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.

Yesterday, we reported on a story about the new search algorithms in the iTunes App store. It was speculated that the new search results seen by iOS developers were due to Apple’s acquisition of Chomp, a search company that had found some success in the crowded market.

The developers who noticed the result reported better than average search rankings, with the implication that the new search would filter out the bad apps, only leaving the good ones.

Today, we heard from a developer of an app with a different story.

Apple has put a lot of work into developing its own secure messaging platform. With Mountain Lion and the Messages app that Apple rolled out in iOS 5, Apple is setting up its iMessage platform with a lot potential advantages for consumers and business users alike. For business, the always available and secure messaging is huge. Messages and conversations can be found on an employee’s iPhone, iPad, home iMac, work MacBook Air – that’s taking the concept of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service to a higher level.

For consumers, the great features are the integration of non-phone devices like the iPad and iPod touch and reduced reliance on carriers for texting, which can translate to cost savings (depending on mobile carrier/plan).

While most of us still use SMS to send text messages, there’s a distinct trend in shifting to using solutions like Apple’s Message platform.

Earlier today, we reported that Siri had leaked Apple’s plans to open up a new retail store in the Broadway shopping center in Sydney, Australia. It seems, however, that it wasn’t such a big secret after all, because the Cupertino company has already begun work on the new outlet, as these images sent into Cult of Mac prove.

Before his tragic and untimely death last October, Steve Jobs’s chronic health issues were such a constant concern for investors that they arguably kept the stock price of the company artificially low for years, as Wall Street worried that the company would tank without its charismatic leader at the helm.

Obviously, that hasn’t happened. In fact, since Jobs’s death, Apple’s share price has soared to new highs. As sad as it is to say, in some ways, Jobs’s death finally liberated the stock from the hyperbolic threat of his death, and allowed investors to finally appraise the company as it actually is: the best on Earth, even without Steve, because he made it that way.

But Wall Street never learns. Since Google CEO Larry Page called in sick to last week’s annual meeting, investors are panicking.

SkimClip is a very clever, and very handy little Mac app. What it does it this: With one keystroke, you can make a screen grab of any part of your Mac’s desktop and SkimClip saves it and performs OCR.

Thus, any image containing text is instantly cataloged for searching. Sure, you could also roll your own PDF workflow to do the same thing, but as SkimClip also organizes the results into an iTunes-like interface with search, subcategories and quick-look, and only costs $5 on the Mac App Store, then why bother?

Plus, this is yet another way to convert DRM-encumbered e-books into plain old go-anywhere text.

SkimClip v1.0 is available now in the Mac App Store.

Source: Dom Loves Kim Software

Believe it or not, there are over one million iPhone users in the United States who cannot access 3G networks because their carrier of choice is T-Mobile. Apple’s smartphone isn’t officially available on T-Mobile right now — because the operator’s unique 3G network isn’t supported by the handset’s wireless chip — but people choose to use its 2G network instead.

That situation will change for the new iPhone, however, because T-Mobile has announced it will launch a new LTE network next year.

Despite countless rumors suggesting it was on its way, when Microsoft unveiled its new Surface tablet late last week, a lot of people were surprised. It was a strange move by the Redmond-based company, who has traditionally focused solely on software and allowed other companies to worry about the hardware.

So why did Microsoft build its own tablet?

According to one of the company’s former employees, it took hardware matters into its own hands when it realized it couldn’t rely on PC makers to make the same bets Apple was making. You see, Apple has taken some incredible steps to make its iPad the behemoth it is today. And rival companies just weren’t willing to gamble.

Over the weekend, The NY Times posted another investigative piece in its iEconomy series that about Apple. This installment focused on Apple’s retail stores. As with previous articles in the series, this one focuses on legitimate concerns about the American economy in an age of globalization. Like the other pieces, this one targets Apple specifically and ignores the range of Apple competitors that employ similar practices.

The primary issue that the Times brings up with regard to Apple retail stores is that employees can sell thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of Apple products and still earn a relatively modest wage. The underlying sentiment is that if a retail employee sells so much hardware, he should earn more because he is contributing to Apple’s vast revenues.

The only way for things to shake out that way and remain fair would be if Apple offered performance-based awards or commissions. Apple chose not to do that because doing so would have delivered a fundamentally different customer experience than the one envisioned by Steve Jobs – a fact that the NY Times chose not to explore in any real depth.

It seems that there can be no corner of the niche product universe that can’t be mined and exploited with tasteless “luxury” versions of regular, plain ol’ tools. Today’s example: the Lynktec ArtCloths, which show your “appreciation” for great art in the same way that the tinny ringtone snippet belching from your cellphone shows your appreciation of music.

Although iOS 6 looks a lot like iOS 5 on the surface, a number of Apple’s built-in apps and services have received some big changes. The biggest overhaul comes to the Maps app, which has done away with Google Maps in favor of Apple’s own 3D mapping service. Another feature you can look forward to in Maps, according to an Apple document sent out to developers, is Yelp check-ins.