Casemakers are known to gamble on upcoming iOS product launches. Every day they can have their product on the shelves closer to launch is a day they have a leg up over their competitors in the hyper-competitive case market.

Case in point, here’s a story about Hard Candy Cases gambled (and lost) $50,000 on iPhone 4S moldings from China to get their cases first-to-market. When the iPhone 4S actually debuted, though, it looked identical to the 4, instead of the radical redesign the case makers expected. Oops.

Now the same case maker is doing the same thing, gambling on the iPad 5 launch. This time, though, Tim Hickman has less to lose.

Google’s YouTube apps for Android and iOS have helped the company triple advertising sales on mobile in the past six months, the company has said. Mobile ads now contribute an estimated $350 million to YouTube’s revenue, with around a quarter of the site’s 1 billion users accessing videos on smartphones and tablets.

The current Internet scuttlebutt has it that when Tim Cook takes the stage on Monday for the WWDC keynote, he will not only unveil iOS 7, but a new, flatter ‘look’ for the entire mobile operating system spearheaded by Jony Ive. This would bring the look of iOS closer to modern design principles employed by the likes of Google and Microsoft, and finally flush Scott Forstall’s skeuomorphism turd.

Developer Steve King wanted to give people an idea what a redesigned iOS 7 with flatter, less skeuomorphic design elements would really look like, so he mocked up a flatter iOS 7. But what makes King’s mock-up even more existing is it’s all done in HTML, CSS and Javascript (no images!), meaning it’s fully interactive in any browser.

Kindgom Rush has been one of our favorite tower defense games for the past two years, so we’re really excited to hear that Ironhide Game Studio just released the sequel, titled ‘Kingdom Rush Frontiers.’

The new game features all new levels as you defend your lands in the deserts, jungles, and even the underworld. You get some new customizable abilities along with a host of new bad guys and nine legendary heres.

We got the full release notes after the break, but if you’re already eager, you can pick up Kingdom Rush Frontiers in the App Store for $4.99.

Game Features:

Crafting great looking, professional documents in iWork or Office can be really tricky, even if you spend a ton of time on the computer. To make things easier, the guys Made for Use created some incredible professional templates for both Office and iWork that make it easier for users to look like a Pages-guru.

We’ve grabbed about Made for Use’s iOS Templates app in the past, but now the team is bringing all the greatness to the Mac with Templates for iWork Pro, and Templates for Office Pro. Both packs offer over hundred of templates for their respective suite of apps. And if you specialize in only one app, you can pick up the Templates Pro Pack for PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Keynote, Numbers and Pages individually.

Templates for iWork and Office Pro are two of the easiest ways to make high quality, professional looking documents, without having to take some college course on Office apps.

To celebrate the launch of Templates for iWork Pro and Templates for Office Pro, Made for Use  is giving away 40 FREE CODES to some lucky Cult of Mac readers. Entering the contest only takes a second, but you gotta play to win.

Here’s How To Enter:

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Have you tried searching in Messages on the Mac? Well don’t try now unless you want to get really frustrated. Among the app’s other numerous bugs, Messages can tend to suddenly throw a tantrum whenever the search bar is invoked.

Flexibits, makers of popular iPhone calendar app Fantastical, have announced their next app: Chatology, a tool for searching Messages on the Mac.

Every year Apple holds the iTunes Festival, a month of free concerts with some of the biggest names in music. The shows take place at the Roundhouse in London, and this year’s lineup includes artists like Justin Timberlake, Jessie J, Phoenix, Queens of the Stone Age, Jack Johnson, and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

Today the official iTunes Festival 2013 app got updated with Passbook support, allowing attendees to download tickets straight to their iPhones. So how do you get your hands on a ticket to see your favorite artist for free? As you can imagine, your chances of going to the iTunes Festival are slim. And that’s because Apple doesn’t put the show on for normal music fans in the first place.

Depending on the way you ask Siri for the date of Father’s Day this year, she might give you two completely different answers. A redditor discovered that when you ask Siri, ‘Is Father’s Day this weekend?’ the personal assistant erroneously replies that “Father’s Day is on Friday, June 14th,” even though it most definitely is not.

To make matters more embarrassing  Siri answers the questions correctly if you phrase it as “When’s Father’s Day?” On the bright side of things though, you now have an excuse if you forget to buy dad something in time.

Source: Reddit

https://instagram.com/p/Zi-AAmGBqM/

The square cropped photo has never been more popular thanks to Instagram. There are a lot of benefits to being challenged to shoot within the confines of Instagram’s square — plus square photos make for easier browsing — but a lot of times cropping down to a square cuts out a lot of beautiful shot.

Even though Instagram forces users to upload square pictures, there are lots of ways to get around it. Not only can you post oblong pictures at whichever aspect ratio you want, you can also crop images into circles, triangles, and all sorts of other shapes.

Here’s our guide on how to break out of Instagram’s square:

We’re spending more and more time on the go with our mobile devices, and watching video on them is becoming increasingly popular. Converting your videos to watch on mobile devices can get a bit unwieldy, though.

Cult of Mac Deals has an offer that will make your day – and converting videos for mobile a breeze…and it won’t cost you a dime.

Thanks to our friends over at Digiarty, we’re able to hook you up with MacX Mobile Video Converter – their new mobile video converting Mac app – for free!