Apple Pay, iOS 8.1, Yosemite, and more! Cover Design: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Yes! Another week, another scintillating issue full of Cult of Mac’s best news stories and features, compiled in one place to read through easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got some delightful coverage of the new Apple Pay features in iOS 8, tips and tricks on the latest operating systems, iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite, and a couple of great apps you won’t want to miss. That and more in this week’s spectacularly useful Cult of Mac Magazine.
[UPDATE: Lots of readers report that the new option to activate iCloud Photo Library isn’t showing up on their devices. I’m looking into it. So far I know that the GM version — the one I used to write this guide — and the final version are identical, build number 12A365. My guess is that Apple turned off the beta already]
iCloud Photo Library is rad. The idea is that all your full-res photos (including RAW photos) reside on Apple’s servers, and you access them from all your devices.
That’s a change from Photo Stream as it is now, which stores only the last 1,000 photos you took, not your whole collection. Apple has also introduced new tiers of iCloud storage pricing to cope with all your photos (and videos). This is now live, and I signed up for the 200GB option ($4 per month) to test it out.
“We still have a lot to cover,” is Apple’s promise this time around. On October 15th, the company sent out press invitations for a media event that will be held at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco this coming Tuesday, October 22nd.
Last month we saw the unveiling of the iPhone 5s and 5c, and this second event is expected to center around new iPads. But that’s not all; the future of OS X, iOS 7, and the Mac are also rumored to be waiting in the wings.
Here’s what to expect from Apple’s October 22nd event:
Would you pay for your favorite app more than once? App Store developers are betting that you will.
When Apple unleashes iOS 7 on September 18th, hundreds of thousands of apps will be revamped for the new operating system in the days and weeks to come.
Each major 1.0 release of iOS marks an opportunity for app developers to go back to the drawing board. And with its radically new design language and hundreds of new APIs, devs are seeing iOS 7 as not only a clean slate, but a chance to earn more money off their existing apps.
OS X Mavericks (named after a surfing hot spot in California) was announced recently, and it contains a ton of new features for Mac users to pore over and learn anew. While not as incredible an overhaul as the concurrent update to iOS 7, Mavericks still contains some fairly helpful features and additions to make it worth some poking around, even in the beta.
Speaking of the beta, remember that any of the stuff we talk about below may only exist in the beta, or in some other form, so enjoy playing around with these things, but don’t worry when things are different when Mavericks releases for real in the Fall.
That said, let’s take a look at five new, hidden, and above all, interesting, features of the latest beta for OS X: Mavericks.
Apple made a lot of significant changes in iOS 7, and some of those will be instantly familiar to those who are running the latest versions of Android. As is often the case, Apple has “borrowed” certain features from rival operating systems, and we’ve counted at least seven that were part of Android first.
I’m not going to list all the problems with Apple’s iPhotos for OS X. I’ll just say that it’s clunky, slow, the library bloats as fast as a mob informer that’s been dumped in the Hudson, Photo Stream doesn’t work reliably and – every frikkin time I switch back to the app – it flips to the “Last Import” section in the source list. So I set out to find an alternative. This article will tell you all about my final choice – called Pixa – and a little bit about the alternatives.
The iPad is pretty great for photographers, but in typical Apple fashion, if you want to really use the device then you keep knocking up against crazy and annoying limits. The most obvious of these is probably the whole iPhoto/iPhoto problem: two apps, for Mac an iOS, that share a name but little else. They certainly don’t share their photos.
So what would I like to see fixed in iOS7? Here’s a list, complete with some suggestions for making things better
Apple has been using ideas that originated in the jailbreak community for years. A jailbreak tweak called MobileNotifier enhanced push notifications in iOS 4, and Apple hired the guy who made it and released Notification Center in iOS 5. Jailbreakers were doing multitasking and tethering before Apple too.
Looking ahead at iOS 7, I honestly have no idea what to expect from Apple. Jony Ive has never really been a big fan of skeuomorphism, so flatter and more minimalist graphics wouldn’t surprise me. Some truly innovate ideas for enhancing the iOS experience have arisen in the past year, and I think it would be foolish for Apple to not at least draw inspiration from these three.
As I never tire of telling people, I do all my work using an iPad. Research, communication, writing and photo editing – all of these are now second nature for me on both the iPad mini and the full-sized iPad 3. I love the portability, I love the stripped-down “workflow” which lets me get stuff done way faster than I can on the Mac, mostly due to lack of OS X’s inherent distractions.
In fact, I am so happy with the iPad as a work machine that I thought that I’d never buy another Mac. I figured that, by the time my iMac died, iOS would have caught up with most of the “truck” tasks I still need to do: keeping a big photo library, running a BitTorrent client.
So why am I writing this post on a brand-new MacBook Air? One thing: My arm is fucking killing me.
There's a lot you can do with this tiny launch bar.
Alfred is a great shortcut and productivity tool for the Mac that received a huge update last week. In case you don’t know, Alfred allows you to quickly perform tasks with a series of keyboard shortcuts. If you’ve used similar tools like Quicksilver or LaunchBar, then you already have an understanding of how Alfred fundamentally works.
Over the past couple of years, Alfred has matured from a little app launcher into a full-fleged base station for getting things done on the Mac. Alfred 2.0 is a huge step forward with additional features like customizable themes, but the biggest addition is undoubtedly workflows. You can, for instance, hit a keyboard shortcut, type in the name of a new movie, and have related browser windows from IMDB, YouTube and Rotten Tomatoes instantly pop up.
Alfred has built up a community of users who have created some pretty cool Alfred 2.0 workflows you can download and use for free. Whether you’re a coder or a complete novice, it’s easy to get started with workflows and take control of your Mac.
Dropbox is about to add a great new feature to make photo-sharing a lot easier. It’s called Albums, and it lets you group together photos from anywhere in your Dropbox folder structure and share them as a single album. The service is currently in beta testing, but if you have an Android device the most recent update also contains a version.
“I was only checking Twitter,” I exclaimed in shock, as she threw my iPhone across the room, shattering it against the brick wall.
“It’s either me, or the iPhone,” she emphatically declared.
I didn’t know what to say. I had only checked Tweetbot while she was looking at her menu. It had finally come to this. Now I had a broken iPhone and a pissed-off girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.
That little story may not have actually happened to me, but I certainly don’t want it to happen in the future. Like many of you, I’m kind of addicted to my iPhone. It can be a problem sometimes. But I have found a way to conquer my addiction and keep my girlfriend happy. No one wants to face the sadness and/or wrath of a loved one who feels neglected. Love is in the air this week with Valentine’s Day, and you want your romantic endeavors with your significant other to be as meaningful as possible. That’s why you need to use your iPhone like a gentleman.
Remember bookmarks? It’s how we used to save sites to go back to later. In theory anyway. Browser bookmark search was pretty terrible, and you had to remember the name of the site to find it again. So we mostly just used Google to search for a site every time we wanted to go there.
With Tuesday’s’s announcement of a 128GB iPad 4, Apple is clearly signaling that the iPad is not only suitable for serious work, but that it can be the primary machine for many users. Most commenters have fixated on fitting extra movies and other consumables into the extra 64GB of space, but they’re forgetting about work.
In fact, I’d say that the iPad With Retina Display, as Apple now insists on calling it, is the new desktop machine, and the iPad mini is the new laptop. Why? Let me explain:
In just the last fifteen years, a lot has changed for Apple. The company has transformed itself from a dying corporation teetering on the brink of bankruptcy into the most powerful technology company in the world, a giant that has revolutionized pretty much every aspect of technology.
Given the extraordinary changes that have happened to Apple in the last fifteen years, you’d think that the Apple.com homepage would have gone through a lot of changes too. But it hasn’t. Why not?
Going back through fifteen years of Apple.com homepages, it is clear that for Apple, their website is just another product, just like an iPhone or iPod. When Apple wants to make a new product, they first find the ideal form they think that object should be, and then endlessly iterate upon it over successive generations to bring the function of that form into sharper relief.
Apple’s website is no different. Here’s how Apple has refined it over the years.
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac News Writer Alex Heath’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.
Although the iPad mini is well-reviewed, a constant complaint that has been leveled against Apple’s smallest tablet is that the display isn’t Retina. In fact, in my review of the iPad mini, I could barely see past the terrible fuziness of the on-screen text, and considered it an otherwise perfect device’s Achilles’ Heel.
Summarized, the argument is this: A Retina iPad mini would be too expensive for Apple to make right now, and it would come with other tradeoffs, like a significantly reduced battery life and a much thicker and heavier form factor.
I was curious if this was actually true, so I decided to try an experiment: I’d build an imaginary Retina iPad mini out of technology that Apple already has access to, add up how much it would cost, and then see what the design tradeoffs would be.
What I found out was that Apple could indeed have shipped an iPad mini with Retina this generation without significantly changing the form or battery life of the device, but it would have cost $379. Here’s why.
So long, Scott Forstall. Don't let your crappy skeuomorphic designs hit your ass on the way out.
Skeuomorphism, or the tendency to deliberately make something new look like something old and familiar. Some people love it, some people hate it and think it’s tacky.
No matter how you feel, his love for skeuomorphism is one of many reasons that former iOS chief Scott Forstall was fired yesterday. Replacing him is Apple’s Senior VP of Design, Jonathan Ive, who will lead a new Human Interface Group in Apple… and whom reportedly loathes skeuomorphism with every fiber of his being.
All that fake leather stitching, those hideous textures, those bizarre font choices in iOS’s stock apps? If Ive gets his way — and we think he will — they’re all about to change.
Here are the eight skeuomorphic apps in iOS 6 we hope Jony Ive is going to change in iOS 7, along with some third-party apps we hope he takes inspiration from.
Apple released the iPhone 5 today, and while it put the majority of us to sleep, we can’t help but think there HAS to be at least one feature of the iPhone 5 that you wish you had. Yes, I realize we already have over 90% of them already, but what about its PPI? There has to be something? I’ve put together a poll with a few of the possibilities, so put in your vote, and if there’s something else you can think of, throw it in the comments.
Man, oh man. At least now we know why Apple has been on such a legal crusade. They’ve got nothin’. I just finished watching the iPhone 5 unveiling and boy was it a bore fest. It’s as if Apple awoke from a cryogenic sleep and is finally embracing the year 2012. Almost nothing was innovating and the majority of new iPhone 5 features have been implemented in other mobile phones for years. Seriously Apple, is that it?
This changed everything. Where were you when it was announced five years ago?
Today is the fifth anniversary of the release of the original iPhone, and for Cult of Mac’s writers, it’s a particularly important birthday: not only does June 29th mark the anniversary of one of our most all-time beloved gadgets, but it’s also a day so momentous that it has rippled through every aspect of our professional lives as both Apple fans and writers.
To mark the occasion, Cult of Mac’s writers got together to talk about where we were when the first iPhone came out, what it meant for us then and what it means for us now. Check out our stories, then please feel free to hop in and leave a comment telling us where you were when the iPhone was born.
The new Retina MacBook Pros are only Apple's first step towards the living display of the future.
Apple’s new MacBook Pro follows the fine tradition of the iPhone 4 and third-gen iPad in that it has a super high-resolution Retina display: a 2880 x 1800 panel with an amazing 220 pixels packed in per inch.
It’s an incredible display. In fact, it’s such an incredible display that it actually has about one million, seven hundred thousand pixels more than it needs to satisfy Apple’s definition of Retina, leading some to claim that those pixels are all going to waste.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Apple’s new MacBook Pros have absolutely great displays, but they need every single pixel they have, because the truth of the matter is that Apple’s got a long way to go before it catches its display tech up to the incredible power of human vision. And that’s a good thing, because it means we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
How many does pixels does a Mac really need to qualify as Retina, anyway?
It’s looking increasingly likely that when Tim Cook takes the stage at the annual WWDC keynote on June 11th, Apple will announce new MacBook Pros and possibly iMacs, and if the rumor mill is to be believed, these new machines won’t just be slimmer and ditch their optical drives… they’ll be the first Macs with Retina displays.
What everyone widely expects from Retina display Macs is an iPhone or iPad-style resolution doubling. So if the current 15-inch MacBook Pro has a 1,440 x 900 display, the Retina 15-inch MBP would have a 2,880 x 1800 display.
What the rumor mill is missing is that there’s no benefit to Apple handling a jump to Retina display Macs this way. The reason the iPad and iPhone going Retina was such a big deal was because they had really pixellated displays. Before the iPhone 4, the iPhone had a display that was only 53% close to being Retina. The iPad was slightly better, at 61%. Roughly, both the iPad and iPhone were only about halfway there, which made the easiest fix to just double the amount of pixels per inch.
But Apple doesn’t need to do this with its line of Macs. In fact, it’s likely that most “Retina Quality” Macs will have fewer pixels than your new iPad. Here’s why.
