Cult of Mac

Facebook has launched its official iPhone app for managing Pages. After a slow rollout throughout other parts of the world, Facebook Pages Manager for iPhone is free and available now in the U.S. App Store. If you manage Pages on Facebook, this app will let you check statistics, post, comment, and more on the go.

Panic, the company behind popular Mac app Coda, has announced the second major version of its prized web development tool. Coda 2 for Mac will launch on May 24th alongside a new app for the iPad called Diet Coda. Version 2.0 of Coda is “better at everything,” according to Panic, and Diet Coda will allow you to preview your code live on the iPad as you write on the Mac. The iPad app will also let you make quick edits to your code on the go.

This post is brought to you by FakhrApps, publisher of the My English Translator app.

Language translation software can easily make you appear to be saying something downright preposterous. It can also get you a slap in the face when smiles and hand gestures would have done a better job of getting your intentions properly understood by your non-English-speaking foreign acquaintance.

But here comes a dependable mobile translator: the just-released $0.99 My English Translator, which aims to put an end to English incomprehension everywhere you go with a new app for iPhone / iPad.

The app can translate any text or idiomatic expression in fifty-nine different languages including Arabic, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, Yiddish, Norwegian… even Latin. My English Translator works in real-time as you type for instant translations, and its voice feature speaks the results in the correct pronunciation.

The rumor mill has been saying for many months that Apple is planning a 4-inch iPhone for release later this year. Two major publications, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, recently hopped on the bandwagon to “confirm” the rumor. All signs are pointing to a larger iPhone, but what does that mean for iOS developers?

People have hypothesized all kinds of ways Apple could make an iPhone with a larger screen and still make it easy for developers to update their apps. The general consensus seems to be that Apple could change the aspect ratio for a taller display, but now the people that actually make apps have weighed in on the topic. While it’s unclear exactly how a new screen size would be implemented, developers feel confident that Apple won’t “pull an Android” and create a fragmented mess.

Reminders is a pretty powerful task list app. While it’s not a full project management suite, it does the ToDo job nicely with an easy to use user interface, location-based notification triggers, and iCloud syncing. In today’s tip, we’ll walk you through the basics of using Reminders app in a more efficient manner than just tapping away and hoping it all works out.

If you’re a freelance or independent developer, designer, content jockey or two-person startup, you may not even consider yourself a small business.

But the client data on your laptop and the banking you do with your iPhone leaves you wide open as a target for hackers — and lawyers.

For Neal O’Farrell, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Identity Theft Council, thinking you’re too small to get serious about security is about as dumb as you can get.

In my neverending quest to find the perfect iPad case, I’ve been giving the DODOcase a spin with my new iPad for the last several weeks. I’ve used Incase’s book jacket for the longest time on my iPad 2, and I wanted to change things up when I got the third-gen iPad.

Based in a bookbindery and wood shop in sunny San Francisco, DODOcase has been an award-winning brand for iPad cases since 2010. Built with pinpoint precision for the newest iPad, the DODOcase lineup blends nostalgia and the cutting edge into a charming combination.

If I was to ask you what kind of product is the PlugBook, what would you say? If you guessed that it’s a power adapter in the shape of a book, then congratulations! You just won today’s Cult of Mac Cup Of Awesomeness, which means you can go have a drink alone in your local bar.

What’s Snabbit? I’ll tell you what it is: it’s Snake, all over again. Is gaming still all about collecting stars? This game is.

LTE devices, including iPads, offer users two major advantages: speeds typically faster than many wired providers (in my neck of the woods, Verizon LTE is just over twice as fast as Time Warner’s Roadrunner Turbo) and ubiquitous access for LTE devices (and any devices tethered to them) that is a lot more convenient than relying on public network or hotspots like those found in your neighborhood Starbucks. A downside is that LTE’s speeds make it easy to rack up a large bill.

If you’re looking for another high-speed wireless option that offers better bang for your buck, there’s one joining the field to consider  – and it’s coming from an unlikely source with an unlikely price. Five major cable companies are joining forces to deliver ubiquitous Wi-Fi coverage for any of their subscribers… for free.

“Oh. Oh. Oh!” was the ejaculative ‘sentence’ I uttered when I saw the press release for this new Micro Four Thirds lens. It comes from Panasonic, and runs from 12-35mm, or 24-70 in old money, and also packs in image stabilization.

That’s fine. But the reason I’m excited is that the maximum aperture is a constant ƒ2.8 along the whole zoom range — a first for mirrorless systems says Panasonic.

FarSight Studios, creators of Pinball Arcade, is looking for your help to digitize one of the greatest pinball machines of all time: The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone table was released by Midway under the Bally label and is currently number one in user rankings on the Internet Pinball Database. Many pinball experts consider it to be the most complex pinball machine ever created, and being able to preserve it in digital form is a dream of FarSight Studios.

AT&T is one of 48 carriers worldwide which have a network vulnerability that allows hackers to intercept cellular data and inject malicious content into the traffic that passes between smartphones and the websites they visit. The flaw can be used to transfer code to unencrypted pages which causes a user to perform unintended actions, like sending messages or friend requests from Facebook and Twitter. And your iPhone may be vulnerable.

Finally, a magnetic iPhone mount that won’t embarrass you, either when actually mounted on the wall or in transit. It’s called the Wallee M, and it is about as sleek as a mounting set could get.

One way to look at the consumerization of IT is as a democratization of workplace technology decisions. Executives and employees alike have become much more sophisticated users of technology. Through iPhones and iPads, they see how well-designed devices, platforms, and apps can create enjoyable and, more importantly, productive user experiences. As a result, they don’t tolerate clunky business systems and slow IT responses as much as they did a few years ago.

Many executives and pundits believe this has already changed the balance of power between the CIO/IT management and the CFO and other executives. A recent Gartner survey found that overall, CFOs are leading IT decision-making more than they were just two years ago. One could even argue that in addition to disrupting industries like music and mobile technology, Apple is subtly disrupting IT and business itself  (with some help from other tech and business innovators).

Imagine that you could buy a tiny USB-powered box that detected your motion like Microsoft’s Kinect, only instead of watching you jump around a room, it watched your hands and fingers. Imagine that the box was sensitive enough to track the tip of a pencil tracing out letters in a 1cm square of space, and to turn that into accurate handwriting on the screen.

Amazingly, that box is available for preorder right now. It’s called the Leap, and it works with your Mac.

You know those awful bendable lamps that coil from your computer’s long-suffering USB port and let you point the cold, bluish-green LED light in any direction except the one you want? Well, somebody took one of these silvery snakes, improved it, turned it into an iPhone charger and gave it a ridiculous name: The Une Bobine. It’s probably French or something.

Apple is renowned for obsessing over tiny details and making its products as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside, and the company maintains that design policy for everything it creates, whether it’s a $1,200 MacBook Pro, or a $30 iPhone charger.

In fact, Apple has gone to great lengths to ensure those tiny iPhone chargers are safe and efficient, and it uses state of the art technology to do that — which is why its chargers are more expensive than most.

Late last week, RIM got FCC approval to ship LTE models of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The news isn’t a complete surprise. RIM had announced plans for a 4G PlayBook option last year when the tablet originally shipped. Sprint was the targeted as the primary U.S. carrier for the device, which would’ve operated on Sprint’s WiMax network, but the carrier announced it was canceling that plan after the initial Wi-Fi PlayBook shipped (and got less than stellar reviews).

FreezePaint is a very neat iPhone app that lets you “remix” the world around you. Or rather, it allows you to make a scrapbook of anything you see, just by pointing your iPhone camera at it and painting in the parts you want to keep. And don’t be put off by the photos on the site — they’re a little cheesy, but when you actually start playing with the app, you’ll be surprised by its potential.

Anytime a new jailbreak comes out, there’s a degree of confusion about what devices are supported, whether it’s safe to upgrade your firmware, etc. That’s as true now on the eve of pod2g’s upcoming iOS 5.1.1 Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak as it ever was before. Thankfully, pod2g and fellow jailbreak maestro MuscleNerd have put together a quick info sheet about everything you can expect when the untethered jailbreak drops later this week.

The summary? It’s safe to upgrade your devices to iOS 5.1.1 now, and the only iOS device that Absinth 2.0 won’t crack open is the third-gen Apple TV. As for the release date? Plans are this week, if everything goes to the plan.

Ever wished your Mac could look more like your iPhone? Well, according to this video and today’s tip, it can. Pull up a chair, the nearest Mac with OS X on it, and your downloading fingers. Here’s how you do it.

There are a ton of terrific iPhone apps that turn your device into a pocket-sized scanner, allowing you to capture documents and photos for copying, emailing, editing, and more. But the problem with these apps is that they only work well if you capture your subject at the right angle with a steady hand.

Scanbox aims to make this process a whole lot easier by turning your iPhone into a sturdy portable scanner for just $15.

When you open up your MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, the glowing Apple logo on its hood sits upright so that everyone in Starbucks knows that you’re using a Mac. However, it hasn’t always been that way. There was a time when Apple logos were upside down on the lid of Apple notebooks, until Steve Jobs realized his mistake.

One of the features that I love most about iOS 5 is Automatic Downloads, which allows me to purchase an app, book, or song on my iPhone and have it installed on my iPad at almost exactly the same time. It’s great for users with multiple iOS devices, and it’s also coming to the Mac.

One developer has discovered the ability to turn on Automatic Downloads for Mac App Store purchases under the latest OS X Mountain Lion release.