Oh man, I love feeding pets, and they love it too. After your little friend has finally dragged you out of bed (by attacking your feet with sharp claws [cat] or nuzzling you with his disgusting wet nose [dog]), you both head to the kitchen together. He’s all around your ankles, excited for breakfast. And you? Totally up early – again! – and ready to make a delicious cup of coffee with plenty of time to enjoy it.

Now, though, there’s a new way to feed pooch or moggy: the Pintofeed. Here’s how the morning goes with a little iPhone-controlled automation:

Your loyal companion scratches at your closed door. You hear him and reach for your phone, irritated. You tap a button, and the Pintofeed in the kitchen dumps another load of dried meat pellets into its dusty bowl. Your pet goes to the kitchen, alone, and half an hour later you wake up, rush into your clothes and pick up a Starbucks on the way to work. Nice going, you lazy, selfish creep.

The Magnefix book case for the iPad mini solves two problems: first, it protects the edges and corners of the little iPad like the Smart Cover never can, and second, it converts into a stand that doesn’t suck – the opposite of the iPad Mini’s own Smart Cover.

And, as all future-looking gadgets do, it works with the help of frikkin’ magnets.

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The case, which costs £36 (or $58) is made with an polypropylene core and a TPU outer, with a microfiber lining to keep the screen nice and clean. To turn it into a stand, you open it up, flip the cover round back and the magnets take over, snapping the cover into place to make a sturdy stand. Compare this to the Apple case which collapses like a house of cards the first time you tap the screen.

That said, I will remain a loyal user of the official cover as it does what I need (screen protection, sleep/wake) and weighs almost nothing. Plus, it’s a pretty great tool for killing mosquitos (when removed from the iPad of course).

The new Magnefix is available now.

Source: C6

I thought that iOS 7 was ready to go on the iPad, but today I’m actually trying to do some work, and my cloud of optimism has been quickly dispelled. It’s a combination of OS-level bugginess and apps which have been too-hastily updated, and it’s causing all sorts of trouble.

The biggest problem? Using an external Bluetooth keyboard. So it’s pretty ironic that this post is about the excellent new keyboard shortcuts in iOS 7. Especially in Safari.

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The Tao of Mac blog points us to three great new shortcuts, lifted straight from OS X:

Cmd+L to move the focus to the location bar
Cmd+T to open a new tab
Cmd+W to close a tab

This is surprisingly useful, although I’m ungrateful enough to wonder why there’s no way to navigate between tabs. I’ve rattled away at my Logitech K811 and no combo of arrow key or square brackets and modifiers seems to work.

Another great side-effect of that Cmd+L shortcut is that you can now trigger an in-page search from the keyboard: just hit Cmd+L and type your query. At the bottom of the list that pops up are the in-page results, and because you’re using an external keyboard, there’s no on-screen keyboard to get in the way.

Also, double-tapping the Logitech’s home button takes you into the app-switcher view, and in iOS 7 that means that the previous app’s screen thumbnail pops into view. Combine this with the fact that any keystrokes are passed to the current app (even though you can’t see it), and you can now copy-type from one app to the next. Very nice indeed. Sadly, you need to reach up and tap the screen to actually switch to the app.

Source: Tao Of Mac

It’s a bittersweet irony that while The Lady looks as stunning in photographs as she does in real life, in fully 80% of those photographs she has her eyes closed, or half closed. That’s right – she’s a blinker.


Usually I get around this by snapping way more photos that I actually need, but inevitably the one picture that has her opened-eyed and not making some weird expression is the same photo that has captured somebody else mid-blink.



And that’s whre Perfect Shot comes in.



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Perfect Shot is a new iOS 7-only app (universal) which has smile and blink detection. You toggle either one or both of these and then point the camera at your group. The app looks for their eyes (using face-recognition) and watches everyone. The moment they are all bright-eyed and (optionally) smiling, the shutter fires.



It’s a little disconcerting as the app just takes the picture without you even tapping the shutter button to activate it. There’s also no shutter sound, so you have to rely on animations to let you know the picture has been taken – a real problem if you’re also in the shot and the iPhone/iPas is sitting unmanned.



The app is somewhat obviated by the burst mode in the new iPhone 5S, but as almost nobody actually has a 5S yet then this is still pretty useful. Available now.
 




Source: Perfect Shot


Thanks: John!


Just like the filters in the iOS 7 camera app, the super slo-mo mode in the iPhone 5S is somewhat confusing when it comes to exporting your work. In fact, it’s almost impossible to get your slowed down masterpieces out of the iPhone and onto sharing services without some rather janky workarounds. But thanks to Macworld’s Serenity Caldwell, we now at least know about these tricks.




Presumably thanks to hangovers caused by excessive in-flight drinking on the flight formthe U.S to the antipodes, the iFixit folks managed to not find the M7 chip inside the new iPhone 5S during their teardown before the weekend, leading to speculation that the chip didn’t even exist. Conspiracy!


And as with any drunken adventure, lost things start to reappear when the dawn finally rises. The M7 chip is there alright; it just doesn’t have a big "M7" label on the front. According to the Chipworks’ blog, the M7 still carries its factory label: NXP LPC18A1.


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> Luckily, we’ve been able to locate the M7 in the form of the NXP LPC18A1. The LPC1800 series are high-performing Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers.



The M7 is a separate chip then, but (as Apple already made clear on the iPhone 5S product page) it processes the data from the MEMS sensors on the main A7 chip, letting the iPhone 5S’s big brain stay asleep while the low-power M7 works tirelessly in the background. These sensors – compass, accelerometer, gyroscope – are mostly the same as in previous iPhones, with the exception of the new Bosch Sensortech BMA220 3-axis accelerometer. According to Chipworks, this is the first time a Bosch component has been found in an iDevice.

The A7 is made by Samsung, just like previous iPhone brains, despite Samsung’s continued and shameless ripping off of Apple’s designs in all other areas. I guess there’s no decent alternative yet.

Source: Chipworks Blog)


With the release of iOS 7, we’ve prepped a guide to what you need to know about Apple’s new operating system — along with some things you might not already know.

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine we catch up with uber-designer Khoi Vinh who has been using it since the beta, why experts think the new activation lock (aka “kill switch”) won’t stop iCrime and take a light-hearted look at the real-world objects that inspired the new icons.

Once again, we’ve tapped an Apple Store Genius to answer your questions on how to get an iPhone 5 replaced for free and what to do when your MacBook Pro gets all wet.

The latest issue is available for free in the App Store.

Got questions, comments, topics in the Applesphere you’d like us to cover in-depth?

Tweet, email or give us a shout out any way you feel appropriate. (Just FYI, though, smoke signals are hard to read here in foggy San Francisco.)

Thanks for all your kind words and input on the first issue.

And, just so we know, were you guys serious that we should call it a “Macazine?”

There are a bunch of video games out on iOS for kids, from educational games to adventure games and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of video games on the App Store that they’re playing.

This week, it’s creature-creating, monster-battling Pet Peaves Monsters, from RED Interactive Agency. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter thinks.

There’s no question that the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 together make for the best phone ever made.

The din of offhand, dismissive criticism from the Android fan base that Apple never innovates should be silenced, at least for awhile, given that Apple now sells the only dual-tone LED flash; the only 64-bit mobile CPU; the only 64-bit OS; the fastest touch-screen performance phones by far; the only wide-scale deployment of Multipath TCP; and the only useful, usable and widely used fingerprint scanner ever placed on any consumer electronics device.

Yes, there’s plenty of petty grousing. And who knows what competitors will ship tomorrow?

But today, it’s clear that Apple rules the smartphone market.

The Android fan critics now also have to contend with a razor sharp, concise rebuttal to the cacophony of general criticism of Apple by Apple VP Craig Federighi: “New is easy. Right is hard.” He said that after referring to Samsung by saying that Apple “didn’t start opportunistically with 10 bits of technology that we could try to find a use for to add to our features list.” Ouch!

Unfortunately, iOS 7 is going to cause some huge problems that nobody is talking about yet, but will do when the unwanted bricking epidemic starts.

This week: iOS 7, available on an iDevice near you! And on our all-new CultCast, joined by special guest Mac OS Ken, we offer our thoughts on the controversial new OS plus a few of our favorite tips. Then, the NDAs are up and the reviews are in, we’ll tell you what critics think of the 5S and why we all agree—the 5C feels great in the pants.

Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest 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 unadulterated audio enjoyment begin. Show notes up next.

BBM for Android and iOS is now officially available to download from the App Store and Google Play. It’s the first time in its history that the popular messaging service has been brought to a third-party platform — but with services like WhatsApp and Viber already dominating cross-platform chat, is it too late?

Talk show host Conan O’Brien asked comedian Louis C.K. why his his kids won’t be getting “phones with the apps.” Louis C.K explains — pretty convincingly — why smartphones are “toxic” and bad for your soul. It’s pretty funny.

The hottest part of this year’s flagship iPhone isn’t a piece of hardware, but a color. Everyone has gold fever. The gold iPhone 5s sold out quicker than any other model in stores, and shipping from the online Apple Store has already been pushed back to October.

Based on the economic model of supply and demand, it is only logical that those who were fortunate enough to snag a gold 5s will then turn around and sell for a ridiculous price. That’s exactly what’s happened.

The gold iPhone 5s is in very short supply. Apple has already sold out, and is unlikely to get them in volume for weeks to come. They are hard to come by. Many of Apple’s flagship stores received only a few units while many stores had none.

The rarity is reflected on eBay. there are a handful of gold iPhones for sale, ranging from $1,6 One gold iPhone 5s on sale is priced at a whopping $1,800 on eBay. Another is a tad cheaper at $1,699.

How much would you pay for a gold iPhone?

Gaming on the Mac got a whole lot better once Steam (by the fine folks at Valve) entered the equation. With the addition of this gaming portal, game development for the Mac rose to new heights, with games like Portal and others that were previously not as easy to port over to OS X becoming available.

Borderlands 2 is an example of one such game, and Cult of Mac Deals has it for $11.99 for a limited time [ends tonight at midnight!].

U.S. Senator Al Franken has been very vocal about his Apple opinions for years, and this time he’s sent a letter to Tim Cook regarding Touch ID in the iPhone 5s.

Franken has “substantial privacy questions” when it comes to Touch ID’s security, and given the recent NSA findings, his concerns come at a time when the American public’s questioning of online security has heightened.

Samsung, the Korean company that makes TV ads mocking Apple fans for waiting in lines, sent its own employees to the Apple Store for today’s iPhone 5s/5c launch. A Samsung video crew was spotted at the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City by CNET.

The reason for the espionage? Understanding why Apple generates so much hype for product launches.

Every time a new iOS device is released, there’s going to be new adopters. With new adopters come new opportunities to create apps that appeal to them. iOS 7 is an all new look for the devices, and there’s a lot of new things to learn about it. This offer from Cult of Mac Deals and iOS Centric is going to help you learn everything you need to know about iOS 7 so that you can make the best use of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

This deal gives you a lifetime video subscription to iOS Centric – and for the low price of just $19.99. That’s a savings of 80%!

I’ve been playing with the 5s for about the last two hours, and I can’t remember the last time I was so stubbornly wrong about, gee, anything really — as much as I was wrong about the iPhone 5s. And not just the 5s, but also iOS 7, which I hated when I first launched it on my iPad last night; but man, is it ever beyond perfect on the 5s.

I know, my iPhone 5s and I have just begun our honeymoon phase, but here’s the first-impression verdict in a nutshell: The iOS 7 / iPhone 5s pairing is phenomenal. I’m so in love.

Tim Cook made a public appearance at the Palo Alto Apple Store this morning for the launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c, and it looks like he may have finally taken to a Twitter account he created back in July to share about the experience in his first tweet ever.

Today Apple released a major update to the Apple TV that was originally predicted to arrive alongside iOS 7 on Wednesday. Version 6.0 of the set-top box’s software includes some big additions, including iTunes Radio, shared Photo Streams support, and AirPlay from iCloud, which is essentially Apple’s answer to the Chromecast from Google.

At the end of last night’s iPhone 5s teardown, the iFixit team still wasn’t sure who made the chips inside the latest iOS device, or where the brand-new M7 was, even. There was a lot of speculation as to who made the A7, Apple’s new, faster powerhouse of a main processing unit, as well.

That’s ancient history, now, as reverse-engineering and security firm, Chipworks, de-capped the various chips on the iPhone 5s logic board to find out precisely what’s what.

SAN FRANCISCO — The gold iPhone 5s is rarer than, well, gold. If you wanted to snag a gold-colored iPhone 5s this morning, you had to start lining up outside the Apple Store at 7:30 p.m. the night before. Apple had only 20 or so at the flagship Apple Store, which was a lot compared to most outlets.

At about 5 a.m. this morning, Apple staffers handed out tickets to everyone in line reserving them an iPhone. But there were only 20 tickets for gold iPhones, people in line estimated, and they were snapped up instantly by those at the front.

By the time I arrived to the Apple Flagship store on Stockton Street at 6:30 a.m. this morning, all the gold iPhones were gone. The line was already two blocks long though but I wasn’t worried because Cult of Mac.com had someone from Task Rabbit holding a spot.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t find her.

One of the big new features of the iPhone 5s is the updated camera. Oh, but it’s still only has a 8MP sensor you say? True, but Apple has managed to make the sensor larger and increase the size of each individual pixel so more light hits your sensor, meaning your really crappy night shots are going to be slightly less crappy.

Out of the box, the new iPhone 5s camera doesn’t look that special – other than new dual LED flash – but one of the first places you’re going to notice the improvements are on your low-light indoor shots. The wide aperture and larger pixel size allow for better low-light shots around your house, which means your Snapchats are about to be immaculate. Well maybe not immaculate, but there is definitely be a notable improvement.

You’ll be blown away by the new Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s the first time you use it. You’ll be prompted to set it up when you first start up your iPhone, and you’ll have to scan your fingerprint numerous times at different angles before your iPhone is happy with it. Once it’s recorded, you can use the tip of your finger to unlock your device and authorize purchases from iTunes and the App Store.