How awesome is Instagram for Android? Well, just take a look at the photo above. Instagram may not be stable, but at least you’ll have hipster filters to make every random crash, well… hip! This photo, taken by reader Alan Liddell, is aptly named “functionality,” and shows that not every app launch goes off without a hitch and perhaps Instagram should have spent a little extra time in the dark room filtering its code for Android.
It's possible (but unlikely) Tim Cook sleeps on a pile on money like this one.
Apple’s stock price has continued to rise at an incredible rate for months, leading one analyst to predict that its shares will reach $1,000 by 2014, making it the world’s first trillion-dollar company.
The iPhone 5 probably won't look like this... or arrive in June.
Apple broke away from its traditional June iPhone unveiling last year, delaying the iPhone 4S announcement until early October instead. The company is widely expected to do the same with the iPhone 5 — likely to be called the “new iPhone” — this year, but according to one Foxconn recruiter, it’ll arrive in June like many of its predecessors.
Firefighters in China’s Yunnan Province have rescued a two-year old toddler from a 40-foot well with the help of Apple’s iPhone. After the child kept slipping out of a rescue harness that was designed for adults, an iPhone was lowered into the well so that the rescue team could use its camera to see the boy’s position.
The new American Pie film American Reunion is set to open in theaters this Friday, April 6th. To help promote the movie, Universal Pictures thought it’d be a great idea to release an app called Stifler’s App Suite featuring a soundboard of all the various raunchy sayings of the series’ infamous support character, Stifler.
Looks like Stifler was too hot for the App Store to handle, though. An anonymous source has exclusively told Cult of Mac that Apple’s App Store review team has rejected the app due to foul language. The rejection has forced the Universal team to resubmit a watered-down version of the app. Stifler’s hardly even himself anymore.
Air Display makes OS X look even crisper on the new iPad's Retina display.
Avatron has released a new version of its popular Air Display iOS app that allows the user to view OS X Lion in hi-res HiDPI mode on the new iPad’s Retina display. Air Display turns your iPad or iPhone into a secondary display for your Mac, and the latest update takes advantage of the new iPad’s 2048×1536 screen resolution by exploiting a super hi-resolution mode in Lion called HiDPI.
Do they really love Foxconn, or were they forced to wear the shirts?
Crappy internships have become a sort of initiation process that American students subject themselves to in order to enter the workplace. Working for free for 4 months – making copies, fetching coffee, and filing paperwork – sounds like hell for a lot of American students, who love to complain about the hardships of their internships.
Well, turns out American interns have a pretty beautiful life compared to their Chinese counterparts at Foxconn who are forced into internships that resemble slave labor and are told they will not graduate unless they spend months working on the production lines.
Foursquare doesn't ever want you thinking about not doing this. That's why you definitely should.
When we broke the story on Friday about Girls Around Me — an iOS app by Russian-based app developer i-Free that allowed users to stalk women in thee neighborhood without those women’s knowledge, right down to their most personal details — Foursquare was quick to respond within hours, cutting off the API access that the app relied upon to function.
Foursquare’s swift response to the issue effectively killed Girls Around Me, and i-Free quickly yanked the app from the App Store in the aftermath until they could figure out a way to restore service. And for a lot of people, the story ended there. The app’s gone. Why keep talking about it?
That’s exactly the way Foursquare (and Facebook) wants things.
Gameloft's Modern Combat series of first-person shooters would be so much better with a physical controller.
As a gamer, I’d love nothing more than to see a proper physical controller for my iOS devices. Sure, the touchscreen works great with titles like Angry Birds or Words With Friends, and accessories like the iCade work well with retro games. But for first-person shooters, soccer sims, 3D platformers and the like, nothing beats a physical controller with real analog sticks and real buttons.
Google’s Android operating system already supports external game controllers, and that’s one of the few things it has over iOS. But maybe not for long. According to one source, Apple is working on a physical controller of its own that will make iOS gaming even more incredible.
Your next iMac may not be this fat, or this shiny.
Apple’s iMac line of all-in-one desktops is set to receive a pretty significant refresh this year. The machine hasn’t really received any design changes since late 2009, when the aluminum unibody enclosure was introduced. But this 2012’s first refresh is expected to bring slimmer models, and new anti-reflective glass displays.
Now i-Free has clarified matters. They pulled the app themselves… but not because they think they did anything wrong. In fact, they’ve gone as far as to say that it is “unethical to pick a scapegoat to talk about the privacy concerns. We see this wave of negative as a serious misunderstanding of the app’s goals, purpose, abilities and restrictions.”
Tim Cook has been in office as Apple’s official CEO for over 200 days now, so how’s he doing? Is he still living in Jobs’ shadow, or has he been busy leaving his own mark on Cupertino. And what about those crazy new rumors about the iPhone we’ve been hearing? Is there any truth to them? The latest episode of The CultCast seeks to answer those questions and more including brief special appearance from Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman.
Once you’ve heard our take on things, comeback and leave a comment telling us your opinion and we just might read your thoughts on the next CultCast episode.
What the world needs now isn’t love, sweet love. It needs more companies like Apple.
Critics slam Apple for not giving more to charity. It’s a reasonable complaint. Apple should be more philanthropic. Under Tim Cook they probably will be.
However, Apple helps the world in a far more profound way than some annual contribution to United Way.
Apple represents an approach to business that “lifts all boats,” to quote a well known cliche.
Apple is the global economy’s single most powerful economic force opposing a great death spiral in which margins are squeezed, goods get shoddier, people make less money and our lives just get cheaper in every way.
Notorious girl tracking app Girls Around Me had its API cut-off by Facebook in response to Cult of Mac's story earlier today.
In direct response to our story from earlier today about Girls Around Me, an iOS app by Russian-based app developer i-Free that tracks and gives personal information about women without their knowledge, Foursquare has released a statement announcing that they have officially killed Girls Around Me’s access to their public API.
This app is meant to all be in good fun, but it's potentially a weapon in the hands of stalkers.
“Boy, you sure have a lot of apps on your phone.”
“Well, it’s my job.”
“What’s your favorite?”
“Oh, I love Daisy Slots, with so many casino games options, I couldn’t choose. But hey, want to see one to set your skin crawling?”
It was the flush end of a pleasurably hot day — 85 degrees in March — and we were all sipping bitter cocktails out in my friend’s backyard, which was both his smoking room, beer garden, viticetum, opossum parlor and barbecue pit. I was enjoying the warm dusk with a group of six of my best friends, all of whom seemed interested, except for my girlfriend… who immediately grimaced.
“Girls Around Me? Again?” she scolded. “Don’t show them that.”
She turned to our friends, apologetically.
“He’s become obsessed with this app. It’s creepy.”
I sputtered, I nevered, and I denied it, but it was true. I had become obsessed with Girls Around Me, an app that perfectly distills many of the most worrying issues related to social networking, privacy and the rise of the smartphone into a perfect case study that anyone can understand.
It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.
And more than anything, it’s a wake-up call about privacy.
Music streaming service Spotify has announced that it will continue offering unlimited listening to its free customers in the United States. In case you didn’t know, all that free music you’ve been listening to won’t last forever. Spotify said from the very beginning that free users would only have unlimited listening for 6 months, and it’s been 9 months since the streaming service went stateside. Looks like the honeymoon will last a little longer.
A specific date for the unlimited listening discontinuation has not been given, so you may want to think about coughing up $10 per month for a Spotify Premium account. There’s also some good news for certain Spotify users in Europe.
Note: Title has been changed to reflect “in-app” revenue
You may have seen this report around the web about the Amazon Appstore generating more in-app revenue than the Google Play Store. While that in itself it impressive, everyone seems to be missing the most important detail of the report: Android is generating more in-app revenue than iOS. At least that’s what this report is claiming.
The folks at FireCore have released a new jailbreak for the latest Apple TV iOS version that Apple released on March 7th. The set-top box’s interface was revamped alongside the release of the third-gen Apple TV, and FireCore’s tethered jailbreak will work on the second-gen Apple TV running iOS 5.0.
New versions of Seas0nPass and aTV Flash (black) have been released to enhance the Apple TV experience on the latest software.
Don't expect to see Cydia on your new iPad anytime soon.
Just hours after its release on March 16, Apple’s new iPad was jailbroken by the iPhone Dev-Team. Their announcement gave us hope that an exploit for A5 and A5X devices running iOS 5.1 would be available within weeks, but it now seems like we’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than that.
RIM thinks Apple employees are pretending to be from other companies to rig votes for the nano-SIM.
Research in Motion may be watching its mobile business crumble away at its feet, but that’s not the Canadian company’s only concern. It has sided with Nokia and spoken out against Apple’s nano-SIM proposal, accusing its employees of vote rigging by registering themselves under a different affiliation.
We’ve read through the Fair Labor Association’s report on Foxconn’s facilities, and while the picture it paints of conditions is bleak, they’re not insurmountably awful, or even particularly Dickensian. Rather, these are issues that can be fixed… many through simple communication.
Here’s all the bad in the FLA’s report, and what Foxconn can do to fix things.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has long said that “no one in our industry is driving improvements for workers the way Apple is today,” and to put the company’s money where its mouth was, Cupertino invited the Fair Labor Association to do a thorough audit of working conditions at Foxconn.
Now the results are in, and there’s good news and bad news.
The bad news is that the Fair Labor Association found wide scale violations of Chinese labor laws, including the amount of overtime worked, the compensation received for overtime, and numerous health and safety risks, as well as “crucial communication gaps that have led to a widespread sense of unsafe working conditions among workers.”
The good news? Apple and Foxconn are fully on board fixing the issues. That’s why they agreed to the audit, and that’s why they’re committing to being compliant with all of the FLA’s guidelines by 2013. Oh, and they’re going to hire a lot more staff and workers to help even the load.
Security guards go to war in front of the construction site of a future Apple Store.
A mall war has broken out in China, as one mall is upset at another for working to open the world’s largest Apple Store. Yesterday, Apple put up posters advertising its new Store in the massive Parkland Mall in Dailan China. Neighboring mall Dalian Department Store quickly became concerned and sent its security team to knock the signs over. As you can see in the video below, havoc quickly ensued.
Looking for a great deal on the tablet that proved to manufacturers that price matters? Amazon is offering up certified refurbished Kindle Fires at a ridiculous price of $139. It’s a limited time, limited quantity deal, so you’ll want to act fast. The Amazon Kindle Fire blazed into the tablet market with its perfect price and treasure trove of content. It was the first tablet to successfully steal a sliver of the market away from tablet titan Apple. At $199 it opened the door for budget conscious consumers to experience digital content in a new and exciting way. It was a good deal then and at $139, it’s a great deal now!
