Ever since Digg purchased Instapaper from Marco Arment, the news aggregator super site has been adding new features to the somewhat neglected service to better compete with the likes of would-be challengers like Paper.
Continuing that trend, Instapaper for iOS was updated to version 5.1.5 today, bringing some new features, including support for Instapaper’s trending stories, a new send to Amazon Kindle function for subscribers, better AirPlay support, gestures and more.
Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 30 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new movies, albums and books to come out this week.
Enjoy!
St. Vincent – St. Vincent
Singer/songwriter/guitar-shredder Annie Clark’s fourth studio album as St. Vincent is full of twists and turns, sonic textures, and balladry, making St. Vincent her best album ever. Beyonce and Gaga may reign supreme among female entertainers, but St. Vincent asserts herself as a pyrotechnic guitarist laying down rhythmic somersaults. Lorde be damned, there’s nothing quite like her mix of vocal range and captivating balance of experimental leanings and pop sensations.
iTunes – $7.99
SchoolBoy Q – Oxymoron
Everyone’s talking about Beck this week and the new album he released after six years of silence, but while Morning Phase is great and definitely worth a listen, I’ve been addicted to SchoolBoy Q’s Oxymoron. The front five tracks are especially hard to escape from a repeat loop. It’s the best rap album so far this year and enlists collaborators such as Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz, ASAP Rocky, Jay Rock, Tyler the Creator and Kurupt, among others.
iTunes – $12.99
Wild Beasts – Present Tense
Present Tense, Wild Beasts’, fourth LP, is simply brilliant. After taking a full year off to recoup from a two-year tour for their last album, the band presents their most human musical portrait, even if its a bit less accessible than their other albums.
iTunes – $9.99
The Future of the Mind
by Michio Kaku
Not a week passes where we don’t hear of scientist making an incredible new discovery about how the brain works but where is all that info leading us? In his book The Future of the Mind, Michio Kaku surveys the latest findings by scientists to give readers a better idea of how the brain works as well as dancing with future ideas like smart pills to enhance cognition; downloading brains neuron by neuron, or even sending our emotions and consciousness out into space.
iTunes – $11.99
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
by Svante Pääbo
As fun as it is to celebrate just how damn smart humans have become, it’s also good to see where we’ve come from. Geneticist Svante Pääbo’s book Neanderthal Man analyzes what we can learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives as he searches for the mysterious answer as to why humans survived while Neanderthals went kaput.
iTunes – $19.99
The Wives of Los Alamos
by TaraShea Nesbit
Growing up in New Mexico, I was always aware that the genius scientists who researched energy sources at Los Alamos National Lab were a main fount of state pride. This is where we first built and detonated The Bomb, after all. It’s one of only two laboratories in the U.S. where research is done on nuclear weapons, but Tarashea Nesbit’s book The Wives of Los Alamos focuses on the town’s softer side. As the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community.
iTunes – $11.99
The Book Thief
Based on the novel of the same name by Markus Zusak, Emily Watson and Geoffrey Rush star in this inspirational film about a girl named Leslie, whose adoptive German parents hide a Jew from Hitler’s army. As the war effort deepens, Leslie becomes obsessed with books and the escape they provide from the brutal backdrop of World War II.
iTunes – $14.99
Frozen
Indie Oscar flicks get all the attention this time of year, but for kids no movie was bigger this winter than Frozen, Disney’s latest animated journey. This epic ice capade pits Anna, a fearless optimist, against mountain man Kristoff and his loyal reindeer Sven. Of course, things go wrong after Anna’s sister is missing, so the crew sets off on an journey that’s full of mystical trolls, weird-talking snowman and enough snow to keep you cold through the summer.
iTunes – $19.99
The Great Beauty
If you don’t mind reading subtitles, Great Beauty was one of the best films to polish your eyeballs with in 2013 and now it’s finally on iTunes. The movie follows an aging socialite, Jep Gambardella, who wrote a famous novel in his 20s, only to retire into a comfortable life writing cultural columns and throwing parties in Rome. After his 65th birthday party, where he is feted at a disco party straight out of Fellini, he walks through the ruins and city streets, encountering the various characters, reflecting on his life, his first love, and sense of unfulfillment.
iTunes – $19.99
The folks behind the brilliant and sticky Tiny Death Star and Pocket Trains are back at it again, this time with another free-to-play title, Disco Zoo. This time, however, NimbleBit has the added talent of rock-star developer Owen Goss, a Canadian dude with a pedigree in gaming that reaches back to pre-iOS days (gasp).
Disco Zoo has the same Nimblebit retro bitizen look and feel, and the fun mechanics from Pocket Trains and Tiny Tower are out in force. You’ll take over running of the titular Zoo, adding animals and building habitats while earning in-game soft currency on a timed basis, as well as randomly on the zoo map screen.
The main part of the game involves rescuing animals from a variety of habitats–each requires the purchase of more and more expensive aircraft–and adding them to your zoo. The zoo animals will sleep after a time, which encourages you to keep checking back into the app to wake them up.
Thanks to the Illumanati-like secrecy established by El Jobso, getting a real answer from anyone at Apple is as rare as a rainbow jellybean unicorn.
Even simple questions like “are other customers having this issue?” get averted, dodged and deflected ad nauseum, so six months ago we created the Ask A Genius Anything column to get some real answers for fans on what happens at Apple.
Unfortunately, our brave Genius is hanging up his Apple lanyard for a new career opportunities. Over the past six months he’s dished on everything from Apple policy, to how to fix hardware issues, while also dispensing tips on how to ask a Genius out and whether drinking on the job is a no-no.
We’re still looking for a new secret Genius to fill his shoes (if you’re interested, send us an email), but in the meantime, here are our five favorite answers from Cult of Mac’s Secret Genius #1:
Q: What are you *never* allowed to say to customers?
Employees are taught not to use certain words that might tarnish the image of the brand. We are constantly in a struggle to portray Apple as positively as possible so that our customers return to buy from us again.
Here’s an idea of some of guidance I received when going through training:
Q: Have you ever worked drunk?
The job can be pretty stressful sometimes. Occasionally, I’ll have a drink before work or on a lunch break. It’s not a bad way to relax and most of the managers at the store don’t care unless you’re always coming in sloppy drunk.
There are always a few situations throughout the day where it’d be great to take a short drink break after helping out a particularly horrible customer, but I don’t make it a habit. Fixing people’s iPhones really isn’t any easier after a few drinks, so there are few benefits to being hammered on the job. As for what happens after work, it isn’t uncommon for employees and managers to meet up and toss back a few.
Q: Can you date customers? Any tips on how to ask a Genius out?
Dating customers is against Apple policy. The policy protects both the employee as well as the customer. I have seen customers who come in consistently to get “help” from the same employee multiple times who are definitely interested, but this only makes the employee less likely to actually pursue something.
If you are love struck by your technician at the Genius Bar, I suggest the straightforward approach. Ask for a card and give them your number maybe or ask them if you can have their number. Don’t be surprised if they say they can’t contact you, but tell them to call you outside of work. Don’t let a little Apple policy keep you from your love connection, but don’t make them completely say no by coming on to someone while they are at work.
Q: How much do you get paid, what hours do you work and how much continual study is required?
I get paid about $14 an hour. Pay ranges anywhere from $10-$20 an hour in the retail stores depending on position, hours, and performance. I work about 30 hours a week because I am part-time, usually on the shy side so I can keep my part-time status. My hours vary but they always fit my personal schedule because each employee submits their hours of availability and is scheduled accordingly, after approval.
As far as training goes, Apple actively trains its workforce. We are trained before we begin the job to deliver superior service and we are trained on new systems, products and software as they become available. If you are looking to advance, Apple will help train you to be ready for any future positions. I was surprised by the non-technical nature of training when I started at Apple. Most of the training I received was customer-service oriented and the technical training I needed for the job was either previous experience or was gained as I encountered issues and sought out a solution.
Q: What’s the most common lie you hear at the Genius Bar?
Geniuses and Family Room Specialists alike have to come up with a fair amount of excuses to explain to customers what’s wrong with their device. The worst excuse and the most commonly told lie at the Genius Bar is for known issues to be called “rare.”
I can’t stand it when a Genius tells a customer that a sleep/wake button failing on an iPhone is rare or that a battery needing service before being completely consumed is uncommon. I don’t know any statistics on failure rates, but I know I handle a fair number of these “rare” issues enough to say that they aren’t rare.
It’s a sort of white lie that reassures customers that the problem was a fluke and that they can trust in Apple’s products in the future. I think it’s better to explain common issues as known issues and just to provide the solution rather than lie about it. The lie gets harder to tell to a customer should the replacement product or repaired device have the same issue down the road.
Primal Flame is one of those games that’s immediately impressive. Its brief loading screen at startup is gorgeous, and the title screen presents the obligatory social-networking links in its own cave-drawing aesthetic so that they fit in while still remaining recognizable.
But I’m not here just to talk about the title screen, luckily for you, and once you stop gawking at it and actually start Primal Flame up, it just keeps on being amazing.
You start with a black screen covered in specks with the sounds of a forest at night. Brighter lights start drifting down from the top, and you run your finger along the screen. Sparks fly and grow and burst into flame, and then you’re playing one of the most unique games I’ve ever seen.
The Galaxy S5’s fingerprint scanner may be coming more than 7 months later than the iPhone’s, but it’s already going to be more useful to users. Not only will it allow them to unlock their device at the touch of a button, but Samsung’s going to allow third-party developers to integrate fingerprint scanning into their own applications, too.
Clear, the popular to-do list management tool for iOS from Realmac Software, is now free for the next 24 hours.
The promotion is designed to give those who purchased the now defunct Clear+ the opportunity to migrate to the original app without having to pay again — but those who have never purchased Clear can take advantage of the offer, too.
Today, Apple designer Jony Ive turns 47. One of the threads of his incredible career has been a passion for hot wheels. Before going on to become one of the world’s most famous designers, Jony Ive went to London’s Central Saint Martins Art School fueled by an early passion to design cars. Eventually, though, he took a detour that led him to revolutionize design in personal technology.
Apple hasn’t gotten around to making an iCar yet, but Jony’s passion for automobiles is still revved up and cruising for thrills. The famed designer hasn’t been afraid to fork over some fat stacks for a nice car on a whim – even if one of his brutal beauties almost cost him his life – and has gathered a nice little collection of luxury cars over the years.
Here’s a look at some of the fabulous cars that have puttered their way into Jony’s garage, with insider information about each one pulled from the pages of Leander Kahney’s new book, “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.”
Apple may have only released iOS 7.0.6 one week ago, but it’s already showing impressive adoption rates.
According to a study by Chitika Insights, just 48 hours after the update went live, 13.3% of all iOS traffic was driven by the latest update.
You can now double the storage space of your MacBook Air by jamming Sandisk’s new 128GB microSD card into an adapter in the SD card slot. Or you can slide it into any number of devices that use the pink-nail-sized storage standard. And if you are using it in a phone or a camera, it’s fast enough to capture HD video recorded straight to the card.