Cult of Mac

I love Apple’s Smart Cover for the iPad 2, and I’ve had one stuck to my device since the day I bought it. It looks good, it protects my display, and it’s useful. I often wonder whether the same kind of concept could work for the iPhone, and it seems TidyTilt has an answer.

TidyTilt is like a Smart Cover for your iPhone 4 or 4S, only much smarter. Not only does it act as a kickstand for your device when you want to type, watch movies, or play games; it provides tidy storage for your earbuds, and a whole lot more.

Google has updated its popular Google Translate app for iOS today, introducing native support for the iPad. Instead of running in a small window in the center of screen, the app will now take advantage of your iPad’s large display to make text translation easier on the go.

Here’s a fun idea from Kickstarter: hip headphones with built-in housing for your iPod shuffle.

Apple is now giving refunds to customers that purchased the bizarre GameStore app that surfaced over the past weekend in the App Store. GameStore offered in-app purchases for non-existent racing games.

In an email to customers that purchased GameStore during the brief time it was on the App Store, Apple has noted that the app was made available for sale “prematurely.”

The area where the fitness tech companies congregate at CES seems to get larger and louder every year — and based on the preview emails or stuff we’ve chatted about on the phone, fitness at CES 2012 looks like it’ll be bigger than ever.

What’s this? Android news on Cult of Mac?! Who the hell cares?! Maybe you don’t, maybe you do. Point is: these are a few of the popular topics going on in the Android world today. Maybe you’d like to know what the competition is up to, or perhaps your aunt received a Kindle Fire she needs to update. Regardless of the reason, having a resource such as Cult of Android allows you to learn more about what’s going on in the ecosystem powered by the world’s leading mobile OS.

Yesterday we showed you how to conserve iCloud storage space by removing old backups from your iOS device. But what if you don’t have old backups eating up your storage, and you’re still going over your limit?

Today’s tip will show you how to manage your iCloud storage by disabling backups for selected iOS apps that you don’t necessarily need to backup with iCloud, quickly providing you with more storage for your important data.

Who rides around in an armored Cadillac and likes to take retro-filtered photos? The President of the United States, of course! That’s right, President Barack Obama is now Instagram.

As the campaign season starts to ramp up, Obama’s staff is covering all the bases. Fellow Instagram addicts can follow the president’s staff from his official account for plenty of hipster filter goodness and behind-the-scenes peeks along the campaign trail. 

Verizon has announced record-breaking results for its 2011 fourth quarter sales. The nation’s largest carrier sold 4.2 million iPhones during the holiday season, effectively doubling sales from the previous quarter.

The iPhone 4S was launched during Q4 of 2011, and holiday sales have surely helped Verizon rise to such impressive results.

It would seem that popular music streaming service Spotify is cooking something especially juicy in the voice department. Forbes is reporting that Spotify’s CEO has shown off a “hack” that involved telling the service’s iOS app to play some tunes.

You don’t need to know anything more about the state of the mobile industry than the fact that the worst mainstream smartphone OS, Android, is the number one smartphone platform by numbers, while one of the best — Windows Phone 7 — justy can’t get any momentum.

That’s a real shame, because short of iOS, WP7 is the best mobile OS out there: it’s got an innovative tile-based interface, slick hardware, and a cogent design philosophy. But not only is Windows Phone 7 not getting any traction in the market, but Microsoft is going so far now as to reportedly bribe retail store employees to recommend WP7 over Android or iPhones. Yikes.

Owners of Apple’s iPad quickly adopted the App Store as their home, downloading three billion apps in 2010 and virtually obliterating Android alternatives. The iPad accounted for nearly one out over every five Apple apps downloaded, according to new research.

Apple has finally tapped someone to run its suffering mobile ads division. Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has poached Adobe exec Todd Teresi to run iAds. Andy Miller stepped down from the mobile ad division last August.

Teresi is listed as the VP and GM of Media Solutions at Adobe. He has also served as the Senior Vice President of Yahoo before resigning in 2008. He has a history of working with interactive advertising.

More proof that the iPhone is the 21st century analogue to the venerable Swiss Army Knife: a hiker lost in the woods on New Year’s Eve was able to alert and flag down rescuers using his iPhone’s flashlight app.

There are few things on Earth as annoying or punchable as a little brother. Sure, deep down in the recesses of his subconscious, your younger brother is just trying to impress you with his antics. From that perspective, his insistence on constantly nudging you while you’re trying to beat your Angry Birds high score on your iPad is in, reality, an act of love and admiration.

Likewise, it must be remembered that an older brother’s responsibility from time immemorial is to firmly take his younger siblings in hand and instruct them upon the ways of the world: the rules, the social decorums, the hidden pitfalls, the unspoken expectations. From that perspective, then, isn’t knocking your younger brother unconscious by hitting him in the face with your iPad also a supreme act of love?

Probably not. But like giving your younger brother an Indian burn, purple nurple or atomic noogie, it is pretty funny.

[via Macgasm]

In late 2010, after years of abstaining from entering the netbook market, Apple finally succeeded in transforming the MacBook Air from a disappointing promise of laptops to come into a machine that revolutionized ultraportables the same way the iPhone revolutionized smartphones and the iPad revolutionzed tablets. Not only was the MacBook Air as thin as a samurai sword and about as small as a 12-inch netbook, it had the performance of a beefier laptop thanks to the inclusion of a proper CPU, dedicated GPU and ubiquitous flash storage… all at a sub-$1000 price point.

Overnight, the MacBook Air finished what the iPad had started and almost completely killed off netbook demand once and for all. Now all of the gadget makers who had previously been counting on netbook sales to boost their bottom lines are trying to catch up with Apple. But as usual, they’re about a year late.

What does this mean for CES 2012? Expect to see ultrabooks, ultrabooks and more ultrabooks.

The Android Market saw staggering growth in 2011 and thanks to some tracking done by Distimo, we have a better look at how the numbers play out in comparison to Android’s top competitor Apple. According to Distimo, the Android Market has now reached over 400,000 apps, which is still 100K shy of Apple’s 500K+ active apps available according to 148apps metrics. While Android still trails in overall apps, it’s really the rate at which it’s growing that is impressive.

Following our report about Martin Reisch earlier today — the Canadian who was reportedly allowed into the United States with a photograph of his passport on his iPad — U.S. customs have contacted us to clarify the situation.

Jenny L. Burke, a Field Branch Chief with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, says that the claim Reisch was admitted into the U.S. using solely an image of his passport on his iPad is “categorically false,” and that Reisch had to provide more than just a photo to get into the country.

If you have plans to sue Apple for a faulty MagSafe power adapter that may have set fire to your home office, then you had better make it a priority on your to-do list. The deadline to make claims under the class action settlement relating to the device is fast approaching.

Even in the New Year, those iTV rumors just won’t quit. The latest word is that Jony Ive has been working on a 42- to 50-inch Apple television in his secret Cupertino design studio; probably the Siri-controlled Apple HDTV the whole industry has been quaking over for the last few months.

Despite being overshadowed by the MacBook and other mobile devices, Apple’s venerable iMac accounts for nearly a third of the 14.5 million all-in-one desktop computers sold in 2010. The strength of iMac demand put Apple ahead of Lenovo and HP, expecting to unveil two new desktop computers at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Meet Martin Reisch, a slightly forgetful Canadian who recently took a trip to the United States only to find shortly before landing that he had forgotten his passport. Fortunately for him, that was the day U.S. customs were allowing people into the country armed only with a photograph of their passport on their iPad. Or so he claims.

Still waiting for the iPhone 4S in your territory? Well, you could be one of the lucky ones who are set to receive Apple’s latest smartphone on January 13. The company has announced in a press release issued this morning that next Friday will see the launch of the device in 21 additional countries.

Finland is far from the minds of most iPhone users. However, the frigid, Nordic country is huge on carriers’ radar because it is there that text messaging was born and where it could very well die. The number of Christmas Eve texts in Finland fell off a cliff, plummeting to 8.9 million from 10.9 million in 2010. With text messages accounting for 20 percent of carrier revenue, its enough to give companies nightmares — but this bad dream is far from over.

If you’ve written a book full of Mac tips, as I have, it’s inevitable people ask what my favourite tips are. So here they are, for one-time only—the top 10 tricks I use every day. They’re not all barnstormers, and they’re not guaranteed to be mind-blowing. They’re just the little things I do to make life easier and more efficient when I’m using my Mac. Please share your own in the comments!