Apple Watch has been on our wrists for just five months and yet it is already having an amazing impact on many people’s lives.
We want to find out how Cult of Mac readers are using Cupertino’s fitness tech to get in shape, so we’re inviting everyone to share their inspiring stories. Plus, we’ve set up a new Cult of Mac club on Strava so you can connect with other readers who are into fitness.
A teen sought medical attention after his Apple Watch heart monitor gave him persistently high readings, and that decision saved him from an untimely death.
Paul Houle, a 17-year-old football player, bought Apple’s wearable a few days before he started pre-season training at Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass. After two practices in one day, he noticed that his heart rate was sitting around 145 beats per minute, even hours after he’d stopped exercising.
He wouldn’t know until later, but he was experiencing a potentially life-threatening condition.
Apple is still preparing shipments for next week’s public launch of the iPhone 6s, but the folks at Vogue managed to get an early unit to test out the phone’s new picture taking skills at New York Fashion Week.
The new 12 MP camera sensor does not disappoint, according to Kevin Lu who became the first photographer to snap pictures with the new phone.
Here’s what Lu had to say about the new camera after hitting the runways with it:
We’re excited about all the cool new “whiz-bang” features in iOS 9 as well as the hundreds of tiny little improvements that will make your iPhone and iPad much better to use.
This week, we’re sharing that joy with you as we take a deep dive into iOS 9’s killer new features, how to upgrade the right way, an abundance of tiny tricks you need to know, and some of the best apps already rocking iOS 9.
Take a look at Cult of Mac Magazine to fill your head with all this great content.
iOS 9 has been out for two days, and it’s already running on more than 20 percent of compatible devices, according to the latest data. In comparison, Google’s latest Android release, version 5.1 Lollipop, is running on just 5.1 percent of devices ten months after it made its public debut.
These figures highlight the staggering difference between updates on Android and iOS. But is it fair to compare adoption figures between these two platforms, and do users really care?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over this very topic!
Developer Marco Arment pulled his iOS 9 content blocker from the App Store two days after launching it. He says it “just doesn’t feel good” to be profiting from his app Peace while taking money away from advertisers and publishers. He’s even offering refunds to anyone who already bought Peace expecting updates and support down the line, which they now won’t be getting.
For the first time ever, Apple fans will soon be able to buy an Apple device directly from the company’s Cupertino headquarters.
Apple’s Company Store at 1 Infinite Loop is set to reopen this weekend, and along with selling special products like shirts, jackets, mugs, pens, the Company Store will now stock iPhones, iPads, and Macs for visitors to purchase.
Apple Pay is a bit closer to making its debut in China — thanks to a new company, Apple Technology Service (Shanghai) Ltd., which Apple has set up to operate in the Shanghai free-trade zone with the express purpose of running its mobile payment service.
Apple has reportedly seeded the new company with registered capital of $13.4 million, and names Apple’s VP and corporate treasurer Gary Joseph Wipfler as its legal representative and chairman.
Apple Watch just racked up another well-deserved award win — being named the year’s best gadget at top U.K. consumer technology event, the T3 Awards.
“Once again Apple have produced a product that has galvanized a market,” said T3 editor Rob Carney. “In a year of outstanding new products, this stood out to all of the judges and voting public as THE outstanding tech of 2015. The tech and fashion media have nothing in common, yet both enthused about Apple Watch. That says it all about this high-style, high-tech, highly personal device. It’s a worthy winner of the 2015 Gadget of the Year.”
We can’t disagree there!
Apple met with officials at California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss plans to test its self-driving Apple Car on public roads, according to a new report.
What does this mean? Quite possibly that we’re set to get a glimpse of the Apple car a lot sooner than most people figured.
Not content with making displays, memory chips, storage, and whatever else for rival handsets, Samsung is reportedly looking to take on Corning’s with a shatterproof Gorilla Glass alternative — currently code-named “Turtle.”
The Apple Watch is still searching for its “killer app,” claims a new report — arguing that the lack of a “must have” use-case is stopping Apple’s wearable device from achieving its sales potential.
The analysts in question suggest that the Apple Watch will sell between 9-12 million units this year.
Apple brought its first Android app to the Play Store earlier this week, making it easy to transfer all of your data to an iPhone should you choose to switch. But it turns out the app isn’t really Apple’s; it’s actually a rebranded version of an existing Android app.
We’ve gotten our first look at the guts of the latest Apple hardware thanks to an iPad Mini 4 teardown that’s appeared online, and the new tablet from the Cupertino company is looking really familiar. But we don’t mean that in a bad way.
Repair-advise site iFixit has sacrificed one of the devices in the name of science and education, and its findings reveal that at its heart, the iPad Mini 4 is a smaller version of the upper-tier iPad Air 2. Here’s what the carnage revealed.
Figuring out which content-blocking apps you want is going to be tough with so many of them vying for your attention. Which one should you choose?
A day after iOS 9 made content blockers possible, we’ve got Purify, Peace, Crystal, Silentium, Blockr, Freedom, Blockr and 1Blocker, just to name a few.
These apps are garnering a ton of attention and reaching the top of the paid app charts. With so many content blockers out there, what’s the difference? Why choose one over the other? It’s so confusing, so we did a little digging. Here’s what we’ve found out.
Just when we thought we were getting bored with Apple Campus 2 flyover videos, one has arisen that shows how cool this building is going to be.
If you do a YouTube search for Apple’s future headquarters in Cupertino, you can follow its progress from a huge hole in the ground to something that looks like it might, one day, possibly be a building. But YouTube user Above Reno went 250 miles out of its usual domain to capture some impressive, 4K footage over Labor Day weekend that shows that things are coming along now.
Check out the gorgeous video below.
A shadow is a form of great substance that keeps its details hidden. Such was the inspiration for the designers at booq with a new messenger bag aptly named for what it does not reveal – your expensive tech gear.
The Shadow, available in gray and black, is elegantly spare in its look, which is part of its m.o. to discreetly carry your computer and other valuables.
We know Jony Ive can design computers large and small. So why not the space where the devices are sold?
The world caught a glimpse of a new Ive-designed Apple Store in Brussels this week and the common theme seems to be: wood.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was spotted using an iPhone at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference this week, and while Nadella insisted the device wasn’t actually his, he was all too proud to show off the amazing apps his company is making for it.
Nadella even gave his device a new name, dubbing it the ‘iPhone Pro’ (a little knock on the iPad Pro that was recently announced) because it was running all of Microsoft’s apps.
Check out Nadella’s demo below:
LAS VEGAS — If you noticed a substantial drop in leg-shaved and Lycra-clad bicyclists on the roads in your part of the world it is because they are all taking a spin in Sin City.
They didn’t come for the penny slots, forced air and big-ass beers, though. They made the pilgrimage to Vegas to attend the annual mega-bike show known as Interbike. It brings out industry giants like Giro and Shimano, but the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well too, with small builders and garage tinkerers showing off their latest big ideas.
Cult of Mac walked the show floor on day one look at it all. Here is some of the coolest new stuff we found.
Some fashion and tech pundits have written that the Apple Watch is a little industrial looking or too geeky to appeal to women. Why can’t a woman be connected in feminine style?
A startup company says she absolutely can with a smart necklace that looks like a stunning piece of jewelry while equipped with a tiny projector that displays texts and calls onto the hand.
Ahmed Mohamed can count Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak among his many supporters in the tech world. According to Woz’s most recent Facebook post, he sees a lot of himself in the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested for bringing a homemade digital clock to school.
While Ahmed’s teacher mistook his clock for a bomb, Woz says he built a similar gadget when he was in high school — only he actually wanted people to think it was a bomb. Woz even spent a night in juvie for the stunt (where he used the opportunity to teach inmates how to shock guards).
Here’s the story in Woz’s own words:
The public release of iOS 9 got off to a rocky start yesterday but it appears that Apple’s problematic servers didn’t stop the big software update from gaining faster adoption in the first 18 hours than iOS 8.
Even though iPhone and iPad users are downloading iOS 9 at a slightly faster rate than they installed iOS 8, the number crunchers at TapyJoy found that iOS 9 is still lagging way behind iOS 7’s adoption rate.
Check out the race in the comparison chart below:
A battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection was reunited with his family after they fled their burning home — thanks to Apple’s “Find my iPhone” feature.
Paul Duncan was on a job fighting a forest fire in Hidden Valley, California, when he received a panicked call from his wife saying that his family — consisting of his wife, son and two teenaged daughters — had escaped from their neighborhood when another major wildfire broke out.
The forthcoming Steve Jobs movie just got a brand new trailer and, to use a Jobsian cliché, it really is insanely great.
Taking a more positive spin than some of the earlier ads — and showing Jobs’ triumphant late-90s return to Apple — it should silence critics (Tim Cook, we’re looking at you!) suggesting the movie is a muck-raking exercise about Apple’s former CEO.
Check it out below.