superior Tweetbot client? Well, bully for you, then, because Twitter has just updated their universal iOS app with some new tweaks to the iPad UI, new profiles with header photos, and more.

Before the Display preferences were available in the menu bar in OS X, connecting my Mac to an LCD projector was a tedious thing. When it arrived a few OS X versions ago, I showed everyone I worked with how much easier it was to use this, instead of hopping into the System Preferences every time they hooked their Mac up to an external monitor or projector. Then OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion came along and replaced the Displays menubar item with an AirPlay focused one, and I’ve missed the original ever since.

The developers behind third-party app, Display Menu, thought the same thing and fixed things for us all.

If you live in Paris, France, and you’re hoping to bag an iPhone 5 from your local Apple store on Friday morning, you may get there to find that it’s closed. Workers at two Parisian stores are reportedly threatening to strike over pay on what could be Apple’s busiest retail day in the company’s history.

When iOS 6 rolls out tomorrow, you be able to download all five of Apple’s free iOS apps — including iBooks, iTunes U, Podcasts, Find My Friends, and Find My iPhone — with just one tap from the new App Store. The Cupertino company has introduced a new ‘Apple Apps’ page that greets first-time App Store users, and it features a button that will install all five apps at once.

Samsung can’t catch a break. Samsung Mobile USA posted the following question on their Facebook page – “If you could only take one electronic device on a deserted island, what would it be?”

They probably figured fans would respond that they would totally take their Galaxy S3 or some other Samsung device that no one cares about. But when you’re on a fantasy island, you probably want the best phone possible, right?

So rather than receiving a mob of responses declaring their desire to never be parted with their Galaxy S3, a lot of people just said that they wanted an iPhone 5. Or an electric boat.

Sorry, Samsung. Maybe people will actually want the S4?

Source: Facebook

Via: Thomas Lampo

It looks like those little green hamlets have been filling their noggins with all sorts of engineering tidbits. Armed with nothing more than a few spare parts and ingenuity, these Bad Piggies are set to take off and conquer Android, iOS, PC and Mac come September 27. Rovio has teased us once or twice already, but this is the first time we get to see the actual gameplay of this upcoming Angry Birds spin-off.

So you want to know what apps will best take advantage of your new iPhone 5 when you get it in your hot little hands this coming Friday? One way is to start searching AppShopper using a search string that includes “iPhone 5.” This will net you a real-time list of all the apps currently in the app store that have the text string in their “What’s New” update description in the App Store.