It’s not always easy to read the tiny text displayed on our iOS devices. But did you know that the iOS operating system features a handy “Speak Selection” feature that will read selected text out loud?
Once activated, the feature allows you to select a piece of text within any app, then have it read out loud. Here’s how to enable and use it!
Remember Netflix’s plan to radically redesign their iPad app’s UI that we were so crazy about? Well, it’s here now, and it looks fantastic.
That’s not all that’s new for Apple fans, though.
When Google first released their native Gmail app for iOS, it was just a total mess: an HTML5 web app that not only had less innate functionality than loading up Gmail in Mobile Safari, but couldn’t even do its one selling point — push notifications — right. Heck, it even gave error messages at boot. Iit was so bad Gmail pulled the app within hours of release.
A little while later, Google released an updated version that fixed everything wrong with the old Gmail app, but it was still a total snoozer of an app. But today’s update to Gmail for iOS actually brings some cool new features to the table that might persuade some folks to switch from Mail.app.
This year we’ve seen a slew of absolutely amazing accessories for Apple devices come to the market for both the iMac, MacBooks, iPhones, iPad and AppleTV. Many of them have been remarkable but we’re having a hard time distinguishing which Apple Accessories should be considered the absolute best of 2011, so we’re turning to our readers to help us out.
Still shopping around for last minute gifts for your friends or family? Consider these three books authored by Cult of Mac writers, which may be just what you’re looking for.
Steve Jobs has been mentioned as a possible contender for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year ever since he passed away in October, but in the end, Time has gone another direction: they have awarded their 2011 Person of the Year instead to “The Protester,” the abstract avatar for the political demonstrations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States this year.
Samsung appears to have its eyes on yet another segment of Apple revenue: iTunes. There is no ‘iTunes killer’ out, but the South Korean company today hired a new executive to create “a new presence in media.” Taking on iTunes has become a cottage industry that usually ends with disappointment — but will Samsung be different?
Shared Paper is a lovely iPad app for making and sharing presentations on a huge scrollable canvas.
Hipstamatic Disposable from Synthetic on Vimeo.
Hipstamatic has a new group photo sharing app that just might help you remember what happened last night.
With the Hipstamatic D-Series (as in “disposable”) app,
Here’s how it works: you invite Facebook friends to participate and everyone who agrees can either shoot the roll or just view all the photos when the roll is finished. And just like analog photo rolls, those blurry shots or accidental shots of the floor go in there, too. The basic app is free, but you’ll be able to buy $0.99 lenses to further awesomeize your shots.
Fittingly, the video demo shows a hungover guy trying to put together the pieces of a rollicking night spent with friends from high school. Like the anonymizing Tweet app, originally designed to liven up boardrooms but popular with Occupy protesters, this could be co-opted to use on reporting events, protests and the like, an scenario Allen Buick says he didn’t plan on but can well imagine.
You would think Apple, which hails from the land of movies and make-believe, would understand the old Hollywood maxim that all publicity is good publicity. If not, courtroom sidekick Samsung can certainly teach a refresher course. Turns out, all the legal battles trying to stop Galaxy tablets instead have been good PR for the South Korean company — at least in Australia.
One of the first tweaks I make to any Mac I use is this neat little tweak that adds the currently playing album’s art to any song playing in Tunes.
Wouldn’t it be cool, though, if you could do the same thing on iOS, replacing the Music logo on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with the album art cover of the song you’re currently listening to? As usual, with a jailbreak and a simple Cydia download, you can.
Apple is relatively unscathed by the recent Thailand flooding which threw for a loop PC makers more dependent on hard drives. That’s the word from Wall Street analysts who say Apple’s move to flash memory saved the Cupertino, Calif tech giant from the fate of Intel.
Wow, Merry Christmas indeed. Dieter Bohn over at The Verge has put together the end-all-be-all guide to iOS, an overview of Apple’s plucky little mobile OS so well-illustrated, informative and complete, all we can do is stew in jealousy we didn’t do this ourselves.
Apple’s new Siri assistant has really revolutionized the way in which we interact with mobile devices using our voice. It’s no wonder, then, that rivals are scrambling to introduce their own alternatives. Google already has one for Android, according to some reports, called Majel, and it’ll debut during the first quarter of 2012.
When you think of computer chips, Intel quickly comes to mind. However, Apple may have a lead on the chip giant when it comes to specialized silicon for mobile devices. A new report suggests Apple’s A5 design could lead to the Cupertino, Calif. company creating its own chips for MacBooks.
If you’re anything like me, you often sit around and wonder what the people and animals you know look like with their skin and musculature pulled off to reveal the screaming skulls beneath. Unfortunately, pulling the faces off of actual living creatures to stare at their skeletons tends to be considered, as I understand it, somewhat declasse amongst the bourgeoise, so until society reconsiders its values, there’s this: the Skulls app by Simon Winchester.
iOS hacker and Chronic Dev-Team member Pod2g is making quite a name for himself right now as he works away on an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5. According to his latest blog posts, he has now completed the code for an untethered jailbreak on all A4-powered devices, suggesting a public release of the exploit isn’t too far away.
Your Mac will check your spelling as you type in many applications, underlining mistakes in red, but did you know that it can also check your grammar?
Solar Walk is an excellent educational app about space and everything in it. With Earth as your home base, you wander the Solar System, cruising the planets and moons and making discoveries along the way.
Sega is set to release its latest Sonic the Hedgehog port for iOS today with the critically acclaimed Sonic CD — a title which first made its debut back in 1993 on the Sega CD. But just in case you weren’t already excited enough, the company has also released a teasing new launch trailer.
Microsoft seems more than willing to spend its time on developing software for Apple’s iOS platform, despite it being a direct competitor to its Windows Phone operating system. Why? We don’t know. But we like it.
Especially when the company throws up gems like Kinectimals. My kids love this game on the Xbox 360, which takes advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect accessory, and now it’s available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Never mind a Retina display iPad, Apple has something special up its sleeve for next year. According to sources within the company’s supply chain, a Retina display MacBook Pro with a display resolution of 2880×1800 is coming during the second quarter of 2012.
Notification Center is a useful little addition to iOS, but it’s very limited. As of now, you can’t customize it to show much more than Stocks and Weather. In this video, I’ll show you a little workaround that will allow you to display the current date in Notification Center.
Till now, HP has held a huge advantage over it’s printer rivals when it comes to printing from the iPad — because even though rivals have made strides with their own apps (like Epson’s slick iPrint app) HP’s printers remain the only ones with AirPrint, which is tied directly to iOS and allows printing from within apps, without having to use an intermediary app (eg iPrint).