I test a lot of iPhone cases and rarely get comments. Most of them aren’t that distinctive. But a new iMac-inspired case from Spigen attracted the attention of my teenage kids and even elicited a compliment: “Cool case, Dad!”
I live in San Francisco where car crime in epidemic. Last year there were just under 30,000 reported break-ins — that’s about 85 a day! My car in particular seems to be a magnet for car thieves; it’s been broken into five times in the last couple of years, costing me thousands of dollars in repairs.
So I jumped at the chance to review the new Owl car cam, a combination dashboard cam and interior security device from one of the product design leads of the iPod and iPhone. The Owl combines two HD cameras — one pointing out, the other inwards — with bump-sensing accelerometers and an always-on LTE cellphone connection that sends alerts and live video to my iPhone.
It’s been great. Setup was the easiest of any gadget in recent memory and the video is surprisingly fantastic. Best of all, no one has broken in to steal it — yet!
My grandfather, who fought in World War II, wore a beautiful mechanical watch. It had an eye-catching expansion band — a stainless steel link bracelet that stretched like elastic. He always took it off to play cricket, and I remember it dangled loosely around my skinny kid’s wrist when I tried it on. He loved that watch, and so did I.
Now I’m wearing a similar expansion bracelet on my Apple Watch courtesy of Speidel, the storied watch-band maker from Providence, Rhode Island. Introduced in the late 1950s, Speidel’s Twist-O-Flex Stainless bracelets are some of the most iconic bands in all of watchmaking. Now they’re available in three finishes for the Apple Watch.
Venturing online can be like an urban safari into the sketchiest, most crime-ridden part of town. The internet is full of scumbags, scalawags and scambots.
That’s why it’s absolutely essential that you use good, strong passwords. And that means you need a good password manager. This is non-debatable. If you do anything at all online — shop, bank or socialize — you need a good password manager. Here at Cult of Mac, we use Dashlane. And in this video, I’ll tell you why.
In the world of watch straps, we think Ottm, a manufacturer of wooden Apple Watch bands, offers one of the best unboxing experiences.
The box itself is plain and simple, but the package is thoughtfully designed, containing extra links and a pin removal tool that makes it very easy to adjust your new band.
The bands are awesome, too. Made from zebrawood and/or sandalwood, each hand-finished strap is eye-catching, comfortable and unique.
We made a video to show you what to expect. And, check out Ottm’s wooden Apple Watch bands in the Watch Store.
Late last year, I switched password managers. I traded in trusty old 1Password for relative newcomer Dashlane, and I haven’t looked back.
Dashlane is a well-designed, fully functional and easy-to-use password manager that tops 1Password in one key respect: a Security Dashboard that makes it dead easy to track your online security and update it as necessary.
Update: Juuk’s added five new Vitero Apple Watch bands now available for preorder, which will ship the first week of February. The new finishes available for preorder are: Vitero Cosmic Grey, Vitero Granite, Vitero Ruby Silver, Vitero Silver and%20Vitero%20Ruby%20Grey.%20Many%20of%20the%20original%20Vitero%20finishes%20are%20sold%20out%20until%20June: Vitero%20Fire, Vitero%20Cerulean, Vitero%20Ruby%20Grey,%20Vitero%20Citron, Vitero%20Sapphire and%20Vitero%20Crimson.
Our%20friends%20at%20Juuk%20have%20done%20it%20again!%20The%20Hong%20Kong-based%20company%20has%20created%20a%20totally%20unique,%20aluminum%20Apple%20Watch%20band%20with%20an%20aggressive%20design%20inspired%20by%20motor%20racing.Juuk’s%20Vitero%20band%20looks,%20feels%20and%20performs%20like%20no%20other%20Apple%20Watch%20band%20on%20the%20market%20–%20or%20any%20watch%20band%20for%20that%20matter.%20When%20these%20bands%20debuted%20a%20few%20months%20ago,%20they%20sold%20out%20quickly%20and%20a%20new%20batch%20won’t%20be%20back%20from%20production%20until%20June.Until%20then,%20Juuk’s%20satiated%20customers%20with%20five%20brand-new%20finishes%20available%20now%20for%20preorder%20to%20ship%20the%20first%20week%20of%20February%20—
Earlier this week my colleague Killian Bell published 10 things he hates about his iPhone X.
Like some of our readers, I was shocked. Hates? How could he find one thing to hate, let alone 10?
I can’t think of anything to hate about the X. On the contrary, there are lots of things to love. Here are 10 things I love about the iPhone X.
In the world of watch straps, we think Ottm, a manufacturer of wooden Apple Watch bands, offers one of the best unboxing experiences.
The box itself is plain and simple, but the package is thoughtfully designed, containing extra links and a pin removal tool that makes it very easy to adjust your new band.
The bands are awesome, too. Made from zebrawood and/or sandalwood, each hand-finished strap is eye-catching, comfortable and unique.
We made a video to show you what to expect. Check it out above.
Last week’s crushing news that Apple’s HomePod won’t be available for Christmas was a blow to some.
But I shrugged it off.
That’s because I made my own HomePod smart speaker. It cost me about $60 and sounds absolutely great.
With the iPhone X finally released, now is the best time to lock-in a price to sell your old phone before it begins to depreciate. And you should use Cult of Mac’s gadget buyback program, because we pay the highest cash prices with the easiest service.
Our popular gadget buyback program pays more for used and broken Apple devices in most cases than rivals like Gazelle and BuyBackWorld.
And we can prove it…
I used to think setting up a new iPhone was easy, but the iPhone X takes it to the next level.
On Friday, I got the new iPhone X and have been using it all weekend. The setup process was the easiest ever, and speaks to Apple’s constant drive to make things better.
Availability of the iPhone X seems to be better than expected. While the phone was predicted to sell out almost instantly, there seems to be a good supply at some Apple stores.
The big flagship store in San Francisco’s Union Square appears to have plenty of phones still in stock, according to Traci Dauphin, my wife, who just left the store.
Update: The Apple Watch Powerbank by Zens is now available at the Watch Store with free shipping!
Most external batteries for the Apple Watch are BYOC — Bring Your Own Cable — and have bulky winding systems for tucking the cable away.
Not the compact Apple Watch Powerbank from Zens, perhaps the most portable external battery pack on the market.
Apple TV has finally caught up with the 4K revolution.
It may be late to the game, but Apple’s newest set-top box pulls out all the stops to be the best on the field. It’s packing incredibly powerful new hardware that leaves competitors in the dust, and a much-improved tvOS platform that is years ahead of its rivals.
It may seem pricey starting at $179, but with amazingly sharp videos and great apps and games all rolled into one, Apple TV 4K is well worth the upgrade.
If you just got a new Apple Watch Series 3 (or are about to), you should think about trading in your old watch.
Cult of Mac has a popular gadget buyback program that pays more for used Apple Watches than competing trade-in services, and it’s a lot easier and safer than Craigslist or eBay.
There’s a pretty amazing demo of augmented reality technology at the new Apple Park visitor center.
The visitor center — which opened to the public on Tuesday afternoon — features a large-scale model of the new campus.
The model is large but bare bones. It looks like a classic architectural model with plain mockups of the buildings and the campus’ contours.
But pick up a nearby iPad, point the camera at the model, and it suddenly springs to life with lifelike plants, trees, and details galore. Check out the video below.
Apple has updated its WWDC app and online iOS Human Interface Guidelines to help developers create software for the new jumbo-screen iPhone X.
It has also added updates for the new Apple Watch and AppleTV.
This an excerpt from Unsung Apple Hero, an e-book about UI designer Bas Ording’s career at Apple. Ording is responsible for a big chunk of today’s computing interfaces, but is little-known because of Apple’s super-strict privacy policies. Hit the link at the bottom of this post to get a free copy of the e-book.
One of the key design decisions that Apple’s Human Interface Team made early on while developing the iPhone was to go all in on big, simple gestures. They wanted to make a single, simple swipe accomplish as much as possible.
It’s a bit ironic. After investing so much in multitouch technology, which relies on multiple touch inputs, one of Apple’s key edicts was to make as many gestures as possible work with a single finger.
Almost all electronic products are still assembled by hand, even hundreds of millions of iPhones.
But that’s changing. Apple’s supply chain is rapidly automating using AI and robots.
At the forefront of this is an ex-Apple product design engineer, Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, who is using her expertise to help other manufacturers build their products.
On this episode of the Apple Chat podcast, we talk to Shedletsky about her new AI startup, Instrumental; Apple’s giant manufacturing operation; the role of product design; and much more.
If you’re curious how Apple makes its products, listen to the podcast or check out the full transcript below.
PALO ALTO, California — The first iPhone “prototype” was strung together using bits of wood, duct tape and some old Polaroid lenses.
Key members of the Apple team reminisced about those early DIY efforts Wednesday night during a discussion led by Brian Merchant, author of The One Device, a new book about the birth of the iPhone.
“This thing was really kludged together,” said Brian Huppi, a former Apple engineer who helped build the first system. “It was built out of wood, duct tape and old lenses from the ’60s.”
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One day in early 2005, interface designer Bas Ording was sitting in a secret, windowless lab at Apple HQ when the phone rang. It was Steve Jobs.
The first thing Jobs says is that the conversation is super-secret, and must not be repeated to anyone. Ording promises not to.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah, Bas, we’re going to do a phone,'” Ording told Cult of Mac, recalling that momentous call from long ago. “‘It’s not going to have any buttons and things on it, it’s just a screen. Can you build a demo that you can scroll through a list of names, so you could choose someone to call?’ That was the assignment I got, like pretty much directly from Steve.”
The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.
The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.
This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.
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On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.
Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.
But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.
I love electric bikes, but a lot of them look butt-ugly. Their batteries and motors are strapped to the frame, ruining their lines. Stromer’s bikes, which integrate motor and battery into the frame, are a notable exception. But the latest Stromers cost an eye-watering $7,000 and up.
Enter Espin’s electric bikes, which look like Stromer’s but cost just $1,888, a steal for an eBike this capable and fun.
