Cult of Mac

One of the first thoughts I had when Apple announced AirPlay Mirroring as a feature in Mountain Lion was that it would make an excellent mobile presentation tool and one that would be far easier to bring to business meetings, trade shows, or client-site training events than hauling a projector. With just a MacBook Air and Apple TV, you can plug into any HDTV, display, or projector that supports HDMI and be ready to go. That’s a great combination for any business traveler.

If Apple does announce AirPlay Direct, a new version of AirPlay that doesn’t require a Wi-Fi network, the company will have made the lives of business travelers, trainers, and educators even easier. It will probably also make network administrators in both business and education a bit happier as well.

If you’ve been watching Twitter, you know that U.S. President Barack Obama is participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit. While celebrities and tech personalities will often opt to use Reddit as a tool for fan engagement, this is the first time anyone as high up as the big ‘O’ himself has jumped on board.

You can find Obama’s AMA thread here, but Reddit seems to be buckling under the weight of traffic. If you can’t get through, try hitting refresh.

Obama has been spotted using Apple products multiple times in the past, and is a self-admitted fan. During one interview he noted that Steve Jobs had personally given him an iPad “early.”

Via: @BarackObama

A California court recently ruled in favor of Apple in a high-profile patent case against Samsung, and the immediate fallout means that Samsung is forced to pay Apple over $1 billion in damages. Federal Judge Lucy Koh will hold an injunction hearing in December to see if Apple is permitted to ban several Samsung phones from being sold in the United States.

The court’s decision was by no means a simple one, as this Apple vs. Samsung case is considered the most important tech patent lawsuit in history. That’s why every bit of the ruling process is being put under the microscope, including Jury Foreman Vel Hogan, the man who led the jury to rule against Samsung last Friday.

A new report reveals that a possible conflict of interest could have affected the case’s ruling.

Subatomic Studios has released its first update to Fieldrunners 2, the popular sequel to the original tower defense game for the iPhone. Version 1.1 of Fieldrunners 2 is now available in the App Store, and the update brings an easier Causal mode, new map updates, Game Center integration, Endless mode, and more.

One of the first secure business solutions for the iPhone and iPad was Good for Enterprise, a secure collaboration tool that allows companies to separate business email, calendar, and contact systems from Apple’s standard Mail, Calendar, and Contacts apps. Going beyond simply separating work accounts and data from a user’s personal accounts, Good’s alternatives securely encrypt all data and must be unlocked using credentials other than the passcode used to unlock an iOS device.

Good released a significant update to Good for Enterprise this week, one that makes the solution more streamlined, user-friendly, and offers powerful new features – some of which are worth considering for their business functionality as well as their innate security.

I’m not that fickle in the rest of my life, honest. When it comes to news reading apps on the iPad, however, I’ve had many loves. First came Flipboard, which grabbed my attention with its well-designed layouts of web links and images shared by people in my social network circles.

Then I found Trapit, which added both AI and editorial curation to my newsreader, though it is a bit lacking in the design department.

Now, there’s News360 for iPad, and I think I’ve fallen in love. Again.

iOS is the gaming platform of the future. Just ask Nintendo, who this year posted its first annual loss (nearly half a billion dollars). And while Game Boy-esque portable playing is good enough most of the time, you only need to add a few accessories to turn the iPhone into a full-on be-buttoned handheld, and the iPad into the center of a big-screen home gaming system. Read on to find out our picks for the best iOS gaming accessories.

The Apple I was the first computer built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs back in 1976. They only made 200 units, and sold them for $666.66, but if you happen to own one, you’re sitting on a small fortune.

An Apple I computer is set to be auctioned off at Christie’s on October 9th, and even though it’s inoperable, because it’s missing the required DRAM, the owner of the machine might get $126,000 for it.

The cellhelmet case for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S is a one of a kind. It’s the only case that comes with a 12-month accidental damage warranty that covers the device itself. Drop your iPhone while it’s in a Cellhelmet and if it breaks, makers cellpig will have it repaired or replaced for free — all you have to pay is a $50 handling fee.

There’s no monthly fee — you just pay the $44.99 for the case and you’re covered for a year, negating the need for a dedicated insurance plan.

Just in time to track Hurricane Isaac’s warpath and the ensuing intensity in the South, Intellicast has updated its iPad weather application with a combo feature set focusing on specific datelines and local weather event tracking.

The good news is that HTC’s next 10-inch tablet won’t look like an iPad. Instead, it will look nearly identical to a unibody iMac instead, right down to its OS X style dock and lopsided, 16:9 aspect ratio design.

What would happen if you took a beautiful, brand new iMac and “accidentally” dropped it in front of a bunch of strangers? Would they weep with you, or would they just laugh on by while calling you a bumbling idiot?

One guy thought it’d be a great prank to walk around the mall with an iMac box, and drop it in front of crowds, just to see what the reaction would be. He didn’t just drop it, though. He flung it down escalators. Tossed it into the trunk of his car. And knocked it off the top of a roof, and then tried to take the iMac box back to the Apple Store.

Check out the video below to see people’s reactions when the most beautiful computer in the universe gets clumsily destroyed.

Facebook’s on a roll lately. Just a week after they released their hyper fast speed update to the native Facebook app, the world’s biggest social network has also given some improvements to the lesser-used Facebook Camera, adding notifications, likes, improved photo management, comments and other UI improvements. It’s actually a pretty usable app now!

Ahead of the launch of Parallels Desktop 8, Parallels has launched a crowdsourced “Apple In The Workplace Barometer” that allows businesses or individual employees to see how their workplace ranks in terms of BYOD readiness for Macs, iOS devices, and other technologies. The site offers a quick and simple questionnaire that asks workers (or managers) about their work computing tasks, resources, and company-provided options. At the end of the survey, their company is plotted on a grid that measures active adoption of Apple technologies and active IT support for Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

As iPhone 5 repair parts have slowly leaked in over the past few weeks, a few people have quietly gathered and assembled them to see what the finished product might look like when Apple announces it on September 12.

iResQ just posted a gallery of all the parts they have so far, and how they look when assembled, so that we can get a good idea of what the iPhone 5 is going to look like. Take a look.

For the last week and a half, we’ve been asking Cult of Mac readers to spill out their gadget bags and show us what’s inside for a chance to win one of three incredible bags and sleeves by one of our favorite designers, Waterfield Designs, as part of our “What’s In Your Gadget Bag?” contest. We got dozens of fantastic entries, but at the end of the day, we only have three prizes to give away, so here are the winners.

After months of delays, Isis has announced the debut of its mobile payment system. A joint venture by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, Isis made news earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in March, but has been pretty quiet since then. During that quiet period a number of other players in the mobile payment market have stolen the spotlight and announced major deals.

Apple is expected to eventually unveil its own mobile payment system, one that will most likely be based around the iTunes Store payment system, but hasn’t made announcements beyond iOS 6’s Passbook feature. Apple has also kept quiet about whether it will include NFC chips used in some mobile payment systems in the upcoming iPhone 5, which some analysts and pundits consider a barrier to entry into the mobile payment market.

Google Wallet has been out for almost a year now, and it allows you to store your credit cards on your Android phone and make payments via NFC, but because of limited partnerships during its launch, it hasn’t really taken off yet.

Now that Google’s seen some of the features Apple plans to bring to the iPhone with the Passbook app, Google has decided to double down on Wallet and bring in new features so it functions more like Passbook.

Imagine if your took the ultimate hippy artifact (apart from the roach clip, I guess), and combined it with the ultimate must-have hi-tech accessory. That’s right: the beanbag chair meets the microfiber cloth.

Now, further imagine that you shrunk the result, and added some fabric designs that would be more at home on a corporate robot’s necktie than on a filthy 60s dropout’s cheap furniture.

Now, behold the result of your crazed imagination: the Toddy Wedge, (not to be confused with the “Todd Wedgie, which was an unfortunate schoolyard event that led directly to the laugh-a-minute movies Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness)

Apple’s lengthy battle with Samsung came to a close last Friday when a jury decided Samsung was guilty of infringing six of Apple’s patents, and that it must pay more than $1 billion in damages as a result. Not only was this a huge blow to Samsung, but it appears it’s also hit the Korean company’s customers, too.

One used electronics company has seen a 50% growth in the sale of Samsung devices as customers “jump ship” following its loss.

With the iPhone 5 right around the corner, you’re probably thinking about selling your iPhone 4S to raise some cash for your new purchase. One of the best ways to do that might be to sell it back to Apple. The Cupertino company is currently offering up to $345 for the iPhone 4S, depending on its condition and specifications, as part of its Reuse and Recycle Program.

FioWriter is yet another new iPad text editor, but with one huge difference: it has Command, Option and Control keys right there on the keyboard.

What’s more, they work as they should: hold down the modifier and hit a key to execute a command. For instance, press Cmd-F (for “find”) and a search box pops up over the keyboard. And that’s not it. Not even close.

Apple has reportedly started work on its first retail store in Belgium, which will be located in the city of Ghent in the Veldstraat shopping center. The store is expected to open in late 2012 — in time for the holiday season — or in early 2013.

Final Draft is the Microsoft Word of the screenplay world: users hate it, but it’s the industry standard, and if you don’t submit your draft/edits in .FDX format, you’re about as popular as Ben Stiller after an award acceptance speech.

Still, in the same way that we all want Word on the iPad, we all want Final Draft Writer on the iPad too. And while it has been a coupleof years in the making, FD is now on iOS.

If you’ve upgraded to OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll have realized as soon as you launched Text Edit, Apple’s basic text editing program, that the default location for saving files is iCloud. Which is all very fine and dandy, but what if you don’t want to save all your random Text Edit stuff in iCloud? Are you out of luck?

Nope, of course not! Why would we even be writing this tip if you were?

There’s a simple Terminal command which will set the default to your local hard drive instead of the cloud, via iCloud. You can still save to iCloud; it just won’t be the first place that shows up when you hit “Save” while in Text Edit (or in other iCloud-enabled apps).