Apple and Google are very interested in taking over the U.S. education market from Microsoft, but when it comes to capturing marketshare, the Chromebook is teaching Apple an important lesson: Price matters.
For the first time ever, Google has passed Apple in the U.S. education market, according to IDC data obtained by The Financial Times, which shows Google’s Chromebook laptops are more popular now in the K-12 classrooms than the iPad.
This week: Gobble gobble y’aall! Ever wonder what a Thanksgiving meal with Tim Cook might be like? Ok, probably not, but come imagine it with us anyway. Then: why Apple quietly included 4K support in iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2; Amazon is building an ad-supported Netflix streaming competitor; plus stay tuned for our favorite products of the year in the CultCast gifts-we’d-love-to-get gift guide.
Heartily guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.
Our thanks to Fracture for supporting this episode. Fracture prints your photos directly onto glass so they really pop. And they come ready to hang on a wall or sit on your desk and make great gifts. Check them out at Fracture.me and save 15% off any order with code CultCast.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re big fans of GBA4iOS, an app by developer Ryan Testut that allows you to play Gameboy and Gameboy Advance titles on your iPhone or iPad. But pretty soon, it’s possible that GBA4iOS won’t be the only way to play emulated Gameboy games on your iOS device: Nintendo looks like it might be moving into the iOS emulation scene too.
Samsung will snap up the majority of the next generation iPhone A9 chip orders, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will manufacture the chips for the next iPad devices, according to a new report coming out of China.
This differs from the current iPhone 6 devices, where TSMC is reportedly responsible for producing the A8 chips thanks to a deal inked in 2013.
Although it was previously reported that the two companies were locked in a tussle to pick up the Apple orders, Samsung apparently beat out TSMC by quoting Apple lower prices for the 14nm FinFET process production. Samsung has upped its game to secure Apple orders following its posted dismal Q3 earnings, which were down a whopping 60 percent in operating profit from the same period in 2013.
We’re a bit early this week, but wanted to make sure you got all the Cult of Mac goodness in one fine compilation in time for your four-day weekend. Dig in and enjoy a whole slew of gift guides, including those for the women in your life, that special college student, and outdoor adventurers. Plus? Pro tips on surviving that modern ordeal of American culture: Thanksgiving. All that and some of the week’s biggest Apple-related news are ready for you right now. Just download and enjoy!
Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine November 28 Edition, Free on iTunes
Is there anything more punk rock than spending loads of money on in-app purchases for iPad games? If your answer is a resounding “yes, of course there is,” prepare to argue with former Sex Pistols screecher John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon.
Speaking with the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, Lydon claims he spent “10,000 f*cking pounds” (around $15,600) during a two-year app-buying bender on his iPad.
“I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing, and I just wanted to up the ante,” he said, making downloading apps sound like the new version of throwing TVs out of hotel windows. “[L]ike an idiot I didn’t check myself. I’ve been checked now. But there’s a kid in me, see? A bit of my childhood was taken from me and I’m determined to bring it back.”
The iPad is great for making music, but the lack of physical keys can be a drag for keyboardists. That shortcoming prompted Adam Kumpf to hack together a miniature piano attachment for the tablet using nothing more than wooden clothespins, aluminum foil, a few pieces of stiff cardboard and some rubber bands
Total cost? Less than $5.
Despite his creation’s humble DIY origins, Kumpf thinks the idea of iPad add-ons has the potential to take touchscreens to the next level.
“There’s an innate desire that users have to go beyond what the screen can usually do,” the 31-year-old MIT graduate tells Cult of Mac. “I strongly believe that there’s a world of accessories relating to capacitive touchscreens that’s just waiting to be explored.”
Do you want a new iPad Air or iPad mini, but can’t afford $399 or $499 to start? Well, thanks to Sprint, you can now lease an iPad Mini 3 starting at just $17.00 a month, or iPad Air 2 for just $20.
Sony announced its plans to replace your cable box today with its new Playstation Vue cloud-based TV service, that offers live access to 75 of cable’s best channels, without a monthly contract. And it’s coming to iPad too.
The invite-only TV service that’s designed to replace cable will begin to roll out in November to beta testers on the Playstation 4 and PS3, but Sony says it plans to bring Vue to ‘non-Sony devices’ like the iPad, at some point in 2015.
The excellent strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Within, is out now for mobile devices as an entirely new standalone game for $12.99. If you haven’t played an XCOM game yet, this is a fantastic place to jump in – the graphics are stunning and the gameplay is addictive; like Civilization, you’ll battle it out with alien invaders in turn-based, tactical maps that offer some thrilling alien-busting fun.
In the new game from developer Firaxis and publisher 2K Games you’ll manage the XCOM global headquarters and send your troops out to fight, dealing with both battle mechanics as well as resource allocation and research into new weapons and gear for your soldiers. The new game adds a “rogue” human faction, EXALT, that will offer even more battles and maps.
“XCOM: Enemy Unknown for Mobile proved that turn-based strategy games are a natural fit for touch interfaces,” said lead designer, Firaxis Games’ Ananda Gupta in a statement. “In XCOM: Enemy Within, players can return to the XCOM universe, where they’ll encounter an assortment of new content including powerful new weapons, abilities and strategies, and confront a host of dangerous new alien threats.”
Newark International Airport is renounced for its habitually tardy flights, but in an effort to woo (and distract) flyers, United Airlines announced today that it’s planning to give its main terminal an iPad makeover.
The airline is investing $120 million into a upgrade of its main terminal at Newark, which consistently ranks as one of the worst airports in the country, despite being the 14th most busy. To spruce up the terminal, United plans to rollout iPads and other tech flourishes that have become an expectation among fliers now.
We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.
After staying quiet the past few weeks, the Apple rumor mill is erupting like Mt Kilauea with hot rumors about the Apple Watch’s possible launch date, gossip of the iPad mini getting discontinued, and our first iPhone 7 rumors of the year. Step up to the crystal ball and see which of these rumors are the real deal, and which are just pretenders.
iPad users generated a massive 79.9% of North American tablet-based Web traffic over the month of September, according to a new report by Chitika Insights.
This number is down slightly from the 81% figure the iPad represented one year ago, although the iPad actually gained 1.9% points since July 2014 — the largest quarter-over-quarter usage share increase of any tablet brand out there.
A CNN political commentator has hit back at reports that he was using an iPad on air, instead of the Microsoft Surface he was supposed to be using.
The gaffe occurred during the coverage for the 2014 Mid-Term elections, when it was revealed that CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper and others were furiously, err, tapping away at iPads behind the sold wall of Surface Pro 3s that Microsoft had issued the network.
Tapper doesn’t deny that he was using an iPad, but argues that he was just using it for tweeting, while happily using his Microsoft tablet for everything else.
“I liked [the Surface] fine, I just wanted to keep the screen up with exit polls,” Tapper argued on Twitter, branding the online response “idiotic” and a “false meme.”
Apple is expected to announce a huge iPad in early 2015, and a new report details some of the tablet’s specs.
According to the reliable Japanese site Macotakara, the larger iPad (or ‘iPad Pro’, as it’s been dubbed by the press) will feature a 12.2-inch display and improved stereo audio. The device will also reportedly be about as thin as an iPhone.
For the last year or two, Spotify’s iPad app has been sadly, pathetically ignored. Like Twitter for Mac and Tweetbot for iPad, the app has lagged behind the iPhone version so badly that it almost feels like using a different service.
So the use of the word finally is very fitting when describing Spotify’s big update today on the iPad.
NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket exploded at launch above Wallops Island, Virginia, yesterday on route to dropping off supplies at the International Space Station.
A lesser casualty of that explosion? One rocket watcher’s iPad, which was blown to smithereens by the explosion.
But don’t worry. Cupertino did the right thing: They replaced it.
Pity Jony Ive. The poor bastard just can’t catch a break.
Ive and his design team at Apple have just released a pair of exquisite iPads — the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 — and yet are getting grief because the iPads offer nothing “new.”
“New” being things like face-tracking cameras, heart-rate monitors or — god forbid — a stylus. These are the kinds of things that get called “innovation.”
Instead, the new iPads look a lot like last year’s models, and those from every year before. This makes many tech reviewers yawn.
“Largely unnecessary,” says The New York Times’ lukewarm review. “More of the same,” writes Business Insider. “You might think I’d be pretty excited about them — but I’m not,” says Walt Mossberg at Re/Code.
Indeed, instead of adding new hardware features, Ive’s team has even removed them. The mute/lock button is gone on the iPad Air 2. Who removes features?
Well, Jony Ive does.
As was the case with “Scarfgate” following Apple’s September media event, the special guest appearances by developers can often often be the unintentionally comic highlights of Apple keynotes.
That’s exactly what happened at last Thursday’s otherwise fairly predictable iPad event, when two French developers accidentally titled their montage video app presentation “It’s road trip” instead of the intended “Utah road trip.”
Yes, it’s a minor glitch, that does at least show that all demos take place live, but it was amusing nonetheless — particularly the disgusted face exhibited by the typist, who appears to be inwardly kicking himself over screwing up the presentation.
Apple, however, seems to not have been quite so amused by the glitch, since someone at Cupertino has sprinkled some postproduction magic on the Replay demo, meaning that when you watch the keynote on Apple’s website or the Apple TV app, it now reads “Utah road trip” as was intended.
If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to have every episode of The Simpsons ever streamable on your iPhone or iPad, there is no longer any reason to, as a certain yellow-skinned tyke might say, “have a cow.”
You can now stream the complete Simpsons archive over an iOS app, no matter where you are. But there’s a catch.
Apple’s new iPads are now available to pre-order through the Apple Online Store. Prices start at $399 for the iPad mini 3 and $499 for the iPad Air 2, and both will be delivered to your door next week.
Tim Cook sure is picking up a lot of nicknames as of late. At the iPhone 6 keynote he was dubbed the “Zen Master of hardware and software” by U2’s Bono, and at yesterday’s iPad event he was given the codename “Chairman Honeycrisp” as part of the entertaining Stephen Colbert secrecy skit.
Taking the latter nickname as his inspiration, YouTube’s resident Apple songsmith Jonathan Mann (whose work we profiled earlier this week) put together his customary post-keynote song, highlighting the October 16 Apple media event.
The result may not quite hit the highs of Mann’s superb WWDC tribute (a song that is still stuck in my head months later), but it’s worth a watch for the repeating “Intergalactic Chancellor Chairman Honeycrisp” chorus alone.
Check out the video after the jump:
Yesterday, Apple unveiled the iPad mini 3, a slightly updated version of the second-gen iPad mini with Retina display. But even though it’s two generations old at this point, Apple still sells the original iPad mini for $249. That makes it the cheapest iPad yet, albeit for good reason: It packs the same A5 chip and other silicon guts that the iPad 2 did way back in March 2011.
That might actually seem like a good deal for consumers, but it’s turning out to be a nightmare for developers who will likely have to support the iPad mini until 2017.
The iPad Air 2 is the best tablet Apple’s ever made. The iPad mini 3 is good, but it’s also a gigantic ripoff.
Phil Schiller gushed over all the new iPad Air 2 upgrades during today’s keynote, reveling in its improved camera, powerful A8X chip, anti-reflective coating and Touch ID. But when it came to the iPad mini 3, Apple tried to slide quickly past it, and for good reason – there weren’t any upgrades to brag about.
Here are the new iPad mini 3 features: