Andy Rooney once quipped that anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
With that sentiment in mind, a new Kickstarter campaign is in the process of raising funds for a fantastic project: a fully reversible, nigh-unbreakable USB Lightning charging cord for your iPhone. Check out the video after the jump.
Even with the recent improvements to iOS 8’s handling of photos you take with your iPhone, it’s still kind of a pain in the butt to sort through and delete the ones you don’t want to keep.
The developers behind Flic, a fantastic new photo app, decided they’d had enough and built a better app. This one works a lot like Tinder, a dating app that uses a swipe to sort potential dates.
If you’ve ever had to sort through a ton of photos on your iPhone, you’re going to love Flic. Getting through all your photos is speedy and efficient.
“I just went on my honeymoon,” developer Brandon Evans told Cult of Mac, “and I think I had 400 pictures to go through. It only took me, like two minutes to go through using Flic.”
Naturally, you hope your new iPhone will stay in mint condition until you’re ready to upgrade or resell. But the fact is, if you cringe at the possibility of a $200 repair bill for a broken screen, it’s time to think about getting an extended warranty.
You’ve got several options: AppleCare+ is available for purchase with new hardware, and mobile carriers and third-party warranty providers sell plans with different perks. You should also check out your personal insurance provider if you’ve got one. Some homeowner’s and renter’s policies offer protection plans for personal belongings, and you might already be covered. The deductibles tend to be steep, but it’s still worth giving your insurer a call to know your options.
Deciding on a warranty can be tricky, so we’ve done the hard work for you.
Popcorn Time, the service that allows users to stream movie torrents, today makes its debut on iOS. It’s available only to jailbroken devices — there’s no way Apple would have approved it for the App Store — and it can be obtained through Cydia via a dedicated Popcorn Time repository.
An iPhone 6 bend test left a German tech magazine with bigger worries than a needlessly broken smartphone: The publication was reportedly banned from future Apple events and told it would no longer receive the Cupertino company’s latest products for review.
Former Apple CEO John Sculley has launched a new lineup of budget smartphones in the Middle East — although he admits Steve Jobs would like not be enamoured with them.
“Steve being Steve would say, you can do alot better,” he told Gulf Business.
The range includes various animal-themed devices, including the Octopus S520, the Falcon S451, Hornbill S551, Wolverine S501, and Obi F240. They are being launched by India’s Obi Mobile, a budget smartphone brand, which John Sculley co-founded.
The ability to add widgets to your Notifications dock is easily one of iOS 8’s most useful additions. The new functionality puts some of your favorite apps’ features right at your fingertips.
Only a limited number of apps offer widgets currently, but with developers hard at work you can be sure many more are on the way. In today’s Cult of Mac video, we show you how to install widgets in iOS 8 so you can get started enjoying what’s available now.
In this instructional video, we also give you a look at some of our personal favorites. See how widgets can make managing your to-do list, journaling and checking out your favorite teams’ sports scores easier than ever.
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The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus may have been available to buy for a week now in the U.S. and other primary markets, but it’s still a hot enough ticket that it’s causing major lines this weekend, as eager shoppers try to grab Apple’s next-gen handsets.
In various cities around the world, a constant queue could be seen for much of the weekend, with many customers having to wait well over an hour.
With Bendgate causing some worrywarts to question the structural integrity of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Consumer Reports set out to answer the question: “How much force does it take for a phone to bend — and not bend back?”
The independent consumer-testing outfit took six smartphones — including both iPhone 6 models and an iPhone 5s — into the lab and subjected them to experiments using an Instron compression testing machine. The results are surprising.
Here’s what they found (along with a video showing Consumer Reports’ torture testing).
Bendgate is the latest in a long line of minor Apple problems that get blown out of proportion by the Internet’s echo chamber and the media jackals that inevitably swoop in and howl about the latest “crisis.”
The same sort of over-the-top backlash happened with the iPhone 4’s reception issue (Antennagate) and the iPad’s trickle-charge feature (Batterygate). It’s a familiar cycle: Apple’s fantastic new device captures the world’s attention, a glitch arises and suddenly the world is coming to an end — at least until it’s not.
“Apple’s ability to trigger consumer demand is probably without rival across the globe — that’s no small feat,” says Larry Barton, a pioneer in corporate crisis management who studies the causes of and responses to incidents like these. “Their core, loyal customer has proven to be forgiving across several minor incidents, and Bendgate is just that — a relatively minor snafu that’s not uncommon with a first-generation design.”
Although the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus chalked up record-breaking sales, Apple’s week has been far from a celebration. A YouTube video showing the iPhone 6 Plus bending under seemingly normal amounts of pressure sent the Internet to crazyville, and Bendgate was born.
Watch Cult of Mac’s news roundup to see the latest regarding the Bendgate frenzy, why some iPads are being banned, and how one person surprised the world with her iPhone 6 impressions more than others.
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Mesmerizing slow-motion videos have flooded the Internet in the last few days, showcasing the kind of amazing footage you rarely see outside a movie theater or Blu-ray disc.
What opened the floodgates? The iPhone 6. The device’s camera and software allows for a mind-boggling 240 frames-per-second shooting rate, letting videographers of all abilities try their hands at slowing down the action and making an impact.
Slow motion has long been used in your favorite films to convey the intensity of a moment (think The Matrix or anything by John Woo), but this is the first time the average consumer has this kind of stunning tech in their hands.
With more than 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units sold already, we’ll undoubtedly get slammed with even more beautiful slow-motion videos in the weeks and months to come. Here are a bunch we’ve found that show off the startling capabilities of the iPhone 6 while also proving that, seriously, people will film anything.
The iPhone 6’s sleek design is undeniably sexy, but the big glass display and those sexy curved edges can cause problems if you leave your phone sitting on a smooth surface.
If you’re not careful, you could find your iPhone in pieces on the floor.
President Obama, sadly, does not have an iPhone 6. But he totally wants one, leading him to openly lust after Apple’s newest handset in a meeting Tuesday at the United Nations.
Bend-Gate is slowly taking over the Internet this morning as Apple fans discover the startling fact that when pressure is applied to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus frame, it bends – just like every other smartphone ever made of metal.
The bending problem has been reported by a number of iPhone 6 owners who pocketed their big iPhone 6 only to retrieve it later with a significant curve in the frame. Some sites are deeming the new iPhones “more fragile than expected,” but the truth is we’ve seen this problem almost every year.
In fact, last year ran we an article titled “iPhone 5s Bending in People’s Pockets.” Any phone made of metal is still subject to the laws of physics, but to reiterate that this isn’t exactly a problem exclusive to the iPhone 6, here’s a look at other Android and Apple phones that have bending problems.
My first impression? My goodness, this is the small one?
The iPhone 6 is a big step up. It makes older iPhones look small. Ridiculously small. Even after a few days, my old iPhone 5s feels positively Lilliputian. The 6 dwarfs the 5s, which felt big and expansive at the time. Now it looks like a little dolls’ phone.
I’ve been really digging the 6. It’s a big bright slab of glass and metal. It feels impossibly thin, almost like an oversize credit card in your hand. But it’s solid and stiff — it’s not going to snap in my back pocket if I sit on it.
The 6 is not a gob-smacker like the 6 Plus, which stops people in the street. But it’s more manageable, especially with one hand.
I’m a big fan. I like it a lot, except for one design flaw that’s been driving me crazy.
While the rest of us waited to get an iPhone 6 over launch weekend, an elite few were anticipating an exclusive variant: a custom 24-karat gold version of Apple’s next-generation handset.
The waiting list of exclusive customers includes music industry heavy hitters, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., Russian oligarchs and practically every royal family member in the United Arab Emirates — people for whom nothing short of a gold iPhone 6 is acceptable.
“Believe you me, we have a lot of very big-name clients, but we don’t like to publicly reveal their names,” says creator Amjad Ali. “As a British company, we just don’t think it’s the polite thing to do.”
It looks like Apple manufacturer Foxconn may not be entirely ready to displace its human workforce in favor of robots just yet.
According to a new report coming out of the Taiwanese media, Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou is disappointed by the company’s current generation of so-called “Foxbots,” which supposedly fell short of expectations in terms of both proficiency and flexibility.
We just saw how incredibly far the iPhone’s display has come in seven short years. But if you think that’s impressive, check out how far the actual speed of the iPhone has come from the iPhone 2G to iPhone 6 Plus.
SAN FRANCISCO — Since Apple won’t be selling the iPhone 6 in China for some time, early buyers of the smartphone have an opportunity to make a quick profit by reselling the hot handset on the gray market.
The first 50 people in line at Apple’s San Francisco store this morning appeared to be iPhone resellers — a pattern that seems to be have been repeated worldwide on the first day of iPhone 6 sales.
You can use iCloud or iTunes to transfer your entire mobile system from your old iPhone to your new one. It’s a clumsy, one-way process, though, and can be time consuming.
The folks over at DigiDNA iMazing (formerly DiskAid) have a secure solution that works a bit differently, giving you complete control over how you backup and restore your data, letting you create a complete snapshot of your iPhone before you head to upgrade to iOS 8 or a new iPhone 6.
Here’s how.
iOS 8 finally gives iPhone users a feature Android owners have long loved: third-party keyboards.
It’s a pretty familiar feature, but unleashing developers so they can create new keyboards for the iPhone (and iPad) is huge — and users being able to enjoy them all is even better.
In today’s Cult of Mac video, we show you how to install third-party keyboards in iOS 8 and introduce you to some of our favorite available custom keyboards. You’ll find out how to wipe to type your messages, give your keyboards themes and much more with this instructional video.
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UPDATED: We got some comments from Dave Rahimi in Sydney. Blogger Dave Rahimi figured out a clever way to be the first person in the world to buy an iPhone 6.
Rahimi and his girlfriend, Jasmine Juan, flew thousands of miles from California to Sydney, Australia, to purchase the first two iPhone 6s to go on sale worldwide.
The couple just emerged from the Apple Store in Sydney, which was mobbed by a monster crowd of about 2,500 people. Some had camped outside the store for more than a week.
But Rahimi and Juan avoided the crowds and more or less walked right into the store.
Here’s how they did it.
For a certain subset of Apple fans, the only thing more exciting than Cupertino unleashing a new device upon the world is the box they choose to unleash it in. Apple is famous for its sexy, minimalist packaging design, and when the Apple Watch hits the market in 2015, we are expecting it to come in a box worthy of its luxury watch status.
Of course, what that box will actually look like is anyone’s guess. But Evelio Mattos of Design Packaging has released a stunning Apple Watch concept that isn’t just sexy, but has a killer hidden feature: the box doubles as an iPhone dock!
After months of waiting, iOS 8 has finally been released for everyone to download and enjoy. The next generation for Apple’s mobile operating system brings plenty of new features. With an upgraded camera app, a new and intuitive health app and much more, this is sure to be an update you won’t want to forego.
In today’s Cult of Mac video, we give you a quick look at what iOS 8 has to offer. Install the new software and take advantage of a number of useful tweaks and enhancements.