The weekend’s already half way over but, fear not, Cult of Mac is here to fill you in on the week’s best apps.
In addition to great gadget-hunting and photo sharing apps, we’ve picked out some great games from the past seven days. Check out our suggestions below. You won’t regret it!
This week on The CultCast: our hands-on first impressions of the new Apple TV! Plus: the new and notable in OS X 10.11.1 and iOS 9.1. And if you want to hear why a half-cyborg Woz might one day lead the AI armies of Armageddon, stick around till the end for an all new (and totally ridiculous) Get To Know Your Cultist, #FutureDay edition. Because quite frankly, your life might. Just. DEPEND on it…
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It’s white, cylindrical, has a spinning head and is full of electrical connectors. It’s not Luke Skywalker’s trusty robotic assistant, but the Twist Plus+ World Charging Station could be yours with its ability to charge five devices simultaneously and through outlets anywhere in the world. It’s a game-changer for the international traveler or anyone who travels with more than one mobile device, and right now you can get one for just $34.99.
After six months of trying to log my runs with my Apple Watch, I finally gave up and bought a dedicated GPS running watch.
There’s a lot to like about Apple’s new wearable. The Activity app, for example, is brilliant at helping people lose weight. But the truth is, as a running watch, it sucks.
Just a few short weeks after Twitter launched Moments, it’s already gearing up to start the monetization process. Promoted Moments will have brands curate some of their favorite tweets from around the service relevant to the promotion and pack them neatly in Twitter’s newest feature.
We know that keeping our smartphones and tablets plugged in over night, well past the point of a full charge, will deplete precious battery life. But who among us purposely gets up in the middle of the night to unplug?
The team at UsBidi assumes very few, which is why its developers believe they have something special with a charging cord that automatically cuts off the power to a device when the battery is full.
Is merging iOS with OS X a good idea? For the longest time, the answer to that question has been a resounding no from anyone who appreciates good software — but with iPad Pro on the horizon, there may well be a growing case for it.
The iPad Pro has the potential to be the ultimate 2-in-1 — a laptop that could really replace a notebook when you need to get stuff done. But in many ways, it’s being held back by iOS, which is still very much a mobile platform without many of the basics we have on our desktops — like a file manager.
So, is there now room for a new platform that delivers the best of iOS and OS X, perfectly suited to a tablet that doubles as a notebook?
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!
Microsoft infamously invested $150 million in archenemy Apple in 1997 as the company was facing bankruptcy right after the return of Steve Jobs, and according to former CEO Steve Ballmer, it was the craziest thing the Windows-maker ever did.
Ballmer spends more of his time on the basketball court now than working on the next big tech ideas, but in an interview with Bloomberg this morning, Ballmer was brought on to talk about the Microsoft’s battle with Amazon. After saying Amazon is not a great place to work, the conversation drifted to Apple and Ballmer actually admitted that “they’ve done a great job.”
Coming from the guy who laughed off the iPhone because he thought the Zune was killer, that’s a hell of a compliment. Watch what Ballmer had to say about Microsoft’s rivalry with Apple below:
When a Klingon says bortaS bir jablu’DI’reH QaQqu’ nay,’ it’s not good. It means “Revenge is a dish best served cold” and what is likely to follow is some sort of death blow.
So when Edward Brawer, the developer of the dock replacement software uBar, had pirates of his Mac app in sight, he set his phaser to amusement. Users who ripped him off soon saw the titles on apps and folders switched to the Klingon language.
A key part of running any effective business these days is securing computers and online accounts against threats from hackers. The Cyber Security Professional Training and Certification Bundle offers 11 courses and more than 13 hours of instruction covering everything from the history of the software development to specific techniques for defending against attacks. It’s an ideal way to become conversant in cyber security or prepare for certification, and right now it’s a massive 98% off the normal price, just $39.
Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs movie finally gets a wide release this weekend — meaning that fans outside of the New York and Los Angeles areas will get a chance to watch the controversial biopic.
So will they?
Xiaomi isn’t exactly known for having its own ideas, so why would you expect it to act any differently when Apple introduced its innovative new 3D Touch feature for the iPhone 6s?
True to form, a new rumor coming out of China claims that Xiaomi has patented its own version of the technology. Because, of course it has.
Apple is slowly rolling out the Apple Watch worldwide, and the next place to receive it is set to be India — a largely-untapped market which ranks among the biggest in the world.
The Apple Watch will go on sale on November 6, according to Apple’s India website. No prices have been announced yet, but it is likely to be significantly more than the cost in the U.S.
Apple is opening yet another major brick-and-mortar Apple retail store in China this weekend. But according to a new report, the company’s retail assault on China is linked with a more negative factor: weaker than expected online sales.
With Pandora CEO Brian McAndres dismissing Apple Music back in July as nothing to worry about, Pandora stock took an after-hours beating yesterday, falling by as much as 21 percent to just $15.25.
The reason? A poorly-received quarterly earnings report, thought to be the result of would-be customers trying (you guessed it!) Apple Music instead of the ad-supported Internet radio company.
When Apple enthusiastically introduced to the Apple Pencil in September, it left out one little detail – where we are supposed to put it.
SteelConnect, a company known for designing smart watch accessories, has come up with with a pencil holder that connects to the new iPad Pro. The Quarter provides a way to store the pencil, dock it in a ready position or keep the cap from getting misplaced while the pencil is charging elsewhere.
If Cupertino is looking for some ideas for its next wearable, this slick Apple Watch 2 concept would be a good place to start.
The mock-up comes from designer Eric Huismann, and he has some cool ideas for how the future of Apple’s smartwatches could look and behave. Along with some nice cosmetic changes, Huismann’s version of the device also boasts some of the features that didn’t make it into the first wave.
Apple’s new “Eye in Speech Bubble” emoji has mystified us ever since it was first discovered last month, but now that iOS 9.1 is out to the public, we finally know the full story (and meaning) behind the odd new pictogram.
Want the new iPad or MacBook for Christmas? You’re not alone. Big box store Best Buy found the iPad the most desired tech gift this holiday season, according to a survey of 2,000 people.
The MacBook came in third behind the Bose QuietComfort noise cancelling headphones. Of the 15 tech items listed, the Apple Watch ranked 12th.
HTC has been getting a lot of stick for its brand new One A9, which looks just like another iPhone clone. But the Taiwanese company insists that the design was its own idea, and that Apple actually copied HTC’s first unibody phone that was released in 2013.
iPhones are pretty tough things, but despite all the Gorilla Glass and engineering magic Apple can throw at them, they’re still susceptible to broken screens when dropped.
That could change in future iPhone models, with a newly-published patent application describing an automated mechanism for protecting the iPhone display with a method straight out of James Bond.
Instagram’s new app Boomerang lets users create one-second videos of everyday moments, then share them to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
The new app is a lot like the new Live Photos feature Apple introduced on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Boomerang takes a burst of five photos, stitches them together into a mini-video, then plays the clip in forward and then reverse — you know, just like a boomerang!
Here’s how it works:
One of Apple’s supply chain iPhone manufacturers is under fire for unsafe and illegal labor practices — and for once it’s not Foxconn.
This time the company is Pegatron, which worker rights group China Labor Watch says has not cleaned up its act, despite Apple claiming that it would investigate it back in 2013 after 86 labour rights violations were identified at three of its factories.
Remember in grade school when you learned what the middle finger meant? Twitter was kind of like that Thursday morning as giggly and astonished people reported their discovery of a middle-finger emoji in their iOS update.
This is not new news. We knew the finger would fly when the iOS update was announced earlier. Maybe it got lost in the excitement of finally getting a taco emoji. Who knows. But the tweets about the bird were refreshing 20 and 30 at a time every few seconds this morning.
To most taking to social media, the middle finger feels naughty and delicious.
Tim Cook has stuck his neck out again in support of the Chinese economy, saying that Apple will continue to pour money into the market, despite a slowing stock market and economy.
“I know some people are worried about the economy,” Cook said in an interview with the Chinese Xinhua news agency. “We’ll continue to invest. China is a superb place to be. Nothing has changed that.”