A young man in China was found guilty of selling his 18-day old daughter in exchange for enough money to buy himself a new motorcycle and iPhone.
The 19 year-old man identified as ‘A Duan’ by local Chinese media reportedly found a buyer for his newborn through the popular messaging app QQ and negotiated the entire deal without the consent of the child’s biological mother.
Yup, water-resistance is one of them! Photo: SamsungYup, water-resistance is one of them. Photo: Samsung
As the iPhone’s biggest rivals, Samsung’s latest Galaxy smartphones have to be good enough to convince consumers that they’re a better buy. None do that better than the new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.
According to the overwhelmingly positive reviews published today, the duo have a number of big advantages over the iPhone 6s. Here are 7 of them.
Wonder how Facebook users will react to this new software. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Spend some time around any teenager and you’ll probably hear some new slang that you don’t understand. If you do get it, and you’re not a teenager or young adult yourself, chances are it’s already gone the way of the dodo in the minds and twisted hearts of said youngsters.
Facebook is hoping to combat this with a new software patent that would detect and gather new lingo as it appears on the social network, making it available to everyone.
Does the iPhone really need to get bigger? Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
If the iPhone 6s Plus seems just a little bit too small in your monstrous hands, fret not dear giant friends: Apple may be planning to go even bigger with a super-sized iPhone 7s Pro.
Apple is looking to add a 5.8-inch OLED display to the iPhone in 2017 or 2018, according to a new rumor that claims Samsung is already on board to supply the screens.
Paying at the pump is about to get a lot easier. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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.
Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs movie bombed hard at the box office and failed to win anything at the Oscars, but the MTV Movie Awards are apparently a bit kinder than the Academy and the movie-going public. The Jobs semi-biopic just got nominated for the movie awards show’s Best True Story prize.
Clinton had no-so strong words for followers of the current privacy debate. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Other than a lasting love of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton’s poll-driven opinions on hot-button issues change as often as most people change their underwear.
But saying whatever the popular opinion is poses a problem when, as with Apple’s current privacy vs. “national security” standoff with the government, people voters are undecided on the issue. What do you do when someone asks you about it on the campaign trail, then?
If you’re the possible future POTUS, you take the bull by the horns and, well, offer an opinion that’s about as inoffensively middle-of-the-road as a Coldplay song in a wallpaper commercial.
The government would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling iKids. Photo: Olly Browning/Pixabay
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.
This story is going to be a Hollywood movie in 20 years, isn't it? Photo: Michael Vadon/Flickr CC
Donald Trump doesn’t seem to like Apple much, and apparently the feeling is mutual. A new report claims Tim Cook joined an exclusive group of billionaires, tech CEOs and politicians who flew to a private island resort over the weekend to talk about how best to stump Trump.
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like the opening of a Tom Clancy thriller?
Apple's co-founder has a new role. Photo: High Point University
Compared to his Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak has always seemed more of a bumbling academic type: the sort who would much rather be getting his fingers dirty in research labs than flying in a shiny Gulfstream jet to negotiate new iTunes terms with a music label.
Which is why Woz would appear to be a perfect fit for his newly-announced role as North Carolina-based private liberal art college High Point University’s latest “Innovator in Residence.”
What’s the betting that theses dedicated to why the Apple II was the best computer ever suddenly get a major boost in numbers?
The iPhone market's not as hot as it once was. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Call it the cyclical nature of being an Apple supplier if you want, but two iPhone manufacturers have reported their lowest consolidated revenues since March 2014, with “slow sales of iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus” cited as one of the reasons.
Square's point-of-sale system is headed to Australia, but Apple Pay is a didgeri-don't. Photo: Square
Australian small-business owners can now avail themselves of Square’s personal-payment system, which should make their lives slightly easier. And they could use all the help they can get considering they live in a country whose ecosystem was apparently designed by a comic-book supervillain. But vendors who have been looking for a way to accept credit cards can now breathe a little easier — once they’ve checked their shoes for deadly, deadly spiders.
A notable omission, however, is that Square’s restricting its offerings in that country to the older reader, which only accepts magstripes and chip cards. So unfortunately, our friends down there will have to wait a little longer for Apple Pay.
Robotic assistant Nadine has the kind of face we can imagine only half-covering a soulless, plastic endoskeleton after the explosion failed to kill her. Photo: Nanyang Technical University
Anyone who’s been wringing their hands in anticipation of the day we’ll each have a physical, robotic assistant to schedule our days and keep us company should be careful what they wish for because the future is here, and it is creepy.
“Nadine” comes from scientists at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore, and its face looks very similar to its creator’s, Professor Nadia Thalmann. But its terrifying, pruny hands come from somewhere else, like the nightmares we had when we were eight and watched director David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly even though our parents specifically told us not to.
Add a mouse (and other peripherals) to your iPad or iPhone. Photo: DoBox
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.
The roof to Apple's theater looks like a UFO. Photo: Apple
Starting in 2017, all of Apple’s keynotes will be held in an amazing new theater in the heart of the spaceship campus, but you don’t have to wait until next year to see what it will look like.
Apple has given curious minds an early look at the 120,000-square-foot subterranean auditorium it has dubbed ‘The Theatre’. Once completed the venue will have a capacity of 1,000 seats below what the company believes is the world’s largest freestanding carbon-fiber roof ever made.
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.
Apple's e-book legal battle is finally over. Photo: Apple
Apple’s nearly three year legal battle over charges that it conspired with publishers to raise the price of e-books is finally coming to end.
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Apple’s appeal, which leaves the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in place. Apple will finally have to pay $450 million as part of the settlement.
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.
It’s as easy as that! Photo: Michigan State UniversityIt’s as easy as that! Photo: Michigan State University
Your fingerprint is supposed to be the most secure method of locking your smartphone, but that’s not the case if your device can be easily fooled. Researchers have been able to hack those from Samsung and Huawei using only an inkjet printer and conductive ink.
Received any emails from the '70s lately? Photo: Ste Smith
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 are plenty of ways the FBI's demands hurt the U.S. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
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.
The S7 Edge shows that on-paper specs aren't everything! Photo: Evan BlassThe S7 Edge shows that on-paper specs aren’t everything! Photo: Evan Blass
Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 edge isn’t officially out until later this week, but according to some early out-of-the-box speed test comparisons it’s doesn’t fare too well against the six-month-old iPhone 6s Plus — despite having twice the RAM of Apple’s 2GB handset.
Over the weekend, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, took to the pages of the Washington Post for an impassioned op-ed about how hard Apple works to stay ahead of criminals and terrorists who want to infiltrate its systems — and why the FBI and Justice Department’s proposed solution to the problem is so “disappointing.”
Torrenters beware! The first ransomware attack on Mac users in the wild has been discovered, “courtesy” of Transmission, a BitTorrent client for Mac.
The torrent service received a major update last week, but it unfortunately the new software happened to be infected with ransomware, which went on to quietly install itself on the the Macs of everyone who downloaded the update from Transmission’s website.