Apple’s decision to make Best Buy an official partner for the iPhone is certainly paying off. With 1,100 outlets across the U.S. and an online store, the retailer is now selling almost as many iPhones as Apple itself, according to a survey of customers who purchased the device between December 2011 and February 2012.
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Today is new iPad day in the rest of the world. At 8AM local time in additional countries across Europe, Mexico, New Zealand and even Macau. As in the US and the other countries in the first wave of launches,. there appear to be plenty of iPads to go around.
Porthole is a Mac app which will stream all the audio coming from your computer to AirPlay speakers, instead of just the music from iTunes. It’s kind of like Rogue Amoeba’s excellent AirFoil, only much less fine-grained in terms of control.
Last week, we showed you how to make Spotlight work faster with a little reindexing trick in System Preferences. Today, we’ll do the same thing, only we’ll use some Terminal magic to make it happen.
Apple and Samsung have battled in court over the design of a number of Samsung’s Galaxy products, which Apple believes were “slavishly” copied from the iPhone and iPad. However, the Korean company’s chief of mobile design maintains that the Galaxy is “original from the beginning,” and believes that one day, he will match Jony Ive by designing a truly iconic product.
A weird bug in Mobile Safari means that your iPad might refuse to show you hi-res images on your new Retina Display, instead scaling them down and making them look just as bad as they would if they were low resolution to begin with. Weirdly, this issue only affects JPGs, and then only certain JPGs. What’s going on?
Apple has finally updated its iTunes Movie Trailers app for the new iPad’s Retina display. I say ‘finally’ because most of Apple’s own iOS apps were updated with Retina graphics on March 7th, but the Trailers app was left out.
You can download the update for Trailers in the App Store now, and it looks fantastic.
Unlike the Netflix app, Apple’s Trailers will let you stream video in stunning on HD. If you haven’t been using Trailers on your iPad and iPad, download it now and discover what you’ve been missing. Not only can you view trailers for upcoming movies, but there’s a handy calendar view for release dates, charts, favorite starring, and ticket/showing info. A great app just got even better.
Cult of Mac is proud to announce our official partnership with Craig Fox and the rest of the team at WWJC, the first jailbreak convention to hit the United States. As we told you before, JailbreakCon, or the World Wide Jailbreak Convention, will be taking place on September 29th in beautiful San Francisco, California.
Apple’s iOS Safari browser has been the source of many vulnerabilities in the past, and a new discovery reveals a scary bug in the latest version of iOS. When browsing the web on iOS 5.1, there’s the potential that you could run into some address bar spoofing.
What does that mean exactly? Basically, a site URL could be displayed in the address bar that doesn’t actually match the webpage you’re visiting.
With all the rumors surrounding Apple’s intense negotiations to acquire licensing agreements with Hollywood studios for its upcoming television, it can be easy to forget about another aspect of the equation that needs to be reinvented: the remote. When Apple does unveil its long-awaited ‘iTV’ to the dismay of cable providers, you can bet that it won’t come with a clunky clicker like every other TV on the market. If there’s anything that needs to be changed about the industry, it’s the tool we use to communicate with our TV sets.
How would Apple do its own remote? Some have speculated that the iTV will be completely controlled by Siri, but there’s more to the puzzle than just voice control. In fact, you probably already use the future iTV’s remote every day.
RIM has making some interesting choices regarding its future over the past year. The company launched its PlayBook tablet with what was really a beta release of the OS. It expanded its device management platform to include support for managing iOS and Android devices (though many saw that move as too little openness too late in the game). And it introduced support for Android apps in last month’s PlayBook OS update.
In another move that will leave observes scratching their heads, RIM is looking to hire iOS developers. Unlike RIM’s recruitment of Android developers, this doesn’t appear to be in any way aimed at porting existing apps to the PlayBook. The job posting, which lists RIM’s Bellevue, WA location, is for an internal Senior iOS developer that would be creating enterprise-focused iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad.
The app privacy scandal caused by Path’s iPhone app is still leaving its mark, as members of the U.S. Congress have sent out letters to 33 prominent App Store developers to better understand the issue. “We want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple’s mobile devices with a social element.”
Apps like the official Facebook and Twitter clients are among the list. Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman and Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member G. K. Butterfield have requested that the developers behind such apps reveal how Apple imposes its privacy standards and how the standards are implemented.
Lightroom 4 isn’t nearly as big of an update as versions 2 or 3, but that’s more of a sign of a mature product than anything else. There are a few all-new features, but the one thing that will really, really want to upgrade is the new Highlights and Shadows section. It really is good enough to justify this point-release upgrade all by itself.
I used a rotary phone once at my grandma’s house back when I was like 6 years old. It’s the only childhood telephone memory I can recall, but most kids my age have never had the pleasure of seeing the dial slowly rotate back into position with each successive twirling of a number. The iRetroPhone is the closest thing to a rotary phone you’ll find today that also utilizes the best mobile phone in the world. Most people will either cringe or laugh when they see it, but we’re pretty sure hipsters across the globe are gonna love this thing.
One of my favorite games of all time is the sprawling Advanced Dungeons & Dragons based RPG, Baldur’s Gate II. Featuring over 200+ hours of content, the game sees your character raised from a hero to a god as he takes on vampires, Beholders, dragons and drow. It’s the closest thing to a real nerds-and-basement tabletop RPG session you’ll ever have on a computer, and in the ten years since it has been released, nothing else has come close to its scope or its writing, and since all of the game’s levels were hand-painted, it still even looks pretty good.
Now Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II are coming to the iPad. Excuse me while I tear off my clothes, smear myself in vasoline and go absolutel bananas.
We’ve got another great Cult of Mac Deals deal for our readers this time around that is set to wrap up today. It’s one that offers 7 inspiring Mac apps for only $50 that will help you take your ideas from concept to reality with elegance and ease.
Among the apps you’ll get as part of The Mac Designer Bundle is acclaimed calendar app Fantastical, the stellar website creation tool RapidWeaver 5 and the time-saving keyboard shortcut tool, KeyCue. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
Sure, iCloud’s convenient, but how safe is your data? No need to be alarmed: it’s actually about as well secured as it can possibly be, as long as you’re not an idiot.
As we reported yesterday, the latest Hipstamatic update adds something that’s not just new for the app, but new for the App Store: direct access to the Instagram API.
Does it make a startling difference to the way you use Hipstamatic? No, not really. Only regular users of both Hipstamatic and Instagram will notice a substantial difference.
Back in October, we highlighted one of the new features in iOS 5 that allows you to hide previous App Store purchases from your ‘Purchased’ list. It’s great for removing all those apps and games that you may be ashamed of, such as Hello Kitty Parachute Paradise. But what happens if you want to reveal those purchases again?
Well, thankfully it’s easy to unhide them.
Apple uses digital certificates and code signing in various ways to help keep Macs secure. One common example is that apps sold through the Mac App Store are digitally signed, which allows an individual Mac to know that it’s getting the genuine article when a user launches the App Store app. It also allows a Mac to ensure that an application hasn’t been tampered with by a malicious user or a piece of malware each time that app is launched (Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper feature will be based on the same technology).
The same process is used with Apple’s Software Update servers. Each update from Apple is digitally signed using a certificate that let’s each Mac know that they’re getting genuine updates from Apple.
Digital certificates are designed to expire periodically and tomorrow, March 23, 2012, the certificate associated with Apple’s Software Update functionality will be expiring. Apple already has a new certificate ready that won’t expire for seven more years (2019). The transition to the certificate will be transparent for almost all Mac users, but it may create problems with some OS X Server installations.
Apple has come under fire for shipping two new products that aren’t revolutionary breakthroughs, but incremental improvements on what came before.
The new iPad and Apple TV have been called underwhelming because they don’t clean your floor while also making a cappuccino. But in both cases, they are significant improvements on what came before.
The new Apple TV, now in its third generation, adds a faster A5 processor and can now stream high-def video at 1080p.
Is it worth the upgrade?
It might not be an issue for you, but some users who have purchased new iPads have found that the magnets of their existing cases won’t turn the display on and off. This doesn’t just go for third-parties, either: even some old Smart Covers won’t turn the screen off.
What the heck’s going on? As it turns out, there’s a small change in the way the new iPad that only applies to magnetic cases: polarity now counts.
Built upon the DNA of NeXT OS, OS X is already one of the most well known Unix-based operating systems, but it could have been supercharged if the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, had accepted a job offer from Steve Jobs back in 2000.
Carol Gerber wants to help reconcile lawyers who bring in their own iPads to work with the IT department.
Gerber is an former bankruptcy attorney who has been imparting tech training to lawyers for a decade. On the front lines of the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) movement, she’s created an iPad class approved by the New York State Continuing Legal Education Board.
It’s rare to see government agencies at the front of the technology curve, but it’s becoming more common with U.S. federal agencies after U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel declared at CES that 2012 the year of mobile for the federal government. While most agencies have pushed to reevaluate their mobile technology option during the past few months, the Environmental Protection Agency seems to leading the government charge to mobile.
The EPA announced earlier this week that the agency has adopted a new “mobile first” policy. Under the policy, it is a setting forward-thinking IT mandate than even the most tech-savvy companies have yet to consider or embrace: develop solutions for mobile devices first and then re-work those solutions to function on the desktop.