iPhone - page 182

Bumpies border upon the nonexistent, and that’s why they are better than most other iPhone cases. Not that you could really count Bumpies as a case: They’re little stick-on corners that protect your iPhone’s extremities, and do it almost invisibly.

When it comes to mobile communication chips, Qualcomm has cemented itself as Apple’s go-to supplier.

The San Diego-based semi-conductor company dominates the mobile chips business like Apple dominates tablets, but Intel is ready to steal a large chunk of it, and according to the president of Intel Korea, Lee Hee-sung, it’s only a matter of time before Apple converts.

From books to phones, Apple’s named everything with the same “i” moniker since 1998. With the Apple Watch and Apple Pay, however, it looks like that convention is set to change. 

Cult of Mac reached out to Ken Segall — the former Apple employee who started the tradition with the original iMac — for his surprising reaction to Apple ditching his naming convention for new product categories.

Two things strike me about the camera in the new iPhone 6 models. One is that you can take better pictures; the other is that the iPhone is now a much better place for viewing those pictures.

With their bigger, brighter screens — and iCloud’s new Photo Albums feature (which stores all your photos, ready to view, in iCloud) — the iPhone 6 and its larger sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus, are looking to be the best smartphones yet, from a photographic point of view.

With its latest iOS 8 beta, Apple added a bunch of gorgeous new wallpapers. Some of them appeared on stage during the company’s special event on Tuesday, and others can be seen on the its website decorating the home screens of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

But you don’t need to wait until iOS 8 goes public next week to get your hands on them, because they’re all available to download right here.

With all the livestream trouble Apple had during its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch unveiling, it’s likely you missed at least part of the big reveals.

Cult of Mac is here to help with this 90-second version of the Apple keynote that will show you all the most important highlights.

There’s tons more that Tim Cook and Co. announced but it’s impossible to cram it all into a minute and a half. Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to keep up-to-date with all the latest Apple news, reviews and more.

There are a lot of Apple skeptics out there. CNBC thinks the new iPhone 6 models are nothing special, and dis the Apple Watch because it doesn’t work with Android. Watch Cult of Mac editor and publisher Leander Kahney set them straight in the video above. See also our report card for Tim Cook’s first three years as CEO.

The Apple Watch looks far more elegant than the rectangular smartwatches we’ve already seen from competing companies, but we couldn’t help noticing that some of its straps look a little… familiar.

In fact, several of Apple’s new strap designs look almost identical to straps from luxury watchmaker Ikepod, which not so coincidentally used to be run by Marc Newson, an Australian industrial designer who recently became a part of Apple’s design team.

We love it when Apple live-streams its keynotes so that we can watch along with those lucky enough to have gotten an invite, but yesterday’s was nothing short of a disaster. It was down more than it was up, and it made Tim Cook and Phil Schiller sound like Chinese girls. But if you missed anything, you can now catch up on-demand and uninterrupted.

That like-new iPhone 5s in your pocket? Obsolete. How about that smartwatch or fitness band you’ve been carting around on your wrist for the past six months? Old news. If you whip out your leather wallet and try to pay with a rectangle of plastic — at least at the corporate stores Apple works with — chances are you’ll be looked at like an old fogey.

Apple has, once again, thoroughly owned the mobile category, expanding the ways we communicate, live and transact business in our daily lives.

This domination of the smartphone, smartwatch and mobile payment categories, as revealed in today’s big iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event, has us ready to hand over another load of cash to the Apple mothership, and gladly. As usual, there were some surprises — some awesome and some not so much — but here are the main takeaways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gwoLjYIeIw

Available in many major cities, Zipcar is this wonderful service that allows you to rent a car by the hour with your smartphone. In my neighborhood, there are half-a-dozen Zipcars parked, just waiting to be scooped up for a quick Ikea run or jaunt to the grocery store. It makes owning a car largely superfluous, at least if you live in a city with good public transportation.

But even though I live in an area with a lot of Zipcars, it’s still hard to find one that is unused on a busy Saturday or Sunday afternoon. But now Verizon has a plan on how to compete with Zipcar, and it’s a doozy: they’re going to allow anyone turn their own car into a Zipcar, rentable by iPhone or other smartphones.

Just when you thought you’d heard everything, allow me to introduce the “Selfie Brush.”

There have been plenty of wacky phone cases over the iPhone’s lifespan, but until now the idea of crossing an iPhone with a hairbrush remained the stuff of mad scientists. Until now.

Appearing shortly before the long-awaited iPhone 6 announcement, the Selfie Brush iPhone case is designed to (no surprise here!) helps its users take better selfies by tidying themselves up beforehand for “professional results.”

We’re mere hours away from Apple’s September 9th special media event at The Flint Center, and as expected, the company has added an “Apple Events” channel for those planning to watch on the Apple TV.

Fans without an Apple TV can watch a livestream of the event on Apple’s website, provided they are running Safari 5.1.10 or later on OS X 16.6.8 or later.

The event kicks off at 10 a.m. Pacific today, and we expect to see the public unveiling of both the iPhone 6 and iWatch.

Cult of Mac will be covering the event live from the Flint Center, so stay tuned for our moment-by-moment coverage. It’s going to be a blast!

Martin Hajek has developed a recipe of sorts for crafting stunning 3-D renderings of future Apple products that get shared around the Web and even used in advertisements while the world awaits the Cupertino company’s big reveal.

“My inspiration comes from real-life Apple products, combined with a good dose of internet rumors, a dash of common sense and imagination sprinkled on top,” the 39-year-old told Cult of Mac. “What I do is quite simply ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ — with the giants in question being Jony Ive and his design team.”

Apple’s secrecy surrounding its upcoming products is legendary (notwithstanding one memorable breach by the Pentagon). Everyone wants to know what insanely great products Apple has up its sleeve, so the company goes to great lengths to protect its secrets. Workers prepping for today’s big event have had their phone cameras plugged with tamperproof tape so they can’t leak anything spied before Tim Cook takes the stage.

Apple’s most-anticipated — and likely most-eventful — product introduction since the iPad is set for later this morning. It will undoubtedly be Tim Cook’s biggest moment yet as Apple’s CEO, with the company reportedly ready to unveil new products from what has been described as its most exciting product pipeline in a quarter century.

Anticipation among the Apple faithful couldn’t be any higher. Endless speculation and massive expectations about finally laying eyes on the long-awaited iWatch got us thinking about other memorable announcements from Apple’s 37-year history.

While you wait for this morning’s 10 a.m. liveblog from Apple’s big event, relive some of Cupertino’s past glories. Here are our picks for the 10 biggest Apple announcements of all time.

Although it has been widely reported that the 5.5-inch iPhone won’t come out until months after the 4.7-inch model, both sizes are now expected to ship on the same day later this month.

Trusting the Internet can be one of the silliest things you can do, especially when it comes to private matters. While what you do within the comfort of your own circle deserves to stay within its parameters, sometimes things don’t play that way.

Some celebrities found that out the hard way this week when their “personal” photos were hacked from their iCloud accounts and leaked online. With the world frantically sharing the photos left and right, this has turned all eyes toward Apple and the security of its cloud operation.

Apple fans hoping to get elevated with Bono and The Edge at the Flint Center will be disappointed to hear the band’s spokespeople have squashed the rumor that U2 will play at the iPhone 6 event.

Rumors began bubbling on the internet this week that U2 would release its album by preloading it on the iPhone 6. Reports also claimed that Apple’s mysterious white box outside the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino is really a giant soundstage for U2 to play on.

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While China is where a lot of Apple’s focus has been in terms of expanding into new territories, India is also a fast developing smartphone market where the Apple brand is doing very well.

According to a new report, Apple has sold more than 1 million iPhones in India since the start of the current financial year — representing a significant milestone for a company that wasn’t considered to be a serious contender in the South Asian market until relatively recently.

Although the sales data was not released, research agencies put the figure at 1.02 million between October 2013 and August 2014, with a total of 1.1 million units projected by the time the fiscal year ends on September 30.

I’ll admit it — I’ve got a thing for these waxed canvas and leather bags from Waterfield. I’ve ended up using the impeccably designed Staad backpack and the classy Nintendo 3DS case long after my reviews of them were published. These bags and cases from the San Francisco design collective are warm, inviting and just get better with age and use.

Let’s face it, though: Sometimes you only want to carry your laptop and a couple of accessories, and that’s it. Waterfield’s latest design, the MacBook Outback Solo, is a minimalist sleeve made of the same strong canvas material and rich, thick, buttery-smooth leather as the other bags in the line. It can be paired with a carrying strap that turns the sleeve into a messenger bag. While our very own Charlie Sorrel called the iPad version of this bag a man-purse, I’m thinking of this more as a shoulder-saving device — the fewer things I end up having to carry, the better.

This little sleeve is perfect for exactly that.

Blame for the flood of celebrity nude photos that hit the Internet has been rotating from the pervy hackers that ripped the pics, to Apple, to the creator of iBrute, but while the FBI and Apple continue to investigate the source of the leak, there’s one tool that has gone unmentioned: the police forensic tool that made it all possible.

One of the key elements behind the iCloud nudes leak is a piece of software created by Elcomsoft that allows attackers to impersonate a target’s iPhone and download its entire iCloud backup, and you don’t even have to be a cop to get it.

Banksy, the U.K. street artist who doesn’t shy from making commentary on social and technology issues with his graffiti street art, published a new sketch with a terrifying reminder that your iPhone has basically become a parasitic extension.

In a separate piece of graffiti art posted on Twitter, Banksy had a subtle message against corporations like Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola, and others.

Take a look:

While we don’t yet know what kind of battery life the iPhone 6 is going to have, it’s always good to have a way of charging your smartphone when you’re out and about.

With that in mind, the city of Seoul in South Korea has announced that it is building a series of outdoor recharging ports along manmade stream, the Cheonggyecheon, in the city’s downtown region. Rather than drawing from the city’s regular power grid, the chargers will instead draw their current from various hydroelectric turbines which are embedded in the stream itself.