Cult of Mac

I’ve never found a stylus for the iPad that I’ve really liked. Whether an aluminum tube filled with cheap capacitive foam, or something more beefy like Wacom’s official $35 Stylus, I’ve found that more often than not, iPad stylii are maddeningly unpredictable when it comes to registering the tip of the pen and where a pen stroke actually starts.

That’s why I’m blown away by this demo of the XStylus Touch by Hong Kong inventor Elton Leung. He’s noticed that all styluses have an issue with where the pen stroke starts, and he’s designed an incredible stylus that seems to register on the iPad at the exact pixel when it first comes in contact with the display.

Apple seems focused on marking its mark in Europe recently, what with the launch of its online store in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland; and the introduction of its iTunes movie store to new even more countries EU countries this week. However, its plans across the Atlantic don’t stop there: the company is also launching its Apple TV in another seven countries from Tuesday.

This morning, a report surfaced that the next iPhone would come with 64GB of storage for the first time ever. It’s looking pretty solid.

At the same time, rumors have been bubbling up for the last couple weeks that Apple would soon be discontinuing the venerable iPod Classic… and today’s move to axe the iPod Clickwheel Games section of the iTunes Store certainly seems to confirm as much.

That’s a bummer. Okay, sure, iTunes Match and iCloud take some of the hurt out… but what if you want to carry your whole music collection around with you without having to sign up for a data plan? For customers like that, the death of the only 120+ gigabyte iPod is a bitter pill to swallow.

Don’t worry. A new 128GB iPod touch is almost definitely coming.

Fearing its Galaxy Tab slate will never hit shelves down under, Samsung has reportedly proposed a deal with Apple that would allow the Korean electronics giant to launch its iPad competitor in Australia.

Following AT&T’s announcement back in July that confirmed it would begin throttling heavy data users, the carrier has today begun sending SMS messages to those who are being a little too greedy to warn them that their speeds will be reduced.

We all know that the writing is on the wall for the venerable iPod Classic. It’s a touchscreen world now, unfortunately, and with the global rollout of iCloud and the rise of streaming a la carte services like Spotify and Rdio, there’s just no reason for Apple to sell 160GB iPods anymore.

One casualty of all of this though? The apps. Before Apple rolled out the App Store for iOS, they experimented with software for the iPod, namely through iPod Click Wheel Games. Now Apple has killed off that section from its online store.

The tip today is a simple one geared towards people who are new to Mac OS X Lion. I’ll show you how to tweak the settings for your Mac OS X menu bar clock. You can switch between a digital or analog clock, change how the date displays, etc.

Inheriting an old Mac does not always mean it’s ready to go with freshly reinstalled software. The Startup (Boot) Manager might show its friendly face sometimes when a valid boot drive can’t be found:

Recently I have been given a iMac G5 (light sensor). The guy who gave it to me has wiped the HD so I can start again. I intend to give this Mac to my parents for a present but before I go and buy a copy of OSX i decided to try and install a borrowed copy just to make sure the computer still works. As far as I know the copy works. But my Mac won’t have any of it. (don’t worry, I’m not asking you for advice on pirating). All that shows on the screen are two buttons. One has a circular arrow and the other has a straight arrow. Nothing happens when I click on either of them.

Apple’s MobileMe service is currently experiencing issues that have resulted in an outage lasting several hours for 75% of subscribers. The issues mean those affected are unable to access Mail, Me.com web apps, or Find My iPhone.

While recent reports have quashed the possibility of an all-new iPhone 5 — and evidence has suggested an iPhone 4S will be the only device Apple announces on October 4 — iPhone 5 cases delivered to AT&T keep our dreams of all-new iPhone alive.

For the first time ever since its launch, Apple’s next iPhone could be available with up to 64GB of storage — double that currently available from the iPhone 4 — according to a reliable source.

Apple rumors are an interesting breed. No other company garners the same level of speculation and anticipation that Apple receives.

The rumor mill is always churning, especially leading up to a major Apple announcement, and sometimes rumors fly so fast that it can be hard to make sense of it all. In case you were wondering, this clever infographic shows how the typical Apple rumor forms over time.

Apple is working on a new type of drive that combines the best aspects of both traditional platter-based and flash storage. According to a recent patent published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Apple has some innovate ideas up its sleeve for a SSD/HDD combo drive.

Following the news that Disney is introducing a series of iPad games that interact with physical toys, Lego is also introducing its next generation of games with the “Life of George” iPhone app.

The game consists of classic Lego bricks, a free iPhone app, and a mat that basically acts as a green screen. The player tries to create the image shown on the iPhone app in Legos on the mat before time runs out.

Remember Psystar? The small company used to put together computers running OS X to then sell on the cheap. Apple won a permanent injunction against Psystar back in 2009 that prohibited the company from selling any unauthorized computers running OS X.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirms that Psystar did indeed violate Apple’s Mac OS X copyrights, and that the ban on sales will be upheld.

If you’re expecting to see iPads with a “Assembled in Brazil” marker engraved across the aluminum back starting next year, think again. Brazilian officials are now claiming that “crazy demands” by Foxconn could totally nix the $12 billion deal, keeping iPhone and iPad manufacturing firmly rooted in Asia.

Right now, it’s looking unlikely that the next iPhone will be a true new design, a real iPhone 5. Instead, it looks almost certain that Apple will announced the iPhone 4S on Tuesday instead… an upgraded device that looks almost identical to the iPhone 4.

That said, the sheer volume of reports that say that Apple has been working on a thinner, teardrop shaped iPhone with a bigger screen are hard to ignore, and many industry folks’ best guess is that that device will come in 2012. And here’s what it will look like.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB11hiwupKM&feature=player_embedded

This is a total fake, for a number of reasons: the date on the unlock screen isn’t the same as the one on the calendar, and the apps obviously activate themselves before the guy doing the supposed iPhone 4S actually touches them.

Got to say, though, this is still one of the better YouTube fakes we’ve seen, and we’re guessing the boys at ECA Games are responsible, given that their unreleased stunt motorcycle game Rock(s) Rider is prominently featured in the app. Well done, scoundrels!

Yesterday, Amazon announced what is likely the first and only true alternative to the iPad in the Kindle Fire, a $199 Android-based tablet smartly tied into Android rich cloud ecosystem of games, apps, books and video on demand.

No matter how you slice it, the Kindle Fire is the first tablet to really understand that most of what makes a mobile device isn’t just hardware or an off-the-shelf operating system, but a library of easily-accessed contents. It’s not just the apps, it’s the movies, it’s the music, it’s the magazines, it’s the ebooks. And Amazon is going to provide these things for $300 less than Apple does.

So now that all the dust has settled, we want to know what you think: does Apple have anything to worry about from the Kindle Fire, or is this less a fire than a bunch of smoke?

[polldaddy poll=”5544143″]

Let us know your answer in our poll after the jump, and feel free to expand upon them in the comments.

Slate’s Michael Agger wrote a nice post this week, musing on the way Apple changed the way we scroll with the introduction of Lion just over two months ago.

It got me wondering: how long did it take people to adapt to the new rules of scrolling?

Ever since Apple released Lion as a download from the Mac App Store, boxed software has been on the endangered species list. Now, the Cupertino, Calif. company tells educators only two titles will be available as boxed software.

I have some exciting news: we’re launching a new software hub at deals.cultofmac.com.

Starting today, we’ll be bringing Apple fans the best deals in cutting-edge software and apps. We’ll be offering all kinds of deals: free app codes; 72-hour sales on premium packages; and bundles of the best apps — all at savings of 30% to 90% off retail.

We’re kicking off today with the smash-hit mail app Sparrow. It’s one of the highest-rated email clients on Mac OS X, and we have it for just $6.

For the first time, Apple is using one of its retail locations to announce a new product. Although next week’s iPhone event happens in Cupertino, Calif., the tech giant will stream the goings-on to London’s Covent Garden Apple store.

According to 9to5Mac, the next iPhone isn’t just popping up in AT&T’s inventory system: it’s in Apple’s too, and it’s confirmed to pack a dual-core A5 SoC.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cSSiCghAdU&feature=player_embedded

The Swiss are known for their neutrality, so who better to try to negotiate a peace deal between Android and the iPhone? The result: this cute little video by the folks at Swiss broadcasting corp Swissinfo, which references movies as wide-ranging as Transformers, Braveheart, The Phantom Menace, Titanic, Ghost and The Bodyguard to urge the Android Army and the iPhone iPhalanx to put aside their silly differences and make love, not war.

[via AppAdvice]