We all know Apple’s are much safer than Windows PCs at keeping out the malware, right?
Researcher Patrick Wardle has been trying to make sure of that for months now as he pokes holes in Apple’s current protection scheme, Gatekeeper.
In fact, he’s gotten past Apple’s latest patch to its software security system in literally five minutes.
We’re back from CES and rounding up everything from the show, checking out the new operating system betas for your iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, proposing ways to fix Apple’s fitness apps, and taking a little time to mourn David Bowie and play some retro-tastic games on Apple TV.
All this, and a lot more, coming your way in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.
Looking to pick up an Apple Watch but don’t want to spend extra on watch bands or a charging stand?
Groupon has your dream bundle, then, with a Sport edition of Apple’s famous wearable, along with third-party knockoffs of the Milanese Loop and leather strap and a charging stand all for the price of the actual Apple Watch.
A new musical comedy coming to Broadway this April will spotlight none other than the two rivals for PC dominance, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Rather obviously titled Nerds, the new musical will feature some of the technology the two men helped foster, including onstage holograms, projection mapping and an app that lets audiences decide what ending they’d like to see.
Stolen!, the app that let you buy and sell Twitter users in a fictional exchange, has been taken off the App Store by its developers due to privacy concerns.
“The app is no longer available in the App Store,” the Stolen! team tweeted Thursday afternoon. “We’ve heard everyone’s concerns and have decided the best thing to do is to shut down.”
Want to play your Mega Man 2 ROM on your new fourth-generation Apple TV? How about Super Mario Bros. 3?
It’s a ton of fun to play classic console arcade games, especially if you have a few ROMs lying around on your hard drive and would like to play them on the big screen.
Here’s how to get your new Apple TV all set up to rock some retro games.
Now you can try out the latest and greatest operating systems for Apple products, thanks to public betas for iOS 9.3 and OS X El Capitan 10.11.4. Both are now available for testing — even if you don’t have a developer account.
You can grab both updates from Apple’s beta program website for free. Take note, however, that this is trial software — and updating could cause some apps and features on your iOS or Mac devices to go funky or stop working altogether. Use these at your own risk.
So you’ve got a fourth-generation Apple TV (the one with Siri Remote and all the apps) and you’ve just downloaded VLC, the “play everything” video app that was just ported to tvOS.
The last few versions of Apple TV haven’t included any storage for video files, and the same is true of the latest model: All the device’s storage is for apps and associated media files. Getting your own videos up on the big screen using VLC takes a little finesse.
Here’s how to watch any video (with a few caveats) on your Apple TV via VLC.
Surprising no-one, the number of shipped iOS devices has overtaken Windows devices in 2015. The number of iOS devices shipped equalled that of Windows PCs just last summer, but this is perhaps the final blow in the post-PC world that Apple’s been predicting (and promoting) for some time now.
Asymco analyst Horace Dediu sent out the following chart on Twitter that shows the continuing trend in detail, comparing Windows PC shipments to iPad, iPhone, and Mac units shipped. Check it out.
Apple’s iOS 9 has been adopted by users at a pretty rapid rate, one that’s faster than even iOS 8 enjoyed.
Apple just updated its developer information page, claiming that iOS 9 is now on 75 percent of all iOS devices out there. This is four percent more than it was just a month ago, showing steady, if slower, growth than the first few weeks after the iOS 9 release.
Finally, the play any video everywhere convenience of super-video app VLC is coming to your new Apple TV.
As the go-to video player app on OS X and iOS, it’s about time we see it on the big screen, considering it was planned last September.
Once you search for and download VLC on your Apple TV, you’ll be set to play any videos you can possibly throw at it, whether stored locally, on a local media server, or even right from your browser.
If you’re looking for some amazing new Retina-display-quality images to wallpaper your Mac, iPhone or iPad, you might want to head over to Apple’s “Start Something New” campaign web page.
The sub-site — part of an ongoing advertising campaign highlighting how creative you can get with Apple products — has a bunch of amazing images that zoom around when you mouse a cursor across them.
Here’s how to get them to spruce up your device.
Welcome back to another week of amazing Cult of Mac action. We sent a crack team of staffers this year to Las Vegas’ all-you-can-eat buffet of technology, CES. Their on-the-spot reporting has resulted in a plate piled high with goodies, and we’re here to share it with you.
This week, we’ve got the best (and worst) of CES, a poll on which glitchy software Apple should fix, some more solid rumors about the upcoming iPhone 7, a quick look at some great knockoff Apple Watch bands, and a “one-click upgrade” that will double your MacBook’s hard drive.
Here’s the rundown this week:
I’ve always loved being able to pick up an iMessage conversation that I started on my iPhone right on my Mac, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, I’ve been having an iMessage issue for the last few months — I can have conversations via Messages on my Mac and conversations via Messages on my iPhone, but my iMessages have stopped synchronizing across my devices.
A whispered conversation in a library is about 30 decibels. A normally loud chat comes in at around 65 decibels. A jackhammer at 50 feet is 95 decibels, and also the loudness at which our ears can get damaged with prolonged exposure.
The Phantom speaker I’ve been using as my main television and Bluetooth speaker for the last couple of weeks tops out at 99 decibels. This sucker gets loud, without any distortion, real quick. It’s easy to use, looks amazing in any room, and will change your experience of music and movies from the moment you turn it on.
While it looks like something out of the future depicted in a Kubrick film, has an ungainly outdoor-style power cable, and is heavier than you’d think, the Phantom is simply the best home speaker I’ve ever encountered.
For two grand, it had better be.
The holy grail of the home workout is something that you can get set up for quickly and easily, doesn’t require a lot of gear, and will only take as short a time as possible.
Wahoo Fitness thinks they have this down. The developer of the Wahoo 7 Minute Workout app has brought its science-based, high-intensity interval workout to your big screen via the Apple TV app store, so you can get your workout on quickly and easily.
Have you ever wanted to try out a different operating system on your Mac? Ever since Apple started using Intel chips in their computers, it’s been super simple to run Windows and even popular Linux distributions via Boot Camp, virtual environments like Parallels and VMWare Fusion, and the like.
The problem is that you need to use up precious system resources to run these things on your Mac. Even virtual machines take up disk space, as does running Boot Camp and partitioning your main Hard drive. What if you just want to test something out on your Mac before fully committing?
Turns out it’s fairly easy to run Linux on your Mac without using up any bit of your hard drive. Using a flash drive and some Terminal commands, you can check out a distribution like Ubuntu running right on your Mac without having to sacrifice a thing. Here’s how.
Walt Mossberg has had his say on what Apple needs to fix most: its software.
Now it’s your turn to weigh in with your own opinion–which specific software should Apple fix? We’ve created two polls for you to express your opinion, one for OS X on the Mac and one for iOS on the iPhone and iPad.
Is Apple Mail giving you fits on your Mac? Does Photos on your iPad not fill you with joy? Let us know in the polls below.
If we missed the software you think should be in Apple’s sights for fixing, let us know in the comments.
Stacked, the wireless charging case that charges your iPhone with a series of stackable power banks, is expanding it’s line of useful, connected devices to help simplify your life and fill it with music.
The company is showing off it’s two new audio accessories at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Las Vegas. The Audio Dock and Boost Speaker connect to your iPhone via the magnetic system of the Stacked power case, reducing wires and making sure you never forget your external speaker at work again.
If you’re like the rest of us, you’ve got a nice Mac with plenty of video, photos, and apps on it. Time Machine is a fantastic way to keep your stuff all backed up and safe, so you’ll need a high-capacity drive to do that with.
Samsung’s new external solid state drive (SSD), called the T3, has the capacity of multiple terabytes to keep more of your data backed up and the speed to make it easy.
“Following the successful worldwide launch of the Portable SSD T1 in 2015, we made several significant upgrades to the T3 based on the feedback and needs of our customers, which included content creators and business professionals in particular,” said Samsung’s Un-Soo Kim in a statement.
If you want to listen to the same corporate pop music as you do on your terrestrial radio, you can do so from the comfort of your couch.
iHeartRadio’s streaming app can now also reside on your Apple TV, assuming you have one of the newer fourth-generation set-top boxes from Apple.
The new Apple TV app will give you all the main elements of the iOS app, including Live Stations, Custom Stations based on songs or artists, and podcasts from the behemoth media network.
Microsoft is excited, as it’s almost got as many installs of Windows 10 as there are iPads. Of course, the Redmond-based tech company didn’t put it in as many words, rather shouting out that Windows 10 is on now on a ton of devices.
“As of today,” writes Microsoft on its website, “there are more than 200 million monthly active devices around the world running Windows 10.”
That’s surely a lot of installs, showing significant growth.
It looks like the new hotness in drone technology — which many of us associate with quadcopters — is wings. Parrot, the company most well-known for its AR Drone and various mini-drones, is bring an all-new entry into the drone space: the Disco fixed-wing drone.
If you’ve ever wanted to fly your own remote-control plane and haven’t gotten into the technology yet, this just might be your time.
It looks like Apple has expanded its killer Apple TV feature again, with Siri searches now turning up shows from PBS and PBS Kids.
This is the first sighting of the universal search feature finding results from more than just the apps included in Apple TVs initial launch, which included iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and Showtime.
Now when you ask your Siri Remote to find shows that are available on PBS and PBS Kids, like the show about that curious monkey, you’ll see another option to watch via the Apple TV screen.
Is your Apple TV glitching out in some way? While I’ve not personally seen any weirdness with the rock-solid OS that comes with the Apple TV, it’s possible that you might have.
As most of us know, rebooting our Mac or restarting our iOS devices can save us from all sorts of odd behaviors; the same could be said of Apple TV. Here’s how to restart that little black box of joy, plus an easy way to get it into low-power sleep mode.
