Greetings, comrades! This time on CultCast: we travel to mother Russia and dance with gogo dancers (no, really); Apple talks to Tesla, we talk iCars. Plus, for the first time, Apple brings the iTunes Festival to the United States; Facebook buys WhatsApp (but why?); Jony Ive vanishes from Apple’s website; and don’t miss an all new Faves N Raves where we pitch favorite tech and apps then vote one which one’s best!

Belly-laugh your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

And thanks to Fresbooks for sponsoring this episode! FreshBooks, the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners – just like you – who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free 60 days, and enter “CultCast” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.

Did you miss the Flappy Bird phenomenon?

Well, if you’re a Twitterific user, no need to download one of the seemingly infinite number of clones: an Easter egg within the popular Twitter app lets you play a great 8-bit Flappy Bird clone with just a gesture.

Personally, I love the look of the new stealth engine Mac Pro, but some people find it to look, well, a little too much like a trash can (which may not be a coincidence).

Jarred Land, one of the key figures of the Red Digital Camera Company, obviously agreed. He built himself a machined aluminum chassis to keep his Mac Pro in, plus an integrated Redmag Mini card reader with 8TB internal Thunderbolt RAID, and a monster fan to keep things cool.

It looks pretty awesome, but sadly, it’s a one-off: Land says he did it just for fun.

Source: Facebook
Thanks: Chuck W.

We’ve been excited about Tengami ever since we saw it at a gaming conference a couple of years back. The long development time has paid off for developer Nyamyam, as Tengami is by far one of the best games of its type we’ve seen on any platform.

It came out for iOS just this week, and we’ve lost ourselves (and our sense of time) playing through the lushly illustrated pop-up book. The story is told without dialogue, tasking us with moving from one beautiful environment to the next, solving puzzles along the way to keep the journey going.

Here’s a video of some of our play through of the game.

This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple Store Genius who answers all your questions about working at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.

This week our Genius answers questions on whether Apple gives Specialists commission on sales, as well as a break down on how many employees it takes to effectively run an Apple Store.

Got a question you want the inside scoop on? Send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.

Q:How does the pay compare to other electronic retailers? Do you guys get any form of commission?

I’ve never worked at Best Buy, Staples or any of the other tech retailers, but from what I’ve heard from co-workers  the pay is pretty solid at Apple which is one of the draws, along with corporate culture and getting to work for the most influential tech company in the world.

If you’re just a Specialist working the floor, don’t except to make too much more than average retail at first. There’s no commission of any kind on the sales we make, but Apple keeps track and you’re encouraged to hit certain metrics. After a few months you’ll be eligible to apply for other posts.

Genius Bar positions start out at around $17 per hour, but you can make quite a bit more than that if you work full-time and stick around for a while. I know a few making more than $25 an hour with managers making even more.

Q:How many employees does it take to effectively run an Apple Store?

A lot. Apple places a lot of emphasis on employee-to-customer ratios so that even if the store is jam packed, there will still be a Specialist available to help you.

Of course each store is different but I work at the smallest of five Apple Stores in my metro area and we still have about 40 employees on an average day. If its a launch day that number jumps  between 60-90 employees, but at other stores like Fifth Ave. I’ve heard they have more than a hundred staff on-hand for a regular retail day.

Q:What is the worst thing a customer has ever brought in?

Apple is pretty laid back on what they allow you to bring into the store which makes it pretty interesting, sometimes disgusting, to see what people tote in alongside their computers to the Genius Bar.

A lot of people bring in food which is fine, unless it’s some smelly weird stuff. I had one lady bring her cat in with her to her appointment at the Genius Bar. It sat in her purse the entire time we fixed her iPod. Others have brought in dogs.

As far the worst tech that’s been brought in, one customer’s toddler stuffed a CD smothered in peanut butter into a MacBook Pros SuperDrive once. Unfortunately, peanut butter damage isn’t covered under warranty.

It’s enough for some people just to plunk one value into a box and watch the conversion come out the other end, but we’re savvy here, right?

The newly released free version of Aperture Mobile’s Converta app thinks you are, and that’s why it actually bothers showing you what it’s doing. The free version calculates the equivalent values of angles, lengths, mass, temperatures, and volumes, and the $0.99 paid version includes things like illumination, radiation, velocity, and energy. You can also choose between a keypad and a clever gestural interface.

I’m not sure how useful the radiation conversion would be to most people, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

Source:Converta – Free | Aperture Mobile

When I was a kid at Showbiz Pizza (back in those carefree days before that upstart rat staged his coup), the Dragon’s Lair cabinet always fascinated me. People would step up, watch a cartoon for about three seconds, and then they’d put another quarter in. They’d watch the same cartoon, and then they’d put another quarter in. And so it went until they said some words that my parents didn’t want me using and went off to play Dig Dug.

I didn’t understand what Dragon’s Lair was until much later; all I knew was that it looked like a movie and annoyed people.

This week, the iOS port of its 1991 sequel, Time Warp, made its way to the App Store, and it’s pretty much here to ruin your day and make you hate your fingers and your slow, stupid brain.

So basically, the old-school experience is intact, and I love it.

Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.

Enjoy!

Albums

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for No Witness

For her second LP, Missouri-native Angel Olsen mixes strummed acoustic guitar with lo-fi garage-rock for a blend that’s both creative, personal and fun. Burn Your Fire for No Witness has already received rave reviews from critics, and with jolly tracks about being lonely like “Hi-Five” it’s not hard to see Olsen’s talent.

iTunes – $9.99

Phantogram – Voices

Some bands just have a knack for making music that’s perfect for insomniacs. Phantogram is one of them and their latest LP has 11 dark tracks dancing with an electric energy. Voices is probably the duo’s most complete work, feeling thematically more consistent than Eyelid Movies, while still offering cinematic synthesized vibe that keeps you nodding along.

iTunes – $7.99

Marissa Nadler – July

While Angel Olsen is getting a lot of hype this month for her second album, Marissa Nadler would like to remind everyone that she’s been playing the folksie introspective singer/songwriter role for more than a decade now. Her previous five albums weren’t commercial successes and while her sixth album, July, won’t likely top the charts its her finest work yet as the singer uses slow-paced folk rock to sing about her emotional journeys.

iTunes – $9.99

Books

Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits
by Kevin Roose

The Wolf of Wall Street caused a ruckus when it shined a light on Wall Street’s greed in the 90’s but has the Recession damped its style at all? Kevin Roose’s book Young Money dives into the new Wall Street scene by following eight young brokers fresh out of college and into Wall Street, where they learn how to make obscene amounts of money– as well as how to dress, talk, date, drink, and schmooze like real financiers

iTunes – $12.99

Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero
by Douglas Perry

In a time when gangsters were as famous as a Kardashian, the shy lawman Eliot Ness rose to fame for leading the Untouchables against Al Capone.  The daring raids with the Prohibition Bureau squad have been immortalized by Kevin Costner, but Douglas Perry’s new book Eliot Ness: The Rise And Fall of an American Hero argues that Ness’s biggest achievement was his forgotten second act as public safety director of Clev;and. A role where he purged the city of corruption so deep the mob and the police were often one and the same

iTunes – $14.99

Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer

The worst thing about getting into a new trilogy is having to wait years for the next books to be published, but with Jeff VanderMeer’s new Southern Reach Trilogy, all three books will be available by September, with the first, Annihilation hitting shelves this week.

Set in Area X – a mysterious land reclaimed by nature that’s been closed for decades – Annihilation follows the 12th expedition group to enter Area X consisting of an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself
iTunes – $7.99

Movies

Nebraska

The Oscars are still a few weeks away, but one of 2013’s top pictures with 6 nominations, Nebraska, can finally be enjoyed from the comfort of your couch. Directed by Alexander Payne, the movie follows an aging, booze-addled father and his estranged son who make a trip from Montana to Nebraska to claim a million-dollar Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize.

iTunes – $19.99

These Birds Walk

Unlike Nebraska, These Birds Walk won’t be all the rage at the Oscars, but it’s got a story that’s just as inspiring and brilliant as other nominees like Cutie and the Boxer. This indie documentary follows a young Pakistani runaway aided by a sympathetic ambulance driver in his quest to reunite with the orphanage he left.

iTunes – $12.99

Camp Takota

We all remember all the great times and magic of summer camp – unless you went to Camp Hope. Wouldn’t it be great to quit your job and go back to the days of papier-mâché projects and archery classes? That’s pretty much what Elise Miller does in Camp Takota when her personal and professional life fall in shambles. Even better, when she takes up a job at a counselor at her old summer camp she’s reunited with two estranged friends who attended camp and never left.

iTunes – $9.99

I remember when the Apple Quicktake was a revolutionary new product. It was an odd, squarish thing that you held up to your eyes like a strange pair of binoculars and it took photos at a then-astonishing 640 by 480 pixels. It was bulky, though, and quickly replaced.

No one took pictures with their phones.

As soon as June of 2007 rolled around, the iPhone debuted with a 2 megapixel camera. It wasn’t as good as the point and shoot I still favored, so it stayed in my pocket (at first). More and more, though, the iPhone was with me when I wanted to take a picture, and my Minolta was not.

Each successive iPhone model increased not only the megapixel count, but the iPhone camera itself, from the lenses to the internal sensors, received update after update, until–honestly, who carries around a point-and-shoot anymore?

This week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine celebrates that fact with an entire volume dedicated to tips and tricks befitting the one camera we all have in our pockets at all times, giving you practical, technical tricks on all things iPhoneography. Cult of Mac’s own photography guru, Charlie Sorrel, weighs in with some choice technical advice on photography that applies across all cameras, iPhone or not, while Olloclip’s Michele Baker and Camera+’s Lisa Bettany drops some wisdom on how she got her best iPhone pictures.

Of course, we’ll have the usual Genius column and Best Apps and Media from the past week to share with you to, so head on in and enjoy the issue.

Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?

Well, if you stop interrogating me for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, I can tell you about this thing we do here.

Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a sleeping aid for nerds, a clever alarm, and a way to avoid looking at other people’s lunches.

Here you go:

Developer Fixdit sees no reason why your nerd love should have to stop just because you’re unconscious. So now we have Hypersleep, a space-themed sleep aid that includes white-noise-ified versions of the engine noises of various science-fiction vehicles. You can nod off to the engine idle of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D or the background hum of the 10th Doctor’s TARDIS. Or some other equally dweeby drones.

And that’s where the Nerd Tax comes in: The default noise is free, but additional (read: recognizable) sounds cost $0.99 each. But I’m pretty sure that if the sound of Serenity’s engine will help you nod off, you’re willing to pay that dollar.

Hypersleep – Free ($0.99 for additional sounds) | Fixdit

My Smart Alarm wants you to be on time, but it also knows that you can’t just walk out the door looking like that. So it lets you build up a list of things you need to do to get ready (showering, shaving, impromptu Nerf-gun battles) as well as travel time. You tell the app when your event/appointment is and check off your pre-game tasks, and it will alert you when you need to start getting ready.

It won’t tell you if that outfit looks dumb, though; you’re on your own there.

My Smart Alarm – Free | Aliyu Odumosu

An official Metacritic app exists, but it’s pretty basic; it only shows you new movies. Metascore is also basic, but in a completely different way. It allows you to look up the Metacritic aggregate number for anything on the site, including movies, video games, TV shows, and music. You just type in what you’re looking for, and it gives you the number.

And when I say it gives you the number, I mean that it only gives you the number. You’ll have to go somewhere else if you want to read the reviews, but this is still a handy app if you’re just looking for a general rating.

Metascore – Free | Pinxit

Photo-sharing social apps like Instagram are fine and all, but most of them have one flaw: You can’t tell them not to show you pictures of people’s lunch if you don’t want to see them. Enter Just…, a quick-and-easy place to post and look at photos that asks you upfront what you want to look at. So far, it includes 11 categories including Automobiles, Cats, Dogs, and, yes, Food, if you’re into that.

It’s easy to put up your own work and like and share others’, and the feeds already have some beautiful pictures for your enjoyment.

(Apologies to Mr. Albano for the crop job up there.)

Just… – Free | FiveIron Software

We’ve already covered multimedia platform Narr8’s transition from iPad to iPhone, but this week, the company released a standalone app just for biographical comics about some of history’s great thinkers and doers. Biographics offers 13 “episodes” that offer tons of information about some fascinating figures. The first two episodes, which cover Nikola Tesla and Sigmund Freud, are free, and the rest are available for $0.99 each. Subjects include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Vlad Dracula, and Martin Luther King.

That’s a lot of ground they’re covering, there.

Biographics – Free | Narr8 Limited