Buster Hein - page 144

HBO is finally embracing cord-cutters by offering up a dream product: unlimited access to all of its content for $15 per month, no contract required.

The new cable-free service is set to premiere next month, just in time for the Game of Thrones season 5 premiere, but in order to access it you’ll need either an Apple TV or an iOS device. Apple signed an exclusivity agreement with HBO to sell the new service, and according to a report from Recode’s Peter Kafka, Apple’s exclusive access will last for the first three months.

Pre-orders for the Apple Watch start on April 10th, but if you’re anything like us, you probably already know which Apple Watch you’re going to buy.

I’ve got my heart set on the Apple Watch Sport murdered out in space grey with a black sport band, even though the stainless steel Apple Watch is a little cheaper than I was expecting. Some of the Cult of Mac staff are still debating which timepiece they’ll be purchasing, but we want to hear from you, the readers, which Apple Watch version do you plan to buy?

Today’s ‘Spring Forward’ keynote was packed with more videos than any event in recent memory. Not only did Apple show promo videos for the new products like the 12-inch MacBook and Apple Watch, there were three separate videos just talking about the different materials that went into Apple Watch.

Apple finally posted all nine new videos on its YouTube channel, and you can watch all of them below:

Starting April 10th you’ll be able to go into any Apple Store and try on Jony Ive’s amazing new timepiece.

If you’d rather not wait and want to see how Apple’s timepiece will fit your wrist right now, Apple’s got a handy sizing guide that will help you find the perfect size from your house. The Apple Store app for iOS also has a size comparison tool so you can see how big each watch face is on your wrist.

Grab the printout version below:

True to the rumors, Apple Watch comes with a special Power Reserve mode that will lightly sip on juice so your watch can keep ticking.

Tim Cook didn’t specify how long Apple Watch’s ‘all day’ battery lasts, but Apple’s website specifies you could potentially keep your watch alive for an extra 72 hours in Power Reserve mode.

“We set out to completely reinvent the notebook,” Tim Cook told the crowd during today’s Apple event. “And we did it.”

Apple introduced it’s biggest redesign of the MacBook since the original MacBook Air was released in 2007. The new notebook comes weighing in at just 2 pounds and 13.1mm thick, despite boasting a Retina display with a 2,304-by-1,440 resolution.

The thinness of the new MacBook isn’t the only thing that’s impressive. There’s a new Taptic TouchPad, thin keyboard and USB C. Plus, Apple invented new terraced batteries to squeeze juice into every cranny of the all-metal housing, giving you 10 hours of use on a single charge.

The Apple Online Store is back up and, along with revealing how exorbitantly expensive the Apple Watch Edition will be, Apple has laid out the prices for its various watch bands.

Right now the Apple Store carries a variety of different band styles. We imagine more will be come out as the product line progresses, but it looks like you’ll only be able to get the Classic Buckle if you throw down $10,000 for the Apple Watch Edition. The Sport watch bands come with two bands in the box: one small, one large.

Here are the different price points:

Are you ready to get your fingers all over the brand new MacBook with its Force Touch trackpad?

Get your credit cards ready because the online Apple Store is back and ready for your hard earned cash. You can pick up the fanless MacBook if you don’t mind shelling out $1599, though there’s no word on when it ships.

The updated MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs are listed in the store and start shipping today. And if you want to start lusting after the Apple Watch Edition, you can look through the different price combinations while waiting for April 24th to finally get here.

Not satisfied with just having a regular gold Apple Watch for $10,000?

The Apple Store just came back online, revealing that you can actually spend a whopping $17,000 on two of the 18-karat Rose Gold watches.

Fashionistas can grab the 38mm rose gold case with a rose gray modern buckle or a bright red modern buckle for 17 grand. At least free shipping is included.

Apple has been very quiet about the Apple Watch’s battery life since the device’s unveiling in September. Reports that the wearable might run out of juice after just 2.5 hours of heavy use have worried many Apple fans, but according to TechCrunch, battery life will be better than expected.

Tim Cook has said Apple Watch owners will need to recharge their devices every night. That doesn’t mean the battery will run dry midway through the workday, though. People who have used the Apple Watch say you should still have around 25 percent of your battery left after a long day.

Apple will supposedly unveil a big redesign of Beats Music in June, but if you are hoping it will come with a free, ad-supported tier, you’re going to be out of luck.

Apple wants to help music labels kill free music streaming by inking deals that will give subscribers exclusive access to albums before they hit rival players like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora.

With more than 70 million iPhones sold in the last quarter alone, Apple has quickly become one of the world’s largest display buyers. To meet the increasing demand for iPhones, Apple has reportedly struck a deal with Japan Display to build a $1.4 billion factory dedicated solely to smartphone displays.

Jony Ive’s new interview with The Financial Times is packed with nerdy details on the Apple Watch and the designer’s life. Slipped in among the juicy design bits, Sir Jonathan also hints that Apple invented an entirely new form of gold just for the timepiece.

“The molecules in Apple gold are closer together, making it twice as hard as standard gold,” Ive says.

Wait. Gold is a metal. Does Apple’s design studio exist in another dimension?

The Apple Watch has a secret connector port the company hasn’t shown off, yet it could unlock some exciting possibilities in the future for Apple’s wearables.

Apple designers placed a secret Lightning port inside one of strap connector slots during development, reports TechCrunch which confirmed Apple is only using it to debug watches, but it could unlock an new ecosystem of Apple Watch accessories in the future.

The next episode of Beats Music won’t be making an appearance at Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event next week.

Sources “with a knowledge of the company’s current plans” have told TechCrunch that Apple will debut the new service — which ditches the Beats branding for tighter iTunes integration — during Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference.

The Apple Watch will be the most personal device ever, and that might include engravings too.

Apple plans to offer personalized engravings for online purchases of the Apple Watch, according to a new rumor from iPhonote. The site’s sources claim Apple hasn’t finalized when it will begin offering engravings, but the customization will almost certainly emerge eventually.

The Mac platform has been treated as an afterthought by Microsoft’s software engineers for decades. That slowly started to change last year with new apps for iPhone and iPad, but with the public release of Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac, Microsoft is making its biggest play yet to woo Apple users to its productivity software.

Microsoft released a free preview build of Office 2016 for Mac today. You’ll be able to buy the final suite of Office apps later this summer, but Microsoft is luring Mac users by giving out the beta to the public.

Apple really is making a giant iPad Pro, according to a new report from Bloomberg, but the Cupertino-based company is running into production issues that have delayed the long-rumored tablet’s release.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, production of the 12.9-inch iPad is now scheduled to start around September, after delays involving the supply of display panels pushed the project back.

Apple snuck a major new emoji feature into its first iOS 8.3 beta, and we’re not talking about the racially diverse kind. Along with the new skin-tones for emoji added last week, Apple has included a potentially big feature with the new emoji keyboard that lets users deconstruct some emoji to discover their emoji combos.

By tapping backspace on emoji like KISS (man, man), users can reveal the combination of two or three emoji that represent the original emoji selected. The feature only works on some of the kissing and couple emoji, but it could be expanded to include more in the future.

Here are the different combos you can unlock:

HBO is finally going to let people pay to access its content without a cable subscription, and according to a new report, Apple TV could be the company’s first major partner.

The International Business Times reports that HBO is in talks with Apple to make Apple TV one of the launch partners for its highly anticipated streaming service that is expected to debut next month alongside Game of Thrones Season 5.

Screenshots of what appears to be the spec sheet of a next-generation 13-inch MacBook Air were allegedly posted on the Chinese forum site Feng.com today, claiming to reveal new info about Apple’s new notebook lineup.

The MacBook Air hasn’t received an update since April 2014, but according to the screenshots, a hardware update could be imminent. The pictures suggest that the update won’t include a Retina display, but new processors and upgraded RAM are supposedly on the way.

Take a peek at the screenshots below:

We’re just days away from finding out all the juicy details of the Apple Watch, but preparations are already underway at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Apple’s crew began working on the event decorations this morning by adding a giant Apple logo graphic to front of Yerba Buena. It’s still a work in progress, but it looks like Apple is using the same graphic from the event invites that went out last week. Along with the Apple signage, a giant white tent has also been constructed nearby, presumably as a press hands-on area for after the event.

Apple is making revolutionary breakthroughs in emoji technology with racially diverse emoji in iOS 8.3. For their next innovative addition, wouldn’t it be great if multiple emoji could be joined together as a single icon?

Designers Alexa Grafera and Louie Mantia teamed up to create a delicious new style of emoji called ligatures. The duo made a special set of ice cream fixins emoji that can be strung together to make the tasty-looking desserts found in Alexa’s ice cream emoji GIF above.

Apple will reveal pricing details on its long-anticipated smartwatch in less than a week, but if the stainless steel version costs upward of $700, I’m definitely going the cheap route with the Apple Watch Sport.

The $350 timepiece isn’t as fashionable as its expensive gold and stainless-steel siblings, a point Apple’s website emphasizes by only showing Sport units with Sport bands. But if you pair the Sport with pricier bands, you can barely tells its the el cheapo option.

iOS developer Nick McCardel created mockups of the Apple Watch Sport with bands for the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition. Despite its less luxe finish, the Sport’s silver and space gray aluminum cases still look great no matter what you pair them with.

Take a look at some of the configurations below:

A newly discovered security bug has secretly left Safari users on both iOS and OS X vulnerable to attacks on hundreds of thousands of websites for years.

The ‘FREAK’ security flaw was exposed today by a group of nine researchers who discovered web browsers could be forced to use an intentionally-weakened form of encryption. FREAK effects iPhones, Macs, and Android browsers, but Apple’s spokesman says the company will release a fix next week.