Cult of Mac

BYOD may be one of the big technology trends out there for businesses, but not every business wants or needs a BYOD program. BYOD is, of course, not a magic bullet for addressing every company’s mobile needs. It also isn’t guaranteed to deliver cost savings compared to providing employees with corporate owned and managed devices.

Companies not pursuing BYOD can still gain value from investing in some of the technology concepts and solutions that becoming a standard part of BYOD programs. After all, BYOD is one of the biggest trends of consumerized IT, but it is only one trend out of many.

Here are five key BYOD lessons that any business or organization can apply even without implementing a BYOD program.

For all the buzz about the Microsoft Surface, we don’t know really know the most important things about it yet. We don’t know when it’ll be released. We don’t know how much it’ll cost. As nice as the Surface looks, Microsoft didn’t even say if it would come with 3G, let alone with LTE. And according to Bloomberg, the reason they didn’t announce it is because the Surface won’t: it’s WiFi-only.

Instaglasses. What a fantastic idea. Sadly only a concept (and surely destined to remain so), these special specs survey the scene before you and apply your choice of Instagram filter to the real world. You’ve heard the expression “seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses”? Well, these are retro-tinted glasses.

Fed up of trying to find the perfect wallpaper for your Mac? There are plenty out there that feature supercars you’ll never be able to afford, models you’ll never meet, and sandy beaches you’ll never visit. But for something a little more interesting, check out Satellite Eyes, a wonderful little app that displays a satellite view of your current location as your desktop background.

A gang leader who orchestrated the production of counterfeit credit cards and then used them to purchase over $1 million worth of iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks from Apple Stores throughout the United States has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison.

The word “innovative” has been thrown around a lot in the aftermath of Microsoft’s Surface announcement, but how innovative is the design, anyway? The thickest part of a MacBook Air is the keyboard, which allows you to balance it on your lap to type on it; where as the Microsoft Surface is just an Air flipped upside down, with the thickest part the screen, making it the first thing to go flipping off your lap.

Okay, we admit, this image is a little exaggerated, but it’s funny, and it does raise a good criticism of the Surface: ostensibly, the Surface is a tablet with a keyboard cover that allows it to be used as a notebook, but its form factor makes it impossible to type on unless you’re at a desk or a table.

Image: 9gag

Like its predecessors, Apple’s latest iPad promises to provide you within around ten hours of battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music. But with its high-resolution Retina display and LTE connectivity, it needs a much bigger battery to do that.

And we all know how long it takes for that battery to charge, because it has been well documented since the device made its debut earlier this year. But the cost of keeping it running may be a lot less than you think.

CineXPlayer, the excellent, rock-solid, play-anything video player for iOS, had gotten yet another big update. Every time the app is bumped to a new version, I wonder what the developers will be able to add next time. And today’s answer is… Quite a lot.

Forget RAM, forget a faster CPU, forget a beefier graphics card. If you are still running a Mac with a spinning, physical hard drive, the best upgrade you can possibly make is to drop a solid-state flash drive into the machine. The immediate effect on perceived performance is stunning: it’s the difference between seeing a spinning beach ball every hour and not seeing one for months at a time.

Unfortunately, for a long time, what has kept most people from making this update to their older Macs has been price. SSDs are more expensive than physical HDDs. That’s still true, by the way, but it’s less so now than it ever has been, making this a perfect time to finally take the plunge.

Remember that audio makes up the first half of the term, “audio-visual.” Movies are just as much about sound as they are vision – a fact that Hollywood never forgets; nor should you. Apple made some fairly great improvements to the audio editing capabilities of iMovie ’11, and here they are.

Earlier this week, Microsoft revealed their new “iPad killer,” a sleek and sexy tablet they’re calling the Surface. The guys over at Gizmodo think it looks even better than the iPad and the MacBook Air. We don’t. Who’s right? What better way to find out than to grab Gizmodo’s Editor-in-Chief, Joe Brown, and let the fists fly on an all new CultCast.

Can Joe convince us that Microsoft is the coolest company in tech right now? Or will the CultCast crew enlighten the Gizmodo chief? Find out on a titillating new episode — and don’t miss the reveal of our favorite new gadgets!

Hit the subscribe button right now and read on for the show notes.

With the incredible success of the App Store, sometimes it’s easy to forgot that there are still many, many countries the world over that don’t have access to it yet. That number has been reduced today, however, as Apple brings its mobile marketplace to another 32 countries, bringing the total number of countries with access to the App Store to 155.

Nike+ Running for iPhone has received a huge update this morning, which not only introduces a fancy new look, but plenty of great new features as well.

It’s now even faster to get into a run thanks to the dedicated run button seen throughout the app, and the new landscape history view allows you to “visualize your runs side-by-side.” One of the update’s most impressive new features, however, is the ability to “tag” your running shoes and get a reminder when it’s time for a new pair.

In two days, Sonic the Hedgehog will be celebrating his 21st birthday. While Sonic goes out and parties like it’s 1999, SEGA will be discounting all digitally available Sonic games for you and I to enjoy. For a limited time, you can head over to any of the following gaming/app stores and enjoy the great deals being offered by SEGA.

One of concerns for IT departments as first iPhones and then iPads and other consumer-focused technologies began creeping into the workplace is how to support the personal devices and apps of employees. That issue took center stage this week as security vendor Fortinet identified that most millennial workers feel that support and security for their mobile devices and other technologies is their responsibility and not the responsibility of an employer or IT department.

What that means is that many IT departments may need to rethink what technical support means. That isn’t a new concept. Various studies and reports have shown that members of Gen-Y prefer to engage support resources using a range of technologies beyond a helpdesk phone line including email, texts, and social networks. As this new vision of support emerges, one model for the future help desk is the Genius Bar from Apple’s retail stores.

Since the debut of the sixth generation iPod nano in late 2010, watchband cases have become all the rage. Within only a few weeks of release, numerous iPod nano watchbands started popping up, some better than others. There’s a new watchband in town now, and it’s shaping up to be the most impressive one yet. The Syre is the first iPod nano case to feature Bluetooth technology built in.

This post is brought to you by Alex&Rovich, publisher of the RealPinocchio app.

Although everyone knows Pinocchio, to most people in the English-speaking world at least, he is the doe-eyed cartoon puppet who’s “got no strings” in the animated Disney movie made in 1940. Since then, there has not been a faithful rendition of Carlo Collodi‘s world-famous wooden creation, who first appeared in an Italian newspaper serial in 1881 and then a children’s novel two years later. This is something of a travesty for Pinocchio, who in his original appearances was a free-spirited and willful marionette, a “truant and a vagabond.”

RealPinocchio is a new app that restores the original story of the genuine Pinocchio. And the famous book is now finally interactive.

Many workplaces are looking at options for social collaboration. The idea is to harness the power of social networks as an internal communication and collaboration tool. While there are some powerful and full featured options in this space, a new iOS and Android app called Pride aims to provide the core benefits of social networks in a free service that’s extremely easy to set up, manage, and use. More importantly, Pride delivers a fun and playful experience that is likely to encourage employees to use it while delivering some very tangible business benefits.

Pride was created by mobile and social enterprise startup DoubleDutch, a company that delivers mobile CRM and event management solutions. The company’s approach is all about using mobile technology to engage with key partners – customers, clients, sales staff, event attendees, and pretty much anyone else involved in a business. That shows through in Pride as well as the companies other products.

Though you may not have heard of Kim Dotcom, you’ve mostly likely know about his large file sharing service Megaupload, which was shut down by the United States Department Of Justice in January, under copyright infringement charges. Dotcom is now back online for the time being, and has posted the above photo on Instagram showing a meeting with him and Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak.

This looks like a simple trick, but the result is just hypnotic. It looks like Redditor eharp1126 just set up a screen sharing loop between two machines on his MacBook Pro, but the result is positively Escher-like… a long mirrored hallways of Mac infinity.

Source: Reddit

On average, iOS is the most expensive mobile platform for developers. It’s the second most profitable mobile platform overall behind RIM’s BlackBerry. One in three mobile developers can’t earn enough money to living from the apps that they produce.

Those are some of the details contained in a new report from mobile analyst and strategy company VisionMobile. The report delves into the heart of the so-called app economy and provides a range of information and statistics about app development, its costs, and the income potential that comes from being an iOS, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone developer. If you’re considering a career as a mobile developer, this is must-read report. For the rest of us, it’s a fascinating sneak peek into the experience of app developers around the world.

Gone are the days of folding and unfolding huge maps that you get from the gas station or the Automobile Club, what with GPS, Maps apps, and the like. Using the built-in Maps app is a great way to get where you need to go, but what if you want to take your navigation to the next level? What if you need to make sure you don’t get a speeding ticket? What if you want to get your kids excited about the National Park you’re all going to see? Maps app won’t do any of that justice. Here are three apps that will, though.

Yesterday we brought you news of Tweetbot for Mac, officially confirmed by Tapbot’s own Paul Haddad via tweets sent out from the application. Today, Mark Jardine, Tweetbot’s graphic designer, has posted this picture of Tweetbot for Mac running on the new, Retina display MacBook Pro.

I’ve waited over two decades to own a real robot. It was one of those silly childhood dreams to own something straight out of Terminator that obeys commands, spies on people, and rains down havoc if need be. Even though we’re in the year 2012, we still haven’t managed to create affordable robots, which is a pretty big letdown if you ask me. Thankfully, we’re getting closer, and playing with the new Parrot AR. Drone 2.0 has given me hope that the toys of the future are going to kick some major ass.

This is your last chance to get the ultimate Slidevana package for PowerPoint and Keynote. Tired of the same old template and layouts? How do 150 PowerPoint layout plus 150 Keynote layouts strike you? That should be plenty to get you inspired and rocking your presentations.

You have to act fast though…this deal only lasts another 12 hours and then it’s gone.

Grab it now!