My Twitter stream. No, didn't know it looked like that either
Biologic is a – hmm, what is it exactly? It’s hard to describe. It’s not a Twitter client, although you can see Twitter with it. It’s not a Facebook client either, but your Facebook friends are all here if you want them to be. So what is it? The people who made it say it’s a “playful environment for exploring your friends’ activity streams from your favorite social networks.” Yeah, that covers it.
iPhoto lets you edit your pics with intuitive gestures on the iPhone and iPad.
Apple announced iPhoto for iOS at its March 7th iPad event, and the app has already been downloaded by over 1 million unique customers in less than two weeks. Since the app is priced at a cool $5, that means Apple has made at least $5 million since launch day. Not too shabby.
Your new iPad's Wi-Fi issues may not be hardware-related, and this simple fix could solve your issue.
This morning we reported that a number of new iPad owners are suffering from poor Wi-Fi performance on their new tablet. If you’re one of the unlucky few, then this simply fix might just solve the issue, and in turn save you a visit to the Genius Bar.
Rhombi, triangles, and rectangles probably don’t elicit a sexual response from you most times, but Apple thinks those beautiful shapes can be a little bit too orgasmic when combined in different configurations. Artist Luciano Foglia’s app of geometric shapes was recently rejected by Apple because they claimed it contained “excessively objectionable or crude content.” But it’s just a bunch of geometric shapes, so why did Apple label it as pornographic? Take a look and judge for yourself:
The Boostcase Hybrid is a battery case that's only bulky when it's charging your iPhone.
The iPhone gets great battery life, but we no longer live in the era of simple cell phones with week long battery life. That smartphone in your pocket isn’t just a way to make calls, but a real humming along inside your pocket, checking email, playing music, keeping an eye on your location, accepting text messages, sucking up push notifications, running Skype and a million other uses beside. That all takes up precious charge, and the more you pull that iPhone out of your pocket, the more quickly you use your battery up.
Given the realities of smartphone power management, battery cases like the Mophie Juice Pack are a necessary evil. Sure, they double and sometimes triple your battery life, but they also double and sometimes triple the size of your iPhone in your pocket. Worse, they are all-or-nothing affairs: if you want to use one, you need to take your existing case off your phone and put the juice pack on instead.
Boostcase’s new Hybrid Case does away with all that. It’s really two cases in one: a lightweight plastic protective case that can snap onto a beefy battery upgrade pack as needed that can juice your iPhone back up. And it’s a pretty great choice for anyone who doesn’t want to juggle cases on the go.
Lead Hipstamatic iOS engineer Sam Soffes sends a pic to Instagram
Instagram is undoubtedly the reigning champion of social photography apps, but there was once a time when Hipstamatic owned the spotlight. As the mobile app that took the trend of filtered photo sharing mainstream, Instagram owes a lot of its success to Hipstamatic. Apple awarded the iPhone app of the year award to Hipstamatic in 2010 and the torch was passed to Instagram in 2011.
As of today, Hipstamatic will now let you send photos you take in the app to Instagram. Not only does this move establish Instagram as the iPhone photography app victor, but it also establishes the app in its own right as a social network of the same caliber as Twitter for Facebook.
The contents of my man-sack, laid out for your inspection
We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac. We are also complete nerds, which means that we’re always peeking into people’s bags at conferences, or checking out what gear people use.
And we figured that you all might be just as bad, so we figured we’d rip open our man bags, handbags and purses and show you what’s inside, and why we carry what we do. We’ll be doing this every Wednesday, and to start things off, I’ll be showing you the contents of my bag. What you see above is my everyday bag surrounded by its everyday contents. To see what’s in there, read on.
In the desktop and laptop world, computer chips tend to get smaller over time, but with the A5X, Apple has gone a different route: they’ve actually made the chip bigger than its predecessors.
How big is the A5X? Over 310 percent bigger than the A4 shipped in the iPhone 4 and original iPad.
If you’re looking to create some smashing iOS apps and want to get all the goods delivered to you in one comprehensive course, we’ve got a Cult of Mac Deals offer that more than fits the bill!
Containing over 66 lectures and 11 hours of content, this iOS app development course we’re offering will teach you the fundamentals of Objective-C and a ton of the advanced strategies used by the pros. To get this kind of training in a live setting would run you in the neighbourhood of $3000 – but at Cult of Mac Deals we’re bringing it to you in an on-demand capacity for only $89!
Managing the iPad and other devices doesn't require a one size fits all approach
There are multiple ways that companies can approach mobile management. The most common approach is device management where IT pre-configure a device and locks it down by not allowing users access to certain features and/or prevents the installation of apps. There’s also the approach of locking down data in which enterprise apps allow IT to create and manage an encrypted sandbox for business data on the device. There’s also the option of taking a lighter hand and issuing policies about acceptable use where IT can use device management tools to ensure that users are complying with those policies.
There are pros and cons to each approach but the truth is that there’s no need to pick one approach over the others. An effective management strategy can actually employ multiple styles of management. It’s also important to remember that mobile management doesn’t need to be one size fits all – it’s perfectly fine to use different levels of management and security based on the job functions of users, on the ownership of devices, or on the devices themselves (and their OS version).
The idea of mixing mobile management options as a best practices got a boost this week in a pari of announcements my some of the major players in the enterprise mobility space.
When you've finished filling in our 3G/LTE survey, your entry should look like this.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re interested in building a data set which we can use to determine which networks offer the fastest and most reliable 3G & LTE coverage to new iPad owners. We’ll then use this data to report on which new iPad carrier is the best in each country or territory where it’s available.
Will LTE networks be crushed by demand, or will the upgrade to true 4G be as dramatic as the likes of AT&T and Verizon would like us to be. Finally, will most people who buy an iPad Wi-Fi + 4G even live within an LTE coverage area?
If you’ve got a new iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, could you take a couple minutes out of playing with your new, shiny tablet and help us out?
Air Display for iPad will soon give you a small taste of future Retina Display Macs to come.
Do you use your iPad as a second monitor using Air Display to wirelessly extend your desktop? If so, bet you wish you could harness your new iPad’s retina display, don’t you? Unfortunately, the functionality currently isn’t baked into Air Display, but that’ll soon change… and for the first time let millions of OS X users experiment with the hidden HiDPI mode in Lion and Mountain Lion.
It seems unlikely you'll ever see an iTunes icon here.
Despite being totally dedicated to Mac OS X right now, I can’t help but get excited about Windows 8. Having enjoyed the Metro UI experience with Windows Phone, I can’t wait to try it out on a tablet. And I know a lot of users feel the same way. But one thing that could put many of them off Windows 8 slates is the lack of iTunes.
Microsoft knows this, and it knows it’s a real problem that could kill Windows 8 tablets before they’ve even hit the market in the minds of many consumers.
FreedomPop's plans include a 4G iPhone case hotspot
Earlier this week, NetZero launched a new freemium mobile broadband service using Clearwire’s WiMax 4G network. Although NetZero is the first U.S. company to launch a “free” 4G service, it isn’t going to be the last. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom has begun work on a similar service called FreedomPop that will launch this summer.
FreedomPop plans to offer more monthly data for free than NetZero’s paltry 200MB. It will also target iPhone owners as a major part of its user base.
If you care nothing for aesthetics, you can make a stylus in a couple minutes. Photo CNET
So, you just spent $800 on a shiny new iPad so you could write, paint and draw on the go. But — inexplicably — you’re still too cheap to spend $20 on a stylus to help you do it. And if you’re this tight with your money, it’s likely that you have been hoarding the very ingredients you need to make your own stylus right now. So go grab the detritus lingering at the bottom of your fruit bowl or junk drawer and follow along.
How will this ever become a reality if employees can't buy iPads?
For a good chunk of the last decade, Microsoft has had a hard time getting its employees to use its own products. During the iPod wars, Microsoft was hard pressed to get their employees to carry Zunes; when the iPhone came out, Microsoft employees wanted to trade in their Windows Phones… and one can only imagine the difficulties Microsoft will have getting employees to switch from their iPads to Windows 8 tablets.
So Microsoft, in their magnanimity, has decided to try to push employees along. A new report says that Microsoft’s Sales, Marketing, Services, IT & Operations Group has just sent out an email to employees, saying that they can no longer buy Apple products with company funds.
Just plug this into your network, and your iPad will see all the printers in your office
You have an office full of cubicle jockeys, and you have a network full of printers. And a lot of your workers come to the office with iPads and iPhones. Now, I hate printers, but even I realize that people need to put things on paper from time to time. And even a printer lover doesn’t want to re-equip the whole office with AirPrint-ready machines.
Thankfully, you don’t have to. The Lantronix xPrintServer will convert the whole network for you.
Now you can access earthquake info, bike routes and lots more from within Google Earth ittself
Google Earth just got what turns out to be rather a big update. On paper it seems like nothing more than a few interface tweaks and the ability to open KML and KMZ files linked from Safari, but one new bullet point — “Touring support: load tours from the Earth Gallery or from mountain layer” — turns the map app into something entirely different.
Some new iPad owners are finding its Wi-Fi performance to be poor at best.
Forget the slight increase in temperature issue-that-shouldn’t-even-be-an-issue affecting the new iPad. According to some early adopters, the third-generation tablet has its own antennagate. Many users are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to complain that the Wi-Fi signal on their device is a lot weaker than that of their iPad 2, and even their iPhones and MacBooks.
If you’re not using the RSS screensaver on your Mac, we’ll forgive you. This time. With a little terminal code and your favorite RSS feed, however, you can get this bad boy to display behind all your apps and desktop icons, as your desktop wallpaper. Cool, huh?
Before Apple released its iOS 5.1 update to the public earlier this month, clicking on a Yelp link after performing a search with Siri did absolutely nothing. Now, however, it’ll take you straight to Yelp’s iOS app — or the App Store if you don’t already have it installed.
Telltale is expected to bring The Walking Dead to iOS in April.
Telltale Games, the studio behind popular iOS games like Back to the Futureand Monkey Island, is developing a new series based on the hit TV show The Walking Dead. If that news alone doesn’t get you excited, then check out this incredible teaser trailer.
Apple believes that even the micro-SIM is too big for the iPhone.
To make its iPhone 4 smaller and thinner than previous iPhones, one of the steps Apple took was making the SIM card smaller. This saw the birth of the micro-SIM, which is slowly making its way into other smartphones, such as the Nokia Lumia 800.
But Apple is still unhappy with the size of existing SIM cards, and it is pushing to make them even smaller for future iPhones. But other smartphone makers are against the idea.
Real Racing, as rendered in pixel-doubled and HD versions on the iPad 2 and new iPad. Screen shots Touch Arcade
We now know that the new iPad uses retina images when blowing up iPhone apps to fill its big screen, but what does that mean exactly? It’s one thing to know that Spotify doesn’t look horrible anymore, but it’s another thing entirely to see the differences side-by-side. That’s why the fine folks at Touch Arcade grabbed screenshots of various versions of Real Racing running on the new iPad and the iPad 2. The results are astonishing.