Tim Cook is living the Jetsons lifestyle — minus the jetpack and flying car — thanks to Siri and the growing number of HomeKit devices on the market.
The Apple CEO offered a rare glimpse into his private life Tuesday during Apple’s quarterly financial report, painting a picture of techno-utopian comfort and ease. It was Cook’s most personal world-beating earnings call ever, and it sent a message: Apple is serious about home automation.
For years, “the last mile” earned the title of broadband’s biggest boogeyman. Now that most of us benefit from having a fairly fat pipe to our houses, it’s more like the last 10 feet — Wi-Fi dead spots can drive you crazy.
The AmpliFi HD System, one of a new pack of mesh systems that pave the way to our trouble-free Wi-Fi future, solves the problem. With a charming little router and a couple of mesh points, AmpliFi HD makes it possible to get a strong Wi-Fi signal to your basement, your attic or that awkward back bedroom where you can never stream anything. It also eliminates the sort of nerdy pain points typically associated with setting up and managing a home Wi-Fi network.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States has a new leader — and President Donald Trump has a bone to pick with Apple. Several, actually.
Will Trump’s “America first” stance and pro-business policies help Apple or give Tim Cook a series of premium headaches? Cult of Mac editors Leander Kahney and Lewis Wallace come out swinging in this week’s edition of “Friday Night Fights.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple packed some amazing tech into its weird-looking AirPods. But to Nuheara co-founder David Cannington, Apple’s white-hot wireless earphones are just “dumb wireless.”
Sure, AirPods let you listen to music, take phone calls and tap into Siri, but they represent a missed opportunity because they don’t solve a crucial problem faced by many people in the modern world: hearing what’s going on around them.
As you might have guessed, Cannington’s company tackled this problem with a new product that launched at CES this week. Nuheara’s IQbuds are smart, truly wireless earbuds that do more than just make calls and deliver high-fidelity audio to your ears. They make it possible to carry on conversations in noisy environments like restaurants, bars and even massive Las Vegas trade shows.
Apple pissed off a lot of people in 2016. In hindsight, some of Cupertino’s moves look clumsy, and others seem truly clueless, but Tim Cook and Co. also made some brilliant moves during this turbulent year.
Let’s go to our happy place and relive the smartest moves made by Apple in 2016.
Consumer Reports just unloaded a mighty smackdown on the new MacBook Pro lineup, citing “highly inconsistent” battery life as the reason the latest Apple laptops failed to earn a coveted recommendation.
It’s the first time the well-regarded reviews organization flunked an Apple laptop. And the test results should give serious pause to anybody who is considering buying a new MacBook Pro.
Pokémon GO is finally ready for Apple Watch. The iOS game, one of 2016’s biggest breakout hits, got an update today that includes the long-awaited Apple Watch app.
According to the game’s maker, Pokémon GO is a perfect match for Apple’s wearable.
Apple’s “thin and light” approach for its latest laptops totally breaks down when it comes to charging, due to the sizable power adapter that ships with the computers. Luckily, a tiny new USB-C charger will let you leave Apple’s ungainly charging brick at home.
If you’ve got high-end wired headphones and want to make them wireless, AirMode might do the trick. The short cable comes with standard audio connectors on either end that replace the detachable cords found on many headphones.
Packed with features and reasonably priced, AirMode could be the perfect Bluetooth dongle for retrofitting your gear for Apple’s wireless future.
With a sharp screen, a fast processor and 4GB of RAM, the new LeEco Le Pro3 is a bold shot across the bow of Apple and other premium smartphone makers.
While the hardware nudges the phone toward the high end of the spectrum, the rock-bottom pricing should send shivers through Cupertino. At just $399 — or $299 if you get in on LeEco’s generous instant rebate, which starts today — the Le Pro3 is a steal when compared to the iPhone 7 Plus.
If you’re traveling with your Apple Watch and desperately want to eliminate a cable from your bag, Belkin’s new Valet Charger power pack could do the trick.
With its built-in round magnetic charging module, this 6,700mAh battery pack lets you jettison the single-use cable that comes with every Apple Watch.
Anybody watching Apple’s “Hello Again” event probably suspected we’d get “one more thing” in addition to the long-rumored Touch Bar and the recently leaked TV app. Or maybe a couple more things.
Instead we got … a Final Cut Pro update and a new accessibility website?
Underwhelming! And cruelly disappointing to all the Apple faithful hoping against hope for new hardware. Here are all the other things we wanted — but got so viciously denied — during Apple’s MacBook Pro event today.
SAN FRANCISCO — Rene Oehlerking is positively stoked that Apple killed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7.
That’s because, as chief marketing officer of Jaybird, he’s been touting the winning combo of killer audio and wireless freedom for years. With its controversial move, Apple made Bluetooth headphones the new normal virtually overnight.
“We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Oehlerking said during a demo of his company’s latest headphones, the Jaybird X3. “It puts pressure on everyone to just buck up.”
If you’re an Apple Watch and iPhone owner, there’s a good chance you suffer from cluttered-nightstand syndrome. There’s only so much surface space on your standard bedside table, and plugging in multiple devices for overnight charging can mean a tangle of wires and general disarray.
The Belkin PowerHouse charging dock, which juices up an iPhone and an Apple Watch at the same time, will cure you instantly of this 21st-century malady.
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple does things one way. LeEco chooses a radically different path — in fact, you might call it the Anti-Apple.
What, you’ve never heard of LeEco, the Chinese company with the French-sounding name that’s gunning for American millenials?
After a big, splashy press conference on Wednesday that unveiled a raft of Android-based products, you’re about to hear a lot about LeEco, which calls itself “the best-kept secret in tech.” And if you’re working for Cupertino, you might be getting a little bit anxious as LeEco storms into the U.S. market.
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They say we’ve all got a book in us. And while not all of us will write that whole book, the internet makes it exceedingly simple for anybody with something to say to self-publish. Start a blog and you can say as much or as little as you like, at whatever pace suits you.
Blogging obviously isn’t new, but it hasn’t gone away either. And the tools for creating your own platform of online expression have never been easier to get hold of and use.
After decades of showing us the best ways to interact with computers, Apple is lagging on the UI of the future — voice controls powered by smart, conversational AI.
Google, on the other hand, is placing artificial intelligence, in the form of Google Assistant, at the center of its new Pixel smartphones and Google Home smart speaker.
Cupertino’s mastery of the user interface is legendary: Macs, iPods and iPhones made the GUI, the mouse, the scroll wheel and multitouch mainstream. But Apple needs to get into the AI conversation if it’s serious about securing a place in our gabby future.
A free software update for Ultimate Ears’ popular Boom and Megaboom speakers lets you connect dozens of the Bluetooth devices to create a massive wall of sound.
The over-the-air update, coming today to the “life-proof” speaker line, enables a new feature called PartyUp that can connect “more than 50” of UE’s popular tube-shaped speakers. “More than 50” is the party line, but UE product manager Jim Saraco said his team connected 130 of the speakers at the company’s HQ.
“In reality, we’re still trying to find a cap,” Saraco told Cult of Mac.
Alright, all you bleary-eyed Apple fans. Did your late-night iPhone 7 preorder go well? We want to know what iPhone 7 model Cult of Mac readers covet the most.
What type of iPhone 7 did you preorder? Let us know in the reader poll below.
And if you fell asleep before the preorder started, or couldn’t get the model you craved, we’d love to hear your iPhone 7 preorders horror stories. That’s what comments sections are for.
Far from the “boring” launch predicted by haters and relentless Apple rumormongers, Wednesday’s iPhone 7 event delivered plenty of big surprises.
Along with our first legitimate looks at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and the new Apple Watch Series 2, we got a promising peek inside Apple’s increasingly powerful and polished ecosystem. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s iPhone 7 event.
SAN FRANCISCO — You might call Logitech’s latest peripherals the mice that didn’t roar. Or rather the mice that don’t click or swoosh or make that annoying ratcheting sound that triggers you to fantasize about strangling your fidgety-fingered co-worker.
This new breed of pointing device is as quiet as the proverbial church mouse, without sacrificing precision or tactile “click” — and apparently that’s a bigger deal than you might imagine.
Parallels Desktop, a go-to program for anybody wanting to run Windows on a Mac, just got more powerful and convenient to use. The Parallels Desktop 12 update, brings increased speed as well as a suite of handy new tools that simplify everyday tasks.
“This is the best Windows-on-Mac performance in the history of Parallels,” said John Uppendahl, Parallels’ vice president of communications, during a briefing about the new software, which will be available Thursday for subscribers and upgraders. (New users must wait until Aug. 23.)
SAN FRANCISCO — Teddy Winthrop is into leather. Like, way into it. In the year since he launched Edward Field, his high-end iPhone wallet case company, he’s been obsessing over ways to make his leather cases sleeker, more functional and more straight-up appealing to the humans who use them.
“It’s weird,” he told Cult of Mac while discussing the mission of his company, which launches a new line of products today. “I never thought I’d be passionate about wallets.”
If the Apple Magic Keyboard is like the latest MacBook — sleek, svelte and missing key features due to Cupertino’s maniacal pursuit of those first two attributes — the Kanex MultiSync Aluminum Keyboard is akin to a MacBook Pro.
It looks and feels a lot like Apple’s stock wireless keyboard, but adds functionality that will make the Kanex an ideal solution for some power users.
Amazon’s Prime Day is here, delivering big sales on tons of items. Cult of Mac is rounding up the best picks, and you can get in on the hot, hot shopping action right now — even if you’re not an Amazon Prime member.