Cult of Mac

The jailbreak community is full of talented developers and innovative ideas that have kept Apple on its toes for the past several years. The time and effort that goes into creating a quality tweak is often unappreciated by the average jailbreaker.

A free tool called iOSOpenDev was recently released for developers. Those with basic programming knowledge can use Xcode templates for creating jailbreak-style apps and tweaks that can be easily published to Cydia, the jailbreak version of the App Store. While iOSOpenDev is attempting to make it easier for developers to code tweaks, apps and plugins, we sat down with a prominent jailbreak developer to ask if iOSOpenDev is really a good thing for the jailbreak community.

Today BYOD and the consumerization of IT aren’t just buzzwords on the horizon, they’re fact of business life and have begun transforming the workplace for millions of professionals. Many solutions exist to deal with managing user-owned mobile devices and integrating them to varying degrees with corporate resources and shared data – something that the explosion of cloud products is helping to drive. Many enterprise cloud solutions (public and private) exist to meet these demands while ensuring data management and security.

Unfortauntely, cloud solutions aren’t limited to the workplace and consumer cloud products including Apple’s iCloud, Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs and many others have become staple parts of our daily lives. That’s great news for all of as consumers. It gives us access to our files and data anywhere at anytime on almost any device. But consumer cloud technologies pose a big headache for IT professionals who are responsible with keeping business and workplace data both readily available and appropriately secured.

Google has sent letters out to various standards organizations, including the IEEE, promising to honor MMI’s patent licensing policies after it completes its planned acquisition of the company. This includes honoring MMI’s maximum go-forward per-unit royalty rate of 2.25%. This is the same rate MMI is asking Apple to pay in order to lift the injunction on the iPhone and iPad 3G passed down in Germany. Apple has rejected this offer and is fighting it, claiming it’s unfair and contrary to the principles of FRAND licensing commitments. No matter the outcome of the Apple/Motorola dispute, Google will be honoring it once they take over.

Hackers have once again turned to cracking iTunes accounts to obtain a ton of content paid content and leave you with the bill. Once inside your account, these thieves will steal your store credit and gift cards, and make purchases with your credit card and Paypal information. But is Apple doing enough to stop them?

Your brand new car starts losing value the second you drive it off the dealer’s lot – that an old (and very true) addage. Like a new, a new piece of technology begins to lose value or depreciate as soon as you leave the store. With cars and with major tech purchases like a new iMac, this isn’t an immediate source of pain or dismay since you’ll be using them for at least a few years.

When it comes to smartphones and other mobile devices like our iPhones and iPads, depreceiation and loss of dollar value is equally true. The big difference is that most of us don’t hold to them for nearly as long.

If you’re in the habit of passing your iPhone or other mobile device onto friends or family members, that may not matter too much. But what if you’re looking to recoup some your investment?

Back in 1991, according to a recently released FBI file on Apple’s iconic founder, Steve Jobs was considered for a sensitive position in the Bush Administration.

The file is quite long, and we’re reading through it now. But one thing that the file immediately makes clear is that even the FBI knew about Steve Jobs’s patented reality distortion field! In fact, it’s directly referenced in their file on more than one occasion.

According to Japanese blog Macotakara, this is the iPad 3’s new Retina Displayl: a Sharp XQGA panel running at a resolution of 2048×1536. Yup. Looks about right. We believe it.

Most reports up until now have had the iPad 3’s speedier A6 processor pegged as a quad-core affair, just like some of the more advanced Honeycomb competition, but according to a new source, the iPad 3’s processor will still be a dual-core CPU. But why would Apple skimp when the competition’s got them beat?

Oh look: talks from smart ideas conference TED have arrived on iTunes U.

There are six themed courses covering things like Visual Arts, Climate Change, and Creative Problem Solving. Each one comprises a number of different TED talks that you can watch for free.

Apple is set to announce its much-anticipated iPad 3 during the first week of March, according to sources for All Things D. It’s unclear when the device will actually launch, but it is said be “pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release.”

There are many grid cameras in the App Store, but Grid Lens by Bucket Labs caught my eye because it adds a little bit of fun, something you don’t see often in camera apps.

Whether Samsung’s blatant Apple bashing adverts are actually convincing customers to buy its products is unclear, but they are at least inspiring other companies to mock Apple’s gadgets in their own ads.

Amazion is the latest, with a new Kindle ad that takes aim at the iPad for its poor reading conditions in direct sunlight, and its heavy price tag.

The latest update to Alfred adds a selection of smart new features, one of which is a new way of grabbing selected text from any Mac app and pushing it straight into one of your other Alfred actions – such as a web search, for example.

Images of leaked iPad 3 components hot off the factory floor have been provided to Cult of Mac. They reveal that the internal components of Apple’s third-generation iPad are significantly different to those features in its first- and second-generation tablet. However, its design seems to remain almost the same.

It’s been quite some time since I heard anyone mention the name Vonage but it appears they are still alive and kicking. They’re looking to steal some of Skype’s mobile business by offering a new VOIP app for both Android and iOS that claims to offer international calling at 30% less the cost of Skype. Of course the biggest draw is the free app-to-app calling and texting as well as free calls to any Vonage number. Full features of the Vonage Mobile app include:

RepairLabs has gotten its hands on what is reportedly a back panel for the upcoming iPad 3. While the new housing remains largely identical to its predecessor, this leaked rear panel does suggest several changes to Apple’s third-generation tablet.

The iPad 3 will reportedly feature a bigger battery, updated camera, and hi-res, Retina-like display. Rumors have suggested that Apple is set to introduce a Retina display, super-powered iPad as early as next month.

Apple’s concept of the App Store works well for consumers. Search for whatever apps you want or need and buy or download them with one-click shopping in iTunes of the App Store app on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. That system starts to break down when it comes to iOS devices in the workplace, particularly for companies that create internal apps that need to be rolled out to a large number of users. It can become even more complicated when dealing with employee-owned devices because IT may never see the iPhone or iPads that are being used and therefore need a specific set of apps.

The best option for addressing this need is the concept of an enterprise app store – an app that users can install from a central location on their corporate network that will allow them to peruse a selection of apps developed by their company’s IT department as well as business apps from Apple’s App Store.

Caught up in a maelstrom of controversy over revelations that Path has been uploading iOS users’ address books to their own servers, Path CEO David Morin has spoken out about what’s going to happen now.

It’s all good news. Not only is Path taking full responsibility, and apologizing whole-heartedly for the violation, they’ve also pushed live a new update to the Path app that makes uploading your address book opt-in. But will other developers follow Path’s lead?

Following the Tweetbot for iPhone 2.0 update earlier today, Tapbots has released Tweetbot for iPad in the App Store. The new app costs $2.99 and is available now.

All the features Tweetbot for iPhone users have come to appreciate are present in the new iPad app, and Tapbots has created a very compelling experience that takes advantage of smart gestures, intuitive design elements, and robust third-party service integration.

We’ve all been wondering when Apple will release the next update for iOS 5, with many speculating we won’t see 5.1 until the next-generation iPad is unveiled. According to a new discovery in the iPhone’s carrier operator profiles, Apple could be set to drop iOS 5.1 on Friday, March 9th.

Apple’s decision to shun Flash Player for its iOS devices has been well documented over the years. But with the iPhone nearly five years old now, it’s no surprise third-party developers are offering up their own solutions for accessing Flash on our iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

One of those developers is Skyfire Labs, which is behind Skyfire for iOS — a web browser that allows you to watch Flash videos without unauthorized jailbreak tweaks. Here’s how to get started with Skyfire.

Over at The Loop, Jim Dalrymple posted a picture of what Samsung’s new 5.3-inch smartphone, the Galaxy Note, looks like next to the iPhone 4S.

While we were over there, guffawing with the rest of you, we happened to note this comment from Joel Glovier, who claims:

Everybody knows this is trick photography, right? The hand on the right is a bit closer to the camera than the hand on the left, as evidenced by the larger shadow of the right hand, and it’s distance away from the hand.

We thought we could put this defense to rest, because at CES, we here at Cult of Mac did a side-by-side comparison shot of the Galaxy Note compared to the iPhone 4S, and — nope — this isn’t trick photography. It really is that big. In fact, we quipped it was an Apple Newton rip-off!

Or as Han Solo might say, “That’s no moon…” But it’s the size of one!

Tapbots released Tweetbot 2.0 for iPhone in the App Store today. The update brings
 several significant improvements, including one-tap links, image preview thumbnails, 
faster performance, and a UI facelift.

Tweetbot was already one of the best third-party Twitter clients in the App Store, and it 
just got even better with version 2.0.

Social networking app Path hit the headlines yesterday after it turned out the company was taking users’ entire address books and uploading them to their servers.

It’s a big privacy violation, but Path’s hardly the only one doing this. In fact, computer engineering professor Mark Chang has just discovered that Hipster, the popular photo-filter postcards app, does the exact same thing as Path: sucks up your contacts and squirts them into their servers.

We often wonder about what the “woman behind the curtain” would look like when we use voice action apps such as Siri but for the Android alternative Iris, we now have a pretty good idea. Iris was an app created for Android by developers Dexetra and started as a tongue-in-cheek reply to iPhone’s Siri. It became immensely popular and currently has over 1 million installs. Things seemed to be going good for this Android Siri competitor until Gizmodo recently revealed the “woman behind the curtain.” It turns out ChaCha, the search engine behind the app, is a bigoted, religious zealot that may have some disturbing answers to some of your questions.