Simple is the bank that refuses to be just a bank. Existing entirely online through its web and mobile apps, Simple offers slick budgeting tools, instant money transfers between accounts, and a great design.
Today Simple 2.0 for iOS and Android was released with a beautiful, iOS 7-inspired redesign and a couple other features.
Despite a planned October unveiling, Apple may still not release the iWatch until next year. That’s the latest from Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, an unusually reliable Apple analyst.
Re/code reported two months ago that Apple’s first “foray into wearable devices” was planned for October. Kuo, on the other hand, has repeatedly thrown shade on the idea of a 2014 iWatch launch. Citing production difficulties this time, he still seems unsure.
At this point we’ve seen pretty much every nook and cranny of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, but a new leak gives us the best look at the device yet.
Luxury accessory maker Feld & Volk has shared images of what appears to be an assembled front panel and rear shell for the iPhone 6. While plenty of these parts have already leaked independently, this is the first time we’ve seen them together.
By now, it’s obvious that Xiaomi is heavily inspired by Apple’s product design. The Chinese company’s founder even dresses up like Steve Jobs at events and uses the “One More Thing” presentation gimmick.
Now we’ve been given a look at MIUI 6, the software for Xiaomi’s new Mi 4 smartphone. It’s the most blatant ripoff of Apple to date.
The sixth developer preview of OS X Yosemite is upon us, and like always, Apple has made some noticeable and not-so-noticeable changes. This time around, there are some new wallpapers included alongside general design tweaks.
So in no particular order, here’s what’s new in OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 6:
Anand Sharma has eaten 17 burritos in the last 141 days. An avid runner and rock climber, the San Francisco-based designer has visited parks seven times this month. He weighed 153.9 pounds and was at 18.4% bodyfat after his 5.5-mile run yesterday. He burned 688 calories during that run.
He gets around a lot, too: On July 15, he flew from Hong Kong to Changi, Singapore. Then he grabbed a bite at the Kampong Glam Cafe. He also spent 94 minutes in a car and 70 minutes on the Lomprayah high-speed ferry that day. During his long day of travel, his heart rate hit a high of 94 and a low of 66 (averaging a slightly higher than usual 79). He didn’t share any photos on Instagram, but he pushed 25 commits to code-sharing site Github.
Sharma, who was 24.382007813 years old as of this writing, is already the most transparent human being on Earth, and he’s just getting started. Fully embracing the data-hungry demands of the quantified-self movement as well as the constant spotlight of social media, he routinely shares every little detail about his life, from his travels and meals to his vital signs and work, on the slickly designed April Zero website he launched last month. Now he wants to invite you to his way of life. He’s working on a new app that will make it easy for anyone to have their own version of April Zero.
Cult of Mac talked with Sharma about April Zero, the benefits of living in public, and the possibilities of Apple’s long-rumored health-centric wearable.
Sam Sung, the most ironically named Apple retail employee on Earth, is giving away his work shirt, badge and business card to raise money for charity. The eBay auction ended last night with a winning bid of $2,653.
“I had a great time working for Apple and would recommend it to anyone,” said Sung in the auction description. “I hope my old business card will go to another fellow Apple enthusiast with a sense of humour and the desire to help raise some money for a good cause.”
All proceeds from the auction will go to The Children’s Wish Foundation, a nonprofit group that “provides children living with life threatening illnesses the opportunity to realize their most heartfelt wish.”
Apple doesn’t have an official retail presence in the Middle East… yet. Recent job listings spotted by ifoAppleStore indicate that the company is looking to open at least one store in the United Arab Emirates by next year.
Apple is now using China Telecom’s servers instead of its own to power iCloud for Chinese customers. The switch took place on August 8th, and now the carrier is Apple’s only cloud service provider in China.
The decision is likely a direct response to the Chinese state-controlled media recently lashing out at Apple over national security concerns.
That caption along with the above photo could be what foils the robbery of an old iPhone. Why? Because the thief posted it to the victim’s Facebook account.
In the smartphone race there are only two players: iOS and Android. That fact is clear in IDC’s new report for worldwide smartphone shipments for the second quarter.
Combined, iOS and Android account for a whopping 96.4% of global smartphone sales. IDC notes that there’s “little space for competitors,” which is a mild way of saying that every other platform has little to no hope.
Mailbox, the beloved email app owned by Dropbox, received a pretty big update today in the App Store. As the Mac beta of Mailbox continues to roll out slowly, the app is maturing on iOS.
19 languages are now supported by Mailbox instead of just English, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese French, German, Russian, and more. Printing, Passbook support, starring, trash emptying, and more have also been added.
Apple has a long history of keeping BitTorrent apps out of the App Store. If you search for “BitTorrent” in the App Store now, only two results show up. Neither of them allow you to actually download torrents.
That’s why it was surprising when an app called Blue Downloader showed up in the store a couple of days ago. Its secret sauce is that it allows users to find and download torrents through sources chosen by its developer, Tyler Harrison, making it hard to use for illegal downloads like grabbing Expendables 3 off The Pirate Bay.
Apple approved Blue Downloader, but after Harrison made a change that allowed searching Google for torrents, the app was suddenly pulled. In an interview with Cult of Mac, Harrison explains how Apple’s response reflects its “innate fear of BitTorent” and his plans to get his app back in the store.
We’ve known for awhile that the next version of USB will copy Apple’s Lightning connector with a reversible design. Now the next-gen connector is ready for production, which means you’ll start seeing it in new desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and accessories.
Today the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced that work on the new design, called USB Type-C, is done and ready to be implemented.
iOS has always been more secure than Android, and new information that’s leaked out of one of the world’s leading surveillance companies reiterates that fact.
The Gamma Group has a piece of spyware called FinSpy that can hook into just about any Android, Blackberry, and older Microsoft phone. But it can’t touch an iPhone unless the user has changed its core security through the process of jailbreaking.
The successor to the iPad Air will feature a new anti-reflection coating designed to make reading easier, according to a report today from Bloomberg.
Apple has reportedly begun the production process for the next-gen 9.7-inch iPad and smaller iPad mini. As expected, both are on track to debut before the holidays.
iPad sales have been declining, and without some other whiz-bang new features, it’s difficult to imagine what will make new iPads interesting this fall.
How will the culture Steve Jobs cultivated at Apple continue to live on after his death? That was the main question being asked when Jobs lost the battle to cancer in 2011.
Part of the answer is a program Jobs put together around the time of the original iPhone launch. Apple University, which works almost exactly like you would imagine, teaches employees about the company’s history and ethos. Real class names include “Communicating at Apple,” “What Makes Apple, Apple,” and “The Best Things.”
In the most in-depth look at the educational program to date, The New York Times sheds light on the kinds of classes Ivy League professors teach about everything from designing like Picasso to choosing which buttons go on a TV remote.
In four years, Instagram has gone from having one million to over 150 million users. The app’s reach as a platform for sharing photos is incredible, but for many, the value of what’s posted maxes out at a number of likes.
Many photographers with tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram have little-to-no prior professional experience. Yet they’ve managed to gather huge followings around the photos they take and share from their smartphones.
“My God, these guys have no idea how talented they are,” Chad Newell remembers saying to himself during Instagram’s early days. “We could sell this stuff.”
The lack of commercial opportunity for a new class of mobile photographers led Newell, a veteran of the stock image industry, to create a startup for buying and selling photography called Snapwire. Think of it like 99designs and 500px combined with Shutterstock.
While still in its early days, Snapwire is already drawing big-name advertisers to its growing of library premium stock photography. And it’s filling that library with the kinds of shots you would normally see in your Instagram feed.
Services like Lyft and Uber made summoning a ride with your iPhone a reality, and now they’re going to make sharing that ride even easier.
Both startups have announced new features that will make rides cheaper, providing that you’re willing to share a car with total strangers.
Foursquare pioneered the location check-in phenomenon that Facebook and so many others now offer. But the reality is that Foursquare just hasn’t been that popular for quite a while. It put out a flashy new check-in app called Swarm earlier this year, and that failed to catch on.
Now the main Foursquare app has received its most significant overhaul to date. Available today in the App Store, Foursquare 8.0 does away with a lot of the social aspects it had before and instead focuses on finding you just the best places to eat.
Apple and Samsung have decided to drop all patent litigation in courts outside of the U.S. The decision ends cases that are open in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, the U.K., France, and Italy.
Disputes over intellectual property related to the iPhone and Samsung phones will continue stateside, and neither party has agreed to a licensing arrangement of any kind.
There are really only two players in the smartphone race: Apple and Samsung. According to new data from Canadian investment firm Canaccord Genuity, Apple and Samsung command a whopping 108% of smartphone profits combined.
The above chart is for the second quarter of 2014. Apple’s cash cow has been the iPhone for years, and it’s easy to see why; no one comes close to raking in the same kind of profit off hardware.
Over the years, one of my favorite Mac apps has always been iStat Menus by Bjango. In anticipation of OS X Yosemite launching, version 5 was released today with a completely new design and some cool feature additions.
The main purpose of iStat Menus is to show you everything you need to know about your Mac’s system from the menubar. Everything from available disk space to battery charge cycles to GPU activity is available in a clean, attractive interface.
Today Apple released the fifth developer preview of OS X Yosemite, its next major OS release for the Mac coming later this year.
Like usual, there are some noticeable and not-so-noticable changes in the new version of Yosemite. Don’t worry about spotting them yourself, though. We’ve got you covered.
If you’re worried about noisy plane passengers being able to make calls in the air, the U.S. Department of Transportation is on your side.
The government agency is looking to ban all in-flight calls from cell phones, which would mean that every airline would have to comply with the rule. The other solution is that each U.S. airline gets to establish its own rule on the matter.