This changed everything. Where were you when it was announced five years ago?
Today is the fifth anniversary of the release of the original iPhone, and for Cult of Mac’s writers, it’s a particularly important birthday: not only does June 29th mark the anniversary of one of our most all-time beloved gadgets, but it’s also a day so momentous that it has rippled through every aspect of our professional lives as both Apple fans and writers.
To mark the occasion, Cult of Mac’s writers got together to talk about where we were when the first iPhone came out, what it meant for us then and what it means for us now. Check out our stories, then please feel free to hop in and leave a comment telling us where you were when the iPhone was born.
Pretty much the only segment of the camcorder market that hasn’t been destroyed by either cellphones or video-shooting SLRs is the rugged sports-cam market, if only because nobody wants to strap their iPhone or Canon 5D MkIII to their head and ski down a mountain.
So it’s no surprise that JVC’s latest offering is – you guessed it – a rugged sports cam, complete with various attachment to mount it on helmets, bikes and even goggles.
MobileMe will be gone in less than a month. Here are the best MobileMe replacement options. Photo: Apple
On Sunday, MobileMe will be dead, and anyone who is still using MobileMe and not Apple’s replacement service, iCloud, will be forcibly evicted. That means anyone still using MobileMe either needs to transition to iCloud and/or copy all data stored in their MobileMe accounts to their Mac or PC. Any files stored in MobileMe’s range of services that can’t be converted to iCloud will be deleted. If you opt not to use iCloud, all data in your MobileMe account will be deleted.
Although iCloud offers several advances over MobileMe, there are some MobileMe services that don’t have direct iCloud equivalents. These include MobileMe Galleries for sharing photos and videos, website creation using Apple’s iWeb, and iDisk remote storage and file sharing. File and information sync is available using iCloud, but the functionality is implemented a bit differently than in MobileMe. In addition, users still using Snow Leopard also can’t upgrade to iCloud.
It’s a tricky problem for thousands of users. There isn’t a single online service that delivers quite the same mix of features and functionality that Apple offered with MobileMe, but by combining some apps and services, you can get pretty close to MobileMe’s feature set. We’ve gone through all of the main competitors to try to find the best services for the soon-to-be dispossessed MobileMe subscriber.
Characters helps out with those hard-to-find, ah, characters.
As a tech writer, I know that pressing Option-Y on my keyboard will give me a ¥ symbol, and that Option-K will add a little degree circle˚ to my article. I even know how to add umlauts (handy for death mëtal band names – just press Option-U and then type a letter) and accents (good for clichés – like an umlaut but using Option-E).
But what about the Apple logo, the copyright symbol, or any of those other essential but seldom used characters? That’s what Characters is for.
If you use your MacBook with external displays, you might want to use it with the display off but the lid open at some point. If so, today’s tip should help you accomplish this goal, with not one, not two, but three different ways to do so.
You can do this with the laptop lid shut, but with ever more powerful MacBooks out there, avoiding the heat that might build up in there is probably worth leaving the screen up, right? Leaving the screen up with the display off will let heat leave the Mac through the keyboard, and will allow the graphics processor give all of it’s power to the external screen, which is helpful if you’re working on graphics-intensive applications.
The iPhone just got a lot cheaper thanks to Virgin Mobile.
Following the iPhone’s prepaid debut on Cricket Wireless just a week ago, Apple’s hugely popular smartphone is now available on Virgin Mobile. Like Cricket, Virgin is offering the handset on a prepaid basis, with prices starting at as little as $31 per month on the company’s Beyond Talk plan — which includes unlimited data, and unlimited texts.
Take advantage of the company’s offer and you could save yourself around $800 a year.
With so many changes recently, it's becoming hard to rely on App Store searches.
Sometime last week, it became apparent that Apple had tweaked its App Store search algorithm to display results in order of their user rankings and descriptions, rather than the names of the apps themselves. The change brought some confusion, not only to App Store customers, but also to developers, who found that their apps were no longer appearing under certain searches as they had been.
It now appears that Apple has backtracked on that change, however.
BrowserChoose is a free tweak that makes Chrome your default browser.
Google finally released its hugely popular Chrome web browser for iOS yesterday, and just as we had expected, it’s the best third-party browser so far. In fact, in many ways, it’s also better than Apple’s built-in mobile Safari browser. And you can now use Chrome as your default browser on your jailbroken iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, thanks to the BrowserChooser tweak.
So, yeah, like clipping the white 30-pin docking cable to the bottom of my iPad and iPhone is SO difficult. You kids these days have it easy. Back when I got my first iPhone, the docking cable had little freakin’ buttons you had to press on the sides just to disconnect it. Man, those were the days.
Wait, where was I? Oh, yeah. Patents. One specific patent, in particular.
Amazing: I just liberated 10GB of space on my MacBook Pro’s harddrive that was being held prisoner by backups of iDevices I used to own, but had long since gone. And frankly, I’m not sure I would have found and freed up the space without the $10 DaisyDisk app.
There’s a whole new class of app these days centered around lending out cars, bikes, and even homes via iPhone apps like AirBnB, Relay Rides, Getaround, and others. They allow people looking for a short term rental car or living space to connect with other people who have spare space or vehicles and pay a fair yet small fee for doing so. It seems like a good idea, on the surface.
A new app, called SideCar Passenger, takes it up a notch. The app not only connects you with a spare car, but with a spare driver as well. Think of it as peer-to-peer taxi cab and you’ll be close. Users download SideCar, register and account, and then either search for rides or offer their own services up.
Does this strike anyone else as potentially creepy?
Gizmodo reported today that their new MacBook Air was crashing something fierce. They turned to their own forums and the Apple Support forums and found that many other users of the MacBook Air also had the crashing issue. Both parties saw improvements when they stopped using Google’s star web browser, Chrome, but no one could be sure.
They even checked on the MacRumors forums, finding the same issue. Then, they heard from Google.
For those of you on the verge of being disowned/dumped/fired by parents/girlfriends/bosses who’re tired of your broomstick-toting shenanigans as you jump out from behind a door and yell “TANGO DOWN!” in a misguided attempt to recreate Call of Duty: Black Ops — just tell them you’ll put the broom down this fall.
Aspyr says they’re bringing the highly rated first-person title to the Mac App Store this fall. No word on pricing or exact date yet.
In the meantime, existing CoD Mac titles (like CoD 4: Modern Warfare) are half-off everywhere you can get ’em; not a bad deal, considering CoD 4 is one of the most expensive games at the App Store. If you do pop for it, the Aspyr team will let you take potshots at them during their Community Multiplayer Event on July 6. Show the love.
In a four-month investigation of 10 of Apple’s Chinese suppliers, China Labor Watch has found what they call “deplorable” working conditions in many of the factories of Apple’s component manufacturers. These factories allegedly contain hazardous working conditions and excessive overtime.
Instead of saving money, most IT directors expect BYOD will significantly increase IT expenses
Despite the fact that BYOD is often perceived as a way to reduce technology expenses, nearly three-quarters (73%) of IT managers expect that BYOD will have the opposite effect. The big fear is that BYOD will cause IT spending to spiral out of control.
That’s the news from enterprise technology vendor Damovo UK. The company recently surveyed100 IT directors from organizations with more than 1,000 users about their feelings on BYOD and how it is being implemented in their organization.
One major reason for potentially uncontrolled expenses boils down companies losing bargaining power with carriers as employees begin purchasing their own iPhones or Android handsets. While the cost of the device isn’t likely to be passed on to an employer, monthly costs for voice and data service may be a different story. With unlimited data plans slowly going the way of the dodo, many workers may not want to shoulder data bills associated with their jobs, which may lead to a shared expense model.
The Sosumi sound continues to be a part of the Mac OS today.
If you’ve spent any amount of time with a Mac in the last 15 years or so, you may have noticed the Sosumi sound, one of several system alert sound options. Even though you most likely just passed it over without a thought, there’s a huge backstory behind the formation of that sound, one that starts with the Beatles, surprisingly enough.
BYOD in K-12 schools presents massive challenges to IT staff, administrators, and teachers
Apple firmly positioned the iPad as an education solution during its education even in New York five months ago. Even before that, many schools and districts had begun pilot programs of full on iPad deployments. The iPad provides many opportunities in education as well as some challenges.
One of those challenges is cost. That’s not a surprise, considering the number of iPads required in order to give one to each student in a district. The San Diego school district, for example, recently spending $15 million as part of its massive iPad plan that includes nearly 26,000 devices.
Given the cost of such deployments and the attention that BYOD programs have gotten in both the tech and mainstream media over the past year or so, it was only a matter of time before someone in the education technology sector began to talk up the idea of BYOD in education as a way to cut the costs associated with such deployments.
Google launched their shiny new version of Chrome for iOS today, complete with syncing and many other features Chrome users on the desktop have been longing for. We dug into Chrome for iOS to see what all the hype was about, and upon first glance, it’s definitely an interesting experience. You can check out our full hands on video after the break.
For better or worse, Verizon’s new Share Everything plans are now here. If you sign up for Verizon and wish to have multiple devices on one account, you’ll have to choose from the new Share Everything plans. Current customers do not have to worry about this unless they either want to, or decide to upgrade to a new device at a subsidized cost.
If you live overseas, you can now download Google Chrome for the iPhone and iPad at the link below. It’s on the Danish store only right now, but it’s obviously in the process of rolling out, so keep on refreshing, and watch for our early look and video tour of Chrome shortly after it hits the US App Store.
Update: It’s now available in the U.S. Store! Get downloading!
OmniPlan helps you manage projects and related resources efficiently and effectively.
Resources are important to any project. They are the people, equipment, and materials necessary to complete a project. Even you’re just building a treehouse for the kids in the backyard, you still need to track the lumber, nails and screws, types of tools you’ll need (like a saw, hammer, etc.), and the people you’ll rope into helping you.
OmniPlan for iPad can help track the resources for projects that are smaller or larger. Let’s look at how.
ownCloud adds business features in its latest release
We last looked at ownCloud nearly three months ago. The company offers a unique private cloud solution that can scale from the needs of a small businesses with a handful of users all the way to the requirements of larger enterprise. What makes ownCloud unique is that it’s designed to easily integrate with existing infrastructure and IT processes.
Because ownCloud is based on open web standards, it can be easily implemented on virtually any web server. That means it can function as an on-premise solution that is configured and managed completely by company’s IT team, a hosted implementation where it can be installed onto server space provided by a commercial web hosting company, or it can offered in a more turn-key fashion through one of the ownCloud’s partners.
Pad&Quill’s Littlest Black Book case was announced back on April 1st, and it still seems like a joke. However, I have one next to my keyboard as I type this and it is very real. And very, very cute.
