Cult of Mac

Halloween is Big Business in historic Salem, Massachusetts.  It’s now High Tech too.  For the 29th Haunted Happenings Celebration, the annual festival of witches, ghosts, and fall in New England, the town has created a new Haunted Happenings App for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The app features info about the Festival Calendar of Events, local attractions and museums, restaurant and retail listings, and directions on how to get to Salem (tip: plan ahead and leave time).  Users also have an opportunity to purchase tickets for some events and attractions directly from the app.

Let the Frightful Fun Commence!  [via boston.com]

One of our favorite iOS apps this week is Gordon Ramsay’s Cook With Me, which features 52 mouth-watering recipes, with simple to follow steps for cooking up gorgeous dishes.

Esquire‘s new magazine app for the iPad is another featured this week: see the World Trade Centre being built, complete with information on how it all will happen.

We also have an amazing new painting application for the iPad!

Here’s a tip for the next time you’re stuck in traffic: Turn your car windshield into a heads-up display for watching movies on an iPad.

Geohot has released another jailbreak. This jailbreak doesn’t require tethering an iOS device to a computer every time you turn it on. The following iOS devices running iOS 4.0, 4.01 or higher (excluding beta versions of iOS) are supported: iPod touch 3rd and 4th generation, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPad.

The jailbreak is fairly new and considered to be a beta. It’s not as easy to use as jailbreaks in the past since this version doesn’t include one-click jailbreaking. You have to work a little harder to get this one to work for you.

There isn’t a Mac OS version yet — it only runs on Windows for the time being. So if you have access to a Windows computer and need this jailbreak now then go download it.

This jailbreak is said to be a bit unstable so you might consider waiting for Chronic’s greenpois0n. It’s due out tomorrow.

As I hope you noticed, the site has a new look.

It’s thanks to the efforts of our indefatigable designer, Craig Grannell of Snub Communications. It’s cleaner and simpler and clears the deck for a very important upgrade: BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin that adds a ton of social networking features, including extended profiles, activity streams, friend connections and groups.

Described as “Facebook in a box,” Buddypress is a like a 21-st century version of a forum. It brings a lot of the same interactivity, but cuts down on the noise and spam.

Buddypress will allow us to implement one of the longest-held ambitions of the site — making it a proper community endeavor. Among other things, it will allow you, the readers, to contribute much more to the site. You’ll be able to write about your own projects, post troubleshooting tips and advice, and recommend the products you use every day. It’ll also make it easier to find and follow the activity of your friends, follow others whose opinion you value, and share the best stories with other readers. We’ll be launching it soon.

Meanwhile, please leave any feedback about the new look (and any problems you find) in the comments. Many thanks.

Slide-on iPhone 4 do cause scratches and cracks on the device’s glass back, the vast majority of readers reported in a poll we ran on Friday.

Almost 75 percent of repondents said their iPhone 4 has been scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged by a slide-on case. Only 26 percent said they’d had no problems.

The poll was prompted by a report Ryan Block in GDGT that Apple is actively investigating slide-on cases before it turns into a PR disaster like Antennagate.

The results are at total surprise to me. I’d not heard of the issue before Friday, and I’ve used several slide-on cases with my iPhone 4 without problems.

Of course, online polls are far from scientific surveys. In fact, most commenters on the post report that they’ve had no problems. If you read the comments and ignore the poll, you’d get the impression that there isn’t an issue, or that trapped dirt affects all cases and all phones — not just the iPhone 4.

The results are interesting because it was unclear how widespread the issue was — it certainly didn’t seem mainstream. But as Block pointed out this morning, Apple is trying to preempt the issue before it becomes a public relations nightmare. More here: Following up on yesterday’s “Glassgate” story.

This week’s must-have iOS games features Sega’s latest Sonic the Hedgehog 4 that many of us have been eagerly awaiting. It’s been described as the best Sonic for iOS yet, with improved controls, smoother gameplay and a genuine Sonic feel.

Another of our favorites is Chillingo’s Cut the Rope – the addictive puzzle game that knocked Angry Birds off the top of the paid charts this week. It combines realistic physics with simple, precise touch controls to create a wonderfully challenging puzzler.

Black Pegasus is the latest Modern Combat 2 game from Gameloft, and also features in our favorites this week. Its console quality graphics together and excellent production make it one of the most impressive first-person shooters to arrive on the iPhone.

We also have some classic ZX Spectrum gaming!

iPhone users are twice as likely to be influenced by the Tea Party than voters who carry an Android or Blackberry phone, according to a new online poll by Zogby/463.

In addition, iPhone users are twice as likely to believe that Sarah Palin “speaks for them,” and 60 percent predict a Republican takeover of Congress this year.

Finding a decent set of headphones or earbuds that doesn’t cost the earth has always been a challenge. You either have to sacrifice on quality to fit your budget, or re-mortgage your house to find that ‘perfect’ sound.

With a maximum budget of $300, I set out to see how much sound you can get for your money at this mid- to high-level.

There is a great video of Steve Jobs giving an interview to 60 Minutes in which he states – rather boldly – that the problem with Microsoft is that they “simply have no taste.” He goes on to say that the Windows firm has “no originality” and “no culture infused into products.”

Let’s face it — for a multi-purpose device heavily weighted toward music, the iPhone’s music-player interface is crap. Dealing with those tiny buttons crammed onto the bottom of the screen is bad enough under most conditions, worse for meaty-fingered users and infuriating when the iPhone is docked or when movement is involved.

Enter Quick-Tunes, a $1 app that replaces the iPhones native chintzy soft controls with a big, meaty, attractive buttons. It also adds cool additional functions around the main play/pause button that let the user play more songs from the same artist, genre or album.

in case you missed it, last month saw the debut of Golf Vision Green Analyzer, an app that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to calculate the perfect putting angle to sink a ball on the green; just measure the slope angle at the hole and at the ball by laying the iPhone on the ground, then set the green speed, and the app does its magic calculations and overlays the premium angle graphically over a still photo of your view to the hole.

Skeptical? That’s ok, the developers have just released a free version to try before considering the $5 full version. Unfortunately, the free version uses a generic photo to overlay the calculations on, and more importantly, only allows for slope measurements at one end, so results may not be as accurate as with the full version.

Cheap Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone 4 are a dime-a-dozen, but this new handset runs Android 2.1, Google’s ever-improving mobile OS.

It’s actually a dual-boot phone. It also runs Windows Mobile 6.5 (yuck!). It has a 3.6-inch capacitive touch-screen with multi-touch controls. It comes with 512MB of RAM and includes a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus.

It costs about $257, which is a bargain. It might be worth looking for one of these on eBay. The ability to run Android is a game-changer for knockoffs. For the first time, the software won’t totally suck.

Via MICGadget and M8Cool.

Foodmatic‘s fun website suggests you might want this app if you’re trying to become “the next top chef,” a suggestion we think can only lead to a rash of contestants staggering off Chef Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen with iPhones lodged in various body cavities.

That’s because the app employs a proprietary algorithm and built-in database with hundreds of ingredients to score the tastiness of ingredients the user wants to combine. The app will even suggest ingredients that compliment any already input. The app includes info on ingredients in the database and the ability to save successful (or not) concoctions.

Foodmatic is currently $1, but the app’s Store page says that’s not likely to last.

Tweet Library by Manton Reece is something special, and I think one of a very tiny handful of Twitter clients – not just on the iPad, but on all manner of platforms – that add something genuinely new.

We close out another week with three highlighted deals. The first up is Yahtzee HD for the iPad. This classic board game comes to Apple’s best-selling tablet for just $1.99 – a $3 price drop. Next up is a leather case for your iPad from Zoogue. The item includes a suede interior, adjustable stand and an elastic car headrest attachment. We end the features with the latest crop of price drops from the App Store, including “Wheel of Fortune” for just $1.

Along the way, we also check out other apps for your iPhone or iPod, hardware such as a hands-free headset and other items. As usual, details on everything is available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Writing for The Economist, Glenn Fleishman has a fascinating look at the design and prototyping process of Glif, an iPhone 4 tripod adapter that just raised $70,000 in two days on Kickstarter:

They started with a computer model of the adapter, created with Rhinoceros 3D design software. The software is $995 for Windows, but they used the beta test version for Mac OS X, which is free. They tested their designs through rapid prototyping, uploading files to Shapeways in the Netherlands. It took about ten days for Shapeways to “print” each prototype in 3D, and a day later it would be in the designers’ hands in New York. Shapeway charges by material volume, so each each Glif test cost about $10. They would try out a few variants each time just to meet a $25 minimum.

The Economist: An atom-based product, developed in bits

It took Athens, Greece-based artist Charis Tsevis about a week of 16-hour days to create this trippy mosaic portrait of Steve Jobs for Brazilian magazine ALFA.

Tsevis is an old hand at innovative Apple collages, whose work has appeared in Fortune and inspired a send-up of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

This one is something of a departure, taking us back to the colorful early days of Apple history. More on the inspiration behind it and close-ups after the jump.

My external hard drive doesn’t get much use, except for one thing: archiving massive libraries of RAW images. The only problem with this solution is accessing the images once they’re off my computer requires finding the drive, plugging it in and trying to search through thousands of images for the one I want to show to someone.

Phooey. What a hassle. That’s what I like about Western Digital’s free new photo viewing application for iOS devices that works with its line of external hard drive like My Book World Edition, My Book Live and WD ShareSpace, which allows users to access and stream up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder.

The app will slurp up your photos wherever you have an Internet connection. Certainly beats trying to load ten years of photos onto your iPhone through iTunes.

It’s becoming a familiar storyline: exclusive agreements to sell Apple’s popular iPhone are being threatened as more carriers want in on a good thing. In the U.S., the question has been who will join AT&T to offer the iPhone. In Asia, China Telecom is the latest name mentioned to join Apple’s current exclusive carrier, China Unicom. A report now cites a Deutsche Bank analyst claiming China Unicom’s exclusive iPhone arrangement could “likely come to an end early next year.”

Although China Telecom execs refused to confirm they’d begin selling a CDMA iPhone, “our own channel checks suggest that the company has been in intensive talks with chipset supplier Qualcomm and Apple,” according to the analyst’s report. China is often mentioned as a potential recipient of any CDMA iPhone. Additionally, China Telecom and Verizon both use the CDMA and EV-DO standard.

Although I’ve always been absolutely terrible at them, I love Sid Meier’s Civilization games, and the fourth game (and its expansions) is probably the most commonly launched app on my iMac after Mail and Chrome. I’ve been eager to here tell, then, of an OS X port of the newest game, Civilization V.

Good news for me and my fellow Civ junkies then, as Mac Rumors reports that an OS X compatible port of Civilization V will be heading to Valve’s gaming digital delivery service Steam within the next few weeks.

Universities across the U.S. are arming students with iPads, so it only makes sense that one school would teach them how best to use it.

Central Michigan University created a pilot course on iPad literacy to make sure they’re getting the most out of it.

What’s in the iPad course curriculum? Business uses for social networking, using the GPS device, making presentations with the Blackboard app  — and a presentation from a lawyer about software and music copyright.

Are you on iOS 4.1? Eager to jailbreak? Better set an alarm now to remind yourself to check the Internet on October 10th at 10:10:10AM. That’s the cheeky time when hackers will release the first working jailbreak hack.

An Apple repair company called Mission Repair is arching eyebrows this morning with the claim that they have gotten their hands on the next iPad’s aluminum case, which they say has a port on the side for landscape docking.

Although we’ve seen a patent for an iPad with the ability to dock in both landscape and portrait modes before, this is the first time we’ve seen physical indication that Cupertino might be considering two dock connectors on the next iPad.

Here we go again: Apple’s plans for an Tunes subscription service is making headlines once more.

According to sources, Apple’s Vice President of iTunes Eddy Cue has been having talks with major record labels for a monthly all-you-can-stream subscription plan, similar to those offered by services like Napster or Spotify.