Cult of Mac

“Boy, you sure have a lot of apps on your phone.”

“Well, it’s my job.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“Oh, I love Daisy Slots, with so many casino games options, I couldn’t choose. But hey, want to see one to set your skin crawling?”

It was the flush end of a pleasurably hot day — 85 degrees in March — and we were all sipping bitter cocktails out in my friend’s backyard, which was both his smoking room, beer garden, viticetum, opossum parlor and barbecue pit. I was enjoying the warm dusk with a group of six of my best friends, all of whom seemed interested, except for my girlfriend… who immediately grimaced.

“Girls Around Me? Again?” she scolded. “Don’t show them that.”

She turned to our friends, apologetically.

“He’s become obsessed with this app. It’s creepy.”

I sputtered, I nevered, and I denied it, but it was true. I had become obsessed with Girls Around Me, an app that perfectly distills many of the most worrying issues related to social networking, privacy and the rise of the smartphone into a perfect case study that anyone can understand.

It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.

And more than anything, it’s a wake-up call about privacy.

Music streaming service Spotify has announced that it will continue offering unlimited listening to its free customers in the United States. In case you didn’t know, all that free music you’ve been listening to won’t last forever. Spotify said from the very beginning that free users would only have unlimited listening for 6 months, and it’s been 9 months since the streaming service went stateside. Looks like the honeymoon will last a little longer.

A specific date for the unlimited listening discontinuation has not been given, so you may want to think about coughing up $10 per month for a Spotify Premium account. There’s also some good news for certain Spotify users in Europe.

Apple and Samsung have been duking it out in court for quite sometime now, with Apple claiming that the Korean electronics giant has been “slavishly” copying its iOS products to use in Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. In its case against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Apple has leaned heavily on two specific patents for its defense, both having to do with the exterior of the iPad.

As if to point out the absurdity of Apple patenting the exterior of a tablet, Judge Koh, presiding over the case, notably held up both the Galaxy Tab and iPad side-by-side and asked those in the court to tell which was which from a distance. It took lawyers on both sides of the aisles a few seconds to answer the question correctly.

The judge’s point seems simple. Sure, the Galaxy Tab may look like the iPad, but Apple can’t patent that appearance… and to prove her point, she made note that in 1994, a television network portrayed the look of a tablet much before the iPad or Galaxy Tab came on the scene. If true, this could seriously destroy Apple’s case.

Note: Title has been changed to reflect “in-app” revenue

You may have seen this report around the web about the Amazon Appstore generating more in-app revenue than the Google Play Store. While that in itself it impressive, everyone seems to be missing the most important detail of the report: Android is generating more in-app revenue than iOS. At least that’s what this report is claiming.

The folks at FireCore have released a new jailbreak for the latest Apple TV iOS version that Apple released on March 7th. The set-top box’s interface was revamped alongside the release of the third-gen Apple TV, and FireCore’s tethered jailbreak will work on the second-gen Apple TV running iOS 5.0.

New versions of Seas0nPass and aTV Flash (black) have been released to enhance the Apple TV experience on the latest software.

Many schools in the U.S. haven’t even had their spring break yet, but school administrators are already planning for the next school year. For public schools that means determining how best to allocate scarce financial resources and trying to determine how far they can push their budgets before the residents and homeowners in their district will vote them down. School IT departments meanwhile are beginning to consider what major projects and upgrades they’ll be doing over the summer recess.

Although this decision-making process tends to run like clockwork for most schools and districts, this year there’s a new factor to consider: Apple’s iPad-based iBooks 2 e-textbook initiative (as well as the iPad itself).

A tweak called SiriSports gives you access to MLB, NBA and NHL game times and scores in Siri on your jailbroken iPhone 4S. Developed by Evan Coleman, SiriSports requires no configuration and is available for free in Cydia.

“Did the Knicks win last night?” “Are the Yankees winning?” These types of question can be answered once you have SiriSports installed.

Engadget spotted that in OS X’s own Dictionary.app, the definition of Apple is woefully out of date, not even mentioning Cupertino’s biggest products: the iPhone and iPad.

Sadly, the dictionary is also out of date in other ways… namely, in how it lists Steve Jobs.

The recently-updated version of GarageBand — Apple’s popular music-making app for the iPad — finally turns it into a serious tool for bands rather than something limited to solo artists and their session collaborators. With a shared connection, up to four band members can play or jam to a piece of music, be it a pop song or a classical overture. For the first time, it brings live performance to the iPad app.

For every American male, every stage of your life can be marked by what magazine you are subscribed to. When you are in your thirties, it’s The Economist. When you’re in your late twenties, it’s The New Yorker. When you’re in your mid-twenties, it’s Playboy; your late teens, Maxim.

And what magazine subscription kicks off being twelve? Harvey Kutzman and William M. Gaine’s eternal paean to grade school parody, Mad Magazine, which is now coming to the iPad.

Who doesn’t like YouTube? Well, besides Vimeo. No one, that’s who. If you’re a true YouTube user, however, chances are you have your own account, channel and merchandising deal. For the rest of us with only an account to track, having it synced up to our iOS devices makes a lot of sense. Here’s how.

Apple introduced Find My Friends ahead of iOS 5 last year. The iOS app allows you to see where your friends and family are located around you. Apple pitched the service as something for a family to use at Disneyland, but honestly, it feels more like a tool for digital stalking.

My colleague John Brownlee highlighted a major issue with Facebook privacy earlier today, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at another app from the same vein. Although you won’t be able to stalk random women with Find My Facebook Friends, you will be able to see your friends on a map. The only difference is that Find My Facebook Friends takes user privacy pretty seriously. If only the app was less buggy.

The most common reaction people have when they see me wearing my Koss PortaPros is: “Don’t you work in tech? Can’t you afford some Skullcandies or something, instead of those hand-me-down headphones from the 70s?”

I always want to smack these people for their shameful ignorance and misguided elitism, but don’t… mostly because this is exactly the same reaction I had when, two years ago, I saw a pair of Koss PortaPros perched upon Cult of Mac review editor Charlie Sorrel’s lank, salt-and-peppery head.

Since then, I’ve converted a dozen friends to Koss PortaPros the same way Charlie converted me: by taking them off his head and making me put them on and listen to them for a few seconds. Everyone I’ve converted has sworn by Koss, just like Charlie and I do.

Koss’s PortaPro series isn’t old or antiquated: they’re design and quality are timeless. There’s a difference. But that doesn’t mean a timeless design can’t be improved or added upon, and with the PortaPro KTC line, Koss has done it.

How? How else. A built-in mic and in-line controls for your iPhone. Those sneaky devils.

We’ve already seen some pretty crazy uses of the iPad and iPhone in spy movies, but it looks like iOS is getting an official nod of approval as a mobile operating system worthy to be used in spy games. The Australian government just approved iPhones and iPads to be used for the storing and sharing of classified documents, meaning Ethan Hunt wannabes Down Under can look even more bad ass in their espionage attempts.

We love us a good iConcept design here at Cult of Mac, and we especially love those which appear to be better than the Apple product they are based on. So I’m happy to bring you Enrico Penello’s iPod Nano Touch, a great-looking update to the terrible iPod Nano.

BYOD may be the poster child for the consumerization of IT (CoIT) movement, but employee-owned mobile devices are just one of the consumer technologies that are steadily making their way into the workplace. Consumer cloud services are another big headache for IT.

Consumer clouds represent a way for data to easily leave office and the office network. Files can be placed in a consumer cloud very easily and often without IT even knowing about it. Despite that big security concern, cloud services like Box and Dropbox are popular with workers because they’re an easy way to ensure access to files and documents while out of the office and/or while working on a mobile device.

While blocking specific cloud services is a possibility, it’s little more than a stop-gap measure. Truly solving the problem means addressing the underlying need – users needing mobile access to data – in a secure way, which enterprise file management company Accellion aims to solve with a new Secure Mobile File Sharing service and sync capabilty dubbed kitedrive.

The immensely popular MMO Pocket Legends is turning two and Spacetime Studios is throwing a celebration to honor all of its milestones and devoted fan base. The now cross-platform global hit, Pocket Legends, was originally launched on iOS April 3rd, 2010. Since then, Pocket Legends has been played in every country on the planet (with the exceptions of Cuba and North Korea) by over five million people. That’s an impressive feat for a mobile MMO! Spacetime Studios thinks so too, that’s why players will now have access to all Pocket Legends premium content areas for free!

You know what? You could probably do a blog about only iPhone cases and you’d still have something worth reading. Provided that the world keeps coming up with cases like this super-specialized iPhone Scuba Case, an underwater shell which gives you access to the camera app as you dive, that is.

Having been fined $1.2 million by Italian regulators late last year over its marketing for AppleCare products, Apple has been forced to clarify its warranty coverage for customers in the European Union, and compare its extended warranty products against statutory EU warranty coverage.

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The Woodero is a slightly different take on the wooden iPad case. Instead of a solid sleeve (like several Bamboo cases we have seen) or a Moleskine-like book (like the baltic birch-frame Pad & Quill), it works like a cross between a pencil case and a desk drawer. It also looks rather impractical.

Earlier this Box launched its new OneCloud feature, the goal of which is to integrate a range of iOS business and productivity apps around Box’s cloud storage. The biggest advantage to OneCloud is that it neatly sidesteps the lack of file management in iOS, essentially functioning almost like cloud-centric iOS version of the Finder.

Box isn’t the only company looking to get around the iOS file limitations while also connecting users to the cloud. Quickoffice this week announced its new Connect solution, a dedicated app and cloud service combination that aims to make it easy for users to access, edit, share, and sync files and documents across all their devices as well as across a range of third-party cloud services.

Just six months after announcing that developers must stop accessing a device’s unique device identifier (UDID) within their iOS apps, Apple put its rule into practice last week amid increasing privacy concerns surrounding mobile apps. Any app submitted for App Store approval will soon be rejected if its attempts to access a UDID, and developers need an alternative.

That alternative could come from AppRedeem, a mobile advertising platform for app discovery, branding and monetization, which has developed a system called Organizational Specific Device Identifier, or “ODID,” already being used by Groupon.

Ever since the first iPod, Apple has had problems with squatters sitting on top of Apple-related domains, trying to scam people. Here’s another one. It is now seeking to take ownership of the Applecom.com and ApplePrinters.com domains and protect its trademark after filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on March 29.

Audiophiles love their audio files. Many Mac users swear by the AIFF format (Audio Interchange File Format), which was jointly developed by Apple and Electronic Arts back in the late 80s, according to Wikipedia. This uncompressed audio format sounds great, but the resulting file sizes are huge. To change it to a smaller format like MP4 used to require a trip into an audio editing program like GarageBand, Audacity, or even iTunes. For those among us who want an even simpler way, here’s today’s tip.

You know, I used to think custom iPad stands were kind of a dumb idea, especially as the Smart Cover is already a stand. But I watch movies and TV shows in bed with The Lady, using an iPad and JamBox balanced on one of those breakfast tray/table things. And after one too many iPad tumbles, I’m ready for a sturdier stand.

And the iKlip looks as good as any.