As expected, the Apple Online Store has gone down hours ahead of today’s special event. When it returns later today (likely shortly after the conclusion of Apple’s keynote), we expect to see new details about the Apple Watch, and whatever else Apple announces at today’s event.
We’re hours away from one of Apple’s most important special events in years, so what better time than to check in on the progress the company has made on its forthcoming Campus 2, courtesy of a new drone flyover video.
The video shows the extent to which the futuristic “spaceship” campus is taking shape, with much of the landscaping done. Earthwork is set to continue until the middle of this year, and overall construction is set to be completed by late 2016.
Check out the video below.
If Jony Ive sometimes missed out on getting his rightful credit while Steve Jobs was steering the ship at Apple, that same accusation can’t be made today. Following on from the recent superb New Yorker profile about Ive and the Apple Watch, Apple’s superstar design guru is the recipient of another profile (complete with interview), this time with the Financial Times.
The story’s not nearly as in-depth as the 10,000-word New Yorker piece, but it still has a few interesting observations about Ive’s approach to technology and the unique design challenges of working on the Apple Watch — including why the Apple Watch was a very different prospect for Ive than working on the iPhone.
Highlights can be found after the jump.
When Tim Cook was recently asked, during a trip to the Kurfürstendamm Apple Store in Berlin, Germany, whether he would agree to give everyone who worked for Apple’s retail stores a free Apple Watch, he basically rejected the idea in the kindest and lightest-hearted way possible.
But while Apple Watches are currently thought of as more recreational devices than serious enterprise tools, there are those who see Apple’s debut wearable device as the kind of device that would fit perfectly within a business or office environment.
One of those is BetterWorks, a company backed by Google board member John Doerr, which is pitching itself as Fitbit for the workplace. “Having visibility and immediate access to your most critical business data literally at your fingertips, rather than on the phone in your pocket or on the web application from your computer, is super powerful,” creator Kris Duggan tells Cult of Mac.
In the summer of 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog was, quite simply, the greatest thing Simon Thomley had ever seen.
At the age of 11, Thomley had graduated to the SEGA Genesis gaming console after years as a Nintendo Entertainment System player. Sonic had lured him to SEGA’s system, and he wasn’t alone: The spiny blue speedster captured the hearts of gamers everywhere. By the end of the year, SEGA had sped past Nintendo on console sales.
A series of sequels followed. While many people remember the Sonic games primarily as a relic of the ’90s, they become an unlikely career for Thomley and his developer friend Christian Whitehead. Better known as Stealth and Taxman, they brought remastered versions of classic Sonic games to iOS for a new generation of gamers to enjoy.
“This has always been my hobby, but I’m lucky enough that this has now become my full-time job,” Thomley tells Cult of Mac. The pair brought finely tuned official versions of Sonic games to iOS — although recent turmoil at SEGA has thrown the future of their highly regarded work into doubt.
Apple was among a group of almost 400 companies which yesterday filed a so-called “friend of the court” brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that same-sex couples should have just as much of a right to marry as anyone else.
Interestingly, the brief doesn’t just focus on moral or ethical reasons that the Supreme Court should be on the right side of history, but actually makes a business case for the legalization of gay marriage; arguing that the confusing legality around the issue “places significant burdens on employers and their employees — making it increasingly hard to conduct business.”
Battery life is one of the most discussed aspects of the iPhone, but some handsets have it worse than others.
If you bought an iPhone 5 in the six month window between September 2012 and January 2013, you could be eligible for a free replacement due to a battery fault.
Apple first launched its iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program back in August 2014, and has now extended it past its original deadline of March 1, 2015 to January next year. That means that if you’re one of the affected customers, and you’ve not yet done anything about it, you’ve still got a bit longer to do so.
Even in the wake of an uber-popular device like the iPhone 6, which sold upward of 10 million units in its first weekend alone, it’s fascinating to see analysts hedging their bets when it comes to the Apple Watch. The spread of predictions from these professional prognosticators might as well have been generated at random.
The latest group to weigh in is Strategy Analytics, which is predicting that the Apple Watch will sell (or at least ship) 15.4 million units worldwide in 2015, which would still make Cupertino the world’s No. 1 smartwatch vendor, but with a much smaller market share than others are predicting.
Anyone who’s followed Apple for a long time knows the company has not always been the kind of world-beating success it is today. An entire book could be written about Apple’s failures over the years — and there are the doomsday predictions to prove it.
But Apple has succeeded in taking those seemingly disastrous mistakes and learning valuable lessons from them. The graphical user interface of the Apple Lisa? Apple learned that sometimes you need to stick with good ideas for a while before they catch on. The takeaway from Apple’s QuickTake Camera? Rushing to beat everyone else to market isn’t always the best idea.
A new infographic runs down 21 of the biggest Apple flops in history — and what Cupertino learned from them. If you’re a long-time Apple fan it’s a great trip down memory lane. If you’re a newcomer, it’s a fascinating introduction to how Apple has learned from even its most grievous errors and become the undisputed giant it is in 2015.
Fan films are the ultimate way for devotees to pay tribute to the characters they love. They give fans the chance to show how the beloved heroes (and antiheroes) should be portrayed — without the creativity-sapping “benefit” of focus groups, hack screenwriters and overpaid producers.
With a war raging between the fans who make these productions and the rights-holders who argue they’re being damaged, Cult of Mac runs down six of the best fan-created short films doing the round on the interwebz.
Check out our picks below.
Apple could launch its eagerly anticipated 12-inch MacBook Air around the time of the Worldwide Developers Conference this June.
Claiming to have spoken with unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal writes that Apple will release its first refresh of the MacBook Air since April 2014 “in large quantities” during the second quarter of 2015, although no definite date has been nailed down. Suppliers are reportedly already manufacturing the notebook, and are building up supplies ready for shipping.
What do you do as a second act after creating one of the most beautiful iOS games in history? If you’re Ustwo, the devs behind the Cult of Mac favorite Monument Valley, the answer is simple: you redesign the car dashboard.
Yes, you read that correctly.
It might be a long way from the M.C. Escher-inspired iPad puzzle game, but Ustwo has teamed up with the company Car Design Research to create a prototype for a simplified in-car display that shows only the information you need at the time you need it. And, unsurprisingly, it looks spectacular.
Two bits of news have emerged for anyone excited about Apple’s upcoming 12-inch-plus iPad Pro. Sources from the Chinese supply chain suggest the tablet will come equipped with Oxide LCD display technology, while a separate report from The Wall Street Journal (paywall) claims Apple is considering adding USB 3.0 ports (among others) to the devices.
What is unanimously agreed upon is that we are unlikely to see the plus-size iPad until the second half of the year, with a Digitimes report suggesting it may not even go into mass production until the third quarter of 2015.
If the rumors are anything to go by, it’ll be worth waiting for, though.
Another day, another award for Apple. This time, branding site Brandchannel has given Apple the nod in its 2015 Brandcameo Product Placement Awards for overall product placement in movies.
After three years without being the most represented company on-screen in Hollywood movies, Apple once again topped the list: appearing in 9 of the 35 movies which scored big at the U.S. weekend box office at some point in the last year, representing one quarter of all #1s.
Anyone want to argue causation over correlation?
I finally pitched the cheap plastic desk lamp I’ve had since high school and replaced it with the light I’ve always wanted: the iconic Anglepoise 1227.
If you’re looking for a classic desk lamp that won’t fade into the backdrop next to your sleek iMac, this is the one for you.
Launched in 1934, the design of the 1227 has changed astonishingly little. It still looks functional and modern, which makes perfect sense given Anglepoise started out making hard-wearing lamps for factory workers.
Accusations that iOS 8 is slower than Apple’s previous mobile operating systems have circulated since the software debuted in 2014. Although it works great most of the time on my iPhone 6 Plus, you don’t have to look far to find people complaining that the latest version of iOS slows down to a sluggish crawl.
From hard resets to turning on the “reduce motion” option under Accessibility, numerous solutions can be employed to keep iOS 8 running at a good clip. One explanation for iOS 8 feeling slower than its predecessors, however, is that (much like iOS 7) its system animations take too long to complete, thereby making the interface feel slower than it should.
So peeved is Omni developer William Van Hecke that he recently compared the animation speeds in a YouTube video. Chalk it up to unnecessary nitpicking if you want, but when you see iOS 3 reacting considerably quicker than iOS 8, it definitely makes you think Apple could make improvements.
Check out the video below:
One out of every four smartphones sold in urban China was an iPhone during the three months ending January 2015, according to sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The impressive stats only serve to underline what we’ve been pointing out for upwards of the past year: that China is well on its way to becoming Apple’s biggest market globally.
“Leading into Chinese New Year, Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus drove sales to an unprecedented high in urban China with iOS’ share of the smartphone market reaching 25.4 percent – a 4.5 percentage point increase over the same period in 2014”, noted Carolina Milanesi, Kantar’s chief of research.
Apple has asked a Massachusetts federal judge for more time in its lawsuit with A123 Systems, suggesting that the Cupertino company wants to settle with the electric car battery maker.
Apple was first slapped with the lawsuit last month, after it reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers with expertise in performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries: once again hinting that an Apple Car could be in the company’s future.
The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and already it’s picking up major design awards. The award in question here is the prestigious 2015 iF Design Gold Award, a prize sometimes referred to as a “Design Oscar.”
The awards were first introduced in 1954, and attract more than 2,000 product entries from 37 different nations — with expert judges ruling based on outstanding design quality.
With Kanye West’s astute analysis of Apple’s business, his close friendship with Steve Wozniak, and his unabashed love for “Jony Ives” (sic), Tim Cook must count his lucky stars every day that he managed to scoop the role of Apple CEO out from under Mr. Kim Kardashian.
Perhaps Yeezy was too busy laying down vocals for Watch The Throne to take over running Apple business back in 2011.
Whatever the reason, Apple probably wouldn’t be in too great shape under the control of Kanye since in a new interview he reveals what he thinks Steve Jobs should’ve done as his final move at Apple: given all the company’s patents away.
Yes, really.
It’s not just technology and environmental credentials where Apple’s helping lead the way; the company is also doing its bit to secure the futures of those service employees working further down the payscale in Silicon Valley.
Like many tech companies, Apple has previously been the recipient of protests from its own security guards, who have been hired as contract workers rather than full-time employees. Last summer, 50 such individuals blocked the main doors of Apple’s flagship San Francisco Union Square retail store, protesting over their lack of job protection. “If [security officers] miss a day of work, they don’t know if they’ll have the job the next day,” one protestor noted.
To combat this, Apple has now announced that it will dramatically expand its in-house security team, which will see the workers receive the same benefits as other Apple employees. The move will mean that the majority of the day-to-day security staff who work at Apple will become full-time Apple employees, entitled to full health insurance, pension plans and lave for new parents.
Apple Pay might be taking over the world of mobile payments, but as with any new technology there are scammers looking to misuse the service. In the United States, criminals are reportedly using Apple Pay to buy expensive goods, often from Apple Stores, using stolen names and identities.
“I was surprised by the irony, but not by the fact that Apple as a merchant is seeing Apple Pay fraud,” Drop Labs commerce and fraud expert Cherian Abraham tells Cult of Mac. “As a luxury retailer it’s not a surprise that they are a retailer of choice to commit fraud.”
Abraham says banks are scrambling to solve the problem, which is already running into tens of millions in losses for financial institutions. Asked how widespread Apple Pay fraud is, he describes it as “rampant.”
Bill Gates may never have creatively made the same impact on computing that Steve Jobs did, but we doubt he’s too upset about it, since according to Forbes‘ newly-published annual ranking of global billionaires, the former Microsoft mastermind-turned-philanthropist is once again the world’s richest person.
And you know what the crazy bit is? Gates earned more money last year from his return on capital than he ever did from Microsoft wages. Wowza!
There were other games I enjoyed growing up, but the Mortal Kombat franchise was the first series of games I ever loved: from the cool character designs of Scorpion, Kano, Goro and the rest, to the ultra-violent Fatalities, which made the games seem so much more grown-up than the rival Street Fighter II titles.
Is there any better news, then, than the fact that more than twenty years after its inception, Mortal Kombat is finally coming to mobile, courtesy of a port of the forthcoming Mortal Kombat X? Provided this is done well, it could be early pick of most exciting iOS game of the year.
Color me (cautiously) optimistic. And check out the trailer after the jump.
Ever since Tim Cook took over at Apple he’s been as outspoken about social issues as he has about the company’s latest insanely great product. During his recent whistle-stop world tour, that included Israel, the United Kingdom and Germany, Cook took the time to speak with German newspaper BILD (paywall).
Despite Apple’s March 9 Apple Watch event being just one week away, Cook used the coverage to speak about a topic as dear to his heart as Apple’s next-gen wearable: privacy.
“We don’t read your emails, we don’t read your messages, we find it unacceptable to do that,” Cook said, adding that, “I don’t want people reading mine!”