coffee

An awesome app to simplify your day or secure your data [Awesome Apps of the Week]

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Awesome Apps of the Week
With over a billion apps in the app store, we’ve found a few that we think you should know about.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

There really are apps for everything at this point. Whether you’re a coffee snob aiming to simplify your brewing experience, or simply looking for a tool to ease the frustration of your digital life, there is an app here for you. If you have other awesome apps to suggest for future installments, email your suggestion or tweet them over!

The Clever Dripper might be the best (and easiest) way to make coffee, ever

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Good morning! I am the Clever Coffee Dripper!
Good morning! I am the Clever Coffee Dripper!
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Good day, sleepy humans. I assume you are a fellow appreciator of delicious coffee, and that you suffer the same morning paradox as me: You just woke up, and are still rather groggy. And yet you also want to make a great cup of coffee. After all, you can’t drink that many in a day without wigging out.

The answer is here: It’s the Clever Dripper, and it’s almost impossible to make a bad cup of coffee with it. Not only that, but it might make the best coffee you’ve ever tasted.

Ember smart mug gets Apple Health integration for caffeine tracking

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Ember 1
Award-winning smart mug will now tell iOS users how much coffee they’re drinking.
Photo: Ember

It’s not every day that a coffee mug becomes one of TIME magazine’s inventions of the year. But that’s exactly what happened with the Ember smart mug, a drink receptacle which uses high tech thermal technology to maintain coffee or tea at its users’ perfect drinking temperature.

Now the mug (and its travel mug variant) has received a new update for iOS-loving coffee drinkers — allowing Apple’s Health app to estimate and make sense of your caffeine intake. That’s without you having to manually enter a whole lot of information manually.

First iPhone XS and XS Max reviews: Great phone, but not revolutionary

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iPhone Xs Max
This is what we've been waiting for.
Photo: Apple

Early reviews for the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have already come in and while most of the people that have tested the new device are impresssed, this years models aren’t as big a leap as the iPhone X.

Testers are raving about the camera, A12 processor, big display and faster LTE. The new phones are truly impressive, but if you have an iPhone that came out in the last two years, you might want to see what the experts are saying first.

PicoBrew’s beer robot now brews kombucha, coffee and more

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PicoBrew Pico U brewing appliance is smaller, cheaper and far more capable than its predecessors.
Pico U is smaller, cheaper and far more capable than its predecessors.
Photo: PicoBrew

PicoBrew’s new Pico U, which the company calls “the world’s first universal craft beverage brewing appliance,” does more than brew great beer. The “U” stands for “universal,” because the Pico U also makes kombucha, horchata and milk-based drinks, as well as tea and single-serving coffee.

It’s also small enough to fit on a kitchen countertop — and costs far less than its predecessors. Pico U offers so many brewing options, at a price that’s so attainable, that Donald Brewer, PicoBrew’s VP of sales, calls it the “Instant Pot for brewed beverages.”

If you can make a good coffee, you could have a job at Apple

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coffee
Apple is looking for a new barista. Could it be you?
Photo: Mark/Flickr CC

Always dreamed of working for Apple, but lacking the necessary electrical engineering qualification or MBA to get a look in? Don’t worry: there’s a new job you can apply for to get your foot in the door.

Apple is currently searching for a Barista at its Visitor Center in the Bay Area, for a role that will fit anyone looking for a “unique role blending culinary arts with exceptional service.”

Cool connected footballs, distributed speaker systems, Bluetooth routers and more at CES

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Wilson connected football

Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

Cult of Mac CES 2016 full coverageLAS VEGAS — Who says everything at CES is rubbish?

Well, yeah, there’s a lot crap, but that’s why we’re here — to rummage through the rubbish and find the best stuff.

And we found plenty: smart footballs and running shorts that improve your game and gait; a coffee mug that instantly cools coffee that’s too hot; and a speaker system that uses all the iPhones in a room to create a distributed, shared sound system that sounds better than you’d imagine.

Check it out:

With each sip of coffee this cup lid gives you some sugar

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This coffee cup lid will let you drink from its delicious lips and include an awkward touching of noses.
This coffee cup lid will let you drink from its delicious lips and include an awkward touching of noses.
Photo: Jang Woo-Seok

Jang Woo-Seok loves coffee and kisses. But it’s only coffee he gets on a daily basis – that is until he designed a cup lid that provides both.

The designer from South Korea has taken the common coffee cup lid and gave it puckering lips for B2B, a chain of coffee shops in his home country.

Cuppa’tino: Apple’s new iCup technician can’t be your average Joe

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tim-cook-coffee

If you’re an Apple fan (and who reading this isn’t?), there are few conversations that would be better than sitting down with one of the company’s top execs to quiz them over all things Cupertino.

That was the rationale behind a 2013 auction to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The prize? A cup of coffee with Tim Cook at 1 Infinite Loop. The eye-watering (iWatering?) price tag: $610,000.

Even at that price he’s not going to tell you what the iPhone 7 looks like, or if Jony Ive is working on an aluminum hover board, but it would still be the conversation of a lifetime. If you’re feeling a bit cash-strapped, you could try lunch with Mr. Fix-It Eddy Cue. A related auction went for "just" $10,000.


When it comes to the driving forces behind Silicon Valley innovation, caffeine would rank pretty high on the list.

If you’ve always wanted to get an inside peak at Apple, but don’t have the kind of computer science or engineering background you think you need, you may be interested to hear that Apple recently advertised a position as “iCup Technician.” Your job? To keep the iPhone, iPad and other Apple divisions up to their chattering teeth in coffee throughout the day.

“The Apple iCup Services is specially designed to provide a fresh brew coffee to all Apple employees within their department,” is how Apple phrases the position. “The iCup staff is also available on call during business of operation.”

This 80-year-old coffee pot still makes an amazing cup of espresso

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The moka pot was designed over 80 years ago, but still beats most modern methods. Photos Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Designed more than 80 years ago, the moka pot still beats most modern methods. Photos: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Before the AeroPress, there was the moka pot, or cafetera as it’s called in Spain. There is at least one cafetera in every Spanish kitchen, and if you want a quick fix of something strong and good, it’s your go-to coffee gadget. Not bad for something invented way back in 1933.

I’ve had a moka since I first saw one in action a couple decades ago. Up until I bought an AeroPress, I used a moka every day, never tiring of its old-school charm and serious wake-me-up taste. But what is a moka exactly, and why is it so good?

Coffee With Tim Cook Auction Reaches $295,000, Breaks Charitybuzz Record [Updated]

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Tim-Cook-charity

UPDATE: Bidding just reached $505,000!

Earlier this week we wrote about a Charitybuzz auction that will get you coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. At the time, the auction had reached $5,250, but its estimated value was just under ten times that amount at $50,000.

Just a few days later, the auction has received 68 bids and reached a whopping $295,000 with 18 days still to go. It’s now Charitybuzz’s biggest ever auction.

Aeropress Timer App For Coffee-Loving Nerds

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If you like good coffee and don’t own an Aeropress, you’re missing out – the thing is just $30 and it’ll make better coffee than a stovetop moka pot, and it’s fun to use to boot.

And better still, there’s now a companion app. Developed by Jarrod Glasgow, Aeropress Timer is an iPhone app which combines Aeropress recipes with a countdown timer for the perfect cup, every time.

App Store Reality – Why You Won’t Pay For Apps, But Will For Coffee

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This is worth more than many apps, that's why.
This is worth more than many apps, that's why.

In a fantastic blog post, designer Josh Lehman begs us all to stop using the metaphor that many of us, press and developer alike, continue to spout when we hear a complaint about the price of a $0.99 app. “Look,” we say, again and again, “you’ll spend $4 on a cup of coffee at (insert your favorite coffe brand here, usually Starbucks), why won’t you spend a paltry $1 on my app?”

Lehman sees through the falsity of this argument, and then shows us why this attitude isn’t selling apps, either, regardless of its accuracy.

The New Maclocks MacBook Pro Security Case Helps You Say Goodbye To The Kensington Lock

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Add a security lock to your new MacBook Pro to ensure it isn't a target for coffee shop conmen.
Add a security lock to your new MacBook Pro to ensure it isn't an easy target for coffee shop con men.

In an effort to create the thinnest, lightest MacBook Pro it has ever released, Apple did away with a number of features that MacBook Pro users have become accustomed to, including the Kensington security lock. That means, of course, that you can no longer secure your $2,800 notebook to a table in Starbucks, and that it could easily be stolen from right under your nose the second you get up to order another cappuccino.

But Maclocks has a solution: the world’s first MacBook Pro security case and lock.