Cult of Mac

One of iPhoto for iOS’s most useful new sharing features is called Beaming. It lets you send your photos quickly and directly to anyone sharing your Wi-Fi network and also running iPhoto.

As good, long-time Mac users we remember the bad old days of networking, where getting two Macs to talk to each other was all but impossible, and hear-tearingly frustrating at best (even when they were joined to opposite ends of the same Ethernet cable). Clearly, something has changed. So just how does iPhoto Beaming work?

Devon Technologies offers up this free search app, EasyFind. They’re touting it as a free alternative or supplement to Spotlight, and say it’s faster and more responsive, especially when searching for text files. If you’ve used Spotlight lately, you know that it can have issues, especially due to the indexing feature, which may be out of date or corrupt.

Apple fans hoping to be the first to get their hands on the company’s latest iPad have already begun lining up outside of its flagship retail stores ahead of the device’s launch this Friday, March 16.

Apple’s new iPad is the first of its iOS devices to offer super speedy 4G LTE connectivity, but it’s currently only available on AT&T and Verizon in the United States. According to Best Buy’s internal database, however, it could soon be available on Sprint, too.

With shipping estimates starting to slip for the new iPad around the world since the tablet became available for pre-order on March 7th, it was only a matter of time before Apple sold out of its pre-order stock entirely. Shipping estimates for the U.K. and U.S. slipped to March 19th this past Friday.

Apple has confirmed in an official statement that it has now completely sold out of its pre-order iPad stock in less than 5 days.

When Apple announced iPhoto for iOS at the recent iPad keynote, they specifically made it incompatible with both the first generation iPad as well as the fourth generation iPod touch. In reality, iPhoto can run smoothly on both of these devices with just a little workaround. In this video, I’ll show you the trick to getting iPhoto running on your unsupported device.

The guys at MacLegion are back at it with their 2012 Spring Bundle. They’ve assembled 10 fantastic Mac apps from great developers and packaged them into an offering that’s hard to pass up. If you decide to purchase this year’s Spring Bundle, you’ll be getting $800 worth of Mac software for only $50. Doesn’t get much better than that.

There’s only a little over a week left before the bundle expires, so don’t hesitate to buy if you’re interested.

Flight Control is one of the most popular games to ever land in the App Store. The game makers, Firemint, won an Apple design award for the beautiful iPhone and iPad app. The next iteration of Flight Control is set to arrive later this month, right in time for the new iPad’s Retina display.

Flight Control Rocket will take you into space for a new set of adventures. This one looks like a whole lot of fun.

There are a host of hidden debug settings in iOS that developers, security researchers, hackers, and others use to analyze data and fix errors. While most normal users won’t care to look through their iMessage logs, the more inquisitive may feel dangerous enough to try.

Remember when a mysterious new category appeared in the App Store on the eve of the this past week’s iPad announcement? The discovery led most of the Apple blogosphere to believe that some sort of interactive catalog experience would be making its way to the new iPad’s gorgeous Retina display. How exciting!

As it turns out, the Catalogs section of the App Store has launched, and it’s not really that amazing at all. In fact, it’s pretty awful.

Apple CEO Tim Cook this week talked about a “post-PC world.” Many people treated his comments as controversial, exaggerated or outright marketing lies.

In fact, everything Cook said about it was literally true and perfectly accurate. He said the post-PC revolution “is happening all around us at an amazing pace and Apple is at the forefront and leading this revolution.”

He didn’t say we currently live in a post-PC world, or that in the future PCs would not exist. He specifically said “we’re talking about a world where the PC is no longer the center of your digital world.”

What he didn’t say — so I will — was that the transition from the PC world to the post-PC world involves a transition from a Microsoft world to an Apple world.

For the past few decades, Windows has been the dominant platform and Mac OS has been a minority operating system. Here’s why their positions will be reversed in the years to come.

March Madness season is about to begin, so it’s time to download the official NCAA app for your iPhone and iPad. With the free app and a $3.99 in-app purchase, basketball fans will be able to watch and listen to all 67 tournament games on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

While introducing the new iPad, Apple CEO Tim Cook this week said on stage that we’re in the middle of a “post-PC revolution” and headed into a  “post-PC world.”

And let’s have no illusions: A “post-PC” world is a “post-Mac” world. Why is Apple so eager to usher in such a world?

Clearly the iPad is a “post-PC” device. But the iPod Touch and iPhone? What defines a “post-PC” device?

What did Cook mean, exactly? And why did even former Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie tell Reuters: “Of course we are in a post-PC world.”

Here’s what you need to know about the “post-PC” revolution.

Apple isn’t giving any love to SXSW this year, but that’s not keeping the company from investing $304 million in a new campus to create 3,600 jobs. The campus won’t be responsible for the new new iPad, but instead focus on administrative responsibilities and customer support.

An App Store app called iTether got a lot of attention a few months ago for allowing free 3G tethering from any iPhone. Despite the fact that carriers don’t officially support such activity apart from their exorbitant data plans, Apple originally approved iTether. The app shot to the top of the charts before it was pulled less than a day later. If you didn’t get your hands on it then, you were out of luck.

The creators of iTether are announcing something big today. Tether is launching a new HTML5 web app for the iPhone that lets you tether your 3G-enabled iPhone or iPad to any wireless-enabled device. No monthly fee. No jailbreak required.

I favorite things a lot. I star things in Twitter and Google Reader, I like things in Instapaper, and I may or may not have once liked something on Facebook. All of this is for my work, as a way to bookmark stories and facts for later use. Every once in a while I try to work out how to collect them all into one universal inbox, but I never manage it. Now, thanks to the developer of the excellent Essay app for iPad, there’s an app for that. It’s called — appropriately enough — Favs.

Apple included a list of new features in the release notes for iOS 5.1, which became available on Wednesday alongside the announcement of the new iPad. It seems that Apple included some unannounced features as well – some of which enable more iOS device security and management when paired with a mobile device management (MDM) suite or with Apple’s new Apple Configurator tool for iOS.

The new management features seem to be primarily related to Siri on the iPhone 4S and they include the ability to prevent any use of Siri while an iPhone 4S is locked as well as the ability to filter out profanity. Additionally, as noted by the Intrepidus Group, a security consulting firm, is the ability to block location services on any iOS device.

Apple has announced that it is shutting down iWork.com on July 31st. The website was a beta product that Apple launched back in 2009 to store documents created with its iWork productivity suite. Since then, iCloud has been introduced to let you keep your documents wirelessly synced across devices, and there is no need for iWork.com anymore.

Oh snap! My iPad is leaving China and making its way across the Pacific already. By this time next Friday I’m gonna be getting super intimate with my new iPad’s 3.1million pixels and learning their deep dark secrets.

Has your iPad shipped yet? Or are you one of those unlucky souls in the U.K.? Post a pic of your iPad’s shipment status in the comments so we can all collectively celebrate that Big Jobs in the Sky who is about to rain down a storm of euphoric iPad glory on us come Friday.

A recent update to the iTunes Terms and Conditions adds an interesting clause regarding free trials for in-app subscriptions in the iOS App Store. Ever since the launch of the App Store in 2007, users have been clamoring for some kind of demoing system for paid apps. It looks like Apple may be slowly making strides towards that reality.

Publishers “may offer a free trial period” via in-app subscriptions in an iOS app, according to Apple.

Newly launched at SXSW this week is Picle, a free iOS photography app with a twist: the aim is to make something that sounds like Instagram. It’s a lovely idea but the initial release suffers a few disappointing problems.

No technology company in the world has been more scrutinized than Apple when it comes to labor conditions. Over the past couple months everyone has been quick to point out how crappy the conditions are at Apple’s supplier factories – Foxconn. But what a lot of the tech press hasn’t done, is investigate the conditions at the other major tech companies in the world. Not only is Apple the only company talking about what they’re doing to fix the problem, but they are the only major tech company that is allowing independent audits of their factory conditions.

It’s a simple question, phrased politely, and sent to the right people. Does your company have any plans to let independent auditors check up on your suppliers’ factories?

Here’s what some of the world’s biggest electronics companies said in response:

I’ll come out and say this right at the beginning: I don’t like to put my Apple gear into cases. I went for years with an iPod Touch bareback in my jeans pocket, but with the iPad there was just too much easy-to-scratch screen on there. All the cases I tried were bulky or inelegant or just plain junk. I settled on Apple’s case, although that was a little like putting a supermodel in a wetsuit.

With the iPad 2, I have used the Smart Cover exclusively, with a rear skin sometimes. But now, I’m totally gaga over this hot little number from Skech. And here’s why.

If you haven’t ordered a new iPad yet, better get going: my guess is before the weekend is out, we’ll see shipping times of 4 weeks or more for all models.

Apple’s new Thunderbolt ports are already the fastest connection ports on the market, but if Intel has their way they’ll be even faster in the near future. In order to boost the performance of Thunderbolt, Intel is working to support PCI-Express 3.0 protocols which will significantly boost data transfer rates.