BYOD and ever-increasing mobility are business trends that are forcing many organizations to take a fresh look at security. The idea of employees connecting from home, coffee shops, and even planes has led to an overall increasing awareness of the need to secure remote connections. At the same time, business data residing on the iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices of those employees is causing the IT industry to take a fresh look at mobile device security.

That is, of course, a good thing. With the focus on mobile security, however, many IT organizations are letting the security and overall design of their core networks to become outdated – and exposing their companies to incredible risks in the process.

TaskPaper for Mac OS X from Hog Bay Software has been reduced to just $1.99 today as part of the Two Dollar Tuesday software promotion. That’s a whopping 93% off its original price tag of $29.99.

Want to quickly check the weather on your iPhone? Want to have your eyes soothed by wonderful, minimal design at the same time as you’re informed of the temperature outside? Then you need WTHR, an iPhone app which could have been designed by Dieter Rams himself.

Following the Flashback malware scare this spring, Apple is stepping up its focus on security and malware protection in Mountain Lion. The release notes for the latest Mountain Lion developer preview include references to a “new Mountain Lion Security Updates system” that checks for security updates on a daily basis, uses a more secure connection when communicating with Apple’s update servers, and can install required updates automatically when a Mac is restarted.

Based on the release notes for the system, Apple is making the security update process automatic and has designed it to  runs as a system process rather than a user task. Presumably that means it will function without a user logged in or while non-admin users are logged in. All in all, that’s similar to Microsoft’s Windows update feature and a good thing for users.

That doesn’t mean that this setup will be great fit for businesses, schools, and other organizations with large Mac populations.

Apple has increased the security of its fourth OS X Mountain Lion developer preview by introducing a number of new security features that will presumably become part of the software’s public release next month. 

It’s taken a good three months, but Words With Friends HD has finally gained support for the new iPad. The version 5.0 update, which just hit the App Store this morning — now comes with high-resolution artwork optimized for the Retina display, and support for landscape orientation.

When Lion debuted, the Save As… function had been removed from the File menu, and an interloper – Duplicate – was put in its place. The problem is that if you use Duplicate, you end up with two documents, one with “copy” appended to its name. In addition, Duplicate has no keyboard shortcut. This has made a lot of us sad.

While we’ve reported that Save As… functionality is coming back in OS X Mountain Lion, that doesn’t help those of us using plain-old Lion right now. However, with a little work around, we can get the same functionality until Mountain Lion comes out.

Apple released its second iOS 6 beta to registered developers yesterday, and it included a number of new changes. The Cupertino company’s new Passbook app remains inactive, however… unless you know about the workaround.

Although nothing you can do within the Passbook app itself will get it working, there is a little trick you can perform in mobile Safari. Here’s what you need to do.

Facebook has updated its standalone Facebook Messenger app for the iPhone this morning to deliver a nice selection of new features, in addition to some bug fixes and performance improvements. Highlights include in-app notifications, the ability to delete individual messages, and support for larger images.

We’ve already talked about how your next iPhone should be a prepaid one, right? Heck, we’ve even discussed why Cricket might be your next iPhone carrier. It sounds like some folks must have been listening.

When Cricket started selling pre-paid iPhones as planned today, people lined up at the door before stores opened to get one of the newly available Apple handsets.

Seems like everyone’s playing catch up lately, right? First Microsoft’s Surface tablet is announced, and now Google TV looks like it’s getting an update that’s sure to put a little heat on Apple’s own hobby initiative.

Apple refrained from mentioning its TV product during the World Wide Developer Conference last week. According to Fox News, an announcement about an update to Google TV is coming at Google’s own developer conference this week, Google I/O. What will it include, we wonder?

The Wall Street Journal seems to think so, reporting that Orbitz points users of its online web travel booking service to different, sometimes more expensive, options when those users use a Mac.

What the heck, Orbitz?

With every iteration of iOS, Apple provides more and more accessibility features to its users to make iOS devices open to more people than ever before. iOS 6 includes something big. Guided Access is essentially a tool that allows you to restrict certain areas of your screen and physical buttons in order to make the device easier to use for someone with a disability, or for younger children.

 Guided Access can even be used in the classroom, to stop children from exiting the current app while taking a test. It’s a really neat feature, and in my opinion, one of the most overlooked. If you’re exploring how to manage access on an iPhone, Guided Access is a great alternative to guest mode iPhone, as it lets you control app usage effectively. With iOS 6 beta 2, the feature is finally functional, so in this video I’ll show you how it can work.

To the general public, Apple’s new MacBook Pro represents the future of laptop technology, and the culmination of years of research and technological breakthroughs. But to Apple, the new MacBook Pro is not only a revolutionary product, but a huge money making behemoth as well.

That’s right, Apple could see an additional $1 billion in pure profit thanks to its newest machine.

Just last week, we reported that Steve Wozniak had met with Megaupload’s founder Kim Dotcom to show his support. Now Wozniak is speaking out, and he isn’t very happy, offering some harsh words towards the U.S. Government’s Treatment Of The Megaupload case.

Keeping your projects organized is hard; whether they’re for home, school, or work, projects tend to take on a life of their own. A good task manager can be essential to keeping the project moving, on time, and with a minimum of stress. wunderlist is available for the iPad, is free, and has some great features to boot, making it an obvious choice for many of us who need to manage our projects better.

In a long-awaited update, Google is finally brining some improvements to its Gmail app for iOS. The newest update brings support for Notification Center, “Send-As”, and persistent login, all useful features which should be well received by users of the app.

Cloud storage accounts for just 7% of our digital content according to Gartner the industry research firm. Given the ubiquity of cloud services and their ability to sync personal data, photos, documents, and just about everything else with our iPhone, iPads, Mac, PCs, and other devices, that number may sound a bit small. After all, the range of content that iCloud is capable of syncing in Lion and iOS 5 isn’t exactly minor.

Gartner also predicts that the percentage of the average user’s digital property will grow to more than five times that by 2016. At that point, the firm sees most users store more that a third (36%) of their digital content in various clouds. That news isn’t exactly surprising for Apple customers. Apple is making a major push for seamless iCloud integration in Mountain Lion and iOS 6. That said, the firm’s report digital storage does have a few surprises in it. In some ways the report shows that Apple is leading rather than following the personal cloud industry.

You probably love Instagram filters, and all the other image-tweaking filters in the myriad apps available for your iPhone. But no matter how many you try, they are all just presets.

What if you could make your own presets instead? That’s the promise of Booster!, an iPhone 4/s (or iPad 3 if you don’t mind pixel-doubling) photo app with infinitely changeable live filter effects.

There are a lot of guitar interfaces out there for the Mac, but at about $32, the Behringer Guitar Link UCG102 (just rolls off the tongue, no?) is one of the cheapest you’ll find. Even more surprising? This little duder sounds good.

We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac. We are also complete nerds, which means that we’re always peeking into people’s bags at conferences, or checking out what gear people use.

And we figured that you all might be just as bad, so we figured we’d rip open our man bags, handbags and purses and show you what’s inside, and why we carry what we do.

We’ll be doing this periodically from time to time. This week, we take a look into the bag – or perhaps we should say pockets – of apps reviewer Giles Turnbull.

Got a super-fast Canon 5D MkIII? Love that you can just pop out the SD card and slide it straight into your Retina iPad via the camera connection kit? Not so fast – literally. Photographer Jeff Cable has done the math and found that the camera’s SD slot is slow, slow slow compared the the CF slot, and then it actually gets worse.

It’s hardly religious, but Apple tends to drop new developer betas of iOS every two weeks when a major new version is coming up. Today, Apple has started pushing out iOS 6 beta 2 over-the-air to registered developers.

We’ll be digging through iOS 6 Beta 2 today to find out what’s new, but there’s at least one change so far: when you install a new OTA update of iOS 6, the Settings icon apparently animates.

Via: 9to5Mac

When Apple unveiled the new Retina MacBook Pros, one thing they really highlighted was the fact that, thanks to the new solid-state storage and assymetrical fans, the new MBP is the coolest, quietest MacBook Pro yet. That’s not hard to believe, but given how lap-meltingly hot previous MacBook Pros could get, it doesn’t really tell you how comfortable a new Retina MBP is going to be on your lap during a heavy workload. Heat maps to the rescue!

RadTech’s brand spanking news RadSleevz are the closest you’ll get to a Smart Cover for your new Retina MacBook Pro. Although some of you might feel that your $2,000+ notebook deserves a little more protection, others will appreciate the RadSleevz’ minimalism.