Filling up your car with gasoline is about to get a lot quicker, now that the world’s biggest oil company is finally adding Apple Pay to its pumps.
Starting today, ExxonMobil is activating Apple Pay at more than 6,000 gas stations across the U.S., allowing customers to buy gas or a car wash without having to bust out their wallets.
iPhone security has dominated the news for the past couple of weeks, so it’s understandable if you’re worrying about your own iPhone.
Have no fear, though: here are some handy tips to help keep your iPhone secure, from both hackers and the FBI.
Today’s video will walk you through 5 easy-to-do tips that will make your iPhone more secure.
The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to overturn a ruling protecting Apple from unlocking the iPhone at the center of a New York drug case. The recent ruling from a New York magistrate judge stated that the government can’t compel Apple to unlock an iPhone involved in a criminal investigation, using the All Writs Act.
So the decision must have been wrong, of course!
The development team at DoBox wants to make your iPad even more useful. This wireless box will let you connect a mouse, a wired keyboard, or even a printer to your iOS device (or Mac) and let you turn your iPad into even more of a productivity workhorse.
Check out the video below.
Less than a week after dropping a big batch of new software on developers and public testers, Apple is back with a sixth beta build of iOS 9.3 as well as new betas for watchOS, tvOS, and OS X El Capitan.
The software updates bring a host of new features to developers and public testers the iPhone like NightShift mode, folders on Apple TV, multiple Apple Watch pairings on one iPhone, improved Apple News and Apple Music apps, and some great education features for iPad.
Here’s a preview of some of the new goodies:
Making it sound like the 2016 version of a souped-up getaway car, NYPD counter-terrorism chief John Miller described iOS as the perfect tool for “kidnappers, robbers and murderers” in a recent interview — all due to its uncrackable privacy policy.
“You are actually providing aid to [felons] who have actually been recorded on the telephones in Riker’s Island telling their compatriots on the outside, ‘You gotta get iOS 8. It’s a gift from God,’ — and that’s a quote — ‘because the cops can’t crack it,’” he said — referring to Apple’s current privacy standoff with the FBI.
A strange iOS glitch has some iPhone and iPad users complaining after they received undeletable emails dated January 1, 1970.
The emails in question are blank, with no subject or content — which means that sadly we’re not in line for scalper messages about tickets to the farewell concert of Diana Ross and The Supremes (which took place that month), or reminders about meetings we’re very, very late to.
There’s no shortage of possible repercussions to Apple’s current standoff with the FBI, regarding whether or not the company should create a backdoor to help unlock iPhones involved with potential terrorist or criminal cases.
But while Apple (and others) have argued that this represents a damaging blow against privacy, a recently-filed amacus brief in support of Apple by former secure technology company Lavabit has a more direct example of how the FBI’s demands may hurt America: by driving tech companies offshore to avoid having their reputations damaged.
France’s lower house of parliament has passed an amendment which could see Apple charged heavy fines, and even handed out jail time, if it fails to hand over encrypted data as part of government investigations.
The amendment affects both tech and telecoms companies. The punishment could reach up to €350,000 ($385,000) and five years in jail, although a proposed amendment asking the French government to hand out fines of €1 million was rejected.
Apple is planning to import and sell refurbished iPhones in India as a way of getting its handsets into more people’s hands.
“An application from Apple regarding import of certified pre-owned iPhones for sale in India and manufacturing certified pre-owned iPhones for sale in India has been received in the ministry of environment and forests,” telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.
The FBI is unlikely to give up trying to pry its way into iPhones even if it loses the current standoff with Apple over encryption, says security expert Bruce Schneier.
Schneier, who is one of the leading experts on modern cryptography, says it is “clear that the San Bernardino case was preselected as a legal precedent case” by the bureau — despite the fact that FBI Director James Comey has claimed this is not the case (only to later contradict himself.)
iPhone sales may be set to level off this year, according to Tim Cook, but don’t think that Apple handsets are entering an irreversible decline.
According to the latest forecast from analysts at IDC, in their Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, iPhone growth should return as soon as 2017 — thanks to Apple’s trade-in programs and expansion into new markets outside the United States.
A joke in Zoolander 2 pokes fun at the ’90s craze for tiny cellphones, something which today seems as retro as flannel shirts and Pulp Fiction posters in your dorm room.
With the upcoming iPhone 7, Apple is apparently showing us the next iteration of that ideal by bringing us a smartphone so thin — just 6.1 mm thick — that even Victoria’s Secret models would advise it to eat a sandwich.
But are super-slim iPhones what users really want, or have Jony Ive and Apple’s design team taken things too far?
Although most of the attention on Apple’s privacy standoff with the government has so far focused on the United States, the U.S. isn’t the only place where Apple’s fighting with the authorities over iPhone encryption.
In France, politician Yann Galut, a member of the country’s Socialist Party, has submitted an amendment to a bill designed to strengthen the French government’s fight against terror — by arguing that Apple should pay €1 million per smartphone if it does not “promptly” agree to unlock devices when asked to by law enforcement.
Apple filed an appeal late on Tuesday, protesting the government’s order that it create software to help the FBI to hack an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the mass-shooting of 14 people in San Bernardino.
The appeal was filed just before 11pm PST, and lists formal objections to Judge Sheri Pym’s order — stating that Apple is making the appeal out of what the company calls,”an abundance of caution.”
Four years ago Apple hit the milestone of selling more iPhones per day than babies born per day. Now, four years later, we wanted to revisit those statistics since iPhone sales have grown quite significantly since then. It turns out, with current sales numbers, Apple sells nearly two iPhones for every baby born.
The math works out like this: Apple sold a record total of 231.4 million iPhones in 2015. Divide that number by 365 days in a year to get 633,963 iPhones sold every single day. The UN estimates that there are 360,000 babies born every day across the world. So technically, that comes out to 1.76 iPhones for every one baby.
Swiss freeskier Nicolas Vuignier blew our minds with his incredible slinging iPhone contraption that creates killer bullet-time videos. Now he’s unleashing his creation called the Centriphone to the public and it’s surprisingly simple and super cheap to make.
Vuignier detailed the making of the Centriphone in a new video that runs through the seven different prototypes he tested for weeks before finally coming up with the perfect device that flies around its wielder while capturing jaw-dropping 360 degree video.
The best part of the Centriphone is Vuignier made it an open source project so now anyone can 3D print it at home. Even if you don’t own a 3D printer you can still buy one for just $39.
Here’s how to make your own:
With Apple not yet willing to accept court orders to unlock the iPhone at the center of the San Bernardino shooing case, legal experts are weighing in on what penalties the company (and, conceivably, Tim Cook) may face if the parties involved refuse to do so.
The answer? Anything from some pretty big fines to jail-time for Apple’s CEO.
Apple’s been getting a lot of flack for its refusal to create a “GovtOS” from the FBI and Department of Justice. Tim Cook and company have also garnered plenty of support for their forceful stance from other tech companies as well as the rank and file Apple consumer.
Check out this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine to figure out why Apple refuses to create GovtOS, how to get its latest and greatest software, find the best iPhone and iPad password managers around, check out a virtual tour of Tim Cook’s office, and see how the beloved iPod shuffle has been reborn for the age of Spotify.
Here are the week’s top stories.
Apple and the FBI are locked in a bitter legal battle over San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone 5c that was recovered at the terrorist event, but according to San Bernardino’s chief of police we’re all overlooking one very important issue: there might not be any useable intelligence on it.
After Samsung and LG announced exciting new iPhone rivals at Mobile World Congress this week, we’ve had heated debates behind the scenes here over whether Apple’s smartphone can still compete against the big guns in an increasingly competitive smartphone market.
Without features like wireless charging, water-resistance, and expandable storage, will it be harder for Apple to reverse slowing iPhone growth? Or are these things just gimmicks that the iPhone doesn’t need, and will have been forgotten just a few years down the line?
Join in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we take our spat public and ask you to wade in!
This is the first installment in a series of memoirs on the intersection of technology and daily life.
When my fraternity brother Grant and I began a drive from Arkansas to Los Angeles to visit friends on the West Coast, I believed it would be the greatest road trip of my life.
I was wrong.
Apple Pay is likely to launch in France by the end of 2016, according to a new report — claiming that it will be a gradual rollout over the course of several months.
There’s no exact date cited, but it is quite possible that it will take place by September, before Apple ships the iPhone 7.
Color us somewhat unsurprised, but all five remaining GOP presidential candidates are siding with the FBI over Apple in the ongoing disagreement over whether Apple should help hack the iPhone of one of the dead San Bernardino shooters — thereby setting a potential precedent regarding future user security.
The FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into a terrorist’s iPhone has done the seemingly impossible by getting Microsoft, Google and Apple all on the same team.
Many of the country’s top tech firms have revealed that they will file friend-of-the court briefs in defense of Apple’s position that no company should be compelled by the government to break its own security and thus put the public safety of millions of users at risk.