A game which asks you to literally throw your iPhone in the air to make it perform extreme sport-style tricks sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Nonetheless, that’s the concept behind Gyro Skate, a new $1.99 iOS title that aims to replicate the skateboarding experience by asking gamers to perform stunts like the 360 flip by physically rotating your iPhone.
The role of Steve Jobs’ eldest daughter Lisa Jobs in the upcoming Universal movie biopic was previously described by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin as the story’s “heroine.”
Given some of the A-list names that have been associated with the project, it’s therefore something of a surprise to hear that the role has apparently been awarded to 17-year-old actress Perla Haney-Jardine.
If your reaction to that news is “who?,” you’re most likely not alone. Up until she won this part, the Brazilian-born American actress is best known for playing the four-year-old daughter of Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo and Bill in 2004’s Kill Bill Vol. 2.
Not exactly bad training for playing the daughter of the often steely tech-ninja Steve Jobs, perhaps!
The iGrow Hair sounds like some kind of comical mishearing of iPad Air. In fact, the iGrow and iDerma are the latest wacky gadgets to show up at this year’s CESB — or not so wacky at all if you listen to its creators.
The fully-adjustable, FDA-approved devices boast a proprietary Low-Level Light Therapy (LLLT) technology. According to its makers, a combination of red laser and LED light diodes is used to “stimulate and energize cellular activity” to reenergize the natural function of the hair follicle.
If your hair is thinning (although you’re not yet bald), iGrow offers a 4-to-6 month process which could give you back a head of hair that is demonstrably thicker, fuller and more vibrant than ever.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, yes, it does come with a 6-month money back guarantee.
The so-called Bendgate incident might have done Apple no favors in 2014, but according to a new patent published today, Cupertino is far from done when it comes to flexible iPhones — this time, purposely so.
Apple’s newly-granted patent covers an invention related to flexible housing for future iOS devices. As described, these devices would be capable of being bent or even folded with no damage to the internal components.
To pull this off, Apple would likely ditch the milled aluminium used in current iPhones for more easily deformable materials such as soft plastics and fiber composites able to withstand repeated flexing.
For a man who played a part in coming up with some of the most gorgeous designs in recent history, I’ve never been too sure about the surprisingly bulky appearance of Venus: Steve Jobs’ 256-foot super-yacht.
With that being said, however, a new crop of photos showing the €100 million vessel in full ocean-going mode definitely makes me rethink my views on the subject.
Half-summer house and half Apple Store, it looks every bit the kind of vacay destination that would have helped Apple’s late CEO recuperate after a new iPhone launch — had he ever gotten the chance to use it.
From forks that tell you whether you’re eating too much, to toothbrushes which quantify your brushing, the post-New Year season always has a few hygiene-related tricks up its sleeve.
Perhaps 2015’s first such device is the so-called Breathometer Mint, which offers something that no other smart device has yet managed — by telling you whether or not you’re suffering from morning breath, as well as measuring your hydration levels.
We said that Apple was going to dominate this year’s Consumer Electronics Show — despite not being there in person — and here’s another example of why that’s true.
Although the Apple Watch isn’t out yet, mobile-marketing firm TapSense is taking advantage of CES mania to unveil its plans to release an Apple Watch ad-buying service, aimed at developers. This service will let businesses create ads targeted at individual users of Apple’s upcoming wearables device.
These ads would use “push notifications” to alert customers of specific deals they may be interested in, although only inside apps that have already been opened.
If you’ve ever wanted an ultra-slim hard disk drive to go along with your MacBook Air or other supermodel-thin device, now’s your chance: the Seagate Seven is set to be the world’s thinnest HDD ever — measuring just 7mm thick.
To put that in perspective, that’s 01.mm thinner than even the slimline iPhone 6 Plus: an astonishing engineering feat, which also pulls off the difficult task of being a gorgeous piece of design. On top of that, it offers 500GB of storage, excellent speeds, and USB 3.0 connectivity.
What more could you ask for?
More than a year after Apple broke ground on its futuristic “spaceship” Apple Campus 2, we have another progress report courtesy of a new drone flyover video from Myithz.
As you can see from the video (which looks absolutely stunning on a 5K iMac, thanks to its high resolution), the forthcoming Apple headquarters is really starting to take shape now, as building continues on the $5 billion campus.
Check it out after the jump:
Silicon Valley has a lot of very bright people, but there are very few who ever reach the level of Steve Jobs. One who might come close is Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has actually been able to use his visionary take on the future to snatch away senior execs from Apple to come and work for him.
According to a Musk employee writing on Quora, however, it’s not just employees that Elon shares in common with Apple’s late co-founder and former CEO.
Much like Jobs, Musk is described as having a ‘reality distortion field’ that helps him convince others that what they view as impossible doesn’t have to remain that way.
And it’s not always a pretty sight.
A new Apple online ad campaign called “Start Something New” has extended to Apple’s brick-and-mortar retail outlets — with the walls of Apple Stores being used to show off artwork created using Apple products.
Apple first launched the online campaign on its Japanese website, before extending it internationally. It shows off work in which “every brushstroke, every pixel, and every frame of film” was created by artistic Apple users, using software like the third-party photography and painting apps VSCO Cam and Waterlogue, along with better known tools such as iDraw and Final Cut Pro, and in-built features like the iPhone’s Panorama mode.
As the company’s first major new product category since the iPad, Apple fans are understandably excited about getting their hands on an Apple Watch sometime in 2015.
But while Apple has so far given just “early 2015” as a vague launch date, a look at the Apple Watch micro-sites for around the world paint a different picture; suggesting Apple’s eagerly-awaited wearables debut will follow a gradual iPhone-style rollout which may keep some customers waiting much further into the new year.
Of course, this is highly speculative based on the fact that Apple’s verbiage can change from market to market, but there’s no getting around the fact that currently major markets like the U.S. describe the Apple Watch as “Coming Early 2015” while others simply advertise “Available in 2015.”
So if this is to be believed, when will an Apple Watch land in your market? Check out the (possible) answer after the jump:
As per Japanese tradition, Apple has started handing out its Fukubukuro (a.k.a. “Lucky Bags”) to customers at its brick-and-mortar retail stores in Japan — giving some fortunate buyers massive discounts on the latest Apple products and accessories.
The bags are part of a special New Year offer, and are available in only limited quantities, with customers not knowing which they’re going to get until they’ve stumped up their ¥36,000 (around $300).
Check out the bag’s contents (as well as how you can get your hands on one, even if you don’t live in Japan!) after the jump:
2014 was a great year for movies, but — if anything — 2015 looks to be even better. If you’re fretting over which films to build your year around, look no further: Cult of Mac has you covered.
From sci-fi epics from the brains behind The Matrix, to the next instalment in the James Bond franchise, to, yes, the next Star Wars movie, here are the flicks you’ll want to check out this year.
Apple Pay is a pretty seamless service for the most part — until you have to restore your iPhone, that is.
Over on the Apple Support Communities forum, a number of users are complaining that they’ve been unable to add credit cards back into Apple Pay after performing a factory restore — despite the fact that doing so should remove their cards completely.
When users try and reload their cards, they receive a message saying, “Could not add card. Try again later or contact your card issuer for more information.”
While most of us are still a day away from 2015, in New Zealand, New Year has already happened. Celebrating with an amusingly offbeat message, Steve Wozniak took to Facebook to engage in a bit of numerical fun for the year ahead.
Having turned 64 this year, 2014 has seen Woz on vintage form: from his controversially suggesting Apple should create an Android device, to penning an open letter to the FCC asking them to keep the Internet free, to raising eyebrows by dismissing the Apple Watch as a “luxury fitness band.”
With plans for a reality TV show and his heart set on becoming a fully-fledged Australian citizen, it seems 2015 is likely to be just as eventful.
Until then, you can check out Woz’s “unique” New Year’s message after the jump:
GT Advanced Technologies’ attempts to make sapphire iPhone screens for Apple may have ended in disaster, but that’s not stopping GT senior execs from asking for millions to be paid out in bonuses.
Because the company filed for bankruptcy protection back in October, any bonus program needs to have the signature of a judge in order to be legally binding. GT is requesting a hearing in January, although it admits there is likely to be opposition.
The bonus program would cover 9 unidentified senior executives, and could add up to $2.275 million if all the necessary targets are hit. A second bonus proposal would pay a total of $1.4 million to an additional 28 people.
We’ve argued on many occasions before that 2014 was a superlative year for iOS games. But it was also a fantastic twelve months for video games in general, as the last generation’s consoles were pushed to their max, and the PS4 and Xbox 360 hit their stride.
So now that the dust has settled what are our picks for games of the year? Check out our choice of the ten titles you must play after the jump.
New York residents may soon be able to pay their collective 8-10 million annual parking tickets using Apple Pay, according to a new report from MarketWatch.
Currently parking tickets can be paid online (with a 2.5% charge), via mail, on in person at a courthouse. The city’s finance department is supposedly looking at change this up, however, and could embrace Apple Pay in the process.
Reading that someone decided to put their MacBook Pro in the oven and then set about drilling holes in it sounds like one of those inane YouTube videos showing someone destroying a perfectly good computer for no reason whatsoever.
For iFixit employee “Sterling,” however, it was not a way to destroy his MacBook at all, but rather a means by which to extend the life of a dying machine.
“Unconventional electronics repair tools they may be, but that’s how I saved my MacBook Pro with a drill and an oven,” Sterling writes.
Here’s how he did it.
The massive success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has pushed app downloads into overdrive, according to a new report from mobile marketers Fiksu.
In the month of November, the combination of time off for Thanksgiving and new iPhones resulted in daily app download volume surpassing the 8 million mark for the first time ever. Not only is this is a significant leap from the 7.8 million daily downloads seen in October, but also a massive increase of 42 percent year-over-year, compared to November 2013.
The good news doesn’t stop there, either.
The Apple blogosphere was ablaze yesterday with reports that the ripoff artists at Xiaomi had come up with the Chinese company’s most brazen copycat product yet. A supposedly leaked image showed a MacBook Air lookalike that was virtually indistinguishable from Cupertino’s offering with the exception of a Xiaomi logo.
Well, the picture is a fake, according to a Xiaomi representative.
While it’s great to hear that Apple’s intellectual property is upheld in this instance, however, it’s still less than ideal for Xiaomi for one very simple reason: just how believable the rumor was.
Apple hasn’t built a device requiring a stylus since the heyday of the Newton in the 1990s, largely because Steve Jobs hated them. But a new patent published today suggests that Apple could be changing its mind — or is making a conscious effort to lead rivals and copycats astray.
Described as a “communicating stylus,” the patent describes a stylus featuring built-in accelerometers, wireless transmission, and storage — with the aim of sending hand-written notes and drawings from one device to another.
Apple’s partnership with Disney goes back way further than the latter company’s recent decision to accept Apple Pay at Disney World. At the time of his death in 2011, Steve Jobs was the single biggest shareholder of Disney stock as a result of it acquiring his company, Pixar, in 2006.
Jobs got on particularly well with Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called Jobs in 2005 and asked if he could repair the damage that had been done to the Apple/Disney relationship under former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
That relationship is examined in a new Fortune profile of Iger, which describes his six-year friendship with Jobs as the “relationship that has most shaped his thinking.”
Europe’s largest collective of hackers, the Chaos Computer Club, claims to have come up with a way of reproducing fingerprints using only a handful of photos (no pun intended) showing your fingers.
Speaking at the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, hacker Jan Krissler, a.k.a. “Starbug,” said he had managed to copy the thumbprint of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
This was apparently done using the commercially available software VeriFinger, using a close-up picture of von der Leyen’s thumb, taken from a news conference in October, as well as some other photos showing different angles of the fingerprint.
