The Notification Center that ships with iOS 5 is nice, and by default it displays a stock ticker, weather, mail, and calendar entries. It all looks great and the eye candy it provides actually conceal some very useful tricks you can use to reach some of its hidden secrets. Today we’ll take a look at the stock ticker.
Starbucks has launched a new iPhone app for the holidays that gives customers special offers and deals on the drinks we all crave. Not only that, but the Starbucks Cup Magic app also lets you play with augmented reality by tracking and taking pictures of special Starbucks characters.
Users can also send a Starbucks Card “eGift” to loved ones.
Popular mobile payment solution Square has received a significant update that adds new features and specialized hardware integration for merchants.
You can set up in-store rewards for regular customers, integrate Square with cash drawers and receipt printers, and work with enhanced software features for transaction and specific customer details.
Apple has seeded OS X 10.7.3 to developers. The update focuses on iCloud document storage and issues relating to several of Apple’s native apps.
Developers are asked to focus on bugs involving iCal, Mail, and Address Book. Apple also warns that installing this 10.7.3 build will prevent one from reverting back to older versions of OS X Lion.
In a press release sent out just moments ago, Apple has just announced that former Genentech CEO Arthur D. Levinson has filled the vacant Chairman of the Board position that Steve Jobs left empty by his death in October.
Levinson has been on Apple’s board since 2005 as co-lead director and served on all three board committees over that period.
In addition, Apple has announced that Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger will be joining Apple’s board and will serve on the audit committee.
Press release below.
Apple has sent an email out to developers with the reminder that the annual iTunes Connect shutdown is scheduled for December 22nd-29th. The iTunes Connect portal shuts down every year during the holidays while Apple’s corporate employees take a much-deserved break.
The shutdown means there will be no app updates, price changes, or submissions approved for the App Store during that timeframe. This year’s shutdown lasts two days longer than previous years.
Steve Jobs’s legacy on the mobile industry is uncontested, but instead of just changing the balance of power between handset makers and the carriers, Jobs’s original vision was even more revolutionary: he wanted Apple to become a carrier using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum.
AppZilla 2 is one of those jack-of-all-trades apps, squeezing 120 little mini-apps into one place.
Tap it, and it grinds open with a dramatic kzzzzzzrrr-tang sound. Inside, you see a springboard-within-a-springboard, with pages of apps to mess around with.
You’re not going to exactly want to replace your tape measure, but as far as iPhone hacks go, this is about as cool as it gets: Acoustic Ruler allows you to measure distance up to 82 feet using a blast of pure sound.
For Apple, the iPhone’s clean desktop is simply an extension of its overall minimalist design. While keeping control of what apps appear on the smartphone makes fans of users, forbidding so-called carrier ‘junkware’ could be a deal-breaker for NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest wireless provider.
Great spot by 9to5Mac: Amazon just dropped the price of the Apple TV by $10 to just $89.99; they’ve also rechristened it the ‘2010’ model.
Could Amazon know something the rest of us poor suckers don’t? Is an updated 2011 Apple TV incoming in time for Black Friday? If so, don’t expect much besides a bump to an A5 chip: if Apple were to, say, bring Siri to the Apple TV, they’d definitely make a big fuss over it in an event.
Even if you’re not a jailbreaker, TinyUmbrella is a great little app that allows you to save your iPhone, iPod touch or iPads SHSH blob files locally. What is the actual use of such a technobabble practice? Simple: if you have your blob files stored locally, you can downgrade your iDevice to an earlier version of iOS; useful if your iPhone gets hit with a bug in the latest version of iOS, or an app you can’t live without stops working.
If you are running iOS 5.0.1, you might want to head on by TinyUmbrella’s official website and grab the latest version: it’s been updated to slurp down the latest version’s SHSH blob files.
Just how popular is OS X Lion 10.7, compared to its predecessors? “Lion’s adoption has been less than stellar,” says one online ad firm. Yet the figures don’t seem to jive with other Internet surveys, as well as Apple’s. Who’s right? As often is the case, it depends on who you ask.
Making an album of new songs seems to be too much like hard work for bands these days. It’s so much easier to pay some developers to make an app instead.
Research giant Gartner had a quick lesson for Apple: don’t let off the iPhone accelerator — if you do, you’ll pay. The latest price for delaying until October its new smartphone: iOS dipped to 15 percent of sales while Android-based handsets skyrocketed to 52.5 percent of the market.
At Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, they serve up to 15,000 meals per day to some of the illuminati of tech, including more than a few celebrities, without a blink. But according to Google superchef Charlie Ayers, when Steve Jobs entered the Google cafeteria, everything was different: the employees parted like “Moses before the Red Sea.”
Jobs liked Ayers’s food so much that when Ayers left Google to open his own restaurant, the Calafia Cafe, Steve Jobs followed him, and even brought his entire family to the restaurant for a last-minute Easter dinner. Even though he was a regular, Ayers says no one ever approached Steve Jobs, except one customer: a little boy who asked for (and received) an autograph. Awww.
[via Forbes]
If you’ve been sitting around debating whether or not to buy the Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle, you better hurry the heck up and make a decision. The Deals.CultofMac Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle will only be available for another 20 hours. If you’ve ever wanted to test your hand at web development, give Flux a go; you won’t find it cheaper than here! We’re busting out the Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle packed with great creation tools as well as productivity goodies and utilities. This bundle has 8 top Apps worth a total of $300 that we’re able to sell for $35. This bundle has a shorter lifespan than some of our other deals, though, and will only be around for 6 days, so get it while you still have the chance.
The Recording Industry Association of America has targeted a business called ReDigi that specializes in selling “used” iTunes tracks online. While ReDigi promises users its practice is perfectly legal, the RIAA is having none of it, and wants the company closed down.
It demands the company abandon its business and its “infringing activities,” and hands over its sales records to the RIAA. It also wants ReDigi to open its servers so that the music files held by the company cannot be exploited.
As part of the streaming video on demand service’s push towards consolidating its user interface across all tablets, Netflix just unveiled the new GUI to their official iPad app. Sayonara, whitespace!
We’ve seen a lot of Steve Jobs tributes since his death in October, but this one is particularly impressive. Speed painter Aaron Kizer took to the stage at the 11th Hour Live Music and Arts Show in Owensboro, Kentucky and in a blur of brushes painted an incredible portrait of Steve Jobs in just six minutes.
Remarkable. Check out the full video below.
In an intriguing note, a Wall Street analyst suggests Samsung — you know, the South Korean company keeping Apple’s legal department in yachts and private islands — could be one of the beneficiaries of $3.4 billion Apple will spend to retool suppliers’ factories in 2012. Or Apple could just build itself a couple of state-of-the-art chip factories from scratch.
The guys over at G-Form go to extreme lengths to show off the impressive capabilities of their gadget cases, like dropping a 12lb. bowling ball on the iPad, and throwing a perfectly good MacBook Pro off of a balcony.
The iPad becomes their victim again in this latest stunt, which is intended to show off the incredible strength of the company’s Extreme Edge and Extreme Portfolio cases, as they’re dropped from 1,300 feet.
Sometimes you need to give your iPhone just a little bit more oomph. Maybe you need to output just a little more sound so you can DJ the impromptu breakdancing showdown that’s spontaneously popped up in your NYC subway car, or maybe you need to give your iPhone’s battery a jolt after being declared MTA Breakdancing Champion Of The Lower Boroughs And The Universe.
Either way, Spar’s Zephyr has got you covered. Think of it as a metallic JamBox with a lightning rod inside: a Bluetooth speaker and hands-free speakerphone, paired with an external battery that can juice up your iPhone in a pinch.
A Vietnamese book publisher has just published a touching, beautifully designed 2012 memorial calendar to the life of Steve Jobs, filled with the most iconic Steve shots of the last thirty years and aspirational quotes from the fiery, passionate Apple founder himself on the way to live life.
If the U.S. makes it easier for tourists to enter the country, more of them will come to spend their money – especially on electronic gadgets, Fox News maintains.
They make the case for iPad buyers from Brazil, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Despite the evidence that they’ll be soon making iPads and iPhones there, nightmarishly high tariffs still make the U.S. a better place to buy Apple products. (By the way, Cult of Mac will be in Sao Paulo Nov. 20, come say hi and talk about all things Apple in Brazil).