Cult of Mac

Open source devotees, iPhone users and hedonists unite! News today that low cost, OpenBTS GSM cell phone service is being tested at Burning Man in a true trial-by-fire fashion:

Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that’s revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man. Where do you want me to begin?

“We make GSM look like a wireless access point. We make it that simple,” describes one of the project’s three founders, Glenn Edens. [Network World]

The economic and environmental potential of the system is promising, particularly for remote and under-developed areas.

In the wake of work produced by the Stanford Laptop Orchestra and the many people worldwide using Smule applications on the iPhone, you knew this was coming: Four creative youngsters calling themselves the iPad Orchestra perform a nice piece of modern orchestral music here, using Seline HD, a new live performance and improvisation app optimized for the iPad.

Seline HD features an ergonomically designed playing surface called ioGrid, suitable for players of all hand sizes. It’s intended to support the playing of melodies with two hands, while keeping the iPad on the knees or on a table. A fully adjustable 16-note scale is divided into 2 parts (odd and even), which are then mapped to the left and right grids.

The app is capable of playing any melody but produces its own character and sound. A player can choose from 20 built-in factory voices (flutes, bowed strings, reeds, synth leads and more) and 9 drone voices. Drones (chorded synth pads) are generated on-the-fly, based on a complex analysis of the player’s melody line, courtesy of the app’s CrystalClarity HD sound engine, and provides an excellent background layer for melodies.

Seline HD player is also equipped with a full range of recording possibilities, including direct recording to .wav files, deleting, and doubling tracks. Overdubbing (layering tracks) is possible and encouraged as an excellent way to create complex orchestrations. Two available onboard effects – grand stereo reverb and dub delay – provide finishing touches to any composition.

Seline HD is available now in the iPad AppStore at the introductory price of $5.99.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxCNyR5NfmU

I’ve always thought time-lapse snapshots were a neat way to visually track change over time. Bay Area-based developer Redbot thinks so too, and they’ve created a Time Lapse Photo Journal for the iPhone that makes it easy to create time-lapse albums and share them with hapless victims your friends.

Use the app to resize and reposition each shot, set reminders to take shots of the subject and fine-tune the slideshows. The results can be shared via email, YouTube or on Facebook. No word on pricing, and the app isn’t available yet but should hit the App Store next week.

Blamed on everything from a software bug to greasy ear canals, the iPhone 4’s overly sensitive proximity sensor was supposed to get fixed with the release of iOS 4.1.

Don’t hold your breath, though, says Apple’s Australian mouthpiece Fiona Martin. According to Martin, the company has yet to fix the proximity sensor issue, with no other information given as to when we can expect the patch.

In our own tests, we found that iOS 4.1 Beta 2 fixed all of our proximity sensor issues, and Steve Jobs himself promised the fix next update. Either our own anecdotal experience with the 4.1 Beta fixing the proximity sensor was wrong and the nature of the issue remains unidentified to Apple or a hardware design flaw, or Miss Martin misspoke. Wednesday should tell all.

It may be somewhat hard to remember — what with sporadically poor call performance, lots of other hardware to play around with and all those apps — that the iPhone is more-or-less primarily a tool for voice communication. And there’s no better or cheaper way to use that tool than through the Skype app.

We start out the week with a deal on a skeleton – for your iPhone case. With a product sounding something like Old Blue Eyes, the Nubi Do To Do list manager has reduced its price. Finally, if you are looking for the perfect stationary to send that email missive, Mail Stationary 3 for the Mac might lend a hand.

Along the way, we’ll take a look at a variety of other gadgets. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

The shipping delays we’ve reported on for the past few weeks seem to be working themselves out. The Apple Store is now telling iPad customers their tablets will ship within 24 hours of purchase. Earlier this month, analysts told investors iPad shipping had dropped to 3-5 days from a 7-10 day delay in early August.

The improved shipping schedule seems to indicate Apple is catching-up with iPad demand which the Cupertino, Calif. company acknowledged caught them off guard. The drop in shipping time also comes as Apple prepares for continued back-to-school sales, as well as the all-important holiday buying season.

Sending cutesy virtual crap to your friends on Facebook is so 2008: dial into the Bartab iPhone app instead and send them cheap, real drinks.

Picking up the tab has never been so painless. Download the free app or go to bartab.com. (Not all your pals have iPhones? There’s an Android version, too).

Pick the person who you want to offer a pint — or Pisco punch or shot of Peppermint Schapps — and the bar where you want to send it, pay a buck and pow: your friend shows their iPhone screen to the bartender at a participating water hole and gets a drink. They also have to pay a buck to redeem the drink coupon, it’s apparently due to some annoying state regulations.

[polldaddy poll=”3692852″]

Apple has called a press conference on Wednesday, September 1st in San Francisco 10:00 AM PST. Yeah, we know, it’s not that far away, but here at CoM we had a spirited discussion over the weekend about just what they’ll be introducing.

Let us know in the comments what you think.

Cult of Mac has been going nuts with iPad and iPhone app giveaways lately, and today is no different! Today, we’ve got some great apps for your iPhone and iPad. We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps. If you want a chance to get your hands on some of these sweet apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. “Like” Us On Facebook (you must do this, if you’re not a fan of us, we can’t contact you if you win).
2. Post a link to your favorite Cult of Mac article from the past week on our Facebook Wall. Make sure you post it on OUR wall, not your own.
3. Your wall post will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners later this week and explain how to get the codes!
4. Optional step: If you want to go the extra mile, you can post it in your Facebook status and status tag us. Do it ’cause you love us.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

Intel is back in the mobile chip business with the $1.4 billion purchase of the German-based Infineon’s wireless unit. Infineon provides smartphone chips for Apple’s iPhone, along with several other high-profile handsets.

The deal, expected to close in 2011, reportedly gives Intel up to four years of research and development time and places the chipmaking giant squarely in the smartphone market – a position it gave up when it sold its wireless unit to Marvell four years ago.

Keeping the dozens of keyboard shortcuts necessary to be competitive in Blizzard’s new multi-faction, space RTS Stacraft II mind mapped can be difficult for even the most caffeinated South Korean pro gamer, but if you’ve got an iOS device, pulling off a successful Zerg rush is about to get a whole lot easier, thanks to the Starcraft II Gameboard.

Developed by Daniel Hellerman, the Starcraft II Gameboard turns your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a dedicated control pad, from which you can easily issue orders and build new units. Essentially, it syncs with a program on your computer and allows you to send complicated keyboard hot key combinations just by tapping an icon with your finger. You can even look up information in a Starcraft II unit encyclopedia while you’re at it.

The Starcraft II Gameboard is expected to arrive in the App Store in September for $2.99. The only problem is, the client software needed for the program to run is for Windows-based systems only… which seems like a huge oversight, given Starcraft II‘s excellent native Mac port.

Sony’s attractive new line of speakers might look like some strange hybrid between a thermos and an iPod dock, but there’s no madness behind the weird engineering of the Sony SRS-V500IP… just smart, practical design.

You see, the thermos or travel-mug-like pod you see above is actually a removable speaker, inside of which is Sony’s Circle Sound Stage System, which blasts 16 watts of stereo in a 360 degree bubble. Use it at home and that sound pod sits in a bundled iPod cradle, but if you want to beef up your car’s stereo, you can remove it, hook it up to your in-car power adapter and position it in your vehicle’s drink tray. Cute.

The Sony SRS-V500IP is available now for just $239.99

China Unicom is the only authorized and official carrier of the iPhone 4 in China, but apparently, that doesn’t mean they are content to tow Cupertino’s anti-jailbreaking line: recent advertisements for the carrier indicate that they are more than happy to jailbreak an iPhone or iPad for customers for a price.

Translated, the circled portion of the signage reads: “Supported Service: Free SIM-trimming, jailbreak, installation of more than 10 hot apps.”

How odd. Leaving aside why China Unicom would jeopardize its relation with Apple by selling jailbroken iPads and iPhones, why are they being so cheerfully helpful in allowing their customers to migrate to other networks.

We suspect that this is ultimately about censorship and warez. The promise to install “ten hot apps” is the tip-off there: by offering to jailbreak customers’ phones, China Unicom can profit from their own customers’ desire to install apps not only without paying for them, but which also haven’t been censored for the local market.

[via 9to5Mac]

The Just Mobile UpStand iPad stand is simply perfect. The form factor the stand assumes and the material it is made of coupled with how much it weighs makes it the perfect place to perch my iPad on. The stand sits just right upon my desk and holds my iPad horizontally or vertically leaving complete access to all buttons, switches, and ports — especially the docking connector.

Click the read link for more information about this product and a gallery of photos of it in use.

Even if you’re hardy enough to carry Apple’s LiquidMetal-crafted SIM Ejector Tool on a chain around your neck, it’s not exactly an easy chore switching between networks with your iPhone 4.

This remarkably hideous iPhone 4 case, though, could make changing between SIMs a lot easier for road warriors or users with both a work and private cell phone contract. An interface ribbon connects a micro-sim adapter installed in your iPhone 4 to a pair of regularly sized SIM cards installed in the case, which can be switched from the SIM Applications menu… although we would think a jailbreak would be required.

Not exactly the most elegant solution, and it would certainly look a hell of a lot better if the case wasn’t transparent, but if you find yourself doing a lot of traveling abroad, or simply want to be able to use your iPhone 4 with two separate contracts on the same network, this might be $29 well spent.

The iPhone 4’s incredible retina display boasts pixels so small and tightly packed that they are almost indistinguishable to the human eye…. but if a new technology created by University of Michigan researchers ever hits the market, the Retina Display might end up looking as antediluvian as VGA.

Using nano-thin sheets of metal with precisely spaced slits that act as resonators, the team of researchers built a tiny high-definition display with pixels eight times smaller than those on the iPhone 4. These nano-resonating displays are incredibly green-friendly, since they don’t require the chemicals needed to make an LCD; better, they’re far more energy-efficient to boot.

Need proof? The above image of the University of Michigan logo might look blurry, but that’s only because it’s magnified up from its original size, which is just nine microns wide. Six of these logos would fit in the width of a human hair.

If this technology ever hits the market, a fully high-definition 1080p display could be fit in the area of a postage stamp. Don’t be surprised if half-a-decade down the line, a grizzled and hunched Steve Jobs holds aloft the iPhone 9 and introduces the world to their hot new marketing buzz term: Nanoresonators.

Ever since the first rumors creeped out that Apple intended on reinventing its “hobby” AppleTV platform to a $99, iOS-driven streaming media device, people have been assuming that the device would have to support multitouch through some sort of Magic Trackpad-esque remote. Now Dan Wiseman has come along and mocked up what he expects the new iTV remote to look like.

It’s an attractive render, but I’m going to say, “No way.” There are numerous problems with this approach, the least of which is knowing where your fingers are resting on the displayless remote in relation to the elements on the television half a room way. The only way that could work is if the iTV overlay mice-like pointers on your display to show where your fingers were in relation to the trackpad… a clumsy and decidedly un-Apple-like solution.

Then there’s the cost: if the iTV costs $99, and the Magic Trackpad costs $69, how could Apple afford to give one of these away for free with every iTV sold? They can’t. End of story.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the iTV, even if it is iOS-driven, will eschew multitouch as an input method in favor of the tried and true Apple remote. The only possibility I see is the possible ability to pair an iTV to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to directly interact with the iTV display elements… but surely we would have seen an inkling of that functionality in the iOS betas by now if that was planned, and we haven’t. The iTV may be iOS-driven, but I wouldn’t bet on multitouch.

[via Daring Fireball]

July’s leak of a tiny 1.18-inch touchscreen being mass produced for Apple seemed so tiny that it had to be destined for the iPod Shuffle, but now Apple Insider is dropping a doozy of a rumor on us. It’s not for the Shuffle at all. It’s for the Nano.

The more we think about it, the more this makes sense, because it shows that Apple is bringing multitouch down — methodically and progressively — through its iPod line-up. It wouldn’t make sense to give the Shuffle a touchscreen and not the Nano. Apple Insider supports its theory with evidence from overseas manufacturers that the new touchscreen iPod will have a 30 pin dock connector, just like the Nano, making it capable of being easily plugged into existing iPod docks.

This theory might seem contradicted by the iPod Classic, which isn’t pegged to get a touchscreen, but at this point, the Classic’s going to be a ghost the second Apple finally manages to upgrade the Touch to 128GB. It’s sole purpose at this point is to accommodate the niche number of consumers with huge media collections — a constabulary to which I happily subscribe — who want to carry every song and movie they own around with them. If and when the Touch doubles its capacity this generation or the next, you can kiss the Classic goodbye.

Not quite sure what you’re looking at? These seven Escher-esque airplane propellors were captured by iPhone photographer Soren Ragsdale, and while the resulting image is a bit mind-bending, no genius would find anything wrong with his iPhone’s camera sensor. Instead, the photo is just a trippy (but terribly neat) demonstration of the iPhone’s rolling shutter.

Here’s how it works. Unlike a film camera — which quickly opens its shutter and burns the resulting image into the ensconced film strip all at once — most digital cameras have a rolling shutter. An iPhone doesn’t take the picture all at once; instead, it works more like a scanner, starting from one side and — line by line — moving to the far end of the photograph.

Usually, this all happens so fast that you can’t tell the difference, but when you start adding in photographic subjects that spin faster than your iPhone’s camera can scan them, you get the weird reality bending of the image above.

The iPhone’s not alone in exhibiting this behavior: you’ll see this sort of sampling on pretty much every CMOS sensor camera on the market. A nightmare for professionals, surely, but for a consumer interested in Dali-fying his iPhone photos without downloading an app, it’s a pretty cool side effect.

[via Gizmodo]

My dad was a magician at sniffing out great places to eat. We’d drive by some hole-in-the-wall we’d never seen before, and he’d point and say, “that’s where we’ll  eat, it’s good.” Then I’d scramble to check out the hole-in-the-wall’s rating using the Yelp app on my iPhone, to see if he was right. The result was always the same: me shaking my head in disbelief as Yelp’s vast community of raters would invariably agree with him.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a magic nose. But that’s ok — we’ve got Yelp.

This week’s must-have iOS games features plenty of zombies, addictive games galore and some fantastic bargains guaranteed to keep you entertained this weekend. There’s also two retro classics thrown in for good measure. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorite games from the past week after the break!

This week’s must-haves include applications to view and manage your CloudApp account, keep track of your to-dos in style and translate tweets from your foreign friends. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorites from the past week after the break!

Dealing with overheating engines by running cold air over them is fine for old Volkswagen Beetles with almost the horsepower of an electric toothbrush and weird French cars (I know, the word “weird” there is redundant). As engines have become more powerful though, air-cooling has become less attractive — at least, in the automotive world. Computers still lag behind though. Mostly.

Zack Fanning, who handles (surprise) marketing for computer cooling system expert Asetek, asked the outfit’s engineers to mod his Mac Pro with a liquid cooling system. The results are pretty interesting: He’s able to overclock his 2.8 ghz Mac Pro to 3.18 while reducing noise — due to the fan not having to work as hard — by 13 decibels over a strictly air-cooled Mac Pro running at the same speed. Pretty cool.

Want one? While Zack’s is a one-off, lovingly handcrafted custom job, Corsair’s H50 liquid cooling system (actually made for them by Asetek) can be had for about $80; just make sure to check first about compatibility, because the H50’ll only work with later-model Mac Pros.

When we reviewed ID8-Mobile’s sneaky little MoGo Talk XD a month ago, we mentioned that it was only available for the 3G/s, but ID8-Mobile said they had an iPhone 4 version in the works. Turns out they weren’t kidding.

The iPhone 4 MoGo Talk — which hides a thin Bluetooth headset in a sleek case —  is a little lumpier than its predecessor due to the fact that they’ve dropped the problematic flip-up charging port in favor of a port completely housed within the case; on the other hand, the case is still better-looking than a bumper.

At $99, the iPhone 4 MoGo Talk XD is $30 less than the older version; current owners of the older case can upgrade to the iPhone 4 case for $20 through the company’s website.