Cult of Mac

In what has to be one of the most ridiculous scams in recent memory, a crook in the UK is selling unsuspecting buyers boxes of potatoes and bottled water, claiming that they are receiving an iPhone.

No matter how careful you think you are, there’s always a chance that when you send an e-mail, text message, or make a call on your iPhone, someone could intercept it. For those who are concerned about security on their phones, a new suite of applications called Silent Circle will provide just the peace of mind you need to use your iPhone without worry.

Since the early days of Apple, an emphasis has been put on realistic user interfaces, starting with the Apple Lisa’s GUI in 1983. This drive for skeuomorphism in design is more present in iOS than ever before. Having a touch screen allows applications to feel more natural, simulating actual real-world buttons and objects. If speculation is to be believed, future versions of iOS may take this trend even farther by placing user interface shadows based on the actual position of the light source in the room.

Apple quietly released an app called Podcasts this week. The app enables the discovery, organization and playing of podcasts on an iPhone.

In the past, users listened to podcasts in the Music app by default. The next version of iOS will apparently come with a Music app that doesn’t support podcasts.

Podcasts are currently monetized using the advertising model. Nearly all podcasts are free, but those podcasts that make money do so through advertising.

Here’s a typical podcast app spoken during the show: “This podcast is brought to you buy Audible.com! For a free audio book of your choice, including audio books by David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgeman, go to Audible.com/american.”)

Under the current system, a podcast content creator can make money from ads, but Apple gets nothing, even when it’s downloaded via the iTunes store.

Providing a platform for other companies to make money while Apple makes nothing really isn’t Apple’s thing.

Apple’s new Podcasts app contains two surprising but telling features.

First, Podcasts contains a skip-forward-30-seconds button. The most obvious use for this button is to skip advertising in podcasts, even the kind spoken by the host of the show. (“This podcast brought to you by [skip forward 30 seconds].”)

Second, the Podcasts app has a mysterious “Redeem” button— but only when you run it on the upcoming iOS 6 version.

It’s not clear what exactly the “Redeem” button will do, but it has something to do with a new way for podcasters to charge money.

So let’s put these two new features together: One makes listening to ads optional; the other creates a way to sell podcasts via iTunes using Apple’s agency model.

It’s a carrot and a stick to podcasters: We’re going to reduce the value of your advertising by letting people skip them; but don’t worry, you can monetize by moving to a paid model.

I think this is the direction Apple intends to move all content available on iTunes.

Go here to read the whole story.

As more and more companies move forward with BYOD programs and/or mobile strategies centered around streamlining workflows for mobile professionals, the idea of the enterprise app store has gone from being a nice add-on feature to being seen as necessity for businesses, schools, and government agencies.

Developing a strategy around mobile apps is seen as a core need by a solid majority of companies – 66% of organization are considering or implementing internal app stores according to a Sourcebits survey of over 6,000 enterprises. That doesn’t mean that actually pursuing an enterprise app store strategy is an easy prospect.

Despite some advances in volume purchasing by Apple, many companies feel that mobile app options are still sub-par for their needs, particularly when it comes to the purchasing process and volume licensing.

It’s no secret that the designers at Apple are fans of Braun. Jonathan Ive has even expressed at times that his work is influenced by Dieter Rams, Braun’s head designer for nearly 30 years. In the past, Braun products have inspired the designs for several Apple products and applications, such as the iMac G4, Mac Pro, iPod, Aluminum iMac, iPod Hi-Fi, iPhone OS 1 Calculator, and most recently, the iOS 5 iPad music app.

With the release of Apple’s Podcasts app for iOS, the legacy of Braun continues to live on in the form of the reel-to-reel tape recorder found in the now playing interface. Looking at the interface last night, I was struck by how realistic the design was, which prompted some Google searching, leading me to the conclusion that indeed, the Podcasts app houses a nearly accurate rendering of a Braun TG 60 tape recorder. Ben Lenarts also noted the same thing on Twitter this morning.

To show you some of the striking similarities between these two designs, we’ve compiled a gallery of the two, which you can find after the break.

Apple has quietly posted an overview guide to Mountain Lion Server. The 25 page PDF document is available from Apple’s OS X Server Resources page, which barely references Mountain Lion at all. The generically named OS X Server Product Overview link in the page’s Documentation section, however, links to the new Mountain Lion Server product brief.

The overview guide is listed as being updated for June. That implies that it was deliberately placed there in advance of next month’s Mountain Lion release (as opposed to going live early by mistake). The guide primarily focuses on introducing the various features in Mountain Lion Server. While not in-depth, it definitely provides a sense of where Apple is going with Mountain Lion Server as well as with Mac and iOS management.

Project management is kind of a big deal, with college level courses, workshops, and seminars taught every day. Big companies hire people with these credentials to help them plan and manage their projects.

With software like OmniPlan, both the trained and untrained can manage personal and work projects with relative ease. It does help, however, to know what you’re doing before trying to organize a mission critical project, even if it is one for home, like building a dog house. All projects are made up of similar things, like timelines, human resources, financial considerations, and the like.

Let’s take a look at how to use OmniPlan to create a new Project – the first step to managing it.

With iOS 6, Apple is finally ditching Google as a maps partner and releasing their own custom maps solution, built upon partnerships with companies like TomTom and using their own technology acquired from companies like C3.

How costly would it be for Apple to compete with Google Maps head-on, though, by building their own mapping system from the ground-up without any outside deals? More than you might think: in fact, Apple might have to increases its global workforce by 50%.

If you’ve ever thought it would be a whole lot of fun to visit Apple’s Cupertino campus, let us assure you that there’s really not all the much you can do there. Sure, you can walk around Infinite Loop like a creepy stalker hoping to spot Jony Ive or Tim Cook, but you probably won’t. The one thing you can do, though, is visit The Company Store on campus and buy a t-shirt or other souvenirs.

Apple makes great phones and computers, but their apparel line leaves a bit to be desired. Here are all the shirts that you can buy from The Company Store when you visit Apple’s campus.

Just Mobile, purveyor of high-design aluminum objects to the not-so-rich, makes what seems at first to be a pointless little gadget. It’s called the Horizon, and its sole purpose is to let you hang your iPad on the wall. I was skeptical when I received the review unit, but it turns out to be pretty great, and full of Just Mobile’s trademark clever design touches.

It seems that my whining prayers for native iPad photo apps have started to answered by the developing gods. And how! MiniatureCam is not only an iPad-specific tilt-shift app, it is fantastically designed, too.

At Google’s own answer to WWDC, the annual I/O conference, the search giant just announced its own answer to Siri: a radically overhauled version of Google Voice Search.

Hey, lookie hear: in the new iOS 6 Beta, you can rearrange the interface app icons on an Apple TV. A small but nice little customability update, but is there more to this than meets the eye: say, some groundwork being laid for an Apple TV app store coming to iOS 6 later this year? After all, why worry about rearranging apps unless you’re going to suddenly need to manage more than one screen’s worth of them.

Rumor had it that Apple was going to announce an official Apple TV SDK at WWDC 2012, but that didn’t pan out. Could we see a similar announcement at the September event instead?

Via: MagMagazine

The earbuds that came with your $600 iPhone are junk, and if you bought an iPad, Apple didn’t even include a pair in the box. It’s time to upgrade.

Trouble is, there are all kinds of cans out there. How do you know what set is right for you? Some people (like me) seem to have a pair for every situation. For everyone else, here’s our guide to the best.

Ever wondered why Facebook’s iOS app is so slow? We’ve explained it all before, but what it comes down to is that the app is an Objective C wrapper around a UIWebView component loading Facebook’s raw HTML data.

Why’s that so slow? Well, UIWebview isn’t very fast, and it has terrible caching, which requires the Facebook app to redownload your entire wall every time it needs to do an update, instead of the chunks it needs.

According to The New York Times, though, that could soon change, and Facebook could ditch the UIWebview bottleneck once and for all.

The Metropolitan Police have released a new smartphone app for Android, iOS and BlackBerry devices that allows Londoners to identify suspected criminals. Called Facewatch id, the free app allows you to enter a post code and then presents a collection of CCTV images of people wanted for questioning by the police, including over 3,000 people involved in last year’s London riots.

Following the launch of the iTunes Store in an additional twelve Asian countries earlier today, Apple has also begun selling the Apple TV in a number of these territories, too. The set-top box is now available in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Most discussions around BYOD and costs focus on one of two areas. The first is the cost reduction that a company might see if employees provide their own iPhones (or other devices) and pay for their own mobile plans. The second is the cost for mobile management solutions to secure and manage those personally-owned devices along with the apps and data stored on them.

Those are major concerns, but research company ARCchart recently identified a completely different cost of the BYOD trend – the revenues that device manufacturers and carriers are likely to lose as BYOD becomes a standard practice across the business world. According to ARCchart, the worldwide mobile industry could take a hit as big as $40 billion over the next four years as a result of BYOD.

The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has installed 72 iPad kiosks in 26 driver service center across the state to make it quicker and easier for drivers to renew their licenses “in minutes.” It has cost the department almost $80,000 to set up the service, which it hopes will improve wait times by making the process of renewing a license significantly quicker.

Our iPhones and iPads are fast little beasts, but it can still take a long time to load up an app you need in a pinch. A new team of engineers, however, have figured out a way to allow iOS to read your mind and start launching the next app you need before you even tap its icon.

Bad back? Of course you do, because you spend the day slouched in front of a computer monitor, and then you slouch over the machines at your gym whilst listening to the excellent CultCast on your iPhone, before heading home to a slouched dinner in front of the TV.

In fact, you’re so indifferent to your posture and the health of your back that you probably don’t deserve to know about the LumoBack Smart Posture Sensor, but I’ll tell you anyway. You’re welcome.

The LumoBack is a small sensor on a belt that you strap around your lumbar region, and when you flop into a bad position it administers a short, sharp buzz to remind you to sit up. But of course there’s a lot more to it than that.

Over the past few months we’ve learned a lot about the mobile ad market from a variety of studies. We know that iOS users are more likely to respond to ads than Android users, and that there’s often a big return on ads designed specifically for the iPad and other tablets. We’ve also learned that many ad agencies haven’t yet realized the value in either of those data points.

One company that sees the value of mobile ads is Universal Pictures. Universal has created an interactive mobile campaign for its upcoming “Savages” – an Oliver Stone thriller that opens a week from Friday (July 6) – that ticks all the right boxes for mobile ad success.

We’ve been drooling over the next-generation MacBook Pro since Apple unveiled it at WWDC earlier this month, and we thought we knew all there was to know about its gorgeous high-resolution Retina display. However, Apple surprised us with a new FAQ page on its website this morning, which reveals a number of things about the notebooks new screen that we hadn’t heard before, which will help you make the most of your new display.

Here are a few of the things that you may be interested in.

There’s nothing more played out than amateur music videos about iPhones featuring the chorus line “There’s an app for that,” but in iMan by Luke Escombe in the corporation, it all somehow works.

That the music video is about an anthropomorphic iPhone in love with its owner who teams up with a radioactive cockroach and become her murderous stalker after accidentally being fried in the microwave doesn’t hurt, of course… it’s hard to be clichéd when that is your central premise.

A really fantastic song and really funny music video by Luke Escombe.

Source: YouTube