We think Siri’s been holding out on us. It turns out that Apple’s digital assistant has been quietly working on a skill that we only recently discovered.
It’s not very useful, but it should give you a smile: A simple request will make Siri beatbox for you.
We were a little skeptical (and sarcastic) when we heard that Apple was trying out a feature in iOS 9.3 and watchOS 2.2 that will let Apple Watch owners pair multiple devices to one iPhone, but some new details have us rethinking our position.
The feature, reportedly called “Auto Switch,” does exactly that, and based on what we’ve heard, it could very well not just be for developers.
Twitter is using its subsidiary streaming service, Periscope, for a direct assault on your attention. That’s the only conclusion we can reach, anyway, as the social-media giant’s mobile app now supports both live streams and replays of content from Periscope.
And it’s hitting iOS first, with the feature rolling out today.
Apple’s finally getting specific about how well adoption of its CarPlay protocol is going.
A list appeared on the company’s website today confirming that over half of the manufacturers it has partnered with have announced specific models of vehicles that will receive the functionality.
If you’re wondering which cars have CarPlay, you have over a hundred to choose from. Here’s what we know so far.
A new Apple TV app promises to give you all the insane, free content you can handle, and it delivers.
Rewinder is a free download in the Apple TV App Store, and it’s crammed full of the educational films, classic-TV anthologies, and questionable B-movies you didn’t know you had to see. If you’re a fan of shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000, which delight in the overly earnest and misguided, it’s exactly what’s been missing from your weekend viewing parties.
We know it isn’t a contest, but if we had to put the features revealed in Apple’s massive beta dump today up against each other, tvOS 9.2 would be the definite winner.
Don’t get us wrong; it’s cool to see the future of our favorite iStuff all laid out in front of us like a gleaming future-buffet. But Apple TV’s list of updates has us the most excited about what we’ll get to do with that device when the update comes to the rest of us.
Here’s what we have to look forward to in tvOS 9.2.
Developers are getting their hands on the first beta for watchOS 2.2 today, and it reportedly contains a feature that has us a little confused: the ability to pair multiple Apple Watches to a single iPhone.
It’s just the first beta, so we aren’t sure if this capability will make it to the final version. But if it does, we can imagine a bunch of incredibly weird uses for the Apple Watch’s new superpower.
Here are our best guesses.
It’s been a busy week here at Cult of Mac as we all scrambled to get as much news as possible out of CES, the big electronics show that’s been chugging right along in Las Vegas. It’s one of the biggest trade shows in the world, so we had plenty of news to go around.
We had people on the show floor discussing everything gadgety — including the finer points of rejuvenating one’s vagina — and we had people at home trying to ignore how hilarious that was for long enough to crank out the rest of the news. While the stories were plentiful, our handy hub here ensures you don’t have to click around too much to get everything worth knowing from the show.
Here’s the huge collection of all of our coverage from CES 2016.
This might be the most divisive news of the day: RealDoll creator Matt McMullen is currently working with artificial-intelligence scientists to create a fusion between digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and synthetic companions. It could be the most amazing news you’ve ever heard, or it might be terrifying and make you feel like spiders are crawling on you.
Regardless of how much or little it creeps you out, however, it’s definitely interesting.
A new drone video shows that some of Apple Campus 2’s most impressive features are coming along nicely.
Construction reached the point that builders can start installing windows on both the inside of the giant ring, but that’s not the best thing the camera saw. You can also get a really good look down into Apple’s 1,000-seat, underground auditorium.
Check it out in the video below.
Volkswagen is the first car maker to offer wireless CarPlay, but Apple doesn’t want them to show you how cool it is.
This isn’t a new feature; if you have an iPhone running iOS 9, it’s in there. But all CarPlay-compatible vehicles currently available go the wired route, making you plug your handset into your ride’s console to use the protocol. Volkswagen has managed to make the feature wireless, but Apple has forbidden the company from giving demos at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
Some new (circumstantial) evidence is lending further weight to the possibility that we may one day cruise down the street in an Apple Car.
Listings on domain search site Who.is show that Apple is buying up car-related web domains like crazy. The sites in question are “apple.car,” “apple.cars,” and “apple.auto.” This is not the absolute, ironclad confirmation a lot of Apple Car fans are looking for, but it may point to some news coming.
Or it may not.
We like HomeKit; don’t get us wrong. Apple’s automation framework has taken our relationship with our lights to strange, wonderful, and not at all awkward new places. And we like the potential of saving money on energy with smart thermostats, getting smoke and carbon monoxide alarms directly on our phones, and using our iPhone or Apple Watch like a virtual bouncer to control who gets into our homes.
That’s the problem, though — that’s basically all anyone’s done with HomeKit. And it’s mostly lights and plugs.
But First Alert has arrived to bust us out of this rut with a promising device that sounds both useful and eminently futuristic: a HomeKit-compatible safe. And if that doesn’t fill you with dreams and vision for what automation can mean, we’re sure you’ll enjoy your bulbs. We really do.
iDevices is doing a better job at pushing HomeKit than Apple is.
That’s the impression we’re getting, anyway, as the peripheral maker just keeps churning out products that are compatible with the home-automation framework built into your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
The four new devices, which the company is showing off at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, bring its total number of things digital assistant Siri can control up to seven.
Kodak is not prepared to let analog filmmaking disappear into the digital world.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the film-stock maker is showing off a prototype for a new camera that will combine time-honored, physical shooting techniques with the latest in digital technology. This powerful combination hopes to capture the best of both traditions, allowing present and future filmmakers to continue to produce their art in whichever way they see fit.
Huawei took to the stage at CES this morning to show off a bunch of stuff that looked really familiar — although the stage wasn’t free of some killer features.
The world’s number three smartphone brand is ready to take on Apple and Samsung, and it brought its own versions of the big three devices on stage to show off what they can do. And they can do quite a lot, it seems, but not all of it has us wanting to defect from our iPhones.
Here’s what Huawei brought to the party.
We’re finishing up 2015, and now that you’re all good and tired of your families, we’ve checked out some great December iOS games to help you decompress in solitude.
This month’s offerings should cover all of your needs, whether you like to relax with a simple match-three title or need something more strategic. We have high-def graphics, pixel art, orchestrated music, chiptunes, straight-up fighting, and strategizing. December had something for everyone.
In no particular order, here were our favorite diversions from the December rush.
You could say 2015 was a product-ive year for Apple. The company entered the wearable market with the Apple Watch, released a hugely updated version of the Apple TV streaming box, unveiled the massive iPad Pro (and considerably less massive iPad Mini 4), took on tune-streaming with the Apple Music service, and made its annual update to the iPhone with the 6s and 6s Plus.
We also saw updates to the operating systems that run all those things, as well as a new desktop OS in El Capitan, but it wasn’t all great news. Apple encountered lawsuits, shakeups and investigations by countries and entire federations thereof.
So whether we ultimately decide Cupertino had a good or bad year, at least it was pretty interesting. Relive the ups and downs with this Apple year in review 2015, Cult of Mac-style.
We aren’t going to pretend we’re perfect, but that doesn’t mean we have no appreciation for the mistakes of others. They make us feel better about our own glaring flaws, and they also make for some good fodder for “weirdest of 2015” news roundups.
This year, we saw some really impressive corporate blunders as well as some head-slapping moments from Apple fans.
In addition to rounding up the best stories of the year, we’re also showcasing the weirdest of 2015, and we can’t do that without including the sickest burns people laid down over the past 12 months.
It’s always strange when companies and CEOs snip and snap at each other like annoyed children. We should expect them to be above that sort of behavior, but guess what? They totally aren’t.
Here are some of the most blistering insults of the year.
It was a little tough to whittle our choices for the best movies of 2015 down to 11, but we did.
If you’d told us five years ago that we’d be getting new Jurassic Park, Star Wars and Mad Max movies, and that they’d all respect their predecessors while forging their own paths, we’d have ask the bartender for whatever you’d been drinking. But all of those things happened, and 2015 was better for it.
We also got some great original movies, including some charming comedies and one of the scariest monsters in recent memory. It was a pretty good time, regardless of your tastes, is what we’re getting at.
Here are our picks in no particular order.
Let me just make this clear up front: HappySacs are little, elastic-banded bags that you put over your testicles. This is probably when you start wondering why a person would do such a thing, and nobody will blame you for thinking so.
But HappySacs have a noble mission in mind, and it extends even beyond comfort. These weird little pouches want to save your balls in both the short and long term. And they do so way less awkwardly than you might think.
Apple fans are some of the most dedicated in all of tech (some might even call them a cult), but a few enterprising and/or desperate people really outdid themselves this year.
Not that we can really blame them. Cupertino brought the heat this year with the Apple Watch, a cool new Apple TV, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and the massive iPad Pro. We can forgive the superfans for really going all out to get their hands on the latest iGear. But some of their efforts might have been a bit too enthusiastic.
Here are some times when people’s love of Apple outweighed logic this year.
Whether you play it fast or slow, Quadrantic might become your new puzzling obsession.
The newly released game, which is available for a mere $0.99, takes the time-honored puzzle-game tradition of arranging things in groups of three and throws in some strategy and a surprisingly intense timed mode just to keep things interesting.
But the concept is simple, and once you start playing it, it’s really hard to put down.
A new poll of the most-wanted technology from the Star Wars universe shows that fans may not have really thought their answers through.
The survey comes courtesy of Harris Poll and software developer myDevices and asks one question: “If you could have any technology from the Star Wars trilogy, which would you want?”
While we approve of the study ignoring the prequels completely, we aren’t sure about the winners because it sounds like what these fans are really requesting are amazing and spectacular deaths.
