News - page 1104

Amazon will start taking more advantage of the millions of credit cards it has on file with new “Pay with Amazon” buttons. The expansion to Amazon Payments will allow third-party developers to include these buttons in their mobile apps and have users quickly sign in to process payments. Since all their payment information is already with Amazon, checkout processes should be much speedier without having to reenter everything. It looks like Apple Pay and PayPal need to watch out.

It’s finally here! The Apple TV we’ve all been waiting for should be arriving in homes across the world today. We’ve got our review of the cute little black box, plus a ton more, including the biggest takeaways from Apple’s recent earnings call, how Google is facing its own Bendgate issues, 10 delightful new iOS games from the month of October, and how to get those gorgeous Apple TV screensavers right on your Mac.

All that, plus the usual plethora of news, reveiws, and how-tos, and you’ve got yourself a hot new free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Be sure to download our fantastic app today.

Here’s the rundown of the top stories this week:

Cupertino, Calif. and the swamps of Louisiana may sound like a mismatched marriage. But the luxury design house Bianca Mosca knew the two would make a beautiful pair when it launched alligator bands for the Apple Watch.

If the Apple Watch fell flat with some fashion critics when it first arrived earlier this year, it could possibly change some minds with a lushly-textured exotic skin band that comes in 11 colors.

The new Apple TV is here, and there’s no doubt it’s the best set-top box we’ve seen from Cupertino, with powerful new hardware and the tvOS operating system, Siri integration — and most importantly, support for third-party apps and games.

If you’re into movies and TV shows, or playing the greatest iOS games on your big screen, the new Apple TV is probably at the top of your wish-list if you haven’t already bought one. But how does it compare to the other products Apple has launched this year? Is it better than the rest?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question!

Ready to boost you and your giant mecha fighters into battle on your Android or iOS phone?

Looks like you’ll only need to wait until 2016, says developer Respawn Entertainment, for several new mobile titles set in the popular first person shooter franchise, Titanfall.

T-Mobile is hosting its 10th Uncarrier event on November 10 and @evleaks was on the case to find out what the carrier has in store for us. The very reliable Evan Blass tweeted that the Uncarrier 10 move will offer unlimited video streaming from services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO that doesn’t count against your data plan.

When I moved to Minnesota, I was warned there would be some winter days when I don’t dare take off my gloves while outdoors. My warmest gloves, though, do not have touch-enabled fingertips, which is a problem when shooting photos or using my phone in the winter.

Instead of buying new gloves, I could try a solution called Nanotips. It is a conductive liquid polyamide solution you paint on the fingertips of any gloves and it is formulated to mimic the touch of human skin.

Apple didn’t give customers a release date for the upcoming iPad Pro other than saying it’s coming in November, but you might not have to wait much longer to get your fingers all over the new tablet’s ridiculously huge display.

If you didn’t pre-order the new Apple TV earlier this week, there’s still a chance to get the new TV box before other Apple fans even receive their shipments.

Apple didn’t announce what day the Apple TV would be available at retail locations, but it appears that Apple Stores across the US have the new Apple TV in stock starting today.

Smartwatches have been around for a few years and as a must-have device, they haven’t quite caught on. Analysts say there are two barriers, price and people not seeing the advantage of owning one.

But a new report shows Apple is making a dent in at least one of those barriers. A survey of 11,000 people by Kantar US Insights shows 92 percent recognize the Apple brand more than any other brand. Fitbit came in second with 47 percent with Google and Samsung scoring in the low 30s.

One company has decided that electric lamps shouldn’t be having all the fun when it comes to lighting the app-controled home of the future, so it’s come up with one of the strangest (and most interesting) ideas we’ve heard in a while: smart candles.

Candle Touch will let you control the actual fire on a real, wax candle from an app on your iPhone or Android device. And the company assures us that it will all be safer than that sounds.

Bendgate is back, and this time, it’s an Android device that’s at the center of it.

Google’s brand new Nexus 6P, which is being dubbed the company’s best smartphone by critics and consumers, is nowhere near as durable as it is pretty. Check out the video below in which the device scratches, cracks, burns, and bends surprisingly easily.

Apple’s desire to compete with companies like Facebook and Google in terms of artificial intelligence research is being hurt by… (drum roll) its obsessive secrecy, according to a new report.

The Apple TV is capable of supporting stereoscopic 3D apps on 3D-capable televisions, according to longtime Apple game developers Pangea Software.

So when can we expect the first wave of 3D Apple TV games? The answer to that question is “right now,” since Pangea has revealed that five of its titles already take advantage of the technology.

You can now play the slots from your Apple Watch, thanks to a recent new game entitled Double Luck Nudge, created by bona fide video game legend Larry DeMar.

DeMar was most famously responsible for co-creating the hit 1981 arcade coin-op Defender — a.k.a. the arcade machine on which the original Mac team racked up thousands of hours playing while putting together the original Macintosh.

Funny how life works, right?

In addition to the plethora of new features Apple added for OS X El Capitan, it also quietly integrated 10 bit color support for the 4K & 5K iMac.

While this may not mean much for your average user, it’s absolutely massive news for photographers, video editors, or anyone else who relies on high-end color correction.

Apple’s latest app for Android is a bitter, ahem, Pill+ for Fandroids to swallow — with numerous one-star reviews already hitting the Google Play Store.

Arriving yesterday, the app lets users control and manage their newly-launched Beats Pill+ speaker, including allowing multiple users to take control of the music playing from a speaker, or configuring two speakers to achieve a higher volume level.

But, of course, it’s made by Apple. So by the ancient laws of Android it must be punished!

With the watch now reinvented, a pair of avid runners believe it’s time to reinvent the watch band.

They have created a band that moves the face of a smartwatch to the spot on the hand just below where the thumb and forefinger meet. The result for runners, cyclists or anyone using the Apple Watch’s health tracking features is the face of the watch remains in the line of site.

The first beta for iOS 9.2 was seeded to developers earlier this week, but public testers can get in on the action as well now that Apple has made the latest build available to the public.

So maybe fans and friends of Steve Jobs think the Aaron Sorkin film was a bit of a hatchet job on the late mercurial genius who started Apple.

An IT company in the Ukraine called QuartSoft released an animated biography of Jobs this week as a way to thank him “for letting us enjoy the perfection of the products you created.”

When Apple TV units finally ship tomorrow, they will bring iOS apps to the big screen for the first time.

Some of the best apps from your iPhone are making the jump, including Periscope, Zillow and Airbnb. And of course all the old Apple TV apps like Netflix, HBO Now, Hulu and Showtime will still be available.

Now that the new Apple TV’s arrival is imminent, developers are ready to flood the device with a tons of apps focusing on everything from cooking and exercising to gaming and news.

Here’s a list of new apps available on Apple TV:

Apps on Apple TV could allow for Periscope-style feedback to live broadcasts, says Apple Senior VP Eddy Cue in a new interview with CNNMoney‘s Brian Stelter.

That’s one of the most fascinating points raised in a short conversation about Apple’s streaming set-top box ambitions, which also touches on a number of other topics — including Apple’s plans to make original Netflix-style content for Apple TV.

Apple TV’s Siri-enabled universal search feature is set to come to Apple Music early next year, Apple has confirmed.

The feature means that Apple TV users will be able to request to find songs, artists or albums in the way that they can currently find movies or TV shows.

Siri has a few extremely scientific and mathematical costume suggestions for Saturday’s festivities, but good luck figuring out how to implement most of them.

You can get prompts from Apple’s digital assistant by asking, “What should I be for Halloween?” to your favorite iOS device. Siri’s ideas aren’t bad if you can find a way to make them work. Check out a few of them below, which we captured from an Apple Watch.

When it comes to revealing Apple Watch sales figures, Apple has kept its lips more tightly sealed than a swimmer in a sewage tank.

One of the ways it’s done this is hiding the Apple Watch numbers under the “other products” category in its SEC filings — alongside the iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics, and assorted accessories.

That doesn’t mean we can’t gauge something from looking at Apple’s new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents, though. And despite keeping hush-hush about it, it seems the Apple Watch isn’t doing too badly for Apple at all.