Finding apps in the App Store can be daunting. Sure, you can use the search function, or the Top Ten lists there, but still, with over 500,000 apps just sitting there waiting to be downloaded, it takes a lot of wading to find the true gems. That’s why Apple started their promotional areas in iTunes, to help consumers find quality apps and games. The New and Noteworthy section, the Hot Apps section, and the more recent iPhone and iPad App of the Week features call out the best of the best, in Apple’s eyes, at least. Now they’ve gone and added a new way to help you find the cream of the crop in their much lauded store: Free App of the Week.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

Absolute Manage MDM provides all the major mobile management capabilities. In addition device and app management, Absolute Manage MDM offers a secure on-device file store option called AbsoluteSafe that can be used to deliver files directly to user devices. AbsoluteSafe includes the ability to automate access to files by policies or schedule in addition to on-demand file deployment, removal, or access rights adjustments. The suite integrates with the company’s Absolute desktop client management (Mac and Windows) and deployment suite, together they can provide complete IT and lifecycle management features mobile devices, Macs, PCs, and software.

When you jailbreak an iOS device, you are given access to Cydia, the wild west frontier of tweaks, themes and apps you can’t get in Apple’s own App Store. Jailbreaking gives you the freedom to customize your device the way you see fit by installing various plugins, system-level extensions, tweaks and apps from Cydia.

After awhile, you can amass quite a few Cydia apps and packages, and it’s important to keep your purchases and downloads backed up for safe keeping. Whether it’s a jailbreak tweak you paid $2 for or a free one, you don’t want to lose what you find during your jailbreaking career.

Every several months a new jailbreak will come out for the latest version of iOS, and you’ll need to re-jailbreak your iOS device. Restoring to a stock version of iOS before jailbreaking removes all of your jailbreak apps and tweaks. In Cult of Mac’s ultimate roundup, we’ll show you the best ways to backup and restore your Cydia apps on your jailbroken iOS device.

Congrats, commenter munpip214! You’ve won the contest! Enjoy your newfound fame!

So, this image is fairly clear, right? A ton of iPads, all charging with some charging ephemera in the background, none of them out of the plastic wrap that iPads come in. The poster on G+, Google’s social network, is Cameron Brower. What he does is anyone’s guess, but we found this image to be rather sublime, and just crying out for a clever caption. His comment on it? “I hope I never see an iPad again.” Now, it’s your turn.

AT&T has begun shutting down its 2G service in New York to free up spectrum for 3G and 4G customers. The shut down will effect a number of mobile phones that rely on 2G service for voice and data.

If you’re still using an original iPhone that doesn’t support 3G, it isn’t time to worry just yet. At least initially, the AT&T will only be shutting down one of the frequency bands that it uses to provide 2G service. Frequency that is  supported by the original iPhone will be maintained for the foreseeable future.

Here we go again, more numbers, more Android and iOS domination. According to IDC, 8 out of 10 smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2012 included either iOS or Android. Android continues to lead the pack with a total of 59% of the 152.3 million smartphones shipped, while iOS accounted for 23% respectively. Combined they populate 82% of the smartphone market, up 27.6% since Q1 2011. These numbers are an amazing testament to Android’s growth as well as iOS’s stability (which is amazing considering they only have a few devices).

TSA is the latest U.S. federal agency to make a significant investment in Apple technologies in what may be a move away from RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows PCs. The agency is set to start a pilot program that will run over the next three years and will involve heavy investment in Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Apple TVs.

According to federal documents (PDF link), the security agency plans to spend $3 million on Apple products and has an amazingly wide range of uses for them in mind. The plans go well beyond the scope of Apple investments made by other U.S. government agencies like the EPA and FAA, which focus primarily on iPhones and/or iPads.

Reminder lists rock, right? They let us track of all the things we need to do, access the lists on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or even in iCal on our Mac. Yet, wouldn’t it be slick if we could share, say, a shopping list with our husband or wife? Share a list of things to get done for a particular work project with our team members? What about set lists with the other folks in our disco band? That would be cool, right? It turns out that this is fairly simple yet not that intuitive to do.

Update: According to our tipster, Airfoil Speakers Touch wasn’t yanked arbitrarily, but instead because it duplicates functionality in the still unreleased and officially unannounced iOS 6. Our source says that in iOS 6, an Apple TV, for example, can pipe sound from a movie to an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad, and any iOS device will be able to beam audio to another. We’re trying to get more details, and have reached out to Apple and Rogue Amoeba for comment. Original post is below.

Update: 2: We’ve added Rogue Amoeba’s official comment at the bottom of this post.

Rogue Amoeba are some of the good guys. They’ve released some of the Mac’s coolest audio apps, including Airfoil, Audio Hijack Pro, Piezo, Pulsar, Nicecast and Fission, and we’ve long been a fan of their version of Airfoil for iOS. Called Airfoil Speakers Touch, the app allowed you to stream audio over AirPlay from your Mac, PC or iDevice to any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. We’ve been rocking it since 2009.

Now Airfoil Speakers Touch is dead, killed for unspecified reasons by Apple’s App Store review team while the guys at Rogue Amoeba scratch their heads.

Take one look at my cellphone and you’ll either laugh at me, pity me or envy me. It’s a Sony Ericsson P900, a brick of a smartphone introduced in 2003, and I got it when my P800 was stolen from my bag in London’s Soho (at that time, Orange in the UK gave you free insurance for your phones — go figure).

And after a few years of struggling with various dumbphones and the execrable Samsung Behold, I’m back to the P900 and I love it. Why? Because it was designed to be used like the iPhone, not crippled by carriers like everything else these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8fJjt068s6s

Coming on the heels of Facebook’s $1 billion Instagram acquisition, but otherwise pretty much out of nowhere, the social networking giant just released a brand new Camera app called Facebook Camera… and it’s so much like Instagram that you have to wonder if Facebook bought the up-and-coming app just so it could put a bullet through its head before it became a real threat.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to build an iPhone & iPad game but didn’t know how to code, you’ve come to the right place. The latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is a video course featuring over 8.5 hours of information that will teach you how to build an iPhone/iPad game using Game Salad – a free third-party piece of software.

This course is aimed at beginners who want to make games today but have no desire to program (or want an easier starting point than traditional coding courses). This offer is aimed at people who want to save money in the process, as you’ll get access to The iOS Games Workshop for only $79 for a limited time!

Apologies in advance for yet another camera adapter post, but this one — as you’ll see — is a biggie: The Fujifilm M-Mount adapter. But first, a short bit of history.

Lead by the iPad, tablets, and other non-phone devices accounted for 20% of mobile ads during the first quarter of 2012. That number is up 5% from the first quarter of last year. The increase reflects a change in the mix of mobile devices that people use to consume content and may have implications for the entire ad industry – mobile and otherwise.

Every now and again you find something on the App Store that brings a smile to your face because you know it’s new, it’s different, and it does something that no other app has done before. Hueless is a one dollar black-and-white camera app that meets all those criteria and more, and after just a day of shooting with it, I think I’m in love.

Sprint took a gamble on the iPhone last fall. In exchange for getting the iPhone 4 and 4S on its network, the company agreed to pay $15 billion in subsidies over the next four years. The company acknowledged that it pays 40% more to subsidize the iPhone than it does for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone handsets. To get shareholders on board, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse actually gave up $3.25 million in compensation.

It looks like Sprint’s investment may be paying off in unexpected. A new study by the Yankee Group revealed this week that the iPhone has a halo effect for carriers as well as it does for other Apple products – an effect that dramatically changed public perception of Sprint once it began carried the iPhone.

Sony has long had an inexplicable love affair with proprietary connectors, accessories, anything. From Memory Sticks to ATRAC Minidiscs to annoying headphone sockets on phones, Sony’s philosophy seems to be “if you can piss off a customer, why not do it?”

And so it is with the NEX mirrorless cameras. Excellent devices in almost every way, unless you want to use a flash, in which case you have to spring for one of Sony’s own specialty units. Still, this customer hatred is at least good news for third-party accessory makers, and NEX Proshop will now sell you an adapter that adds a proper hot-shoe and PC socket to your NEX camera.

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

This post is brought to you by SolarWinds, an IT software management company with more than 93,000 customers worldwide – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses. Click here to download a free 30-Day Trial of Mobile Admin from SolarWinds. Author: Denny LeCompte Coauthor: Stephanie Mitchell.

Which smartphone or tablet are you bringing to work?

With the constant stream of news emerging in the Apple versus Android battle, we think it’s time to look at which devices the IT pros are choosing, and how recent trends are affecting what devices are brought into work.

Infinity Blade II is one of those essential games that every iOS user should own. Its intense hack and slash gameplay makes it a joy to play over and over again, and its stunning 3D visuals are the perfect masterpiece for showcasing the abilities of your iOS device. What’s more, it just keeps getting better with each and every update.

The latest, version 1.2, is named ‘Vault of Fears’, and it delivers new areas with new secrets, new enemies, and new items.

After two months of scarcity, Apple’s finally gotten its new iPad production ramped up enough to get a new iPad to you the same week you ordered one, from a Foxconn factory straight to your door in 1-3 business days. Just three weeks ago, it still took 3-5 business days for Apple to ship a new iPad to an online customer. In another three weeks, you might be able to overnight one.

Apple’s done a lot better with new iPad supply compared to the iPad 2. Not only did everyone who wanted one on launch day pretty much get one, but it took Apple about four months last year to get shipping times down to 1-3 business days, and five months to get it down to within 24 hours. Let’s hope this is a trend towards having enough supply to go around that continues with the iPhone 5.

Source: Apple

One interesting moment during last year’s WWDC keynote was when Steve Jobs said that Apple was moving beyond the digital hub strategy it had embraced for years. He talked about how our computers are no longer the hub of our digital life and said that Apple was demoting the Macs and PCs and making them just another device like an iPhone or iPad.

That message set the stage for iCloud and for cord-free iOS devices that don’t need a Mac or PC for activation, backup, or sync.

There was also a much subtler message, however, that no one really picked up on at that time. In making the Mac just another device, Apple was likely laying the groundwork to change how companies and schools manage Macs – essentially treating them as just another device and bringing the mobile device management (MDM) paradigm introduced in iOS 4 to OS X and Mac management.

The creators of the popular Bump app that lets you share contact information and photos by simply bumping two phones together has bumped up their magic to include your computer. Thanks to today’s update, users will now be able to “magically” transfer their photos from their phone to their computer by simply bumping their phone against their keyboards spacebar. Say what? Yea, and the best part is there’s no additional software needed!

The first thing the vast majority of us would do in the event that our precious iPhone is stolen is load up the Find My iPhone feature within iCloud and then call the Police and tell them where the shameless thug is located, in the hope that they’ll find the time to go and recover our device. Some of us may even take matters into our own hands and try to recover it ourselves (but that’s not really recommended.)

But when Michael Meehan’s son had his iPhone stolen, he took advantage of his position as Chief of Police in Berkeley, California, and ordered ten of his officers to track it down. All off the books.

French newspaper Le Figaro is reporting that Apple’s European, Middle East and Africa aVP, Pascal Cagni, has resigned from Apple after a twelve year tenure, having first been appointed by Steve Jobs directly back in April 2000.

In that last dozen years, Cagni drove revenue in Europe from $1 billion to more than $19 billion.

Right now, Cagni’s LinkedIn profile still lists him as employed by Apple.

We’ve reached out to Apple for confirmation. More as we get it.

Source: LeFigaro
Via: The Next Web

While the majority of Americans celebrate Memorial Day with barbecues and lawn darts, Rockstar Games is celebrating with pimps, hoes, and enough bloodshed to paint any street red. Now until May 28th, Rockstar Games will be offering its sandbox hit Grand Theft Auto III for $.99 (that’s 80% off). For less than the cost of a hotdog, you’ll be able to enjoy: