Cult of Mac

With the CultofMac so chock full of bike geeks, it’s no wonder we pretty excited to see the arrival a few months back of one of the first gadgets that fall into the app-enhanced category — a gadget/app mashup that manufacturer New Potato Tech cleverly calls an “appcessory.” In this case, the $99 LiveRider combo of an iPhone bicycle mount and sensor/receiver package with its own dedicated app turns the iPhone into a flexible, jumbo-screened bike computer.

It’s not the only sensor/app combo on the market; Enki Sports offers a more complete and expensive solution, and newcomer Wahoo Fitness recently arrived with a flexible, modular approach (with sensors that look remarkably similar to Enki’s). But we figured New Potato’s kit would provide a simple, relatively inexpensive setup for intermediate-ish cyclists wanting their data fix. We were mistaken.

According to a recent Houston Chronicle story an iPhone has once again saved the day and solved a crime. This particular iPhone was stolen from a female jogger, who was jogging with a friend, during an armed robbery that occurred in the 700 block of Brittmore on the west side of Houston, Texas.

The alleged robbers exited a pickup truck and confronted the two women according to Houston Police Department (HPD) spokesman John Cannon.  An Apple iPhone was turned over to the robbers by one of the women and fortunately neither of them was hurt.

The kitchen computer is a wonderful, wonderful prospect — recipes to be references, emails to be responded to over cooking — except for the prospects of smoke and steam and spatters of hot grease. Doubly so the prospect of cooking with an iPad, which is simply too beautiful, too pure a device to put near an open flame.

Enter various rack solutions, none of which have caught our eye for their permanence, but this is pretty ingenious: The Original Kitchen iPad Rack, an acrylic rack that temporarily hooks into an installed mount on the underside of your hood or cabinet for when you need it. Otherwise, you just slot it off and take it away.

Works for iPad quite well, natch, but it also works on other recipe-accessing tablets, including the Kindle and Galaxy Tab. For only $29.99, this may well make a good last minute stocking stuffer.

Oh, sweet Bacchus. Forget those other iPod Nano watchbands we’ve seen: here’s the only one that matters. Called the “Richard Tracy Nano Watch Strap,” this project — kicked off via Kickstarter, only to ignominiously fail to raise its funding,– is not only one of the first Nano watch bands to have a high quality leather strap, as opposed to some plastic nonsense… the frame even contains a built-in beer opener, perfect for helping to remove the childproof cap from some brews, thus medicating your delirium tremens.

Like we said, this failed to get a following over at Kickstarter, so you can’t actually buy it. Maybe spreading the word, however belatedly, will inspire them to give it another go.

ACHTUNG: Creator Jason Hilbourne says that these are, indeed, for sale… just at Think Geek. Only $49.99!

We’re pretty up on the iPhone’s Bing app; its ability to combine the useful functions of several different stand-alone apps earned it a spot on our 23 Essential Apps list for the iPhone earlier this year.

But Microsoft is apparently even more ambitious: they’ve just updated Bing with some new abilities — including location-based reminders, a Google Maps Street View-like feature and more — to the point where it seems as if Microsoft is trying to turn Bing into some kind of uber-app. The whole thing’s also been given a facelift, and the results pages are less cluttered (even though the front page still needs work). It’s worth a download, even if, at the very least, just to gawk at its application of technology. Here’s a list of all the new stuff:

Google’s Marissa Mayer (and the rest of us plebs) must be disappointed to hear that Steve Jobs has not been awarded Time Magazine’s 2010 “Person of the Year” award. Instead, it was awarded to Mark Zuckerberg, the translucently pale lizard man who created Facebook pictured on above.

Steve didn’t totally get the short shift, though. He was declared one of Time Magazine’s “People Who Matter.”

“With each passing year Steve Jobs and his sleek Apple products not only succeed in impressing the techiest of tech addicts, they also manage to create a whole new batch of gadget enthusiasts,” the magazine noted, pointing to the iPad and the redesign of the MacBook Air as examples.

They also noted that this year, under Jobs’ leadership, Apple became the largest technology company in the world.

This isn’t the first time Jobs has been denied the “Person of the Year” award by a thin margin: in 2009, Jobs was one of the top seven finalists. He’ll make it one of these years.

Bargain-hunting just got more interesting — Metaio has added yet another augmented-reality channel to their AR iPhone app, Junaio. This time they’ve partnered with eBay and created a channel that lets users scan their surroundings for deals in eBay Classifieds, itself a newish, local version of eBay.

It works just like any other Junaio channel; looking around through the iPhone with the eBay channel switched on will, in this case, display local eBay Classifieds listings — apartment buildings will show unit listings superimposed, shops might show discounted stuff available, etc. The channel is also searchable by keyword.

What goes around comes around: one of the disc jockeys busted with running a six-figure iTunes scam has admitted his role.

Lamar Johnson, 19, admitted he was involved in this modern take on chart rigging, pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud in court.
Nine British djs are charged with using 1,500 stolen or cloned credit cards to buy their own tracks to the tune of £500,000 (about USD $780,000). They were paid £185,000 (USD $288,000) in royalties before getting caught.

Apple reportedly has added two more iPad 2 touchscreen suppliers, making five the total number of firms churning out displays for the Cupertino, Calif. firm. Apple expects its iPad 2, believed to appear in early 2011, to sell six million units per quarter, compared to four million quarterly shipments of the current tablet.

Chimei Innolux and Cando have been added to the suppliers list, which already contains Wintek, Sintek Phototronics and TPK Touch Solutions, according to a Taiwan-based industry publication. The new suppliers reportedly will begin shipping touchscreens for the iPad 2 in January or February of next year.

Should your six-year-old have an iPad? At least one educator says yes.

“Think of devices like the iPad, and its little brother, the new camera-equipped iPod Touch, as the bicycle of the digital age,” said Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review and an educator, education researcher and parent. “These devices are at the center of a modern child’s play. They capture and manage information.”

Buckleitner made the statement in response to a parent who wonders whether fulfilling the request from her Montessori-educated first grader for “an iPad like her daddy has” is a good idea.

At the beginning of the month, Adobe put Flash Player 10.2 up for download, which added a new feature called “Stage Video” to the mix which Adobe claimed would allow for high-performance video playback while using “just over 0 percent CPU usage.” How? Basically, it offloaded the whole video rendering pipeline to your Mac’s GPU.

Sounds like a step up from the current status quo, but there was only one problem: it wasn’t backwards compatible, so sites across the Net would be required to update to the new code to take advantage of Stage Video.

Now Adobe says that many of the bigger players in Flash Video — most notably YouTube — have updated their Flash Player to take advantage of the speed increase.

Nice to hear, of course, but we’ll stick to HTML5 for the moment, until we see some power efficiency benchmarks come down the pipeline. In the meantime, enjoy the video above, in which an Adobe engineer wears a vintage Starfleet shirt that is comically too small.

Are you a developer who wishes your game could look good as Infinity Blade? Great news: Epic is publicly releasing their Unreal Development Kit for iOS today, which should vastly simplify the creation of a games’ graphics and animation. Best, it’s free… within limits.

Having sound issues with your 27-inch LED Cinema Display? Apple’s just pumped a fix down the pipe to deal with occasional audio loss experienced by some users.

Previously, Apple’s own tech note explained that some users were noticing that sound from an LED Cinema Display connected to a Mac would intermittently drop sound, and that users may have to unplug the display or even reboot to get the audio working again.

Seems like a big gaffe, but apparently, the new update will fix these issues. That said, it’s a rather unique update by Apple’s standard, so remember to follow the instructions included in the updater application to letter, to minimize accidental explosions, implosions and trans-dimensional vortices.

[via 9to5Mac]

The iPad is rocking the corporate world. So much so, one analyst describes pent-up demand for tablets in the boardroom as a “corporate explosion.” Apple is the main beneficiary, with more than eight out of 10 tablets used by business bearing the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s logo.

What’s more, interest by corporations in tablets is set to double in the first quarter of 2011, according to a November IT buying survey by ChangeWave Research. The survey found 7 percent of corporations now use tablets, but 14 percent say they will use tablets in the next quarter. As for the iPad, the numbers held good news for Apple versus competitors.

Around this time every year we ask you, our lovely Cult readers, to tell us which new OS X desktop applications have caught your eye over the last 12 months.

Last year’s winners (by a hair) were Google Chrome and OmmWriter.

What do we mean by “new”? Ideally, we mean brand new applications that were launched for the first time this year. But we’re prepared to be flexible, so “new” can also mean major updates to existing apps. And don’t forget, we’re talking OS X desktop apps here, not iOS apps.

A few suggestions to get you started: Scrivener 2, Postbox, Office 2011, iLife 11, iTunes 10, Reeder, Kiwi, Transmit 4, Lightroom 3… the list is long.

The comments box is yours. Tell us what new software you loved most in 2010. The application with the most mentions is declared the winner, and will be featured in a follow-up post next week.

Ever wondered what Apple hardware and software pro bloggers use?

Peter Sciretta is a professional blogger/journalist specializing in film and entertainment. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Slashfilm.com (stylized as /Film), which has won numerous awards and recognition from the mainstream media. Last year, Total Film named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in Movies.”

Sciretta began his career on a Windows PC, but soon thereafter saw the value of switching to the Mac. “Nowadays everything I have in my home office is Apple-based,” he says.

In this post, adapted from a recent interview, Sciretta reveals what hardware, software, and mobile apps he can’t live without — both personally and professionally.

Although Cupertino never tips its hand ahead of time, past experience indicates you can set your watch (at least by the month) for their product refreshes, so no shock here: it’s now being reported that Apple will launch new MacBook Pros in the first half of 2011, which probably equates to a April 2011 timescale, along with new iMacs, which were last updated back in January.

Apple has just issued a press release saying that the Mac App Store will open for downloads on January 6 2011.

“The Mac App Store will be available in 90 countries at launch and will feature paid and free apps in categories like Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity and Utilities.”

I have a feeling some developers aren’t going to get much rest over the Christmas break this year…

Wyse has just released a free version of PocketCloud for iOS, giving you wireless access to remote computers from your iPad or iPhone.

The free version carries adverts, and lacks some features (video streaming and external monitor support) that you’ll find in the paid version.

Hazel is software genius. It’s one of those tools that looks so simple to start with, but after a while, you realise just how powerful and flexible it could be.

British iPhone owners who enjoy foul-mouthed comedy will be delighted to learn that there’s a new, official Malcolm Tucker iPhone app to download for a mere four fine English pounds.

Tucker is the brutal, thuggish political spin doctor character in UK comedy show The Thick Of It. His adventures in swearing are legendary.

“Foul-mouthed” hardly does him justice, to be honest. If there’s a %^&@ way he can think of to @*(! your day and shove your @*($@$@% through your @£[/*$ until you’re bleeding £!*++ out of your !&@*, Tucker will say so.

And now he’s on your iPhone – or you’re on his, so to speak. The Missing Phone app pretends to be Tucker’s phone, and you’ve just found it. I’ll leave you to guess which four-letter passcode might unlock it, and discover the top-secret emails and text messages stored within.

Chinon’s AVi is a combination iPod dock, Digital TV and MP3 player that’s good for kids.

It’s portable, easy to use, and the picture and sound quality are OK. It has big, easy-to-use buttons that are great for kids. It’s not for the living room, but it does do a ton of things, which makes it good for a kids’ room or RV.

An update for iTunes has just hit Software Update, and although version 10.1.1 includes no new features, it does address a couple of issues and that may cause problems with syncing and quitting unexpectedly.

The release notes for 10.1.1 list the changes:

• Addresses an issue where some music videos may not play on Macs equipped with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 or 9600 graphics.
• Resolves an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when deleting a playlist that has the iTunes Sidebar showing.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when connecting an iPod to a Mac equipped with a PowerPC processor.
• Addresses an issue where some music videos may not sync to an iPod, iPhone, or iPad.

Download the latest release via Software Update on your Mac, or from Apple’s website.

It’s no secret that Apple enjoys an unprecedented lead in the touch tablet market. The last major accounting put Apple at an incredible 95% market share.

Until the iPad’s first real competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which shipped late in the year, Apple pretty much had 2010 all to itself. Next year will be different.

The generally expected outcome for the market is that the coming flood of tablets will usher in a new range of choice for tablet buyers, and Apple will be forced to share the market with competitors who offer pretty much the same functionality at a lower price, or more and better features at pretty much the same price.

The market should settle, with Apple’s share declining to a low, two-digit number with the “open” and cheaper alternatives, especially Google Android devices, taking the lion’s share.

I don’t think that’s going to happen. I believe Apple will remain the dominant player indefinitely. Apple’s incredible lead, plus unexpected craziness in the rest of the market will favor Apple in the mind of consumers.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

Apple has released an updated version of iBooks, version 1.2, introduces PDF printing and Collections. Collections allow you to organize your books and PDFs.

The app is now able to provide better graphics support for children’s books and there is even an option that will allow you to display more words per page for devices with smaller screens like the iPhone and iPod touch.

It’s available now, for iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad via updates in the iTunes App Store app or grab a copy here.

Check out the iPhone 4 screen shots after the jump.