Way back in the mists of 1991, in the dark days when Kevin Costner somehow beat Martin Scorsese for the Best Director Oscar (Dances with Wolves vs. Goodfellas. Seriously?), WinZip was first launched. The frustrating, hard-to-use piece of shareware is still going today, and has just elbowed its way into the iOS App Store. That’s right: WinZip is now available for the iPhone and iPad.
Yesterday we showed you how in OS X Mountain Lion, Software Update has shifted from its own app to the Mac App Store. But how will that work with updating apps that weren’t purchased through the App Store, but were instead bundled with your Mac at point-of-sale or installed from a DVD?
As you can see in the screenshot above, Apple’s got it covered: the Mountain Lion App Store will automatically detect any app that has historically been updated through Software Update and ask to register it to your Apple ID, along with a unique hardware identifier.
One of the features that immediately caught my eye about Mountain Lion was AirPlay Mirroring. As I noted yesterday, this offers a powerful presentation tool for business users as well as a great classroom addition for teachers and trainers.
Of course, it’s also a great entertainment solution and one that has some dramatic advantages over AirPlay Mirroring on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Those advantages are likely to set the stage for a showdown between Apple and the entertainment industry.
The psychedelic Whale Trail for iOS has been updated with 32 brand new levels and more power-ups. As the lead developer of Whale Trail told us in a recent interview, the popular App Store game now includes a second Challenge Pack called “Baron’s Revenge.” Among other additions, players can now keep progress synced across multiple devices.
The new levels in Whale Trail 1.2 will take you to the dark side. Now that’s what we’re talking about!
If you live in a city, the people that you meet when walking down the street are often great photo subjects.
But if you, like me, have a hard time getting decent shots with your iPhone of the woman with the cascade of facial tattoos you pass every day on your way to work, check out a free workshop at San Francisco’s Apple store this Sunday.
Brad Evans and Travis Jensen will teach you how to add some street cred to your everyday iPhone photos. They’re a pair of veteran urban shutterbugs who teamed up for #iSnapSF Field Journal, which showcases 42 images from thousands snapped on the streets of San Francisco using the iPhone 4 and the Hipstamatic app. (If you can’t catch the workshop, stay tuned for Cult of Mac’s interview with Jensen for some great iPhone photography tips.)
Which would win in a fight? OS X Mountain Lion or a real Mountain Lion? Over at DealMac, Jeff Somogyi put together this absolutely hysterical chart, delving into the question.
The cheeky result? If the criterion on which you are judging Mountain Lions includes messaging, productivity, note taking, notifications, sharing, gaming or Twitter support, OS X has the edge. If, however, you are judging mountain lions based upon their ability to leap 18 feet straight in the air, run at land speeds of up to 45 miles per hour and urinate upon things to mark their territory, the real-life Mountain Lion will eat your face off.
Go on over to DealMac to check out the full post, it’s priceless.
Zooka bills itself as a wireless speaker bar for any of your sound-producing gadgets, but one look will tell you the truth: it’s made for iPads and skinny MacBooks. The Zooka is a silicone cylinder which can work alone, but which also has a slot into which you can slide the edge of your favorite Apple device.
What with the whole Path address book debacle, this isn’t a good week to be caught up in a user privacy scandal on iOS as far as public perception is concerned. Google better batten down the hatches then, as it has just been discovered that they have been exploiting a loophole in the way Safari blocks cookies to bypass the privacy settings of millions of iPhone, iPad and Mac owners. Ouch.
Osfoora, a popular Twitter client that made its debut on the iPhone, has made the leap from iOS to the Mac. It is now contending with the likes of Echofon, Twitterific, and Twitter in the Mac App Store, but is it worth its $4.99 price tag?
Microsoft’s Active Directory is a core component in virtually every enterprise network. When I looked at Centrify’s DirectControl for Mobile, I singled out its deep integration with Active Directory as a major feature and a leg up over some of the other mobile device management (MDM) suites on the market. That’s because Active Directory is an essential piece of technology infrastructure in the vast majority of businesses.
Despite being a Microsoft solution (and a feature of Windows Server), Active Directory is a technology that all Apple IT professionals should understand and have some skills in using. With the Xserve gone and OS X Server headed to more limited uses since the release of Lion last summer, Active Directory is becoming a de facto standard for Macs and iOS devices as much as it is for Windows PCs.
It’s light, it’s tough and it’s beautiful to both look at and touch. Is there anything better than bamboo for making an iPad case? Maybe not. And Silva’s bamboo case for the iPad 2 is finally, finally available to buy.
Yesterday, we reported that Apple’s new Messages app icon looked pretty shamelessly similar to that of HipChat‘s. Now HipChat has spoken out about the maybe-theft-probably-concidence, and while they don’t have any hard feelings, they still think it sucks they’re about to get steamrolled by Apple.
Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.
It’s amazing what you see when you look closely at numbers, and super-analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco looks closer than most. Parsing some of Tim Cook’s keynote speech at Goldman Sachs earlier this week, he did some digging came up with the incredible graph you see above.
Apple has been introducing high-resolution artwork in preparation for Retina Display Macs since last July, when the company released OS X Lion. And it continues to do so, with artwork from its new Messages beta available at double its normal size.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEH1H-4Siw
Following our handy video roundup of new OS X Mountain Lion features, InsanelyGreatMac has published a video walkthrough of AirPlay, which allows you to mirror your Mac’s display on a television hooked up to the Apple TV.
As you can see, the feature works in much the same way as AirPlay on an iOS device, sending both video and audio from your Mac to your TV over a wireless network.
While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.
This is Pinwheel, a new iOS app for leaving and finding virtual notes anywhere in the real world.
It’s in private beta right now, but you can join in if you ask nicely and leave your email address in the box of the Pinwheel home page.
Avid Apple fans will undoubtedly remember The New York Times’ series on supply chain worker abuse overseas. The Times published a piece looking at Apple’s effect on the global economy followed by a second article titled, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” The probing look into worker abuse at Foxconn, Apple’s largest supply chain partner, sparked a firestorm of reactions from the media.
Since the report from the Times, Apple has made every effort to reassure the world that it is leading the industry in terms of supply chain accountability. CEO Tim Cook recently stated that Apple does more than any other company to provide fair working conditions. While that may be the case, it seems that The New York Times has now be given the cold shoulder for uncovering the issue originally.
A new jailbreak app called MultiTunes lets you sync with multiple iTunes libraries on your iOS device. Apple limits you to one iTunes library at a time by default, and while iCloud and iTunes Match make it easier to access your music from anywhere, some would still like to sync with different libraries without deleting all locally stored music first. That’s where MultiTunes saves the day.
https://www.cultofmac.com/147043/30-new-os-x-mountain-lion-features-in-2-minutes-video/
If you’re as excited as I am about OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll want to check this video out. Since only developers have access to the Mountain Lion beta at this point, I put together this quick video for all of Cult Of Mac’s great readers detailing 30 of the best new features of Mountain Lion, all jam packed into just two minutes. Check out the video after the break.
Apple has seeded a pre-release of Safari 5.2 to registered developers. Following the release of the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview this morning, a new beta of Safari has been made available with browser features from Apple’s upcoming desktop OS.
Namely, Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion introduces the unified, Google Chrome-like address/search bar. There are some other minor cosmetic changes that mirror the Safari version from the Mountain Lion developer preview.
Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.
If you grew up during the 1980s, many of its style tropes will have been burned indelibly into your brain. Shoulder pads, snow-washed jeans, pleated pants, and tacky, tacky poster art, exemplified by selective-colored black and white photos. If you can imagine a monochrome image of a rose, with the petals colored lipstick red, then congratulations: your mind just traveled back to 1985. Now, with Paint FX, your iPad can do the same.