Mobile menu toggle

Sparrow For iPhone Now Just $0.99 For 48 Hours

By

There's never been a better time to buy Sparrow.
There's never been a better time to buy Sparrow.

As I mentioned in my post about Sparrow for iPhone yesterday, it is by far my favorite mail client on both Mac and iOS. Despite a lack of push support — for now — Sparrow contains some really awesome features, which are detailed in my review. If you haven’t picked up this terrific app yet, now’s the best time, because it’s just $0.99 for the next 48 hours.

MacBook Pro Retina Display Teardown Reveals The Changes Apple Made To Make It So Thin

By

The new MacBook Pro's Retina display, without its pretty casing. Image courtesy of iFixit.
The new MacBook Pro's Retina display, without its pretty casing. Image courtesy of iFixit.

Apple mentioned during its unveiling of the MacBook Pro last week that it has made some substantial changes to the construction of the notebook’s display to help make it super thin. Unlike existing MacBooks, the new Pro does away with a cover glass and case to measure just 1.5mm thin, essentially making the entire display just an LCD panel.

Use Multitouch Gestures In iMovie To Save Time [OS X Tips]

By

gestures_hero

Editing videos can lead to a great sense of fulfillment when you’re all done and showing off the fruits of your labors to a packed house of admirers, but you have to admit that the grunt work can be kind of a slog. Anything that makes the editing process a little faster or a little bit simpler has my vote for being a tip worth knowing about.

iMovie ’11 has a host of under-the-radar tricks that will help you take your editing workflow up a notch. One sweet trick that both saves time and impresses other video editors is using multitouch gestures right on the trackpad.

Mountain Lion’s New Notes App Contains Hidden Tribute To Famous Apple Ad

By

Notes isn't the first app to contain this famous quote.
Notes isn't the first app to contain this famous quote.

It’s not uncommon for Apple to hide little treats within the icons of its Mac apps, but it’s always nice when we stumble across a new one. The latest comes with the new Notes application that will launch in OS X Mountain Lion next month, and it contains a famous quote used in Apple’s Think Different ad campaign.

Spotify Takes On Pandora With New Radio Feature For iOS, No Subscription Required

By

Spotify-radio
Radio finally comes to Spotify on mobile... if you're in the U.S.

Spotify is gearing up to issue an update to its iOS app today, which will bring its popular radio feature to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for the first time and allow the service to take on rivals like Pandora or Slacker. What’s more, unlike its traditional music streaming service, the radio feature will not require a paid Spotify Premium subscription to use on mobile devices.

Could A PIN On Shutdown Deter iPhone Thieves?

By

Cabel proves once again what a smart guy he is
Cabel proves once again what a smart guy he is

Sasser, co-founder of Panic software, has had a fantastic idea to make stealing iPhones pretty useless. Most savvy thieves know that when you find or steal a smartphone, you shut it down immediately. This stops it being tracked by the carrier and – in the case of the iPhone – it stops the user from tracking it, or wiping it from afar.

Cabel’s incredibly simple idea would stop this from happening.

Why The Mac Pro Matters And Why It Isn’t Designed For Most Mac Users

By

The Mac Pro is the most PC-like Mac, but it serves niches that other Macs and PCs can't
The Mac Pro is the most PC-like Mac, but it serves niches that other Macs and PCs can't.

Apple quietly updated its Mac Pro line last week. The update was an important move even though the actual changes were so minor as to be barely noteworthy. The minor refresh gave high computing customers a sense of confidence that Apple wasn’t going to abandon the Mac Pro line anytime soon. That sense of confidence got a boost from New York Times columnist David Pogue, who was assured more substantive Mac Pro upgrades were in the works for 2013.

The Mac Pro is something of a relic when it comes to Apple’s current strategy. It’s the only Mac that features significant expansion options using industry standard hardware – a point made by Lifehacker columnist Adam Dachis, who compared the Mac Pro’s specs and costs to three hackintosh options. Looking at the Mac Pro as simply a series of specs, performance, and cost is appropriate for most users – but not for some important niche markets.

This Dev’s Apple Design Award Was Nearly Mistaken For A Terrorist Device By The TSA

By

ada

In a post-9/11 environment, the TSA is suspicious of everything. Shoes. Bottles of water. What you look like underneath your clothes. Everything

So when Game Collage developer Juraj Hlaváč flew back from last week’s WWDC and was discovered with a mysterious black box in his backpack that resisted all attempts to be scanned by the airport’s security equipment, and mysteriously glowed to boot, the TSA quickly became suspicious.

Luckily, before it became cavity search suspicious, Hlaváč revealed the true nature of the black box in his bag: an Apple Design Award for his app, Bobo Explores Light.

Starting With iOS 6, Mail Will Preview App Store Apps

By

Mail in iOS 6 shows mini app previews when you click an App Store link.
Mail in iOS 6 shows mini app previews when you click an App Store link.

Traditionally, clicking on App Store links in iOS was a very jarring experience. Instead of being taken to an App Store preview page like you are on the desktop, you would be immediately thrown out of your current app, and shuffled over to the App Store. This problem seems to be alleviated with iOS 6, at least to some extent.

Jailbreak App Display Recorder Ripped Off And Released In The App Store

By

Display Recorder in the App Store is a near clone of its jailbreak counterpart.
Display Recorder in the App Store is a near clone of its jailbreak counterpart.

Fans of jailbreaking will most likely know about Display Recorder, the jailbreak app by Ryan Petrich, that, as its name implies, lets you record your iPhone’s screen. Display Recorder is one of the reasons I initially began jailbreaking my devices. It’s a handy tool if you need to show someone how to do something on your iPhone. That in mind, I was excited today when I saw that Display Recorder had been released into the App Store. That is, until I saw it had been developed by someone else.

Does The Retina MacBook Pro Use Sharp IGZO Display Tech Originally Meant For The New iPad?

By

MacBook

In the run up to the release of the new iPad, there were many rumors that Apple was going to use Sharp IGZO display technology to make a much more bright and vibrant Retina iPad with much better battery efficiency.

That didn’t pan out: Sharp delayed the debut of IGZO, and Apple instead was forced to release a Retina iPad that was thicker than the iPad 2 in order to accomodate a bigger battery necessary to drive the display.

But according to one expert, IGZO may have crept into the new Retina MacBook Pros…

Teach The Kids Classic Car Games On Summer Road-Trips [iOS Tips]

By

State Plate Bingo

So, you’ve got that big road-trip planned this summer, right? Got everything packed, maps apps at hand, ready to see the world from the point of view of your car, up close and personal in a way jet travel will never be. Pile in the dog and the kids and hit the road!

Of course, once the initial excitement wears off somewhere down the road, the kids are gonna get whiney. Instead of numbing them out with cartoons or video games, how about a bunch of classic car games? Of course you can use your iOS device! Here are a few fun apps that will teach the whole family some great ways to stay interested in the world outside the windows while staving off boredom.

Read It Now Lets You Read Articles In Your Browser. Right Now [Humor]

By

Instapaper queue getting on top of you? Why not Read It Now instead?
Instapaper queue getting on top of you? Why not Read It Now instead?

You all use and love Instapaper, right? Or perhaps Pocket, or Readability? These apps are the perfect way to put long articles aside for reading during downtime, or for browsing on a device better suited to the task than a desktop computer. But what about those times when you have a few moments and you just want to stop and read the website in front of your right now?

That’s where Read It Now comes in.

Retina MacBook Pro Gets “Best For AirPlay” Display Option In OS X Mountain Lion

By

"Best for AirPlay" mode is new in Mountain Lion.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’ve been playing around with our new Retina MacBook Pro — look for our review tomorrow — and we decided to install Mountain Lion on our shiny new ultra high-res notebook and take Apple’s latest operating system for a spin.

It runs a peach, of course, but one thing we noticed when we were playing around in the Displays preferences in Mountain Lion was that there is an option to set your display resolution as for “Best for AirPlay,” along with the other two regular options which appear in OS X Lion: Best for Retina display, and Scaled.

PaintCode App Converts Vector Graphics Into iOS OS X Code

By

PaintCode lets you concentrate on the drawing
PaintCode lets you concentrate on the drawing

Do you know how to code a circle? If you’re a software developer, the answer is probably yes. But what about interface elements, complex icons and other fancy graphics? Sure, you could probably get it done, but what a pain. That’s what PaintCode is for.

PaintCode is a Mac app which takes your complicated vector-based designs and translates them into Objective C code, ready to be pasted straight into Xcode.

Apple’s iBooks Scheme Dropped Amazon’s Monopoly To 60%, But Killed Industry Profits

By

ibooks

We’re all familiar with the antitrust complaint that the Department of Justice filed against Apple and five major publishers back in April, but how much of an impact that case could have on the book business if the ruling goes against Apple and its partners is beginning to come into focus.

When Apple launched the iBookstore back in 2009, it had a huge impact on Amazon; it dramatically reduced the retail giant’s market share of the ebook business from 99% to just 60% in three years, breaking its monopoly on ebooks.

But it wasn’t all good for publishers.

This Is What A Retina MacBook Pro Desktop Looks Like At 2880 x 1800

By

28801800desktop
You'll need Superman vision for this desktop resolution.

The new Retina MacBook Displays may have an incredible resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels, but OS X doesn’t treat it as such. Instead, it treats the display as a 1440 x 900 HiDPI display in its default configuration, meaning that while text, video and images may look crisper, you don’t actually get 2880 x 1800 pixels worth of desktop space.

In the Displays panel in Systems Preferences, you can tell your Retina MacBook Pro to give you more desktop space, up to the equivalent of 1920 x 1200, but that’s as far as it goes. What if you want a 2880 x 1800 desktop, though, with each pixel mapped one to one? There’s an app for that.

Griffin Launches iPad Case Designed Specifically For Doctors

By

Griffin's AirStrap Med case makes the iPad more physician-friendly
Griffin's AirStrap Med case makes the iPad more physician-friendly

The iPad has been popular with doctors and healthcare providers since it debuted two years ago. In fact, the iPad’s form factor and capabilities are almost tailor-made for many common and emerging uses in medicine like electronic health records, medical and drug reference guides, and even remote diagnosis using FaceTime.

With hospitals rolling out iPad deployments and many physicians in private practice buying them, it was only a matter of time before healthcare-specific iPad accessories hit the market. Griffin Technologies is one of the first companies to focus on making the iPad an even better fit for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals with a new case that’s designed specifically for medical environments.

Protex Case Lets You Use The iPad Single-Handed

By

Protex protects
Protex protects.

The iPad is many things, but one thing it is not is easy to hold. The Lady literally refuses to touch one when it’s naked (a sound policy in some other situations too), and even though I love the skinny feel of the iPads 2 and 3 in my hands, I too get a little nervous.

Higher Ground’s Protex is a case that not only protects the iPad, but makes it way easier to hold – and all without adding bulk or fugliness.