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.
If you use OneNote to keep all your digital stuff in one place, you’ll be excited to know that Microsoft’s note-taking app is getting an iOS 8 update today.
Microsoft announced the new update on its official YouTube channel Tuesday with a fun little video showing how you’ll be able to clip bits of the web and share photos from your iPhone to OneNote.
Take a look at it below.
Apple supplier Foxconn Electronics is reportedly considering legal action against U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail over claims that cleaning agents used in Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory may be to blame for multiple Foxconn employees developing leukaemia.
In its recent report, The Daily Mail says that Apple is investigating Foxconn after a cluster of leukaemia-related deaths among young workers at Foxconn.
At least 13 workers in their late teens and early 20s have been diagnosed with leukaemia at the factory since 2010. Five of these employees have since died, with families and a labour welfare group claiming the disease was caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals used to clean electrical panels.
What’s your iPhone made of? Just looking at it, you might dismiss it as just a slab of metal and glass, with a dose of magic inside. But our iPhones are actually portable chemistry labs, and there are an incredible number of complex chemical functions happening underneath the glass and metal shell that keep your iPhone ringing.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus are wildly popular, with more than 4 million confirmed preorders. Though many people have picked their preferred version of the next-generation Apple phone, many undoubtedly remain on the fence.
With a 4.7-inch phone on one side and a massive 5.5-inch display on the other, this can be quite the decision to make prior to the Sept. 19 launch date. In today’s video we take a look at some factors that can help you decide which iPhone to purchase. Take a look at in-depth specs, features and more to help figure out which iPhone 6 model makes sense for you.
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Apple’s historic launch of U2’s new album Songs of Innocence to 500 million iTunes users hasn’t exactly been well-received. After less than 1 percent of iTunes users downloaded the freebie album on the first day, Apple shoved it down users’ throats by automatically downloading to devices withdisastrous results.
Now, after everyone’s had a weekend to cool off, Apple’s offering users an innovative solution in the form of a support site dedicated to teaching iTunes users how to pry U2’s spam album off their Mac or iPhone for good.
Here are the steps Apple recommends:
The iPhone 6 is the first iPhone with a camera lens that protrudes slightly instead of being flush with the back of the device. It was a necessary design trade-off, allowing Jony Ive’s team of designers to cram the advanced optics into the iPhone 6 necessary to make it the best smartphone camera ever.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Apple usually likes clean lines in its product designs. And that protruding camera lens, when viewing the iPhone 6 in profile, turns an otherwise clean line into an unsightly bulge. Apple can’t stand that bulge, so the company is going to the unprecedented length of using clever lighting and photography to hide it in its marketing materials.
Tools like hands-free kits and Siri might mean that you don’t have to have your face constantly buried in your iPhone, but for most people the reality is that using a smartphone suggests your focus is not entirely on the real world around you.
Tackling this problem head-on is a place called Foreigner Street in Chongqing city, China, which has installed a special walking lane for smartphone users — just as might be the case with a cycle lane elsewhere.
The big iPhones are here at last, and so – as surely as indigestion follows a burrito – are the oversize iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus cases. Also new on the scene this week: a game controller for all your iDevices, plus some sweet retro-style cameras.
Apple fans will never revel in the glory of another Stevenote. But an essay that imagines how Steve Jobs would have introduced the Apple Watch just might be the next best thing.
Lesson No. 1: He wouldn’t have called it the “Apple Watch.”
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.
Widget, widgets, widgets. Boy, have we got some widgets for you. And text. Plain text. Plain old text, turned into a calculator. And widgets. Did I mention those? Weather widgets. Battery widgets. And yes, text widgets.
Read all about these new widgets and other new apps in this week's App Watch.
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.