Cult of Mac

I really liked the RSS Visualizer screensaver from OS X Lion and earlier, but for some reason, Apple’s taken it out of the install of OS X Mountain Lion. Luckily for all of us who enjoy watching an RSS feed swirl around the screen in a fun 3D style, there’s hope. The screensaver file works just fine in Mountain Lion – you just need to grab it from an earlier OS X install, like OS X Lion, and move it to your current machine. Here’s how.

This is from the always-questionable Digitimes, so take it for what it’s worth, but Intel may be planning on rolling out the ability to wirelessly charge smartphones to its 2013 Ultrabook standard. If so, that means that we might all be wirelessly charging our iPhones and iPads from our MacBook Airs as soon as the end of next year.

Apple could be making a mistake if it releases a smaller “iPad mini” alongside the new iPhone this fall, because according to a recent survey conducted by a leading coupon code site, nearly 80% of Americans will shun the tiny tablet in favor of the smartphone.

Another morning, another big leak in next-generation iPhone components.

This morning, that leak comes to us from iColorOS, which shows pretty much the entire front assembly of the iPhone 5, including the glass display, internal sensors, home button, and volume control… as well as a new protective shielding that separates the back of the iPhone’s display from the rest of the internal components.

In addition, the iColorOS photos — which are very well done — clearly show a number of other iPhone 5 parts we’ve seen popping up over the last couple weeks, such as the new nano-SIM tray.

There’s no doubt about it: this is what the next iPhone is going to look like, friends.

Via: Nowherelese.fr

I’ve always had a lot of love for Things for iOS, ever since I began using it on my iPhone 3G. But lately I’ve felt the iOS version has been lacking a few key features, and struggling to compete with rival solutions. Today, however, Things has received a massive update packed full of new features, including a fresh new look, and Things Cloud syncing. But does it do enough?

No big pitch here, let’s just talk money. I’m lucky that I married someone with a head for managing money. Me, yeah, not so much. For me the barrier has always been finding the right tool to help me manage, track, and understand where I spend money (How much at the LEGO store?!?). Looking at today’s deal—Koku—I think I might have an app to check out. Easy, intuitive financial management. Nice.

Also don’t forget about the other deals on right now:

• Data Backup 3
• MacFlux 4
• Wooden SigniCASE iPhone 4/4S Case

So, there’s a new app out there for the iPhone that will let you create a temproary number that routes to your real phone number, and can be set to stop working, or “burn,” after a set amount of time. Basically, the free Burner app comes with enough credits to create a temporary phone number called a mini-burner that expires after 20 minutes of talk time and/or 60 text messages, or after 7 days. Or you can burn it sooner.

Inbound and outbound calls use up your actual phone plan minutes and/or texts, but the actual identity of the caller and callee are kept private. You can then buy more credits, in various tiers starting at 3 for $1.99. These can be used to buy burner numbers of different lengths, or to extend burners you’re currently using.

Yeah, we all want to think we’re James Bond, but the reality is probably more mundane. Or, you know, way to hook up anonymously (possible NSFW link). As the iTunes description says, “** What will you use Burner for? **”

A new iPhone app campaign tool released by the Obama for President Campaign last week is raising privacy concerns among activists who worry about the potential for misuse. The iOS app, to be released for Android tomorrow, allows users to see already public information about registered voters, including their first name, last initial, age, gender, and street address.

The app is freely available to the public, even though it was created for use by campaign workers to help locate, register and ask local Democratic voters for money. It also allows users to find nearby political events, and send out announcements to Twitter and Facebook.

The NPD Group announced a report today that confirms what many other analysts and data firms have been saying for a while now: Apple and Samsung are the top smartphone brands in terms of growth. Samsung and Apple’s combined unit sales rose 43 percent in the last year, from the second quarter of 2011 to the just finished second quarter of 2012. Other smartphone makers’s unit sales fell 16 percent.

There are lots of apps out there that let you manage your data usage, but My Data Manager amazes. It works on both the iPhone and iPad, and has a feature set that’d make it a great deal even at $5 — let alone at the $0 it actually costs.

Apple and Google haven’t exactly been been on the best of terms in recent years. The stock YouTube iOS app disappearing is a more recent example of the bad blood between the two companies. Google tried its best to sherlock Apple’s 3D technology in the iOS 6 Maps app, and many moves Apple and Google make can be seen as direct outcomes of the bad blood Steve Jobs spoke of when he vowed to wage thermonuclear war on Android.

Apple and Google may hate each other, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t compete in the same markets. Today Google lifted the curtain on a major update that’s coming to its iOS Search app. The new version of the app will feature smart, contextual voice recognition that clearly mimics Apple’s own digital assistant, Siri.

Since the beginning of the 2012 London Olympics last month, Apple has been giving away a rotating set of 4 Great Britain-themed lapel pins each day. This isn’t a new thing for Apple, as the company gave out similar Canadian-themed pins during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

For the Olympics this year, the pins are tiny black and white iPhones and iPads. Cult of Mac reader Andrew Wingert sent in some shots of Apple’s full pin set.

You need to read more. It’s just a fact. Everyone could stand to read a few more books a year and watch a few less GIFs on the internet. Isn’t that why you bought your iPad? Because you said you’d read more if you had an “eReader”? No? Well you should anyway.

To inject your life with more literature you’ll need to buy a lot of books. They’re not cheap, and they kind of suck to buy because, depending on which digital store you buy them from, they’re laden with DRM. Don’t let that get you down though because there’s some really great news today on the eBook front. Storybundle.com just launched their cool new website, and it’s pretty much the neatest thing to happen to eBooks this year.

Just a blurb: according to Macrumors, Apple is starting to get ready to seed builds of OS X 10.8.1 to developers. That means it won’t be long until we have it in our hands.

Fingers crossed that 10.8.1 addresses Mountain Lion’s bizarre way of handling “Save As…” functionality as well as the massive battery life hits many users are seeing on their Mac laptops. What bugs do you hope Apple squashes in 10.8.1?

Source: Macrumors

Yesterday, if I had suffered a grievous accident involving some kind of heavy farm machinery, and my fingers were mangled to leave only a single, stubby nubbin where previously I had sported ten beautifully slender digits, I’d still have been able to count the entirety of half-decent iPad blogging apps on one hand.

Today, though, I’d have to start counting on my toes, as Black Pixel software, the company behind Apple award-winning app Versions, had launched Posts, and you might like to call it the Reeder of blog publishing.

As smartphone shipments surge, the mobile market remains dominated by two operating systems: Android and iOS. Android maintains a commanding lead, with over 68% of all smartphones shipping with the young and robust OS. This, of course, comes at the expense of its elders, such as BlackBerry and Symbian, while iOS keeps its small but steady pattern of growth as it gears up for the release of its next grand iteration.

The WanderFolio is a new iPad case from Speck that combines a form-fitting cradle with a sleek, faux leather cover. Its special feature is that its front cover opens up to reveal a series of six “hideaway” pockets, designed to house your documents, cash, and credit cards while you’re on the go.

Stellar, which produces a number of Mac and Windows utilities has launched a new tool designed to offer a quick and painless transition from OS X’s built-in Mail application to Outlook 2011 for Mac. The new Stellar Apple Mail to Outlook 2011 Converter joins Stellar’s collection of prosumer and business email management, transfer, and recovery tools.

Mike Daisey’s life has been pretty crazy the past 12 months. He shot into fame with his monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which sparked the public’s interest in Chinese working conditions. Woz even saw the show and cried.

Then word came out that many parts of Daisey’s play were fabricated and an unrelenting storm of excrement rained down on Daisey. Now he’s back, and his play The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs has been completely updated to version 2.0 so people will stop accusing him of lying while telling some of the vital truths behind Apple’s manufacturing process.

New evidence from inside Samsung appears to prove that Samsung copied Apple’s iPhone ideas and used them to design Samsung’s Android phones.

As damning as the “Relative Evaluation Report” appears to be, it does NOT constitute proof that Samsung copied Apple’s ideas or infringed on Apple’s patents, and for 3 reasons.

Read the rest of this post

Looks like the rumors were true: Valve’s Steam digital delivery service is breaking out of being exclusive to games, and will soon be selling apps on the PC and Mac as well. That makes Steam a head-to-head competitor with Apple’s Mac App Store.

Valve will soon be expanding the scope of software on Steam beyond games to app types ranging from “creativity to productivity” including accounting, animation & modeling, utilities, software training, video production, web production, design & illustration and many more besides.

Both Verizon and AT&T are introducing their shared data plans this summer, and Verizon is forcing all grandfathered unlimited data customers who renew their contracts with a subsidized phone purchase onto a shared plan. Whether you’re a fan of shared data or not, you probably don’t know that Verizon offers 5 extra top-tier data plans. For some reason, Verizon doesn’t list the upper-level plans on its website or in promotional materials.

Verizon’s biggest plan offers 20GB of shared data for $150 per month. AT&T charges $200 per month for 20GB across up to 10 devices. With the extra $40 per month Verizon charges per device (AT&T charges $30 per smartphone or tablet), Verizon’s shared plans end up being slightly cheaper than AT&T’s across the board.

The number of personally-owned iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices that professionals bring into office is expected to more than double between now and 2014. That means the businesses that have so far been lax about considering or planning an official bring your own device (BYOD) program and/or establishing security policies around BYOD are going to need to play catch up – and they’ll need to get started as soon as possible.

In the continuing saga of Mat Honan’s digital life getting hacked to pieces, Apple has stopped accepting over-the-phone AppleID password resets indefinitely. In a statement today, Apple confirmed that the freeze it put on over-the-phone password change requests last night will remain in effect until tighter security can be implemented on Apple’s end. For now, all AppleID password resets will have to be done online.

The writing is on the wall my friends. Apple is going to announce a sleek and beautiful new iPhone in September, only instead of using the traditional 30-pin connector, it’s going to use something a lot smaller. Like, “maybe only 9-pins” smaller. Apple might sell an adaptor so your old iPod speaker docks can play nice with the new connector, but will that satisfy you?

Does the news make you sad or angry? Or maybe you’re like, “Smaller dock connector? Hells yeah! Now all my iDevices are going to be slimmer and cooler.” I dunno. You tell me. We want to hear how you feel about the smaller dock connector and whether or not you’re worried it will ruin all of your Apple accessories.

Click here to tell us your thoughts on the smaller dock connector in the Cult of Mac forums