Now you can post to multiple social networks at once!
Ever since Apple integrated Twitter into iOS 5, many have been clamoring to also have Facebook integration for posting status updates and photos anywhere in the OS. There was reportedly some drama between Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs over the Ping debacle and iOS 5 integration. The two companies just can’t seem to get along.
Whether Facebook ever makes its way to iOS or not, a new jailbreak tweak brings integration with the social network giant right now. Fusion lets you simultaneously post to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and even MySpace.
Image of what the next iPhone could look like via Macrumors
Apple is expected to announce its new iPhone later this year, most likely sometime this fall. Some expect it to be a drastic redesign compared to the iPhone 4/4S, with a larger screen and new unibody design.
Analyst Brian White from Topeka Capital Markets has dropped a note this morning, confirming these reports based upon a recent trip to China and saying that the iPhone 5 will be “the most significant iPhone upgrade” yet. He also expects that with the excitement it will bring, the iPhone 5 will push Apple’s stock to a crazy price $1,001 per-share by year’s end.
Cult of Mac’s delicious new podcast is back with a new episode this week. CultCast episode 7 dives into rumors of Apple’s new TV being called the “iPanel,” along with some commentary of high school iPhone users and whether or not we’d let our kids get an iPhone.
And what about Ashton Kutcher playing Steve Jobs in that upcoming indie film? Bad casting decision? Or does Ashton have the dramatic chops it would take to convey the complexities of El Jobso? The CultCast dives into those topics and much more which a heavy serving of comedy to help satisfy your Apple cravings.
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.
No one's ever going to mistake a Galaxy S for this, are they?
Products can be too popular for their own good. Take zipper, for example. Today, it’s used as a generic term for the interlocking steel teeth that keep you from exposing yourself to the public, but in the 1920’s, it was a distinct brand: the Zipper, invented and marketed by B.F. Goodrich, which was such a successful alternative to the boring old button that it lost its capital ‘Z’ in the mind of the public and became a generic term that lost its trademark… and once it lost its trademark, anyone could call their rip-off product a “zipper” as if it was the real thing.
It’s a very real issue that many companies spend a good deal of money on every year. They want their brand to be synonymous with a certain type of product, but they don’t want it to be so synonymous that they lose ownership of the brand. And it’s why, if you like, say, Jell-O, or Xerox, or Kleenex, you shouldn’t refer to similar products from another company by the same name.
Over at The News Virginian, there’s an interesting think piece by AP writer Mae Anderson if the same thing could happen to the iPad. It’s a great read on the history of trademarks becoming generic, but it’s not really very likely to happen to the iPad. Here’s why.
With a $30 XBox accessory, you can add Wi-Fi to your $6,000 camera
If you have already paid $6,000 for a new Nikon D4, you are either rich enough not to care that adding Wi-Fi costs another $900, or your bank account is now so wiped out that you can’t even afford to charge the battery. If you fall into either camp, though, you might still want to try out his great DIY project which adds Wi-Fi to your supercamera for just $30.
After ripping into the new iPad when it finally landed in their hands on March 16th, a sizable number of customers began to notice their tablet experiencing issues with Wi-Fi. Worse, it’s not an isolated problem with a few bad iPads: in fact, there are enough people complaining that they’ve managed to fill up a huge thread on Apple’s official support forums.
So far, Apple’s remained mum on what’s causing the issue. However, a repair expert thinks that the issue with the iPad’s Wi-Fi may be caused by bad power management to the Broadcom BCM4330 chip that handles Wi-Fi on the device. While it’s a hardware issue, though, the expert says Apple could probably fix it with a software update.
Few iPad publications include interactive or immersive ads (source: Kantar Media)
It’s pretty clear that digital distribution is going to play a large role in the future of magazines and newspapers. That doesn’t mean, however, that print editions are going away any time soon. For the foreseeable future, we’re likely to see print/digital hybrids while consumers and publishers test the waters of both digital products and distribution channels.
The road to digital hasn’t been a smooth ride for many publications. Part of the reason is the lack of resources being devoted to creating engaging and immersive digital content that doesn’t feel as if you’re simply reading a PDF of the print edition.
One big area where publisher are still failing is advertising – despite excellent interactive ad systems like Apple iAd, publishers are still stuck in a print mentality when it comes to ads. In fact, according to a new study, publications often simply toss the exact same print-formatted ads into digital editions that run in their print counterparts.
Last week a Foxconn recruiter thought he knew what he was talking about and told a reporter that Apple’s next iPhone is launching in June. However, he probably only knew as much as we do, and was just making an assumption based off Foxconn’s drive to hire 18,000 employees.
Interestingly, another employee inside of Foxconn would like to disagree with his co-worker. The head of human resources at Foxconn’s Taiyuan factory told reporters in an interview that the new iPhone is launching in October.
While we know a new iPhone is coming this year out of Cupertino, we don’t know exactly when that iPhone will launch or with what specs, but what we do know is that Apple is testing prototypes of the new iPhone in its labs. This morning, a new report sheds some information on the new iPhone that Apple is testing, along with a new iPod touch.
I’m a complete neat freak. Add to this my weakness for bags of all kinds and you’ll see immediately why I love these new organizing wallets from ThinkTank. These four wallets are designed for tidying and storing SD cards, flash gels and cameras batteries.
If you hear the phrase “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” and nod in solemn agreement, then read on.
Made right here in the U.S. of A., we partnered with Seattle indie brand Might Tees to bring the computing days of yore back to life on our new In Love With Lisa graphic tee.
Who’s Lisa? Why, she was only one of Apple’s most iconic computing failures. Perhaps it was her stratospheric 10k price tag that was to blame for her abysmal sales record — it obviously wasn’t her boxy good-looks! We loved her though, so resurrected her cutting-edge, dual-floppy technology in a vintage design you’ll be proud to wear over your torso.
Our new tee is hewn from 100% super-soft cotton, ships worldwide, and is available right now over at MightTees.com.
Wrap Up might just stop you burning down the house
I have had to replace more than one frazzled MagSafe charger thanks to an uncharacteristically bad piece of design by Apple. Sure, the magnetic connection breaks away to save the connected Mac from a fall, and it’s great that the latest MagSafe adapters have newly-designed, tougher aluminum tips, but the junction between the cord and the chager itself is still pathetically weak. So weak it makes a sick kitten look like Chuck Norris.
Thinklabs’ Wrap Up is an effective solution to this.
In Mac OS X Lion, it’s finally possible to customize your System Preferences, removing unwanted preference panes as well as sorting them in different ways. Here’s how.
A new jailbreak tweak called Curiosa lets you see incoming Cydia updates in the iOS 5 Notification Center. Instead of having to open the Cydia app and refresh for changes, new updates will be pushed as notifications for you to quickly view and open.
Developed by prominent jailbreak dev Ryan Petrich, Curiosa is available for free in Cydia now. It comes with some nice features to enhance its functionality.
For those that celebrate Easter — and even for those who don’t — Cult of Mac Deals has what we consider “the ultimate Easter egg” for you. It’s a giveaway that will level up your productivity…because we’re offering you a chance to win a bundle that contains all of The Omni Group’s top Mac apps!
This giveaway is valued at $580 — and it’s one that you definitely want to have in your Mac toolbox!
Papermill launched on Android several weeks ago. Developed by Ryan Bateman and designed with the help of Matt Legaspi, the app is a beautiful Instapaper client for Android devices. Papermill received high praise from the community and widespreadmediacoverage when it launched, and the developer has since broken down its success based on sales. The conclusions he draws about Android users in general are particularly interesting.
Bateman says that, “Android users not being willing to pay for an apps whose focus is quality and whose price reflects this.” Is this true only for the average Android user, or should the average iPhone user be considered as well? How can one make the blanket argument that people don’t want to pay for quality apps? I think it comes down to the basic issue of supply and demand.
In the 1984 novel Neuromancer, author William Gibson described a future in which “implants, nerve-splicing, and micro bionics” could turn people into internet-connected cyborgs.
If you like that idea, you’ll be happy to know that Google is working on it.
The company’s “Project Glass” augmented reality glasses is the first step toward Gibson’s cyborg vision. The glasses project images into one eye, enabling real life (what you see with your actual eyes) to acquire menu items, contextual information, turn-by-turn directions and more. You can take a picture by blinking your eye.
If the idea that augmented reality glasses are a first step toward being assimilated into the Borg, you should know that the head of the project in Google’s “Google X” labs, Babak Parviz, has already developed an electronic contact lens that can display data to the wearer’s eye.
The first step is glasses. The second is contact lenses. And the third is internet-connected eye implants.
Google isn’t the only organization taking these steps. Such technologies will soon become generally available. But will they come from Apple, too?
In a nutshell, Kazwell says Apple will wait and see how the market responds to Google’s Project Glass and he implies that Apple will follow Google into the cyborgification of mankind.
I think he’s wrong. I think Apple will never cross that line. Here’s why.
Movies from Universal, like 'Repo Men', are now available to re-download from iCloud.
When Apple announced that it was bringing movies and TV shows purchased in the iTunes Store to iCloud, every major production house was onboard except Universal and Fox. Due to licensing conflicts with HBO, Universal and Fox were not able to offer video content in iCloud initially. HBO later said that it would be loosening its grip on the studios to allow for licensing agreements with Apple.
It now appears that Universal Studios has been able to start offering its movies in the iTunes Store for re-download in iCloud.
Forget trying to wear your polarized glasses while trying to use your iPad in portrait mode.
Do you wear polarized sunglasses? If so, you can go ahead and forget trying to use your iPad in portrait mode while wearing them. You think we’re kidding? No.. when wearing polarized sunglasses the iPad’s screen turns black when using it in portait mode — rendering it useless until you flip it over in landscape. Devastating, we know.
Last week, I published an opinion piece proposing that Apple open a corporate museum. It was also published on Forbes.com. The story started trending by Sunday evening. Then somewhat amusingly, it got buried first thing Monday morning by the wall-to-wall coverage of Ashton Kutcher, who’s to play Steve Jobs in an upcoming indie film. To be honest, I really wasn’t all that amused.
Celebrity physicist Brian Cox is famous in the U.K. for making physics accessible to the public through bestselling books and several popular TV series. Now he brings elements of both to a gorgeous new iPad app: Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe ($6.99).
Featuring amazing animations and lush, high-production video, the app will sweep you back in time to witness the Big Bang, and then look ahead to the universe’s end, when the last black dwarfs will fizzle away to entropy.
As Prof. Cox points out: while the universe evolves momentarily from order to chaos, now is a precious window of time when life is briefly possible, for us to be able to contemplate the universe…
We’re huge fans of Tapbot’s great alternative to the official Twitter app, Tweetbot. This evening a very cool update for Tweetbot has been released, which adds iCloud sync for user’s timelines, direct messages, and mute filters. This update is a must have.
There’s also a ton of other fixes and features in version 2.2:
This Ruby on Rails tutorial for beginners is the perfect comprehensive video guided tour of modern Rails web development. With this course you’ll get a grasp on the newest, most effective approach to web development as Micheal Hartl walks you through the entire Rails development process: installing and setting up Rails, designing Rails applications with MVC and REST, building dynamic pages, coding effectively in Ruby, implementing registration and authentication, adding social features, even testing and deployment.
This course — usually $129 — is now available for a limited time for …courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals!
As a Mac user, I’ve always been a fan of Activity Monitor. It keeps track of RAM and hard disk memory, CPU and Disk usage, and Network activity. It’s a handy app to have, on my Mac.
But what about the iPhone? Doesn’t it deserve some sort of activity monitor of it’s own? Well, todays’ tip offers one such app, called Activity Monitor Touch.
Those of you who have purchased your iPhone off-contract, aka for the full price, will be happy to hear that AT&T will begin unlocking iPhones at customers’ request this Sunday. Carrier unlocking will allow customers “in good standing” to switch out the AT&T SIM for a SIM on another network, as long as the bands are supported. This is great for customers who want to travel with their AT&T iPhone internationally.
