Apple's still leading, but the market for tablets is declining. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The Los Angeles Unified School District is demanding a multimillion-dollar refund from Apple following a failed iPad program that was set to give more than 640,000 students a tablet for education.
It is thought that the Board of Education is exploring the possibility of litigation against the Cupertino company as it seeks to claim back money that has already been lost on the scheme.
The pope's iPad was a 32GB iPad 4 WiFi + Cellular. Who knew? Photo: MarketWatch
We all know that the pope has an iPad, but even popes upgrade. While we normal, unblessed humans tend to simply pass our old iPads down to a family member or sell them on Craigslist when we upgrade, the pontiff’s old iPad went straight to auction, where it sold for a staggering $30,500.
The "Sound of Emotion" will play music based on facial expressions at eh Market Street Protyping Festival in San Francisco. Photo: Sound of Emotion/Neighborland
You’re in a mood and your face can’t hide it. Now imagine if that face was the source of music.
The “Sound of Emotion,” a musical project created with facial expression recognition technology, will be on display at the Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco. The festival runs today through April 11 on Market Street between Embarcedero and Van Ness.
The installation will use four iPad and for selected genres, each device will represent a single instrument, such as bells, a didgeridoo and drums.
Searching within Safari pages is pretty easy, but well-hidden. Photo: Rob LeFebvre
On the Mac, it’s super-easy to search for a word or phrase within the currently loaded page. You simply hit Command-F on your keyboard and Safari, Chrome or any other web browser will open up a little field to type your search terms into.
But what about when you’re using mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPad? How do you find a specific word or phrase there?
It’s pretty simple, but not super-intuitive. Here’s our recipe for finding search terms on your iPhone’s version of Safari.
Is this another clue we're about to get a larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro? Photo: CURVED Photo: CURVED
Apple will apparently utilize oxide TFT displays for its next-generation iPad models, allowing the tablets to consume drastically less power.
In order to gain a bigger piece of the pie, manufacturer LG Display (aka the world’s largest LCD panel maker) is reportedly investing in the necessary P8-P9 production-line technology in its plants in Paju, South Korea, according to new reports coming out of Asia.
iPhone Data Recovery makes it simple to restore lost iOS files. Photo: FonePaw
This post is brought to you by FonePaw, creator of iPhone Data Recovery.
Accidentally delete important iPhone files? Encounter a fatal failure while jailbreaking your iOS device? Experience a hardware or system malfunction? iPhone Data Recovery can snap you out of this all-to-common data nightmare quickly.
The easy-to-use Mac software is designed to help you recover deleted photos, videos, messages, contacts, call history, notes, etc., either directly from your phone or by extracting and restoring files from iTunes or iCloud. All you need to do is plug your mobile device into your Mac and click “Start Scan.”
The iPad is a familiar sight today, but it wasn't always like that. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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.
Drexel University won our hearts two years ago with its invention of a MacBook vending machine for students. Now the school is taking its tech to the next level with a vending machine that spits out iPads.
The vending machine isn’t just for students, either. Residents of Philadelphia’s Mantua and Powelton Village can use their Free Library of Philadelphia cards to sign in and check out an iPad.
Microsoft’s early attempts to the tablet crown from Apple hasn’t really gone according to plan. All the Surfaces from the original to the Pro 2 were flops, but Microsoft seems to have hit its stride with the Surface Pro 3. Now it’s ready to take on the iPad with an even cheaper tablet.
Today, Microsoft unveiled its thinnest and lightest tablet ever, the Surface 3. At 1.37 pounds it’s just a little bit heavier than the iPad Air 2, but boasts a bigger screen and price tag that starts at $499.
I’m still on the fence over whether society should allow monopod poles selfie sticks to exists, but this latest invention is pushing me over to the “hell no” side of the argument.
iPad Pro could prove that size mattesr. Photo: Canoopsy
We still haven’t gotten a glimpse of Apple’s long-rumored 12-inch iPad Pro, but a new set of images of an alleged iPad Pro dummy unit show that the mythical giant tablet might actually be real.
Images of an alleged iPad Pro case posted to Weibo today could potentially reveal some of the new features Apple has in store for it’s enterprise-focused tablet, including a USB-C port in a very unexpected place.
The KOLOS gaming wheel is for iPad gamers who want a more realistic and comfortable experience with driving games. Photo: KOLOS
A game like Real Racing has sophisticated graphics that, combined with the motion sensors of an iPad, give you the sensation of being behind the wheel.
The only thing missing is the actual wheel.
Ivaylo Kalburdzhiev wants iPad users to have a more comfortable drive when they play anyone of the more than 450 tilt games.
The CEO of KOLOS, slavic for colossus, has developed a gaming wheel for the iPad that launches on Kickstarter today.
iPad Airs are now officially allowable expenses. Photo: Flickr/U.K. Parliament CC
The 650 politicians who win seats at the U.K.’s House of Commons on May 7 are set to be given iPad Air 2 devices as part of a new deal.
Not everyone is happy about it, though. Shadow Cabinet Office minister (and possible Android user?) Chi Onwurah has attacked the plan — saying that, “Locking some of the most powerful people in the country into a platform that most of my constituents can’t afford seems like a mistake.”
Her iPhone's so fancy, but you already know that. Photo: Officialcharlixcx
Lesser brands like Samsung have to splash some serious cash to give the impression that they’re cool pieces of technology, but Apple’s so ubiquitous that pop stars are seemingly lining up to feature its products in their music videos.
The latest to create an unofficial Apple ad is pop songstress Charli XCX (a.k.a. the girl who sang the hook on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”). In her new video “Famous” — debuted as part of this week’s YouTube Music Award Show — Charli dances around her bedroom texting and watching videos on her iPhone and iPad, before both devices run out of battery, at which point she’s whisked off on a surreal adventure.
Where would the iPhone and iPad be without multi-touch? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Steve Jobs may have had an astonishing ability to predict where tech was going next, but he very nearly missed out on the iPhone and iPad altogether.
That’s because — according to a quote from Jony Ive in today’s freshly-released biography, Becoming Steve Jobs — Apple’s late CEO didn’t see “any value to the idea” of multi-touch: the breakthrough touchscreen technology which makes iOS regulars like “pinch-to-zoom” possible.
And it was left up to Ive and a few other core Apple employees to save it.
Twitter is testing auto-playing video. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Twitter is looking to take a swipe at YouTube’s viral video crown by adding a new feature that will automatically play videos in your timeline.
Starting today, some Twitter users in the U.S. on iPhone and iPad may see videos that start playing, whether you want them to or not. This goes for videos ads and users uploaded videos alike, as the company tests whether people are more likely to sit through a video if the action’s already started.
March Madness is here. Will your bracket survive? Photo: Cult of Mac
It’s that time of year when office work comes to a standstill for weeks thanks to the NCAA’s annual celebration of sweat, leather and nylon nets. The brackets have been set and teams are en route to play the 67 basketball games that will take place over the next few weeks, with Kentucky being the undisputed favorite to walk away with a perfect season.
Thanks to the glories of technology, you can follow all the action this year even if you don’t have a cable subscription. With the right combo of apps, you can get expert insight into your favorite Cinderella team, watch every game — and maybe even pick the perfect bracket.
Dominate March Madness this year with these apps for Mac and iOS:
The Black Eyed Peas co-founder apl.de.ap relies heavily on Apple gear. Photo: Sebastien Camelot/Flickr CC
The Black Eyed Peas’ co-founder apl.de.ap is at the top of his game in the music industry and a total Apple fan. He’s also just beginning to speak out about his journey from a young boy with a visual impairment to his current status as a star vocal coach on The Voice of The Philippines.
“I was born with my eye condition,” apl.de.ap, aka Allan Pineda, told Cult of Mac. “Today, I feel much less handicapped by my legal blindness as technology has helped me a lot…. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely tough at times, and occasionally I still feel challenged by it.”
He lives and breathes by his MacBook Pro, thinks Siri is amazing and messes about with music apps on his phone. He shared with Cult of Mac the story of his early life, the visual problem known as nystagmus, and his reliance on and use of technology and Apple products, which he says have helped him get through “a lot of things that would otherwise leave me helpless.”
The guts of the new MacBook. Photo: Apple Photo: Apple
Apple’s design team went to extreme lengths when redesigning the new MacBook to be more portable than ever. The most drastic move was to toss out the fan and extra ports for a super-tiny logic board.
The new MacBook logic board is two-thirds smaller than any board Apple’s designed before. It’s the highest-density Mac logic board yet, but really, it’s more like a super-iPhone or iPad logic board. Put side by side with the iPhone 6 logic board, the new MacBook logic board is barely twice its size.
Will the iPad rebound in 2015? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Tablet sales are on the decline, and the iPad is “the weakest leak,” according to the latest report from International Data Corporation.
The organization has scaled back its five-year forecast for tablets, expecting market growth to come to a near standstill. With 234.5 million units expected to be sold in 2015, the tablet market will only gain a modest 2.1 percent year-over-year.
Will the iPad rebound in 2015? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The iPad might be the king of tablets when it comes to quality, but it is no longer the king when it comes to sales.
A new report from research firm Strategy Analytics says that the iPad is now being outsold by so-called Brand X tablets: generic tablets sold under any brand name that isn’t Apple or Samsung.
Lost that iPhone again, huh? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Picture this: You’ve lost your iPhone somewhere, but it’s run out of juice and it’s not ringing or vibrating when you call it.
You might think you’re out of luck, but there’s one function you can enable (or disable if you’re into privacy) that will keep track of your iPhone’s last location, even when the battery’s dead.
Apple often uses the word “magical” to describe the iPad. That’s usually dismissed as hyperbole, but watch this magician’s appearance on Ellen, and you might change your mind: He’s able to pull actual objects from his iPad’s screen!
Apple's ad at the Grammy's tonight shows how the iPad uses music. Photo: Apple
Ahead of last night’s 57th annual Grammy Awards, Apple debuted a brand new iPad commercial called “Change,” showing just how easy it is to record music on the iPad.