Cult of Mac

Over the last few weeks, third-party iOS developers received a lot of heavy venom from the Internet after reports surfaced that apps are accessing users’ address book information without users’ permission. It appears that the situation is worse than first thought and that apps can access more than just address books without notifying users. Photos on iOS devices are also susceptible to apps once a user has granted an app permission to their location information.

Apple’s stock price has been breaking its own records pretty frequently of late. So, it doesn’t come as much surprise that the price per share shot up to a new record high today after the company announced its iPad 3 launch event.

Already trading at over $500 per share, the price began skyrocketing once the news that Apple had delivered press invitations to the event – breaking its own recent record and reaching a high of $534.62.

Determined to acquire sea legs before the America’s Cup breezes into San Francisco in 2013, I’m learning to sail. Well, learning is a big word. Mostly trying not to get smacked by the boom and checking out the porpoises.

The Bay Area is known for its challenging waters, so I figured it’d be a good place to test out DryCASE, which vacuum seals your iPhone into a waterproof pouch that you can wear as an armband or around your neck.

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Apple loves putting little Easter eggs in their invitations to tease fans about what to expect at their events. Along with some sly cryptic phrases that are meant to intrigue you without actually telling you jack squat, Apple sometimes includes a few app icons to give fans a hint about what’s coming. The iPhone 4S invitation had a “1” above the phone icon to denote that they would be announcing only one new phone. In their latest invitation, Apple has given us the picture of an iPad with three apps in the dock – Maps, Calendar, and Keynote – along with the phrase, “We have something you really have to see. And touch.”

What does it mean!? Well, after taking a 30-minute online web course in Cryptology, I’m pretty much an expert at reading into Apple’s secret codings and here’s my break down of what to expect based on the secrets of the invitation icons.

It seems pretty likely that the invitation to Apple’s iPad 3 event includes a shot of the new model.

The display is particularly sharp and smooth – just like the anticipated retina display for the device.

The spacing of the icon’s on the iPad 3 pictured on the invite clearly indicate that it’s in portrait orientation rather than landscape.  But there’s no sign of a home button, a design change that Apple has been allegedly been toying with for some time.

Oh those clever bastards at Apple are up to it again. Sitting back in their glass spaceship palace in Cupertino acting so coy as they unleashed their trickery on the world in the form of a simple invite . Right as Google’s Eric Schmidt was taking the stage at Mobile World Conference to talk about how awesome his company’s Android platform is, Apple completely distracted the entire internet by sending out invitations to their iPad 3 event.

Mere coincidence you say? Bullshit. Apple usually sends out invites exactly 7 days before the date of a keynote, but today they broke tradition and sent the invites out 8 days before the event just to screw with Google.

It’s here! The long awaited iPad 3 Event has finally been announced. Apple just sent out invites to a special event that will take place at 10:00am on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The tagline on the event invite reads “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” Apple is expected to announce the iPad 3 that will have a better processor, improved graphics, and a new Retina Display.

ThumbTack is a Menu Bar utility for OS X that puts your most recent Pinboard bookmarks in easy reach, no matter what application you’re using.

In addition to iCloud, there are a number of other cloud services available to Mac and iOS users. Dropbox, Box.net, and Google Docs all come to mind immediately and each offers its own set of features. Another option that isn’t discussed so much by Apple users is Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Although SkyDrive has offered a basic iOS app and web access from Macs and iOS devices, the functionality has been a bit limited. Newly leaked details of an OS X SkyDrive app, however, indicate that Microsoft may be planning to compete against iCloud on Apple’s home turf.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Scalado, most recently seen removing people from photos like a cold-war-era dictatorship, today showed me some of its other fancy photo-processing apps. Scattered across Android, Windows Phone and Symbian, but mostly Android, there is an embarrassment of cleverness in fast photo processing.

9to5Mac reports that one of their most trusted sources has revealed Apple will launch a new Apple TV in March alongside the iPad 3. Rumors have claimed Apple would be releasing two major new products in March and it appears that a new Apple TV and iPad 3 will be the two products in question.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — If you’re looking for cans on the high-end, you can always count on Sennheiser. Their latest headphones, though, are particular nice. Don’t expect just warmed over tech: their new MM 450-X and 55-X Bluetooth headphones can pipe in some of the clearest tunes you’ll hear without a wire.

While Siri seems to get all the attention when it comes to voice actions, Motorola wants to remind people that Android not only does voice actions, but does them extremely well, if not better. At least that’s the message we’re getting out of Motorola’s latest campaign pitting Android’s voice actions against its top contender Siri. Motorola runs through a slew of voice action challenges using three different Motorola phones and the results are impressive. I’m blown away by how fast both OS’s perform the tasks given and it’s an excellent reminder of the fact that Android has been perfecting voice actions for quite some time. I’m betting there are a lot of you that didn’t even realize your phone could do the things your about to see. Check out the videos after the break.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Speck, the prolific and (very friendly) gadget case maker, had something very special on show at the Mobile World Congress Mobile Focus even last night: An iPad 3 case, which you see above, now liberated and comfortable in the Cult of Mac Barcelona HQ. But all is not as it seems. It turns out the case isn’t quite as mysterious as you might think.

RIM, which is not showing much in the way of new products or technologies at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, sought to dispel the idea that its failures over the past year had created tensions between the itself and BlackBerry developers.

The words, meant to be reassuring to developers and users, had a rather hollow ring to them considering that the company has seen major mobile developers retreating from its existing OS and its new platforms based around QNX. The move comes as RIM is seeking to court developers for its PlayBook tablet and future BlackBerry 10 devices. It also comes following the loss of several high profile enterprise BlackBerry customers, something that is sure to be on the minds of mobile developers when choosing platforms to support.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — As ever, NTT DoCoMo has some weird new tech to show off at the Mobile World Congress. This year, it’s a cellphone battery that charges fully in just ten minutes. and if you’re really in a hurry, you can get enough juice to last a couple of hours in just a minute.

Do you want to rock? Well get ready to enjoy your favorite Justin Bieber tunes in crisp, clear, audio HD, because according to a new rumor, Apple is hard at work developing a new audio file format that will offer adaptive streaming to provide high- or low quality files to iCloud users based on their current bandwidth capacities. Apple’s new format could mean users will have the ability to download high-definition audio to their iOS device via iTunes Match.

Here’s another OS X Lion feature: the Launchpad. It fades in and out when being shown and hidden. You’d think this was just the way things are, but there’s actually a way to disable it. Why would you want to? Older computers that still support OS X Lion might need a little less to worry about, and turning off animations like this (or the “move to dock” window function) can help things feel a bit snappier. Or, maybe you just don’t like the fade in and fade out. Have it your way.

According to this official White House picture, “President Barack Obama receives the Presidential Daily Briefing from Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration, in the Oval Office, Jan. 31, 2012. Part of the briefing was done using a tablet computer.”

Oh really? I assert that President Obama isn’t using a “tablet computer” in this picture at all. A tablet computer is a vague term for some crummy, half-baked Android thingie like the Motorola Xoom or Transformer Prime. No, what President Obama is using quite openly and proudly here is an iPad 2.

Hey, Android fans! Does your president use an Android device? Ha, just kidding, obviously the answer is no.

[Thanks, Tim!]

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Prowling the showfloor for scoops on the second day of Mobile World Congress, we happened to stop by the Windows Phone 7 booth, where we discovered that just hours before, an original first-generation iPhone beat a top-of-the-line Windows Phone in one of Microsoft’s very own challenges. Oh, delicious hubris!

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Last night I was treated to a security demonstration. Cryptography Research director Pankaj Rohatgi pointed a cheap, standard TV antenna at an iPod Touch several feet away, running standard RSA encryption operations.

On the screen of his oscilloscope was a sound-wave generated by his custom software showing distinct troughs at semi-regular intervals. These troughs, and their accompanying flattish peaks, represented the ones and zeroes of the private keys used in every secure communication we make today, sucked right from the iPod. With no further cracking required, all of your private operations can be read as if in plain text.

How is this done? From the electronic noise generated by every microchip as it goes about its processing duties.

BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Yesterday, Nokia announced its crazy new 41 megapixel camera phone, the PureView 808, and the world chuckled. Just how big is the damn phone, I wondered, when Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee woke me up and told me the news. But last night I spoke to a Nokia engineer, and it turns out this camera is pretty smart after all.

First, while the sensor does indeed contain 41 megapixels, it doesn’t snap 41MP photos. Instead, the sea of noisy data collected from those pixels is combined in software to get 5MP photos. Why? It started with the desire to design a better zoom.

Apple is expected to announced the iPad 3 to the world in less than two weeks. If you’ve been thinking about selling your current iPad in time to upgrade, the clock is ticking. Now is the best time to trade in your current Apple tablet for a shiny new one next month.

https://youtu.be/W0ABfj0ydPA

I don’t consider myself to be a terribly vain individual, but one of the main reasons why I hate using FaceTime is because I’m forced to look at my self-portrait if I want to see the person I’m talking to. My double chin always decides to make an appearance whenever my sister and niece send a FaceTime request, and half the time I just angle the camera away from my face.

Maybe if I were wealthy and cared more about my wrinkles and extra flab I’d call up Dr. Sigal to fix my FaceTime face, because apparently that’s his specialty. No, this isn’t an article from the Onion. Dr. Robert Sigal is a Washington DC-area plastic surgeon who specializes in reassembling human faces so that they’ll look better while video chatting.