Both the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6 secretly support 4K video, but don’t expect the same from the next-generation Apple TV, according to one new report.
Citing “sources in position to know,” BuzzFeed News claims that the much-speculated-upon 4th generation Apple TV isn’t going to go out of its way to support a video resolution “still in its infancy” — despite the fact that rivals Netflix and Amazon already offer this service, albeit in limited supply.
When the Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, one place it will be conspicuous in its absence is Switzerland: the spiritual home of the wristwatch, which Jony Ive famously (allegedly) said was “f**ked” due to the awesomeness of Apple’s upcoming wearable.
One possible reason? A trademark claim made by a company called Leonard Timepieces for a watch and watch parts carrying the image of an apple and the English word “APPLE.” First filed in 1985 — not too long after Apple originally launched the Mac — the 30-year trademark expires on December 5, 2015.
In her latest blog post on Apple’s website, supermodel and Apple Watch spokeswoman Christy Turlington reveals a few more interesting tidbits about the Apple wearable — such as the fact that you can use the device’s Force Touch tech to change the color of animated emoji.
Today marks five years since the iPad first went on sale and, to celebrate, the superb app Art Authority (which also celebrates its fifth anniversary) is slashing its price from $9.99 to zero for one day only.
For those unfamiliar with it, Art Authority is a fantastic resource for any art-lover, with 75,000 high-resolution classic artworks stored in one place. These include paintings and sculptures by more than 1,000 major western artists, with an easy-to-use interface that divides the works up into different periods — so you’ll have no problem sorting your Byzantine paintings from your Baroque, or your Romantics from your Renaissance.
Up until now we’ve seen Game Boy emulators and accessories created for the iPhone, but this is something else entirely: a Nintendo Game Boy-compatible case for the iPhone 6 Plus, which actually runs real Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges.
Sound too good to be true? Well it is, sort of. Originally, the concept — called the Smart Boy — was an April Fools’ joke created by Hyperkin product developer, Chris Gallizzi. However, the idea of a turning your iPhone into a fully-functioning Game Boy proved too irresistible, and Hyperkin has now announced plans to really create and sell the product.
Provided Nintendo’s legal team don’t stop them first, that is.
The battle over who will manufacture the A9 chip for Apple’s next-gen iPhone has reportedly come to a close, with Apple giving the nod to long-time frenemy Samsung instead of current A8 chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
Okay, so all eyes are currently trained on the Apple Watch, which arrives later this month. But April also represents another important benchmark for Apple: five years ago today the iPad went on sale for the very first time.
To celebrate, we’ve scraped the dark recesses of the Cult of Mac archives to bring you a whistle-stop tour of the glorious 60 months we’ve spent in the company of Apple’s breakthrough tablet.
Whether you’re after a zero-gravity Garage Band symphony or a reminder of the time the Queen of England bought an iPad 2, keep reading for a trip down memory lane.
Aside from better battery life, a waterproof iPhone has to be one of the most-requested upgrades Apple could make to its smartphones — a feature that H20-defying rivals like the Xperia Z1 haven’t wasted a moment bragging about possessing.
But a new patent application published today suggests a waterproofed iPhone could finally be on the way, thanks to a method for sealing buttons specifically designed for iOS devices.
A new, improved version of the Apple Watch’s Force Touch technology could be coming to Apple’s next-generation plus-sized iPhone — and according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo it may be a significant enough upgrade to persuade Apple to call its next handset the iPhone 7 instead of 6s.
iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales hit a new all-time high in urban China in February, capturing a massive 27.6 percent of the smartphone market. For those keeping track at home, that’s an impressive increase of more than 2 percent from the 25.4 percent recorded just one month earlier.
Driving the jump was Chinese New Year, which saw a large number of new activations take place amidst the festivities. It’s no wonder that Tim Cook has claimed that it’s only a matter of time before China overtakes the United States as Apple’s biggest market!
The Apple Watch was created under crazy, sleep-deprived conditions, with its first working prototype being an iPhone strapped to the wrist with a Velcro strap, and the Digital Crown represented by a custom dongle plugged into the bottom of the phone via the headphone jack.
Those are a couple of the revelations from a new in-depth article, reporting on the creation of Apple’s eagerly anticipated wearable device.
Apple’s not even announced its rebranded Beats Music streaming rival to Spotify yet, and already it’s under investigation from regulators.
According to a new report, multiple record labels and digital music companies have been contacted for questioning by the European Commission for what could be a redo of the Apple’s antitrust ebooks controversy, in which the company was forced to shell out $450 million in damages.
The mystery part: since such investigations are usually triggered only by a formal complaint to the commission, there’s plenty of finger-pointing going on regarding who’s responsible for throwing accusations Cupertino’s way. In true Clue fashion, was it an existing streaming music provider, in the dining room, with the endangered business model?
All will (presumably) be revealed.
Apple’s new MacBook won’t go on sale for another week-and-a-half. But if you want to get an advance glimpse of the next-gen notebook, you can check out a new unboxing video, which shows off the device’s ultra-thin form factor for the first time in all its glory.
The video’s in Vietnamese, but if you’ve been keeping up with our coverage here on Cult of Mac, you should know what to expect — from the edge-to-edge keyboard to the minimalist USB-C port. Did I mention how much I want one?
Apple’s China trade-in program only went live today, but already it’s on the receiving end of criticism, as would-be sellers are disappointed to find that Apple is offering far less credit than is offered by private third-party buyers.
Welcome to the club, we say.
Here’s a pretty incredible story: The CEO of Apple touchscreen glass supplier Lens Technology has been named China’s richest woman, after demand for her company’s output saw shares climb 10 percent in a single day.
What’s impressive isn’t just that an Apple supplier rakes in enough cash to accumulate a $7.1 billion fortune, however, but rather the journey that 44-year-old Zhou Qunfei has taken to get there. Prior to getting into the glass manufacturing business as an executive in 2004, Qunfei worked on the factory line for another glass-maker in tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen.
Apple continued its drive to grow its brand in China today with the announcement that customers in the country can now trade in their old iPhones and iPads to let them upgrade to the latest models.
The Apple Watch could be Apple’s next mass-market iPod-like product, but the company’s not quite ready to see it popping up everywhere yet.
With the Apple Watch launch just 24 days away, Apple has reportedly declined to supply the U.K.’s largest mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, with its debut wearable device.
“We would love to be able to stock the Apple Watch,” Carphone’s chief executive Graham Stapleton told The Telegraph newspaper. “I’ve got to be careful what I say but I think they are just going another way with it. We have not been given the opportunity.”
Apple today announced that all members of its Developer Program can now officially submit Watch apps to the App Store; potentially triggering a gold rush similar to that seen when devs were first able to create iPhone apps early on its lifecycle.
Developers are encouraged to submit their WatchKit app, icon, screenshots, and description for review by Apple’s testers.
A Chinese smartphone maker has apologized for an ad comparing Apple to mass-murdering Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.
The ad depicted a cartoon Hitler performing the Nazi salute, with his red armband showing the Apple logo instead of a swastika.
Text on the advert read, “Under the arrogant regime of iOS domination that developers around the world love yet hate, we are always carefully asking, ‘is this kind of innovation okay?'” It went on to describe Apple as a “dusk empire,” suggesting that it’s on the wane as a company.
Check out the CEO’s grovelling apology below.
The Apple-Ericsson confrontation continues to heat up. The U.S. International Trade Commission says it will investigate Apple, based on two complaints alleging that Cupertino illegally infringed on Ericsson patents.
Ericsson previously asked the ITC to block Apple products, such as the iPhone, from selling in the United States while the case is being investigated.
With an innovative architectural style that brought elegant living to the masses, real estate developer Joseph Eichler left an indelible mark on California in the 1960s.
His beautifully simple blueprints also had an undeniable impact on Apple’s co-founders — although Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs took very different lessons from his work. Remarkably, Eichler’s design philosophy continues to shape Apple’s products, inside and out, to this day.
“I was very lucky to grow up in an Eichler,” Wozniak told Cult of Mac, referring to his family’s four-bedroom home in Sunnyvale, California. “It greatly influenced my liking of simplicity and open style. I like it whenever I see those attributes in any architecture.”
On his Kingdom Come album, Jay Z talked about being a big star “befo’ Steve Jobs made the iPod.”
Now, close to a decade later, the hip-hop mogul is keen to show that he is still ahead of Apple by introducing his new streaming music rival to Spotify and Pandora, prior to Apple’s own rumored Beats Music rebrand.
If you think the 2007 unveiling of the iPhone is tech’s most impressive demo, you haven’t seen anything yet!
Back in 1968, when Tim Cook was barely 8 years old, an engineer named Doug Engelbart put on a computer demonstration at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Engelbart showed off for the first time a stream of new technologies that would shape computing for the next half-century: windows, hypertext, computer graphics, the mouse, video-conferencing, word processing, real-time collaborative editing and more.
Now those of us who missed it the first time around can see it live, thanks to a new avant garde opera taking place at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall.
Okay, this is pretty cool: a 2.6x scale model of an Apple Watch built entirely out of Nanoblocks, the tiny building blocks made popular in Japan, but with a growing international following.
With the smallest brick being 4mm x 4mm x 5mm, creating this take on Apple’s eagerly-anticipated wearable device took more than 800 bricks. It was created by Christopher Tan, a well-known Nanoblock brick artist, who has previously built scale models of everything from the Great Wall of China to zombie dioramas.
You can check out more pictures of his Apple Watch below.
Among the biggest differences between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook as leaders of Apple is Cook’s willingness to use his platform as CEO to push positive social change.
Having last week shamed Indiana’s controversial “religious freedom” bill — which potentially allows a business to deny service to would-be customers if they disagree with their sexual orientation, based on religious beliefs — Cook elaborated on his thoughts in a weekend editorial for the Washington Post.
Proclaiming that “Apple is open … to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love,” Cook makes a powerful case. Check out his thoughts below.