Coming off a monster financial quarter, things are pretty good in Cupertino right now. But if Tim Cook didn’t have enough to smile about over his morning coffee, here’s one more: Apple has overtaken U.S. sales of Android devices for the first time since 2012.
According to figures pulled by market research team Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the holiday quarter was a massive one for Apple as far as market share goes — with iOS devices picking up 47.7 percent of sales, compared to Android’s 47.6 percent.
The iPhone's processor is about to get supercharged. Photo: iFixit
ARM holdings, the company behind the mobile processor architecture that powers the iPhone and iPad, unveiled its next generation processor blueprints today that it says will increase performance three fold compared to its current designs.
The new Cortex-A72 chips aimed at smartphone and tablets will make their debut next year — just in time for the iPhone 7 — and also use 75% less power while maintaining the same level of performance as today’s ARM processors, paving the way for thinner, more powerful iPhones in the future.
Make the Notification Center your own with widgets. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Swipe down from the top of your iPhone (or iPad) screen and you’ll see the new iOS 8 Notification Center. It’s got two sections — Notifications on the right and Today on the left. Tap on the Today button and you’ll see all the new widgets arrayed in their default order.
You can add your calendar, weather, stocks and any one of hundreds of third-party app that has widget support.
The great thing is that you’re not stuck with the default order, or even the default apps — this part of Notification Center is totally customizable. Here’s how to make it your own.
iPhones are expensive, and leaving your new, shiny iPhone 6 or 6 Plus without a case on is akin to driving a car without insurance. Why risk it?
In today’s video, I run down my five favorite cases for Apple’s current-generation iPhones, selecting the ones that will keep your phone both safe and stylish at the same time.
Do you really need to carry all of these photos around with you? Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
We all need to get rid of photos from our iPhones from time to time, and iOS 8 makes it pretty simple to select a single or group of photos and delete. Deleting a photo at a time is all well and good, as is tapping a bunch of them and then deleting. But what if you want to just seriously delete a whole ton of them at once?
There’s a better way to bulk delete photos from your iPhone (or iPad), and it takes a lot of the tapping out of the process. Here’s how to do it.
This Batmobile is the one every iPhone owner deserves. Photo: Soap Studio
I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you don’t even like Batman. This beautiful, remote-controlled, iPhone-compatible Batmobile? It’s the toy that Gotham — hell, everybody! — deserves.
The iPhone has gotten considerably better over the years, but which iPhone is the loudest?
iClarified ran the numbers in a recent video, in which a decibel meter was placed beneath the speaker of every Apple handset so far while they played sound at maximum volume.
Apple's patent cover a Wikipad GameVice-style accessory capable of attaching to your iOS device. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
What is it with Apple and the gaming-related patents as of late?
Just weeks after the publishing of an Apple patent showing a concealed gaming joystick capable of being hidden in future iPhones, today the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has revealed another Apple invention related to a snap-on gaming controller for iOS devices.
As with the joystick patent, the idea here is to allow gamers to fully capitalize on the present golden age of iOS gaming, without having to block parts of the screen using their fingers for multitouch controls.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a beautiful iPhone that has zero GB of storage left. Especially when you see that a lot of room is actually taken up by a mysterious “other” section that just seems to grow bigger over time.
In today’s handy video, I’m going to show you a few quick methods to clear your phone of unnecessary files, giving you more room for favorite albums, pictures and apps.
Apple acquired TestFlight maker Burtsly last year and quickly added it to iOS in an effort to improve the iOS beta testing experience for both developers and testers. Now Apple plans to close the independent site TestFlightapp.com to Android users and everyone else, forcing iPhone and iPad owners to only test apps through the official TestFlight iOS app.
The iPhone 6 dominated 2014. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple enjoyed historic sales this holiday season, and while the company won’t reveal its official earnings until January 27th, based on the latest smartphone activation report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Apple dominated the holiday shopping season and accounted for 50% of all smartphone activations in Q4 2014.
Tim Cook is likely to announce another record breaking quarter as Apple nearly doubled the number of activations of its closest competitor Samsung, which accounted for a modest 26% of the market.
Shifts is a scheduling app for time card punchers. Photo: Shifts
Not all of us work 9 to 5’s. My wife, for example, works all sorts of shifts, working around her school schedule: 8:30 – 5:30 one day, then 1:30 to 9:30 the next. And as a guy who spends the better part of each day glued to a computer just two rooms away from his bed, it can be pretty hard to keep track just when she’s working, and when I can next expect to see her.
Shifts is an app that solves all that. A calendar app specifically designed for people who either work retail jobs, or otherwise have constantly shifting work schedules, it’s an ingenious little app that makes managing your weekly shifts -— and keeping your partner informed of them — a snap.
Apple has agreed to accept the Chinese government’s demands to run network safety evaluations on all Apple products before they can be imported into the country.
Tim Cook met with the country’s Internet and Information office last December to discuss Apple’s plans in China, and has since consented to the government’s demands that they be allowed screen products for the fabled NSA backdoor. According to a spokesperson who was also present at the meeting, Cook has assured Chinese officials that Apple will fully cooperate with the governments wishes to have products inspected for security concerns.
How many iPhone users are in your state? Photo: Jim Merithew
Do you think your state has a lot of iPhone users? You might be surprised to learn that you’re right – if you live in Alaska, Montana, or Vermont.
This surprising result comes from a survey conducted by mobile advertising firm Chitika, who wanted to quantify the level of iPhone usage on a state-by-state basis.
While the data doesn’t show much correlation with geographic or raw population figures, the survey did figure out that the three states had the highest percentage of iPhone users, with 65, 60 and 59 percent respectively.
You can now use WhatsApp on your Mac, but there's a catch. Photo: Cult of Mac
WhatsApp is a great alternative to iMessage, except in one regard: iMessage lets you send messages from your Mac. That means if you hate tapping in text messages on a touchscreen, you can use your keyboard instead.
But that’s changed. The long-awaited ability to use WhatsApp on your Mac has finally arrived. But there’s a caveat: It only works if you don’t have an iPhone.
There's an iPhone storage crunch coming. Chart: I Love IceCream
Apple’s refusal to upgrade the cheapest iPhone to 16GB could be leading to a crisis, and these stats just might prove it.
When the iPhone 6 came out, Apple (un)pleasantly surprised everyone by only upgrading two of the three storage options: While the baseline iPhone 6 stayed at a meager 16GB of storage, the middle and high-end storage options were upgraded to 64GB and 128GB respectively.
Chrome's fancy new look on iOS. Screenshots: Google
Google’s Material Design makeover isn’t just for those running the latest version of Android; the search giant is also bringing it to its slew of popular iOS apps as well. Chrome is the latest to get the fancy redesign, and it comes with Handoff support and further improvements for iOS 8.
A blind person gets assistance from a sighted volunteer to check the expiration date on milk. Photo: Be My Eyes
Karen Koch Rasmussen navigates life just fine without sight. Developing systems to identify the tangibles in life come to her naturally, from how to stock her canned goods to labeling her music collection so she can listen to which ever genre strikes her.
She even has a strategy for when there’s a glitch in her systems, like when a canned item goes in the wrong place. If she grabs tomatoes instead of beans, she may adjust her recipe and roll with the inconvenience.
So when an iPhone app to assist the blind came into her life, thus offering a solution to those occasional challenges, Rasmussen, 26, didn’t quite know how to use a set of eyes that were easily at her disposal.
“I’ve been blind since birth so you learn to get along without seeing,” said Rasmussen, a graduate student in political science in Aarhus, Denmark. “I’m not use to having the opportunity so I would forget there is a solution.”
The iPhone recently celebrated its eighth birthday, and what better way to mark the occasion than with a mesmerizing animated GIF — showing the evolution of Apple’s mobile handset from the revolutionary but (now) small and slightly bulky device Steve Jobs unveiled in 2007, to the landmark iPhone 6 which racked up more than 10 million sales in its first weekend alone?
If you’re a long-time iPhone fan, or a relatively new user, it’s an astounding glimpse at just how far we’ve come in just a handful of iPhone iterations. To paraphrase The Simpsons, it’s hypnotic… almost like watching a lava lamp.
White Album turns your iPhone into a disposable camera. Photo: HypeBeast Photo: HypeBeast
I think we can all agree that the iPhone and other smartphone cameras have been a boon for photography. For the first time in history, the vast majority of people have an incredibly powerful camera in their pockets at all time. Because of this, our age will be the most well-documented age in history. And that’s awesome. But some critics claim that because we can take as many pictures as we want now, we give a lot less thought to what they shoot, and how, than they did when they had to measure out each and every shot.
That’s why I love this new app for iOS, White Album. It basically makes a disposable camera out of your iPhone. But don’t worry, you don’t have to throw your iPhone away when you stop using the app.
Up in flames: Is this what Apple will look like by the end of 2015? Photo: GDS-Productions/Flickr
You know that scene in a horror movie where everything seems to be good, but things are just a bit too quiet?
Well, according to analyst Abhey Lamba of Mizuho Securities, Apple is there right now. With the company coming off its most profitable iPhone launch ever, exciting new devices on the horizon and a stock price that recently hit an all-time high, what else is there for the self-respecting analyst to do but predict that doom is right around the corner?
What is the metaphorical monster ready to leap out of a cupboard and savage Apple to bloody death, so soon after it hits its glorious peak? Why, the Apple Watch of course.
According to a new patent application published today, Apple may be investigating the possibility of building in a miniature joystick inside the Home button of future iOS devices.
A brilliant white lightning bolt strikes the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In Venice, Italy, a whale splashes joyfully through a street system made up of canals. In New York, an elephant is lifted high into the sky by a mass of colored helium balloons.
These may sound like the most fanciful of cheese dreams, but they are, in fact, the work of a fantastic artist double-act: German-born Robert Jahns and his iPhone.
Using his iPhone to assemble his surreal masterpieces, and then posting the resulting pictures to Instagram under the name nois7, Jahns is taking the art world by storm. And like many contemporary artists, he couldn’t have done it without his trusty Apple device.
BlackBerry isn’t quite dead yet, but don’t tell that to the person running their Twitter account.
The classic BlackBerry keyboard is great for pounding out 140-character tweets, yet whoever is tweeting from @BlackBerry was spotted using an iPhone to implore the brand’s few faithful remaining fans to keep up with the BlackBerry conversation on Twitter.
GoPro shares have dropped 42 percent since hitting an all-time high in October. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac
Shares of GoPro stock plummeted as much as 15% this afternoon after it was announced that Apple was awarded a patent that could put the wearable camera company in serious trouble.
Apple was granted a series of 34 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today relating to a camera system that can be mounted to helmets and scuba masks and controlled remotely. That patent specifically mentions weaknesses in GoPro’s system, which has sent investors worrying that Apple is aiming to crush the sports camera giant.