John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
The bad news? Instagram has a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to take over your account. The good news? That hacker would have to be close enough that he could just walk over and punch you to do so.
Sales of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 are eating into the iPhone 5.
Apple’s iPhone penetration strategy is to not release a lot of conflicting models, but to drop the price on previous iPhone models every time the new one comes out.
Right now, for example, Apple sells the iPhone 5 starting at $199 on contract, the iPhone 4S starting at $99 on contract, and the iPhone 4 with a two-year contract. In this way, Apple can sell an iPhone to anyone, regardless of their income level.
This strategy might be leading to negative repercussions for Apple, though, at least according to a new report, which suggests that Apple is proportionally selling considerably fewer iPhone 5 units during launch than they sold iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 units during their launch window.
In Russia, you don’t buy music… you pirate it, along with pretty much everything else digital. That could soon change, though, as Apple is apparently now inviting a small group of Russians to an iTunes event scheduled to take place in Moscow tomorrow, December 4.
Right now, iOS’s notifications system is curiously bifurcated in design between the alert bubble system of iOS 4 and the banner notifications that appeared in iOS 5. A new concept floating around, though, has some great ideas on how these systems could be merged in iOS 7 by a new iOS UI design team lead by Jony Ive.
Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am has a plan: he wants to turn your iPhone’s 8MP sensor into a 14 megapixel SLR capable of taking pro-caliber photoshoots. He says it’ll turn your iPhone into a “genius-phone.”
Happy Thanksgiving! This year to observe the holiday we asked each of our writers to tell us a bit about the things they are most thankful for in 2012: specifically, the Apple product, app, service, third-party accessory and person they most relied upon and were grateful for this year. All through the rest of the day, we’ll be posting these thanksgiving observances. Here’s Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee’s list of the things he’s most thankful for this year. You can find the rest of our Thanksgiving Smorgasbord entries here.
Look, it’s the day before Thanksgiving, it’s a slow news day, whatever. Here’s a baby squirrel eating a pair of Apple earbuds in the cutest way possible. You’re welcome.
Want an iPad? Best Buy has a great deal on the still-perfectly-excellent-and-less-than-a-year-old, third-gen model with Retina display: not only are they charging $50 less per iPad today only, but you’ll also walk away with a $75 gift card.
The deal is good today only, one iPad per customer, and you can only choose between a $649 64GB iPad WiFi in black or a $549 32GB iPad WiFi in black or white. After the discount is applied, you’re talking about $599 and $499 respectively. Shipping is free, but you have to order online.
Even so, that’s a heck of a deal: if you don’t have an iPad or have considered getting one for a loved one, you’re not going to beat this savings before the holiday.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is saying that Apple has basically solved their iPhone 5 supply issues in the United States, and that in a couple weeks, anyone who wants an iPhone will be able to just walk into a store and buy the one they want without any chance of leaving empty handed. Just in time for the holidays!
AT&T has notoriously been stingy, which made it no surprise back in August when they announced that they would only allow subscribers on Shared data plans — and not grandfathered plans — to utilize the new FaceTime over Cellular feature in 2016.
Call it an early Christmas present, call it a change of heart, but AT&T has now opened up FaceTime over Cellular to grandfathered unlimited data plans.
The new, ultra-thin iMacs may not be shipping yet, but they are at using cutting-edge manufacturing and fabricating techniques that are right out of the space program.
Case in point? The way the new iMacs achieve their remarkable thinness is because of something called friction-stir welding, and it’s a process that’s been used in spacecraft fuel tanks and airplane wings.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the idea that Apple will release their own television, having predicted it for at least the last years every three or four months Now he’s at it again, promising a sub-$2000 Apple HDTV before the end of 2013. That’s not the weirdest thing he’s predicting though: a retina iPad mini by March, and a third-gen by September 2013.
Move over, Photo Stream. Facebook is horning its way into iOS’s automatic photo syncing turf. The world’s largest social network is starting to roll out a new service to users of the iOS app that will automatically squirt up to 2GB worth of their most recently taken photos to Facebook’s servers.
Disappointed with iOS 6 Maps but sick of waiting Google to finally get its act together and release a native Maps app on the App Store. Good news: another big name in maps, Nokia, have launched their own native maps app for iOS today. Called Nokia HERE, the app leverages Nokia’s decade-long expertise in mapping and brings it to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, while also offering cool new features like Facebook integration, turn-by-turn directions, the ability to save maps for later, transit directions, and more.
Ah, the venerable old Macintosh Portable. First introduced in 1989, the $6,500 wasn’t just a milestone in that it was the first battery-powered portable Mac, but it was also the first laptop ever used to send an email in space.
I’ve always been fond of the cute, suitcase-y design of the Portable Macintosh, so I’m delighted to see that some industrious hacker has given it a new life by gutting it and transplanting the innards of a Toshiba NB100 netbook inside. Some truly advanced soldering later, and you have, for all appearances, a pristine Macintosh Portable that can also run OS X Mountain Lion.
As everyone who has ever read J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic fantasy novel, The Hobbit, knows, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Thorin Oakshield and a company of twelve other dwarves make their way from Bag’s End to the Lonely Mountan to battle Smaug on a journey by way of Rivendell, the Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains.
Here’s what the actual trip looked like. Thank goodness they didn’t trust iOS 6 Maps as their navigator, right?
Right now, if Apple sticks with a yearly product release cycle, all of Cupertino’s major products are scheduled to debut next year in October. The iPhone 5S. The iPad mini 2. The iPad 5. New iPod Touch. New iMacs. New MacBooks. All released right before Christmas.
It’s hard to believe that Apple would actually release all of their new products in October next year, though. It not only makes for a boring road map, but it positions all of Apple’s new products during the most expensive holiday of the year: if people want to get, say, a new iPhone and an iPad next year, they might have to choose one or the other, instead of getting both at launch during a more staggered road map.
That’s why there’s something about the latest Digitimes report that makes sense to me: they say the iPhone 5S and next-gen iPad will come out in the middle of next year, or around June or July.
Can you imagine being this poor Apple Store specialist, Mr. Sam Sung? The glowers of suspicion, the titters of ridicule he must have to endure? But he’ll show them. He’ll show them all as he conducts his job with ruthless efficiency, schooling Apple Store customer after Apple Store customer in his way of doing things. The Sam Sung Way.
An airport worker accused of being an accomplice in a recent robbery at JFK airport that resulted in over $1.5 million worth of iPad minis being stolen has been arrested.
This video of a young Jonathan Ive talking about the design of the famous 20th Anniversary Macintoshi back in 1997 is hypnotic for a number of reasons.
At first, it’s just kind of cute, watching Jony Ive standing next to this bulky plastic all-in-one and talking about it with the same intensity as he would talk about designing the iPhone 5, but then you get sucked in, and despite your first impressions actually starting to appreciate what he was trying to accomplish, and see the same echoes and reiterated design philosophies extending forward in time, right down to the latest iMacs. Everything Ive was trying to do then, he’s still trying to do with Apple’s latest products.
Well, today appears to officially be launch day of the iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular at carriers around the country. Hot on the heels of the announcement that Sprint would be selling iPad minis with LTE support in store starting today, AT&T has followed suit. Press release below.
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is filled with a lot of personal anecdotes about what the charismatic Apple co-founder and ex-CEO was like in his personal life… and most of them were not very good at making Jobs look likable or human.
That’s why I was grateful to see this thread pop up on Quora, in which Tim Smith, the principal at the Applied Design Group talks about the time that Steve Jobs, his son and Laurene Powell Jobs tried to fix his car back in the 1990s… along with a mysterious man in a tuxedo who looked eerily like James Bond.
Steve Jobs before unveiling the original Macintosh back in 1984.
Famed screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin’s background is in the theater, and started his career as a promising playwright before going on to write such films as A Few Good Men and The Social Network, along with television shows like Sports Night and The West Wing.
Sorkin’s theater background is worth keeping mind, given the latest revelation he has dropped concerning the plot and structure of his upcoming bio-pic based on the life of Steve Jobs.
$1.5 million worth of iPad minis were stolen on Monday night from New York’s JFK airport, and if that wasn’t enough, it all happened in the same cargo building that was the site of the Lufthansa heist featured in Martin Scorcese’s famous 1987 gangster flick, Goodfellas.