Natalie Portman may play a major role in the upcoming Steve Jobs movie scripted by Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin.
The actress is in talks to join the film, reports Deadline, and while the details of her role are unknown, she’s expected to play a major part in the movie that will feature Steve Jobs’ first daughter Lisa as the main heroine.
It’s been over a decade since the last time Hollywood took us to the magical world of friendly and fun dinosaurs, but the first trailer for Jurassic World has been released, and from the looks of things, everything’s changed and yet nothing is different at all.
The park is open and humans are back on the menu. Chris Pratt is all over the first trailer, playing a genius paleontologists brought to the island to investigate the disappearance of a genetically-modified super dinosaur, created by Jurassic World’s air-head scientists, who obviously didn’t learn from the past three movies.
Watch the full trailer below:
Apple packed the biggest display it’s ever made onto the iPhone 6 Plus, and while its 1920×1080 resolution is great for streaming 1080p videos, it turns out that Apple also secretly added 4K video support without telling anyone.
The iPad Air 2, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus all support 4K video playback out of the box, thanks to the new A8 processor added this year. Apple doesn’t list 4K video playback as one of the A8 chips features, but the discovery was made by the developers behind WALTR, who posted proof of 4K video playback on the iPhone 6 this weekend.
Americans are four days away showing how grateful they are for the biggest shopping day of the year, and to draw in more upgrades than ever, Apple is giving away $50 iTunes gift cards with the purchase of every iPhone and iPad.
Continuing its huge (RED) promotion announced yesterday, Apple will dole out (RED) iTunes gift cards in varying amounts to shoppers who pick something up on Black Friday. The deals aren’t much more impressive than last year’s meager offerings, but for the first time ever, Apple is including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the deal.
You can also get an iTunes gift card for buying a Mac, iPod, Apple TV, or Beats product. Here’s how much iTunes cash you’ll get for each:
Going gear-shopping for your favorite outdoors-loving friend or family member can be harder than trekking up Mount St. Helens as she’s about to blow. There are so many options, but so much crap.
To help you out with your holiday shopping, Cult of Mac waded through the endless lists of camping and hiking gear and gadgets to find the stuff your special someone will love.
Whether you’re looking for something for an adventuring buddy, or picking a present for someone you’d never want to be trapped in a tent with, we’ve found gifts for everyone. From hiking clothes to campsite gadgets, we’ve got you covered.
Microsoft has assaulted Siri with a wave of ads pitting the popular digital assistant against Windows Phone’s Cortana, and while Siri repeatedly gets topped in areas like traffic alerts and reminders, she’s got some secret rhyming skills Cortana can’t top.
To showcase Siri’s mad ability to flow like lava, hip-hop producer Skeewiff featured her skills on his latest track “Know How.” Turns out Siri had the busiest rhymes ever made by man after all, and she’s got some harsh words for Cortana and Google Now.
Check the rhymes below the break:
The launch of Apple Pay last month was seen by many as a possible deathblow to Square’s mobile payments service, but CEO Jack Dorsey told CNN today that he doesn’t view Apple Pay as a competitor at all. In fact, Dorsey says his company is open to all forms of payment methods, and they plan to start accepting Apple Pay next year.
The Rumor: Arch-rival Samsung will remain Apple's top chip supplier.
The Verdict: Most likely. Apple's been trying to reduce its dependency on Samsung components and manufacturing for years, but the problem is there's just not another company that can compete with Samsung's chipmaking biz. TSMC tried but they're still not able to handle as much of the load as Apple would like, so Apple's stuck with Samsung, for better or worse.
AMC’s highly anticipated prequel spinoff to ‘Breaking Bad’ is starting to come into focus this week, with news that the two-night premiere of ‘Better Call Saul’ is set for February 8th and 9th. AMC will broadcast back-to-back episodes starting at 10PM, and then settle into the Monday’s at 10PM slot for the rest of the series.
The show stars Robert Odenkirk as Saul Goodman, the crooked lawyer that helped Heisenberg build his Southwest meth empire, and is set six years before Saul met Walter White. To go with the premiere date announcement, AMC released a new 30-second trailer that’s hints of dark things to come.
Check it out below:
Dan Lyons, the tech blogger who skewered Apple for years on the popular blog ‘Fake Steve Jobs‘, is making a return to tech blogging as editor-in-chief of Gawker’s anti-Silicon Valley site, Valleywag.
Current Valleywag EIC Nitasha Tiku is leaving the site next month, but after years in self-imposed exile, Lyons will take over the reigns to smatter the pending tech bubble implosion his sardonic wit. Lyons, who currently works as a ‘marketing fellow’ for Hubspot, also just helped write season 2 of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” He’ll make his return as Silicon Valley’s #1 critic in January.
Lyons wrote his new Gawker Media co-workers the following after news broke of his hiring:
Apple and Xiaomi executives got into a little trash talk fight at the World Internet Conference this week in China. Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun described his company as a “small miracle” that’s ready to dominate the smartphone world. But Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, who was also at the conference, wasn’t impressed with all of Xiaomi’s boasting.
Xiaomi’s sudden rise to being the world’s third largest smartphone maker has been nothing short of miraculous. Executives at the Apple copy-cat are bullish on the company’s future and hope to become the top smartphone maker in 5 to 10 years, but Sewell thinks that’s much easier said than done.
The U.S. Department of Justice has issued a chilling warning to Apple executives as a response to increased privacy protections added to iOS 8: Children might die because we can’t hack into bad guys’ iMessages.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole met with Apple executives last month, reports the Wall Street Journal, to discuss privacy issues, but after making the ridiculous claim that the blood of dead children will be on Apple’s hands if it doesn’t give the NSA access to iMessages, the talks have ended in a standoff.
Apple took the wraps of WatchKit yesterday and revealed an entirely new font created just for Apple Watch called San Francisco. Designers are heaping praise on the sexy new typeface that condenses at larger sizes to take up less space, and becomes easier to read at smaller sizes, but we can’t help but wish it was coming to OS X soon.
For those that can’t wait to interact with San Francisco on the Apple Watch there’s good news though: A developer named Wells Riley has released a bundle on GitHub that swaps Yosemite Helvetica Neue system font for Apple’s new Sans Serif creation.
To make San Francisco your Mac’s system font, follow these steps:
When it comes to the App Store, there’s rarely such a thing as a “free” app. If you’re not paying for it upfront you’ll probably get hit up with exorbitant in-app purchase offers later. So in a move to change the way apps are advertised on iOS, Apple had decided to remove the “Free” download button entirely.
Google’s new Inbox app is a godsend for people like me who seem to teeter on the brink of inbox bankruptcy weekly, but there’s one problem with the killer Gmail manager: it’s not only available on iOS, Chrome, and Android.
The Inbox team might not be in a hurry to bring its service to Safari, but if you want don’t want to defect to Chrome just manage play with Inbox, our friend Rishi at Zinx has discovered how to access Inbox from Safari.
Here’s how to do it:
It’s been decades since pagers played a central role in our tech lives, but the beeper is causing some headaches for Apple lately. A federal jury just slapped Apple with a $23.6 million fine for infringing patents related to ’90s technology.
Mobile Telecommunications Technologies sued Apple last year for violating several of its patents that govern two-way exchanges of data. Apple services such as iMessage, calendar invitations and emoji allegedly violated the patents, and after six hours of deliberation, the jury found Apple was guilty of five out of the six charges.
With the Apple Watch release still months away, plenty of details — like the timepiece’s price and battery life — remain unknown. But the release of WatchKit this morning sheds new light on Apple’s most personal product ever.
We dug through the new WatchKit programming guide and Apple Watch human interface guidelines this afternoon and found a few details that weren’t mentioned in the keynote, such as a special new font designed to look good at any size on the Apple Watch’s tiny face.
Here are five new Apple Watch details buried in the WatchKit SDK:
The mad dash to develop the first wave of Apple Watch apps has just begun, and to go along with the new WatchKit for devs, Apple has also released the first iOS 8.2 beta this morning.
iOS 8.2 beta 1 includes support for WatchKit, which allows Apple Watch apps to connect to and run processes on your iPhone in the background. In a press release announcing the update’s availability, Phil Schiller said, “With the iOS 8.2 beta SDK, developers can now start using WatchKit to create breakthrough new apps, Glances and actionable notifications designed for the innovative Apple Watch interface and work with new technologies such as Force Touch, Digital Crown and Taptic Engine.”
Release notes for the beta don’t mention other major new features, but we’ll report on any surprises we find, once we get it installed. The iOS 8.2 beta is available to registered developers in the iOS Dev Center, along with a new Xcode 6.2 beta as well.
You can also grab iOS 8.2 from the direct download links below:
Pulling up apps and finding files is super easy on OS X Yosemite thanks to the new Spotlight feature, and thanks to GitHub user slong1987, you can now use Spotlight shortcuts to shutdown, restart, logout and put your Mac to sleep.
The clever workaround uses four small apps that you can download from GitHub and then add to your Applications folder. Once installed, all you have to do is pull up Spotlight (CMD+SPACE) type in Restart, hit Enter and you Mac will reboot.
I’ve found the Sleep shortcut especially useful at coffee shops when you have to step away for quick second. Slong1987 says shortcuts for Empty Trash and Securely Empty Trash are also in the works.
The Mac Pro is one of the most beautiful and powerful computers ever created, but it remains beyond the reach of many small developers due to a price tag that’s bigger than a car down payment.
That could change this week when MacStadium brings the world’s first Mac Pro data center online, giving anyone the ability to rent server time on the high-performance Apple computers for just a few bucks a month.
MacStadium CEO Greg McGraw said the company originally set out to address the needs of small developers with Mac mini hosting. “We had great success with the Mac mini and we’ll continue to use it,” McGraw told Cult of Mac. “But the Mac Pro is an enterprise-class data center appliance. It’s going to open up a whole new market.”
Apple didn’t give the iPhone 6 camera a big update this cycle, but next year could be a revolutionary leap forward for iPhotographers if Apple upgrades to the new sensor its camera supplier just unveiled.
Sony announced today that its Exmor RS IMX230 camera sensor will be ready to ship in April 2015, and along with packing a 21MP CMOS sensor, it could bring DSLR-quality auto-focusing and 4K video recording to your next iPhone.
Take a look at this crazy comparison image:
Snapchat has become the go-to method for sending naughty nudes to your friends, but with a big update released today, the app is hoping you’ll start using it to send something a little more valueable: money.
Snapchat announced today that it’s partnering with Square to bring Snapcash to its ephemeral messaging platform, giving the ability to wirelessly transfer money directly from a bank account. And all it takes is a single snap.
The company even made a whacky 60’s style commercial to promote the new feature:
Have you been plagued with intermittent Wi-Fi dropping issues ever since you upgraded to OS X Yosemite? Have no fear, Apple’s fix is finally here to get your Mac back on track, with the official OS X 10.10.1 update.
Apple released OS X 10.10.1 to the public today with a couple of bug fixes, one of which will hopefully cure the Wi-Fi connectivity woes many users have reported on Apple’s support forums.
The Yosemite update comes after Apple also released iOS 8.1.1 today, to fix bugs on the iPhone 4s and iPad 2. Apple’s OS X 10.10.1 release also improves Microsoft Exchange server reliability, as well as Back to My Mac connections between two remove computers. The free update is available now in the Mac App Store.
Apple has released iOS 8.1.1 to the general public today after weeks of beta testing the update for its mobile. The update is the first software release since iOS 8.1 last month, and brings some minor tweaks to the Health app, as well as bug fixes for the iPad and iPhone 4s.
iOS 8.1.1 is available as an over-the-air update or via iTunes, and while it doesn’t contain any major new features, a number of performance enhancements have been added. Apple has also released an update for Apple TV 3 version 7.0.2. Major features aren’t included in the update, but
Here are the download links: