Back in the time of the OS X Leopards, the Finder became a whole lot more useful for anyone with photos and videos on their Macs (ie. everybody)/ We got Quick Look, which let us watch slideshows and movies right there on the desktop, and the Finder itself was good enough to use as a lightweight photo viewer.

Then Lion came along and broke one essential tool: the little slider in the bottom right of Finder windows had its functionality removed. It used to let you zoom file thumbnails defaults write Finder trackpad zoom, but in Lion the tool remained, but did nothing.

Thankfully in Mountain Lion the slider now works again. And happily for the photographers out there, the Finder has some other new tricks you’re going to love.

The US Patent Office has awarded Apple another patent tonight, this one for the Cover-Flow interface that showed up in iTunes 7.0 in 2006, and then in the Finder as a view option in 2007 with Mac OS X Leopard and the iPhone itself.

US Patent Number 8,230,360 is credited to Jeffery Ma, Gregory Dude, Rachel Clare Goldeen, Justin Henzie, and Fainer Broderson, with Apple as the assignee. This patent was filed on January 14, 2008, which is a far less amount of time than the mouse cursor one granted today as well, but still – four years?

Today, the US Patent and Trademark office awarded Apple a utility patent that covers the use of the mouse cursor that changes according to the context of the task it is engaged in. Called a “Dynamically Changing Cursor for User Interface,” patent number 8,230,366 describes the functionality of the on-screen mouse cursor when it changes to the familiar spinning beach ball, the green plus symbol when copying files, or the red number of items being moved from one disk to another.

Temple Run is an original, popular, and successful game by Imangi Studios. It was picked up by Disney to become Temple Run: Brave, a tie-in to the Pixar/Disney flick of the same name. If you haven’t already downloaded it, do so now. We’ll wait.

Pyramid Run is a horrible rip off of Temple Run. Do not download it. I’m not even going to link to it, but the similarities are clear. It’s not even a careful attempt to re-skin or remix the original. It’s a blatant cash grab, as you can see when you read the predominance of one-star reviews.

It’s bundle-o-rama here! We have the iStack Mac Bundle still going on (which is awesome), but today we have a little bundle. Something, focused, targeted…more creative.

The OndeSoft Mac Bundle brings you a clipboard manager (I can’t live without one!), audio recorder (podcasts from Skype recordings FTW!), & a screen ruler (sure pixels are dimensionless, but they still have to fit on screen).

More after the jump.

Beyond the numbers, there were some tantalizing tidbits about Apple and the company’s future plans during today’s quarterly financial call. While nothing quite lived up to Tim Cook comparing Windows 8 to someone trying to converge a toaster and a refrigerator into a single device during the last call, there were several choice comments.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer presented the results of the company’s spring 2012 quarter. The quarter included extensive growth for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac product lines though iPod sales declined 10% from the same quarter a year ago.

Here are the financial numbers delivered during the call.

On The CultCast, our listeners ask us all the time whether they should go for the Macbook Pro or the Macbook Air. I say be a real Apple fan — get both. But if that’s not an option, we’ll tell you when which model makes more sense than the other, and which Macbook will be right for you on our latest episode.

And then, Faves and Raves! The fun but poorly-named segment where we pitch our favorite apps and gear then vote on which is best.

Don’t miss this stupendous new episode of The CultCast. Subscribe now on iTunes, or stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s new Podcasts App.

Show notes below!

According to Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer, iPhone and iPad rumors are continuing to affect sales of the devices.

We’re reading the same rumors and speculation about a new iPhone as you are, and we think this has affected sales.

It’s no surprise that consumers are scared away by rumors, after all, details about the new products often get leaked months in advanced, causing consumers to think twice about buying.

Apple CEO TIm Cook announced some interesting numbers during today’s Q3 earnings call. Apple’s “hobby” the Apple TV, sold a surprising 1.3M units just last quarter, totaling 4M so far this fiscal year.

With all this growth, Apple is still calling the Apple TV a hobby, although Tim Cook hinted at future plans, saying that Apple will “continue to pull the string and see where it takes them.”

Apple has stuck in the Apple TV game for quite a while, and it looks like it is starting to finally pay off for them.

As part of Apple’s Q3 earnings press release today, CEO TIm Cook has announced that OS X Mountain Lion will be launching tomorrow, available only in the Mac App Store.

We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline.

OS X Mountain Lion is set to cost $19.99, down from the previous $29.99 for OS X Lion and Snow Leopard.

Source: Apple 

Apple just released the numbers for its 2012 third quarter earnings. The company made $35.0 billion in revenue and a quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion, up from revenue of $28.6 billion and a net profit of $7.3 billion this time last year. Apple sold 26 million iPhones, 17 million iPads, 6.8 million iPods, and 4 million Macs in Q3. A cash dividend of $2.65 per share for investors has been announced and will be payed out on August 16th, 2012.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also just announced that OS X Mountain Lion will ship to customers tomorrow.

If you’ve been watching the App Store, you may have noticed iTranslate Voice, a translation tool that looks a lot like Siri, rise to the top. iTranslate Voice does just what you’d expect: you speak into your phone, and it magically outputs what you’ve said into the language of your choice.

Starting today, iTranslate Voice is now available on the iPad as well.

Apple is set to announce its quarterly earnings today and host a conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, so naturally, analysts have been making last minute predictions about what they think today’s results may bring.

To make sense of all these predictions, Phillip Elmer-Dewitt has compiled a list of predications from 68 analysts over at CNNMoney. The results? Divided expectations.

Do you have a favorite third-party Twitter app that you use everyday? I use Tweetbot on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. I’ve been using third-party Twitter clients since I joined the social network in 2008. It’s fun to switch apps and try new clients as they are released for different devices. Many would say that Twitter has succeeded because of the developer community that made (and continues to make) such great apps. Heck, Twitter wouldn’t even have its own mobile or desktop app if it hadn’t bought Tweetie years ago.

Like any growing business, Twitter’s mission as a platform is changing. In a recent interview, the CEO of Twitter explained what kind of apps and services the company wants to have tie into its platform, and there isn’t much room left for the third-party apps we all know and love.

As you’ve likely heard, Google recently acquired Sparrow, the popular email app for both the Mac and iPhone. Along with the acquisition, Google made it clear that no further updates or changes would be pushed to the Mac and iPhone, and that the Sparrow team will be merging with the Gmail team.

People never like change, though, and the Google-Sparrow acquisition is no exception. Within just days of the announcement, a petition to keep Sparrow alive has popped up on the web.

When worlds collide – this is ostensibly an iOS tip, but it involves a Mac App, which should technically be an OS X tip, but hey – you probably know how to print from your Mac. It’s more likely that, like me, you have a printer that you use with your Mac and it isn’t one of them newfangled fancy AirPrint ones, neither. While AirPrint protocol has been around since iOS 4, I still haven’t bought a printer with it built in. Hey, mine works just fine, still!

If so, you can print from your iPhone or iPad to the printer connected to your Mac, using Printopia 2, a $20 Mac utility available from developer eCamm.

The entire legal battle between Samsung and Apple is just crazy enough to make your head spin if you even care. One day Apple’s got Samsung’s new Android phone banned in the US. The next, they have to issue a statement that Samsung didn’t copy them.

The whole episode is kind of silly, but Apple has a very strong argument that Samsung’s smartphone lineup is just a rip-off of the iPhone. Case-in-point, the image above was made by All Things D’s John Paczkowski to show Apple’s main argument in the legal battle: Before the iPhone Samsung phones had variety and looked nothing like the iPhone. After the iPhone they all look just like the iPhone.

Image: John Paczkowski

Via: Gizmodo

Apple’s earnings call is set for 2pm PST today, where Tim Cook and the gang will talk all about sales figures for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Even though the Mac has enjoyed great sales numbers over the past few years while all other PC makers are experiencing a decline, the Mac isn’t growing as steadily as it once had. Is the iPad to blame?

What have you noticed among you and your friends? Are you considering abandoning the Mac altogether in favor of the convenience of the iPad? We want to hear from you on whether you think the iPad is already replacing desktop computers for novice PC users.

CLICK HERE TO TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN OUR FORUM THREAD

Radio Shack is now offering multiple iPhone models on AT&T and Verizon for significant discounts in its retail stores. These iPhones have been “refreshed and remanufactured,” meaning that they have been either used or repackaged internally. You can get a 16GB iPhone 4S on AT&T or Verizon for $100 off Apple’s $200 retail price, and there’s also a $100 discount for the 32Gb iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4 is also being offered for free on both carriers. All discounted models obviously come with a two-year contract.

Here’s the unit/price breakdown:

Few camera bags are built keep your camera gear safe while you hike, bike, and conquer the wilderness like the manly man that you are. But the Flipside Sport 15L All-Weather camera bag from Lowepro ($135) was designed to do exactly that, and comes standard with some tricks you won’t find on your everyday camera sack.

“Welcome to the ultimate virtual cadaver dissection experience!” So begins the pitch on McGraw-Hill’s Anatomy & Physiology REVEALED app for the iPad, a teaching app which overlays photos of real dead people onto rendered models of the underlying gristle.

If you’ve been debating for the past two years whether or not you should finally commit $4.99 to purchasing Rock Band for iOS, the time to act is now my friend, because soon, your beloved guitar shredding game will be gone from the App Store in all its hair metal glory. Due to an expired license agreement with developer Harmonix, EA has notified users that Rock Band for iOS will be removed from the App Store on July 31st.

Among Mountain Lion’s more than 200 new features are many that have distinct appeal for business users. AirPlay Mirroring, the ability to share items with colleagues, secure and unified messaging across Macs and iOS devices, one-step encryption of hard drives and flash drives, Reminders, Notification Center, VIP prioritization in Mail, and dictation are just handful of the Mountain Lion features that are poised to become great business and education tools.

With so many great features, IT departments big and small are likely to hear requests for Mountain Lion from employees, managers, educators, and even students. While Mountain Lion may be an easy and painless upgrade for consumers, any major OS upgrade poses challenges and concerns for technology professionals and Mountain Lion is no different. In this guide, we’ll show you how to prepare for Mountain Lion, test it for compatibility issues, and plan a successful roll out.

I might bang on a bit about manual knobs and dials, but sometimes they are the perfect and simple solution to a complex problem. Who wants to dig around in menus when you can just twist a ring and get immediate feedback on the result?

So it is with the Astro, a tripod-top time-lapse controller with all-manual – and all-awesome – controls.