Cult of Mac

This is one big deal from Cult of Mac Deals that will allow your creativity to go wild! Well, if you’re a designer, this one’s for you!

The Creative Design Bundle contains over 1000 icons, vector elements, Photoshop templates, an essential designer’s strategy guide and a lot of useful bonus files for just pennies on the dollar! With a total download size of 1.4GB, you’ll get all of this bundled together at an insane price – just $49! The items in this bundle are valued at over $1,000 – meaning you get a whopping 95% off!

The official Facebook for iPad app has finally been updated with Retina graphics for Apple’s third-gen iPad. Version 4.1.1 of the app is available now with offline chat mode, photo bug fixes, added language support and stability improvements.

I’m not sure if Kickstarter is the best place for software projects, especially complex ones involving video editing. That said, I like the look of Vival quite a bit. It look like the perfect way to sweep up all those little clips I snap on my iPad and iPod Touch, and automagically turn them into montages.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwY70jkdY4

With its Lumia 900 set to make its much-anticipated debut in the U.S. on April 8, Nokia has kicked off a new advertising campaign called Smartphone Beta Test, in which it mocks devices like the iPhone and Android-powered rivals. Its most noticeable stab is at the iPhone’s “Death Grip,” which can be seen in the clip above.

When we broke the story on Friday about Girls Around Me — an iOS app by Russian-based app developer i-Free that allowed users to stalk women in thee neighborhood without those women’s knowledge, right down to their most personal details — Foursquare was quick to respond within hours, cutting off the API access that the app relied upon to function.

Foursquare’s swift response to the issue effectively killed Girls Around Me, and i-Free quickly yanked the app from the App Store in the aftermath until they could figure out a way to restore service. And for a lot of people, the story ended there. The app’s gone. Why keep talking about it?

That’s exactly the way Foursquare (and Facebook) wants things.

After years of tweaking and improvement, ioShutter is finally here. ioShutter is a simple cable that connects your iPhone to your camera and allows you to control it using an app. Remote shooting, time-lapse sequences and even photos triggered by sound can all be programmed in easily using the free companion app. And best of all, no fancy dock connectors are required: ioShutter connects through the headphone jack.

As a gamer, I’d love nothing more than to see a proper physical controller for my iOS devices. Sure, the touchscreen works great with titles like Angry Birds or Words With Friends, and accessories like the iCade work well with retro games. But for first-person shooters, soccer sims, 3D platformers and the like, nothing beats a physical controller with real analog sticks and real buttons.

Google’s Android operating system already supports external game controllers, and that’s one of the few things it has over iOS. But maybe not for long. According to one source, Apple is working on a physical controller of its own that will make iOS gaming even more incredible.

Apple’s iMac line of all-in-one desktops is set to receive a pretty significant refresh this year. The machine hasn’t really received any design changes since late 2009, when the aluminum unibody enclosure was introduced. But this 2012’s first refresh is expected to bring slimmer models, and new anti-reflective glass displays.

Thanks to a great article by our own John Brownlee, we now know how easy it is for apps and people to stalk you using location-sharing services like FourSquare and Facebook. And now the more paranoid among you might be wondering, just how do I turn these things off?

Theoretically, you would have already checked the privacy settings when you signed up. But that’s like reading the manual before you switch on a new gadget: Almost nobody ever does it. So here’s a quick guide to locking down FourSquare, and a rather more involved guide to shutting down Facebook.

In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple set things up so that the user Library folder isn’t available to the casual user. This is probably to keep less savvy folks from getting in there and messing about with files they shouldn’t be. For the rest of us, however, today’s tip is all about freedom of information, power-user style.

If you’re going to launch a real product on April 1st, then you may as well make it seems as ridiculous as possible, and that’s just what Brian Holmes did yesterday when he announced The Littlest Black Book for the iPod Nano, the new tiny, nano-sized Moleskine-style case from Brian’s company, Pad&Quill.

I actually mailed Brian yesterday to see if this was for real, and it is. There’s even a Kickstarter page to prove it, which is already almost a quarter of the way to the $4,500 goal.

SwipeBack is a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones that allows you to elegantly navigate back through your menus by swiping your finger across your screen, rather than tapping on the buttons at the top of the display. It’s currently still in beta, but it works well and you can get your hands on it now.

Well, here we go again. Despite the crowing of many “journalists” looking for a click, or so-called consumer agencies which have dumped objective reviews to chase page views, the public loves it some new iPads. According to a survey by ChangeWave, fully 82% of respondents said they were “very satisfied” with the new iPad. And adding in the numbers for “somewhat satisfied,” (16%) we get a 98% satisfaction rating. Not bad, right?

Thankfully for tech bloggers the Anglo Saxon world over, this year April Fools Day aka All Fools Day fell on a Sunday. That didn’t stop PR folk waking from a fitful, hungover sleep, dragging their laptops into bed and sending out a “funny” press release, which is why you should probably still watch out today.

But above the dross stands — as it does every year — ThinkGeek. In the past, we have seen such April Fool wonders as the Taun Taun sleeping bag for kids, the iCade iPad arcade cabinet and the 8-bit tie. This year, ThinkGeek went to town with a whole range of fake gear. Here we take a look at the best.

Breaking free from the mold of conventional apps like Tweetbot and the official Twitter for iPad, developers Adam Bell and Miles Ponson have created a unique Twitter app for the iPad called Crest. Priced at $1.99 in the App Store, Crest isn’t a power user’s tool for digesting vast amount of tweets. Instead, it’s a fun, leisurely way to view your Twitter stream from the comfort of your new iPad’s Retina display.

No one likes a thief who gets away with stolen items and especially not 8 year old Landon Crabtree. After a burglar broke into his family’s house to get away with the family’s iPad and a few other items, the family got insurance money for the lost goods. But Landon wasn’t going to stand for someone else having his iPad and used Apple’s free Find my iPhone to recover the iPad. However, that’s not the only thing police found.

The “Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher is set to play Steve Jobs in a new indie film, chronicling the earlier years of the Apple co-founder. The new film is set to start filming in May, when Kutcher takes a break from filming “Two and a Half Men.” It looks like the former “Punk’d” host might have to grow out his hair and grow a beard in the mean time, too. 

Let’s face facts: most startups fail, even if they launch to much fanfare. With that in mind, you’re looking to make your very own startup a success. You know the odds are stacked against you. So how do you put yourself in a postion to have a greater chance of success?

By taking advantage of this Cult of Mac Deal, which lets you join The Lean Startup Movement at a fraction of the regular price, that’s how. But you’d better act fast — because today is the last day that deal is on the table!

Historically, developers have earned 70% of the revenue from application downloads from the App Store and 60% from iAd revenue, but today comes good news for those of you who use the iAd platform in your apps. Apple has revealed on its Developer Center that developers will now be earning an extra 10% from iAd revenue, boosting it to 70% in total. Is this Apple’s push to get the advertising service into more apps? 

I live on the east coast, but I have been to Silicon Valley twice; visiting Apple’s mothership was a must-do for me.

Perhaps you feel the same way. It’s exciting for us fans, though all you can really do is park, take pictures out in front of the main 1 Infinite Loop building, and the Apple sign near the street, then visit The Company Store. It’s a special treat as they don’t sell Apple devices, they sell logoed items not found anywhere else. I don’t know if I would go so far as to call my visit a pilgrimage, but it was a top priority for me, if I was going to be anywhere near Silicon Valley.

When the creepy girl stalking app Girls Around Me went missing from the iTunes App Store last night, it wasn’t immediately clear who had pulled it: Russia-based i-Free, the developer behind the app, or Apple itself.

Now i-Free has clarified matters. They pulled the app themselves… but not because they think they did anything wrong. In fact, they’ve gone as far as to say that it is “unethical to pick a scapegoat to talk about the privacy concerns. We see this wave of negative as a serious misunderstanding of the app’s goals, purpose, abilities and restrictions.”

Oh really?

Tim Cook has been in office as Apple’s official CEO for over 200 days now, so how’s he doing? Is he still living in Jobs’ shadow, or has he been busy leaving his own mark on Cupertino. And what about those crazy new rumors about the iPhone we’ve been hearing? Is there any truth to them? The latest episode of The CultCast seeks to answer those questions and more including brief special appearance from Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman.

Episode 6 of The CultCast is now ready for your listening pleasure.

Subscribe now on iTunes!

Once you’ve heard our take on things, comeback and leave a comment telling us your opinion and we just might read your thoughts on the next CultCast episode.

Girls Around Me — the creepy geo-location app that allowed you to stalk and find personal information about girls in your neighborhood without their knowledge — has been pulled from the iOS App Store.

What the world needs now isn’t love, sweet love. It needs more companies like Apple.

Critics slam Apple for not giving more to charity. It’s a reasonable complaint. Apple should be more philanthropic. Under Tim Cook they probably will be.

However, Apple helps the world in a far more profound way than some annual contribution to United Way.

Apple represents an approach to business that “lifts all boats,” to quote a well known cliche.

Apple is the global economy’s single most powerful economic force opposing a great death spiral in which margins are squeezed, goods get shoddier, people make less money and our lives just get cheaper in every way.

Here’s how Apple does it. 

No one likes to spend an inordinate amount of time on their computers doing mundane tasks. And let’s face it…going through all of the duplicates, missing album art and mislabeled tracks in your iTunes Library are just those types of tasks.

That’s why this Cult of Mac Deals offer is ideal. Cleaning up your iTunes Library has never been more powerfully simple (or simply powerful) than with The TuneUp Bundle. TuneUp hooks up with iTunes to organize and categorize your music from top to bottom. And today’s your last chance to get it for just $30!