Cult of Mac

If you’re looking for a blazing fast ultraportable laptop, the MacBook Air is the best value for the money… and that value just got a little bit better, as Apple has finally started adding refurbished models of the 2012 MacBook Air to the online Apple Store, offering savings of up to 16%.

The new iPhone 5 is almost among us, dear friends, and on this episode of the CultCast, we’ll tell you everything we know about it, ponder what Apple will actually be naming it, and tell you how to hang on to that unlimited data plan your carrier wants to move you out of.

Plus, looks like there’s a new HD tablet in town, and this one is looking pretty fern good, partner. We’ll tell you why Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is one tablet that could actually give the iPad a run for its money.

Hit the subscribe button and let’s get this party rollin’!

Show notes ahead!

Notefile, a popular note-taking app for iOS, developed by Junecloud, has made the leap to Mac. Priced at $4.99 in the Mac App Store, the app offers cross-platform sync between your Mac and iOS devices, high-resolution artwork for the Retina MacBook, and all the features you’ve been enjoying on iOS.

Apple has begun prepping the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco for the iPhone 5’s grand unveiling on September 12. Now that the Cupertino company has sent out invitations for the much-anticipated event, it has started decorating the venue with its logo, while exterior banners are expected to go up later today.

Twitter for Mac’s future isn’t looking very bright. The app hasn’t received an update in over a year, and it doesn’t look like Twitter will be updating it ever again.

Word on the street is that Twitter has an update technically in its pipeline, but the social network probably won’t pull the trigger. Twitter for Mac has basically been sent to its grave.

The Arctic. A tribe of mystical, peace-loving Eskimos. A greedy, visionary corporation named Toxi Co. (get it?). A freak accident unleashes goo that mutates all in its path, including a massive polar bear named, you guessed it, Fatty Sparkles.

Can’t you picture this on your television or movie screen? How about as a turn-based multiplayer digital board game? I bet you can see it both ways, and that’s what developer, Lantern, is banking on. Co-founders Austin Hice and Carlo Eugster in 2011, Lantern began with a dream to make games influenced byt he storytelling they learned about while working in film and television. This past weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, they showed off a pre-release four-player demo of the game, and it caught our eye.

Apple cut its order for memory chips slated to go into the upcoming iPhone 5, according to a report at Reuters this evening. Citing a “source with direct knowledge of the matter,” the report says that while the South Korean chip manufacturer is still on the list as an initial supplier of memory chips for the new iPhone model, but that Apple continues to decrease its reliance on Samsung as a chip supplier.

You may have played any one of a half-dozen similar location-based games on the App Store, from PerBlue’s Parallel Mafia and Parallel Kingdom to Self Aware’s Fleck, but you’ve never seen a location-based game like Life Is Magic before.

Apple has been working on beefing up its iTunes experience for quite some time, and now it looks like the Cupertino company is looking to create a Pandora-like internet radio service. Users would be able to create stations for favorite artists or songs, and Apple would presumably use its Genius algorithm to stream related music. The service would be free and available on all Apple devices, but iAds would be interspersed throughout as a means of monetization.

At today’s Amazon event, Jeff Bezos dropped some whoppers on the industry: not only an upgraded Kindle Fire, but the Kindle Fire HD, a mother of a tablet that has a Retina-caliber display, serious horsepower, and a super low price starting at just $199 for the 7-inch model, $299 for the 8.9-inch model and $499 for a 32GB 8.9-inch model with LTE. Without a doubt, it’s clear Amazon is gunning for the iPad and the upcoming iPad mini, but how do the new Kindle Fires really stack up?

Below, you’ll find a chart comparing the third-gen iPad, rumored iPad mini, Kindle Fires and (just for comparison’s sake) the Galaxy Nexus 7, spec-by-spec. Please be aware that this chart is still in flux, and is based in the case of the iPad mini on rumors, and in the case of the new Kindle Fires on incomplete information which we have supplemented with reasonable speculation. We will be updating the chart as we get new information about the exact specs of Amazon’s new Kindle Fires, but for right now, we think this is a good resource in how all of these tablets compare against one another.

Amazon is the only other company in the world that has a great ecosystem that might be able to compete with Apple’s. The Kindle Fire was a cute little tablet, but it definitely wasn’t an iPad Killer or even an iPad Competitor, but Amazon is looking to change that with the Kindle Fire HD.

External hard drives: super handy, but oh-so-slow, especially since Apple put a bullet in the back of FireWire’s head. Thankfully, Western Digital has once again come to the rescue with a neat new addition to its My Passport line of portable drives: The Edge.

These new versions not only look way more high-tech than the previous curvy plastic models, they also support MacBook-friendly USB 3.0.

The chunky K-30 is the latest DSLR from Pentax. Don’t be deceived (or put off) by its unusual looks – in use, it’s a fantastic general-purpose camera that produces high quality, color-accurate pictures. Cult of Mac took it for a spin.

With the Galaxy Nexus 7 eating their lunch and the iPad mini expected to debut in October and put the squeeze on the first-generation model, Amazon has just announced the new Kindle Fire.

Featuring an all-new, more iPad-ish form factor, the new 7-inch Kindle Fire boasts a faster processor, 2GB of RAM, up to 40% faster performance and longer battery life. Otherwise, though, Amazon is being mum about the specs.

Boy, is this tablet cheap though. It costs $159 with preorders starting today, and orders shipping on September 14th.

Image: The Verge

Amazon’s keynote has just gotten underway where CEO Jeff Bezos is unveiling some new Kindles. Before anything was revealed though, Bezos took a jab at other Android tablets and basically said they suck.

“Customers are smart. Last year, there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought ’em. Why? Because they’re gadgets, and people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month.”

Apple will be holding its highly anticipated iPhone 5 event this coming Wednesday, and the new iPhone is expected to go one sale Friday, September 21st. According to a new rumor, Apple will finally drop the iPhone 3GS and make the iPhone 4 its cheaper, entry-level model.

The 3GS was introduced back in 2009, and the phone is still offered 3 years later for free with a two-year carrier contract. With the introduction of iOS 6, the 3GS will be so outdated that it only makes sense for Apple to give it the boot.

Whether you love her delicious looking meat dresses or not, there’s no denying that Lady Gaga is one of the biggest names in music right now with a bevy of singles that have launched her into superstardom.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Lady Gaga wants to do something new with her next album that she’s working on. Earlier today Lady Gaga revealed that her next Album, Artpop, won’t just be a couple of tracks burnt onto a cd, but it will be a “completely interactive” experience because she will be releasing it as an iPhone and iPad app.

It seems so simple: Press harder, get a thicker, darker line. But drawing on the iPad has been – in pressure sensitivity terms at least – little better than using an Etch-a-Sketch. Now, at last, we’re seeing the first pressure-sensitive styluses for the iPad. Very, very soon you’ll be able to buy the new Bluetooth 4 Pogo Connect for your iPad 3.

You may have thought it had already happened, but today Facebook has finally purchased Instagram. The proposed $1 billion buyout was announced back in April, but the FTC just recently closed its investigation and gave Facebook the go-ahead to make the purchase.

Due to Facebook’s stock decline, the deal’s value is now estimated to be around $750 million instead of the original $1 billion. Facebook today reaffirms its promise to keep Instagram’s 80 million+ users happy by allowing the app to run independently.

First, AntiSec leaked a ton of iPhone and iPad UDIDs to the public, claiming they hacked them off an FBI laptop. The FBI responded and said there was no way the UDIDs came from them. Then Apple jumped in and said that they totally didn’t give anyone 12million UDIDs. But 12million UDIDs were still leaked and people are still wondering how the heck AntiSec got them.

A few theories have been bouncing around the web this morning, but the most plausible theory of how AntiSec got all the UDIDs is that a network of free apps were keeping track of UDIDs and AntiSec hacked them off the publisher’s laptop.

I have been looking for a decent scrapbook app for the iPad for quite some time. So I was pretty happy yesterday when I saw the brand-new Scrapnote, a snippet-organizing app which pulls in photos, videos, text, scribbles, handwriting and even Evernote notes, all into slick, handsome and easy-to-edit notebooks.

If you have been looking for a research tool, or a way to put together travel journals, diaries or – really – anything involving words, pictures and snippets of information, you should probably go and download Scapnote right now.

Subatomic Studios has released a massive update for the original Fieldrunners iPhone game. The App Store tower defense classic has been updated with Retina display support, a new soundtrack, and other improvements. To celebrate the update, the game is also on sale now for $0.99 in the App Store.

Fans of popular task management app Wunderlist will be happy to learn that the next major version is slated for a release later this year. 6Wunderkinder, the company that makes Wunderlist, has announced that Wunderlist 2 is nearing the beta stage, and the beloved task manager will be rewritten from the ground up as a native application for each platform, including OS X and iOS.

The unfortunate news is that 6Wunderkinder has also decided to can Wunderkit, its collaborative project management tool. Wunderkit will not be receiving any more updates, and Wunderlist will become the main focus for 6Wunderkinder moving forward.