Who says iPad keyboards have to run on Bluetooth? Not MacAlly, that’s for sure. The iKey30 is a good ol’ USB keyboard which sports a 30-pin dock connector on the end of its cable, and comes with an almost ridiculous number of special function keys.
We can all surmise that urinating upon your Mac will not be covered by your AppleCare, but here’s an interesting question: if you stand up right this second, unzip your fly and hose off all over your MacBook, can you even pay Apple to service the machines?
The answer is no, because Apple looks at micturated-upon MacBooks as a biohazard. Along with an obnoxious 11-year-old’s full bladder, the obscure fact above is what ended up costing a Pennsylvanian school district upwards of thirty-six thousand dollars to replace a cart full of thoroughly soaked MacBooks.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran another in its series of exposes about Apple. This one focused on Apple’s complex mix of offices and subsidiaries located throughout the world and the U.S. that allow the company to keep large portions of its more than $100 billion in low-tax states and countries.
The report comes after the paper’s expose on working conditions within Foxconn, the contractor that Apple uses to assemble most of its products and calls by politicians and members of the media for Apple to move more of its manufacturing and money to American soil.
Apple’s mythical, standalone TV set has been the subject of much speculation over the past several months. Rumors have been saying that we’ll see an Apple-branded TV set (dubbed ‘iTV’ in most cases) by the end of this year at the earliest. The TV is expected to feature Siri integration, IP-based streaming and even a gaming element.
On the streaming side of things, a new report claims that Apple has been in talks to secure the rights to stream Hollywood movies for its upcoming TV set.
When Windows 8 debuts as a tablet OS later this year, it will have one major advantage over the iPad for people who want to use a Windows 8 slate as a laptop replacement: you can run apps side-by-side, consulting a document in one pane while writing up an email, say, in another.
I’ve been saying since last year that this is a killer feature Apple should try to lift in iOS 6, but up until now, all we’ve seen are jailbreak hacks sloppily emulate the functionality. No longer. A hack has finally come along that does it right.
Microsoft has teamed up with Barnes & Noble with a $300 million investment that will create a new subsidiary focused on accelerating “the transition to e-reading.” Microsoft will take a 17.6% equity stake in a subsidiary, which is yet to be named, while Barnes & Noble will own the remaining 82.4%.
The move will provide Microsoft with its own answer to iBooks, with plans for a NOOK application that will run on Windows 8, and it’ll give users an alternative to the Kindle Store.
Alternative desktop browser fans(*), your attention please. Opera’s released its next thing, and it’s a feature-packed beta of Opera 12.
Is your menubar getting just a little, well, crufty? With more and more apps taking advantage of this handy place to put notification and mini-app icons for extra functionality, it seems like the menu bar is like that bar down the street where they’ll let just anyone in. Today’s tip should help clean up the Menu Bar apps on your Mac. You’re on your own for the neighborhood watering hole.
Despite his love for the iPhone and its iOS operating system, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak surprisingly feels that Windows Phone apps are “more beautiful” than their counterparts on Android and iOS, and jokes that Steve Jobs may have been reincarnated inside Microsoft.
Woz also revealed that he favours Windows Phone over Android, but that iOS is still his number one choice.
The new Apple TV has made its debut in Brazil today, but it picked up a pretty hefty price tag on the way. Although the set-top box sells for just $99 in the U.S., in Brazil it costs 399 Reals — roughly $211.
We’re excited to announce new promotional opportunities on The CultCast, Cult of Mac’s new technology podcast.
Since our launch on February 24th, The CultCast has been consistently positioned as a top-five technology podcast on iTunes, and has had multiple appearances as iTunes’ #1 most popular tech podcast. We’re off to an amazing start!
Bluetooth OnOff, an incredibly useful app which does one thing — toggle your iPhone’s Bluetooth connection on and off — has inevitably been pulled from the App Store. The 99-cent Universal app used private APIs to work its magic, and is now sadly consigned to the trashcan, along with data-tethering apps and other much-missed utilities.
OS X has a nice default array of keyboard shortcuts, but as more advanced users know, it can be nice to be able to customize these shortcuts to fit your needs. In this video I’ll show you how you can customize and create keyboard shortcuts for any application.
If you visited the site yesterday, you’ll already be aware that Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have apps and games roundups are now back. This is where we choose our pick of the best new releases and updates to hit the App Store in the past week.
This week’s feature includes the official Klout app, which has finally made its way to iOS; a great service for storing and syncing your passwords from security specialists Norton; a beautiful weather app, and more.
Everybody and their mother is trying to cash in on Apple’s success, or dictate the evolution of media and technology through the courts.
Shameless gold diggers, grand-standing government attorneys, vindictive rivals, patent trolls and, well, good old-fashioned morons are dragging the world’s most valuable company into court to try and get their piece of Apple’s $110 billion pile of cash.
You won’t believe some of the crazy lawsuits Apple is currently defending itself against.
So you’ve wanted the opportunity to learn how to code your own website but you just…haven’t…done…it. Well, Cult of Mac Deals is here to get you started on the path to, well…doing it.
With the Web Dev and SEO Course Bundle, you’ll learn how to code, attract thousands of visitors to your brand new website and get certified in HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL. By the time you’re done with these two video courses, you’ll be a certified web developer and will be able to implement strategic SEO tactics to make sure people can find your brand new website. Cult of Mac Deals has had this bundle up for grabs for a limited time for only $79…but that limited time is almost up!
If you’re a fan of Steve Jobs, or if you’ve ever pondered what makes Apple so different from every other company out there, you’re not going to want to miss our fascinating CultCast interview with ex Apple Ad guy and long time Steve Jobs collaborator, Ken Segall.
In his 12 years as an advertising executive working with Apple, Ken Segall put that little “i” in front of the iMac, helped develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign, and spent countless hours creating and working closely with one Mr. Steven P. Jobs — he even got yelled at a few times.
Now Mr. Segall has a new book out, titled, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success. And in this episode of The CultCast, Ken regales us with stories of what it was really like working with Steve Jobs, and what makes Apple so different from every other company on earth.
There’s no question that the iPad and iPhone are two of the best ways to watch a movie. But the biggest problem is getting our favorite DVD’s on to the dang things. Sure, you can go to iTunes and buy a digital copy of your movie, again. But that costs a lot of money if you want a digital copy of all your movies, and if you already own the physical disc, what’s the point? Plus, once you download those movies, the iPad only has a limited amount of storage available. Those two hurdles prevent a lot of people from fully realizing the beauty of owning an iOS device by watching their favorite movies.
This week we’re bringing you two solutions to get over your DVD ripping hurdles: the MacX DVD Ripper Pro Stream Edition and MacX Video Converter Pro by Digiarty. MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer’s package includes the ability to rip movie files from the DVDs you already own, convert them into iPhone and iPad supported video files, and wirelessly stream them to your iOS device. MacX Video Converter Pro can take those files and convert them to any video format you need, or download your favorite Vimeo and YouTube videos right off the web. Not only is Digiarty’s software awesome, and easy enough for your momma to use, but they’re giving it away, FREE, to all Cult of Mac readers for the next 7 days!
Here’s how to get your copy:
Apple’s iPhone dock looks good, but has a couple of big problems. It doesn’t accommodate cases and it hangs onto your iPhone and won’t let go. The ODOC stand fixes both these issues, and looks great too.
Incase, the company that produced the first iPod case for Apple, has gained a reputation for making well-designed and well-made Apple accessories utilizing advanced construction techniques and innovative materials. The company has just updated its lineup of iPad cases for the new iPad.
Following a short hiatus, Cult of Mac’s weekly must-have apps and games features are back! Here we’ll roundup our pick of the week’s best iOS titles, including our favorite new releases and updates worth writing home about.
This week’s picks feature what is quite possibly the best arcade fighter yet to hit the App Store, awesome updates to Angry Birds Space and Jetpack Joyride, plus a fantastic platformer that I just can’t put down.
Games have held a remarkable 40 month lead over all other categories when it comes to mobile apps. Mobile games have become so popular that even powerhouse console gaming companies such as Nintendo have seen their profits plummet because of them. They’ve given developers the highest ad revenue and have consumed more of a consumer’s time than any other app category. Unfortunately, like all good things, mobile gaming’s reign has come to an end. There’s a new head honcho in app land and its name is social networking.
How quickly WWDC sold out this week – less than two hours and before many developers on the west coast were even out of bed – raises some interesting questions for Apple. Could the company have handled the announcement better? Should Apple allow more than 5,000 developers to attend? Is the current model for WWDC, which was adopted years ago, still viable given the stratospheric success that Apple has experienced over the past few years?
Some folks just aren’t all that great with money. For some it’s because it’s just not something that’s fun to do. They have all the knowledge and understanding, but it just a boring bit of drudgery that they can’t be bothered to give it the care and attention it deserves. Perhaps if it was more fun to deal with, it’d make things a whole lot easier – and better.
Enter Cult of Mac Deals…and Toshl Finance Pro.
This simple and intuitive web-based application (and mobile app) is a personal financial assistant that, believe it or not makes finance fun. It helps you note down your expenses and income, and plans your finances with detailed budgets so you can be on-top of every penny. And Cult of Mac Deals has an offer for a one-year license of Toshl Finance Pro for only $10 – which is worth more than every penny.
True story: When my mother was pregnant with me, she and her friends got together to do a Ouija board. The story goes that the glass moved around, and then smashed. My mother told everyone that they should finish things up properly, and “put the spirit away,” or some such thing.
They laughed, and ignored her. Over the next few weeks, everybody present at the séance had an accident. My mother fell out of her car while leaning out the door to reverse. Luckily, her hair was styled in a bun, which cushioned the impact.
Did this make me superstitious? Nope. In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw this Ouija Book Cover Case (€66 or $87) from Etsy maker Joe V was “if you’re able to look into the future and communicate with the other side, Mr.V, then why the hell is the screen of your iPad so scratched up? Surely you should have seen that coming?”
Skepticism aside, the leather book cover looks like the perfect Christmas gift for Cult of Mac’s own resident mysticist John Brownlee aka. Dr.Crypt. Or should I say “pagan midwinter fertility-festival gift”? The hefty tome is etched with the alphabet, numbers from one to zero and — of course — the words “yes” and “no.” Thus equipped, our hard-working editor will be able to check up on us minions without even entering our Cult of Mac chatroom.
“Will Charlie finally write a serious post?” he will chant in monotone, as the empty diet Coke can moves all by itself over to “no,” yet again.
“Whose post will get the most page views next week?” he will continue, and the can will scrape drily across the leather towards the letter “B.” Then, as it slides down and right towards the “U,” Dr. Crypt will hurl the can aside in petulant frustration. “Damn you, Buster Heine,” he’ll shout, “Damn you and your interesting, reader-friendly posts!”
Then, as Mr. Brownlee’s harsh words float down onto the aging cowskin, something happens on the other side of the country. As Buster picks up his morning beverage and relaxes with his iPad to read the news, the air suddenly grows chill, and the screen doors start to flap and slam in the rising breeze. Buster looks up to see the livid, contorted face of his editor swirling in the mists now whipping in through the open windows. He starts, and the iPad slips from his hands, cracking the screen in one corner.
If only he’d had it in a sturdy, witchcraft-proof case.