This week: get your mace and taser ready for Black Friday! We share some of the best deals on MacBooks, iPhones, Playstation 4s, Xbox One’s, Wii U’s and more. Plus: why your Mac store apps could be corrupted (and what to do about it); RDIO bites the dust; and the iPad Mini 4 proves far better than we originally thought.
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They year of Apple Pay is nearly over, but the company is continuing to make its contactless payments push with a new guided tour video for iPhone users.
The new video details how iPhone owners can use Touch ID to verify payments both at physical payment terminals, as well as via shopping apps on iOS. There’s also a walk through on how to manage and setup new cards through the Wallet app.
Take the full tour below:
Many, many more Black Friday ads have come out since our last roundup, so we’re back with a new batch of top TV picks for 2015. Walmart and Target are currently leading the pack with screens both big and small, but who will ultimately take the top spot? Be sure to bookmark this page; you never know when a new ad will knock one of these off the list!
It’s one week away from Black Friday, and in addition to our killer live blog with up-to-the-minute deals, we’ve got a new magazine with all sorts of quirky products that our loving reviewers have taken the time to get to know.
We’ve got a funky clip-on lampshade for your iPhone, a Pro Tip to max out your iPhone battery, a conceptual piece on how Apple could fix the next version of its wristband, a secret messaging app that pulls in 1 million downloads every day, and (of course) our weekly gabfest about all things Apple, The Cultcast.
Here’s the rundown of what we’ve got for you in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.
The war between iPhone and Android will wage on for years to come, but in this week’s Friday Night Fight, we’re not going to be bickering about which is best. At least not in terms of design, features, flexibility — and the other things normally discussed during a platform war.
Instead, we’re battling it out over the supposed class divide — the notion that the wealthy only buy iPhones, and the poor only buy Android because they can’t afford that Apple logo. It’s going to be a fun one!
So, join us below for one of our hottest Friday Night Fights yet, and be sure to weigh in at the end!
Harvard classmates Lei Guo and Oliver Hayen created what could have been just another messaging app. They knew they had something unique, as every app development team claims, so they put it in the hands of 2,000 people and hit launch.
Within 30 days, their app SOMA Messenger had 10 million users and has been growing since. They’d love to brag about who is using it, except they can’t because of security measures built into the app that prevents even them from knowing SOMA’s users.
You know the way that Apple’s heroically struggling to build a new “spaceship” HQ capable of housing its army of brilliant worker ants who design the iPhone? Well, Samsung has an easier solution for its phone division: just fire a load of people.
New statistics published courtesy of Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service underline the degree to which Samsung’s smartphone business is struggling — with 5,000 employees booted out of the door over the past year, while 30 percent of execs are expected to follow them in the next month.
Microsoft has brokered a deal with automaker Volvo to co-develop a driverless vehicle, according to a new report — putting it in competition with Apple’s rumored “Project Titan” Apple Car.
Opportunities to buy new Apple hardware at a discount don’t come around very often, but ahead of Black Friday, Best Buy is offering $50 off all Apple Watch models.
While in exile at NeXT, Steve Jobs remained obsessed about coming back to Apple, according to a recent interview with tech investor Steve Jurvetson.
Apple’s official charging pad may be a not-too-cheap $79, but if you want to wirelessly charge your smartwatch, Apple’s not leaving you a whole lot of options.
That’s because, despite the wide range of Qi chargers around, Apple has made it so that its watch will only work with a select few which have received the Cupertino stamp of approval.
Boasting a 100,000-square-foot fitness center, 11,000 parking spaces, 2,000 bike parking spaces, 2.8 million square feet of office space, and a 100,000-square-foot lab thrown in for good measure, Apple’s “spaceship” Campus 2 is pretty darned massive.
Struggling to wrap your head around that? Then consider that it’s big enough to house pretty much the entirety of Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. And we’ve got the (mocked-up) photos to prove it.
Like an over-the-air update to fix a faulty piece of software, Apple sprang into action following Jimmy Iovine’s Thursday interview with CBS This Morning — with Iovine apologizing for his sexist comments about women’s inability to find music because… you know, women.
“I could have chosen my words better,” the Apple Music boss, Beats guru and Interscope Records co-founder said in a statement.
Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine has won today’s “Yes, they really said that” award after an appearance on CBS This Morning.
Iovine was there talking up the latest ad for Apple Music, which features singer Mary J. Blige, actress Kerry Washington, and singer/actress Taraji P. Henson just kinda hanging out with knives and salsa dancing. This one follows the also-great original spot from September, but Iovine didn’t necessarily explain the origin of the woman-centric campaign (Selma director Ava DuVernay helmed both of them) as well as he could have.
I love my Philips Hue smart-lighting kit, but every time I’ve just randomly turned my living-room lights different colors in front of another person, they’ve asked the same question:
“How much did you pay for this?”
And then I just kind of mumble something because while the system has added convenience and versatility to my apartment, I’m still not super comfortable admitting that I plan on paying $60 for a light bulb. Instead, I just say, “It was for work,” and leave it.
But Qube, a new smart-lighting system that launches in April, wants to avoid that kind of awkwardness with bulbs that cost way less than its competitors but offer just as many opportunities for just the weirdest ambience you can design.
Let’s face it: Online shopping is amazing. Given the choice of shopping from home while relaxing in their PJs or fighting crowds and dodging overbearing salespeople, we bet most people will choose to shop online.
But shopping online has some drawbacks as well. Mainly, those drawbacks come in the form of having to sift through multiple colors and sizes of
The iPhone can do a lot of things, but work as a functional piece of furniture? Yes, as one design studio proved when it created a tiny lampshade that clips to the iPhone.
Activate the flashlight app and behold, a nightstand reading light.
Spotify and Apple Music subscribers won’t be able to stream Adele’s highly anticipated album “25” when it is publicly released tomorrow.
The album is sure to be one of the biggest sellers of the year, but according to a report from the New York Times, Adele’s people have informed companies that “25” will not be made available for streaming.
Winter is here, which also means flu season is getting ready to knock you out. Finding time to get immunized may not be on the top of your To Do List, but Uber is making it ridiculously easy to get your flu shot with it’s new UberHealth option that will bring a registered nurse to your front door.
The special promotion is only in effect today from 11AM – 3PM, with over 35 cities participating. Uber will deliver wellness packs for $10, and give users the option to request a free Fluzone vaccine for you and nine other people.
Here’s how it works:
Lens attachments for your iPhone can bring a fresh point of view to your photos but there are drawbacks. Some force you to remove the phone’s protective case to properly fit the lens. Others require a sticky mounting plate.
The mount for the Iris lenses by Photojojo looks like a little girl’s ponytail holder with a silicon housing holding one of three pop-in lenses that is attached to an elastic cord stretching and securing snuggly to diagonal corners of your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.
The Apple Pencil stylus accessory was one of the most-praised parts of the newly-launched iPad Pro — which, naturally, means that our friends at iFixit were tripping over one another to pull it apart and scoop through its gory innards like geeky zombies with a taste for tech components.
Here’s what they discovered in their customary teardown.
Jony Ive memorably (allegedly) described Swiss watchmakers as “f**ked” due to the then-impending launch of the launch of the Apple Watch, and one year later — like some kind of creepy, well-dressed soothsayer in an Apple-centric episode of The Twilight Zone — it seems he may have been correct.
Swiss watch exports suffered their biggest decline in six years in October, with sales dropping 12 percent to $2 billion. Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux in Zurich, describes 2015 as a year “to forget” for watchmakers.
Unless their name is Apple, of course.
Black Friday is inching closer and we’ve got plenty of ads to whet our appetite for savings. We’ve done our initial inspection, and we’re ready to present our first look at the best Black Friday ads. Here you’ll find all our favorite ads in one convenient place, from crazy-cheap TVs to Apple items galore.
Got an opinion on which ads are the best? After reviewing the list below, click here to vote in our poll about which doorbuster is top dog for 2015!
Popular U.K. talk show host Jonathan Ross (possibly best known to U.S. readers as the husband of Kick-Ass screenwriter Jane Goldman) recently gave an interview about technology as part of the IAB Digital Upfronts 2015 conference.
In addition to touching on Apple Watch and a variety of other tech topics, the most interesting anecdote came when “Wossy” talked about getting on the Apple free products guest list — including receiving an iPod shuffle months before it was publicly available.
How? Apparently it pays to be nice to students. Particularly if one of them turns out to be the future Sir Jony Ive.
Apple’s always on the lookout for ways to improve the resiliency of its devices. For this reason, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office today published a new patent application from the company — calling for retractable drop-proof bumpers to be built into future iPhone housing, capable of doubling as a flotation device in case your handset accidentally lands in water.