Think Retina display Macs are a gimmick? Think again: Mac developer Gus Mueller is almost ready to pop out an update to the Acorn image editing app which will use the Retina display on the new MacBook Pro to spectacular (and rather useful) effect.
Like its predecessors, Apple’s latest iPad promises to provide you within around ten hours of battery life for surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music. But with its high-resolution Retina display and LTE connectivity, it needs a much bigger battery to do that.
And we all know how long it takes for that battery to charge, because it has been well documented since the device made its debut earlier this year. But the cost of keeping it running may be a lot less than you think.
The downside to buying a new Mac with a 2880 x 1800 display is that it’s not easy to find content that matches such a high resolution. All of your old Charlize Theron wallpapers you found on Google Images are going to look blurry and pixelated and just awful.
Fortunately for you, we’ve put together a gallery of high-resolution NASA images that look terrific on the new MacBook Pro’s Retina display.
Gameloft’s Asphalt series has been one of the most successful racing titles on iOS, and its latest addition promises to the “newest, fastest, most visually stunning” edition yet. It’s called Asphalt 7: Heat and it’s available today on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for just $0.99.
For that you get the chance to race over 60 cars — including a DeLorean! — over 15 tracks, in both single and multiplayer game modes.
The new 2012 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro marks an evolution of the Mac: it’s the first of presumably the entire Mac line-up to get a Retina display, just like the iPhone and iPad.
Unlike the iPhone or iPad, however, the new Retina MacBook Pro is not aimed at the mass market. This is a professional machine, through and through, and has a price to match, starting at $2,199.
The beauty of the Retina MacBook Pro’s display can’t be overestimated: it’s like living print. Likewise, the Retina MacBook Pro is the most powerful all-in-one professional notebook you can buy off the shelf: it makes every Apple notebook before it look archaic.
It’s a Mac that has been designed by Apple for the first time as they would have it: completely without compromises, using cutting-edge technology that it will take at least a year for the competition to catch-up with.
But is it the Mac for you?
Thanks to the dual Thunderbolt ports and new HDMI connector in the Retina display equipped MacBook Pro, for the first time ever, a MacBook can power three external displays. Other World Computing today posted this image of a new MacBook Pro powering three high res displays, all at native resolution. This is quite an impressive feat, especially for a mobile video card.
Alien Blue, undoubtedly the best third-party Reddit client for iOS, has just received a great new update on the iPhone. In addition to a long list of improvements and optimizations, version 2.6 brings the ability to sort your subreddits into groups, and then sync them via iCloud; Retina subreddit icons, a native Imgur album browser, a native GIF player, and lots more.
Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!
Yesterday, we reported that according to the speculation of display expert Dr. Raymond Soneira, the new Retina MacBook Pro could conceivably use Sharp IGZO display technology originally meant for the new iPad.
At the time, we were a little skeptical of the claim. Turns out we were right, as the new displays don’t use IGZO at all.
Apple mentioned during its unveiling of the MacBook Pro last week that it has made some substantial changes to the construction of the notebook’s display to help make it super thin. Unlike existing MacBooks, the new Pro does away with a cover glass and case to measure just 1.5mm thin, essentially making the entire display just an LCD panel.
If you’re in the market for a new MacBook Pro, particularly of the Retina display variety, expect to shell out a little more than usual for a new battery. Apple’s updated pricing list for MacBook battery replacements shows higher than ever battery costs.
Do you know how to code a circle? If you’re a software developer, the answer is probably yes. But what about interface elements, complex icons and other fancy graphics? Sure, you could probably get it done, but what a pain. That’s what PaintCode is for.
PaintCode is a Mac app which takes your complicated vector-based designs and translates them into Objective C code, ready to be pasted straight into Xcode.
New Macs! Mountain Lion! iOS 6! The second part of our WWDC special edition CultCast is now on iTunes, and in this brand new episode, no fruity pebble is left unturned.
Join us as we discuss the pros and cons of Apple’s new Macbook Pro with Retina display, the mysteriously missing iMac and Mac Pro updates, and the best and worst new features of Mountain Lion and iOS 6. Yes sir, we cover it all on this special WWDC edition MEGASODE of the CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes, and find out why 2012 is going to be a great year to be an Apple fan.
Full show notes ahead!
You know the shutdown spinner on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? If you own latest-generation hardware, it probably drives you crazy every single time you see it. Why? Because it is a lone holdout of non-Retina UI on Apple’s otherwise beautifully high-res OS. Now, in iOS6, this has – finally – been fixed.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of Apple events: the secrecy, the frenetic guessing games, the lines at Starbuck’s. It’s like Christmas–before your older brother ruined Santa for you–and it happens a couple of times a year.
So Cult of Mac got the inside scoop from developer Chris Lott, who was sitting inside on this unusually warm San Francisco day with a restless crowd of developers at the World Wide Developer Conference, for his take on the keynote announcements. Lott works with Darren Murtha Design; the two currently have eight iPhone/iPad apps in the iTunes store, most of them nifty learning games aimed at the preschool set.
Today at 10AM Pacific, Tim Cook will take the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Apple’s annual WWDC keynote, and if the rumor mill is to be believed, he’ll be hard pressed to fit everything Cupertino is ready to announce into its 90 minute presentation. We’re looking at massive upgrades to the entire Mac line, the official unveiling of iOS 6, loads of new apps, and maybe possibly even our first glimpse of the iPhone 5 and Apple HDTV.
Here’s what we think Apple will (and won’t) announce today, ranked in order of likelihood.
Noteshelf — the best writing and scrawling app available for the iPad — has at last gotten a Retina update for the new iPad. And boy was it worth the wait.
We’re almost certain Apple will announce a new MacBook Pro at WWDC this week, but what we’re not quite so sure of is exactly what the new notebook will bring. An Intel Ivy Bridge processor and a high-resolution Retina display seem like the most feasible changes, but there’s also been much debate over a new design.
Some reports have suggested the device will sport a thinner, lighter form factor that will be heavily influenced by the MacBook Air. While others have claimed the design will remain the same as existing MacBook Pros. Now a leaked logic board for the upcoming device seems to side with the latter.
Macs equipped with Retina displays are high on everyone’s wish-list right now, but despite many rumors claiming we’ll see them announced at WWDC, we’ve still had our doubts they’ll arrive this year. However, we’ve been handed a glimmer of hope this morning after Retina-ready Mac applications began appearing in the Mac App Store.
SoundHound has updated its popular music searching and discovery app for iOS today, introducing a whole host of new features. Version 5.0 makes SoundHound faster than ever before, according to the release notes, and brings high-resolution album art and images, an improved user interface, a new SoundHound Player with LiveLyrics, and lots more.
Apple’s massive orders for its next-generation MacBook Pros are causing havoc for its supply chain, with many facing labor shortages as they struggle to meet its demands. Others have been forced to outsource their business as a desperate attempt to complete orders before they start shipping.
We’re a big fan of awesome wallpapers here at Cult Of Mac, so we’re happy to announce to you today that you can now download our new, official Cult Of Mac wallpapers.
We’ve got two wallpaper designs for you, both featuring the Cult Of Mac logo, as seen above. There’s not only Mac versions available, but both iPhone and iPad optimized wallpapers as well, so you can use them on all of your devices.
You can download the zipped folder containing the wallpapers (22.4MB) here.
You sometimes here people talk about the iPhone 4S as if it’s a minor upgrade, but even if you’re not wooed by Siri, the camera on the iPhone 4S makes it worth a whole new phone in itself if you have even the most cursory interest in photography. The 8MP back-side illuminated sensor provided by Sony is a marvel — arguably the best camera sensor on a mobile phone outside of the crazy new Nokia PureView 808 — and a serious, serious upgrade over the 5MP OmniVision sensor found in the iPhone 4.
But don’t count OmniVision out for Cupertino’s iPhone 5 business. The Californian digital sensor maker have just announced a crazy 16MP back-side illuminated sensor that could theoretically put the iPhone 4S’s image quality to shame. Even better? Since they are capable of shooting video in 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, they’d take perfect images and videos for those rumored new Retina Macs we’ve all been hearing about.
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.
With Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone set to make its debut this year, there’s no doubt the company has a number of prototype devices — all with different designs and specifications — in testing within its Cupertino headquarters. One of those handsets is said to feature a 3.95-inch widescreen display with a 640 x 1136 resolution that’s taller than all the existing 3.5-inch iPhone displays we’ve seen to date.
