The iPhone 6s is on the way. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The iPhone 6s is just weeks away (okay, two months, but saying “weeks” makes it sound closer), and so it stands to reason that more leaked components from Apple’s supply chain would start finding their way online.
VW's 2016 lineup is rolling deep with CarPlay. Photo: VW
Volkswagen is planning to put CarPlay in nearly all of its 2016 vehicles in the United States, thanks to its all-new MIB II infotainment system that will be available later this year.
The thirteenth Angry Birds game is here. Photo: Rovio
Rovio has churned out more sequels to its Angry Bird franchise than any developers on the planet. They even have sequels to the sequels (we see you Angry Birds Star Wars II), but six years after the original was released, Angry Birds 2 is finally here.
The thirteenth title in the Angry Birds franchise is packed with new puzzling towers to topples, missile birds, and boss piggies. There’s also a new feature that lets you challenge your friends over Facebook to see who’s the true master at flinging birds.
235 Second St. might be Apple's new home in San Francisco. Photo: Todd Johnson/SF Business Times
Construction on Apple’s gigantic spaceship headquarters in Cupertino is coming along nicely, but the iPhone maker is reportedly looking to take its first big bite of San Francisco real estate.
This stylus would add new meaning to the word touchscreen. Photo: USPTO/Apple
Steve Jobs was famously opposed to including a stylus with the iPad, but even he might have changed his mind had he caught a glimpse of the futuristic texture-sensing input device Apple just patented.
According to a pair of patent applications published today, Apple is working on stylus with in-built camera which would allow it to detect the surface over which it is passed and reproduce these textures for the user — even down to replicating the feel of different fabrics.
Leica invented the autofocus camera system with the Correfot in 1976. Photo: WestLicht Camera Auction
Legendary German camera maker Leica spent nearly 20 years patenting technology that would take focusing out of the hands of photographers. As with the 35 mm still camera the company created in 1925, Leica stood ready to once again revolutionize photography, this time with an autofocus system.
But after spending the last part of the 1970s working on prototypes, Leica dropped plans to bring autofocus to consumers. Leica figured its customers already knew how to focus their cameras.
“There’s an element of truth in that,” said Heinz Richter, who was a member of the Leica Historical Society of America when he held one of the first autofocus cameras at a meeting in Minneapolis in 1980. “Leica used to be an extremely conservative company. The autofocus mechanism as they were available then didn’t fit into the company’s ideal of precise focusing.”
Apple's rivals better turn up the temperature to compete with Apple. Photo: Nest
Google may have poured billions into buying smart thermostat maker Nest Labs, but according to a new piece of consumer research, Apple’s the company most people think of when it comes to Internet of Things devices.
Conducted by ThroughTek, a leading Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions provider, almost half of consumers (48 percent) aware of IoT devices on the market are said to be familiar with Apple’s devices in the category, while just 22 percent know Samsung’s, 15 percent know Amazon’s, and 13 percent know Google’s.
Despite, you know, the fact that Apple’s not really an Internet of Things company at all!
Harry Potter really loves magic, it seems. Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac
The Internet has gone crazy for selfie sticks ever since a couple of Twitter users posted modified images of Hollywood’s toughest characters with their guns swapped out for the hated tech accessories.
The Photoshop swap really has a way of removing all the menace from a person — especially if their new phone has a ladybug case on it. You can see some examples below (as well as some we put together because we just couldn’t help ourselves).
Come and hang out with Tim Cook and co. Photo: Apple
Apple’s forthcoming $5 billion “spaceship” Apple campus may be designed to squeeze in a massive 13,000 employees, or the equivalent of 35 fully-filled Boeing 747s, but don’t worry: it’s got plenty of space for you, too.
According to Apple’s plans for the new headquarters, the Apple 2 campus will include a glass-walled structure for visitors, boasting a 2,386-square-foot cafe, 10,114-square-foot gift shop, and rooftop viewing space, where visitors can gaze out over Apple’s domain while Tim Cook tells you that everything the light touches is his kingdom.
Emojis are the new subliminal messaging. Photo: Technewz
When iOS 8.3 introduced new gay-friendly emojis, one person no doubt responding with a :( sad face was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s not taking it lying down, however. According to Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor, the President has requested a full pro-Kremlin group investigation and crackdown on same sex emojis, concerned that they violate the country’s ban on “gay propaganda.”
Because if there’s one thing proven to make you trade girlfriends for boyfriends, it’s someone sending you a picture of two male smiley faces holding hands.
It's coming. One day. Photo: GT Advanced Technologies
It would be easy to think that Apple’s sapphire iPhone dreams went down the pan when GT Advanced Technologies went bust, but Apple’s nothing if not persistent.
Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple describing a new method for manufacturing sapphire displays by irradiating the sapphire crystal and then using a laser and “second gas medium” to slice it into the super-thin sheets Apple requires.
The third public beta of Apple’s upcoming operating system, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, was seeded to public testers today, one week after the release of El Capitan beta 2.
AT&T is asking the FCC to not make it pay the largest proposed fine in the agency’s history as punishment for throttling customers’ data speeds.
After being slammed with the $100 million fine by the FCC last month when the government agency found the carrier had throttled speeds for customers with ‘unlimited’ data plans, AT&T says it didn’t really harm anyone, so it shouldn’t have to pay up.
iFixit has made repairing broken iPhones as simple as setting up Ikea furniture thanks to the site’s easy-to-follow guides and excellent repair tools Apple doesn’t really want you to use. Now the company is about make it easier to fix even more broken gadgets by partnering with Electronic Recyclers International.
Finding parts to fix broken Kindles, GoPros, and Nexus devices can be practically impossible, but now that iFixit and ERI are teaming up, consumers will have a way to keep more of their busted gizmos alive, instead of tossing them in the wood chipper.
Our house of tomorrow is going to have to wait. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple’s HomeKit connected devices are rolling out slower than expected, and one reason for this is that Apple reportedly requires that anyone making a third-party HomeKit device buy and use a special identity chip — a fact that caught many devs unawares.
“I know a lot of people who have been surprised by this requirement and had to re-spin boards for the chip,” said Michael Anderson, chief scientist of engineering firm PTR Group during a recent talk. “A lot of manufacturers are up in arms [about the] Apple silicon [that makes their] device more expensive.”
OSTraining is offering a lifetime subscription their web development courses
Learning is a life-long task, so why not give yourself a lifetime to learn? OSTraining’s top notch developer courses on web design usually go for $2,000, but right now you can get a lifetime subscription for just $79.
The tablet pie's not what it used to be. Photo: Universal Pictures
The tablet market continues to plummet worldwide, but Apple’s still leading the pack, thanks to the iPad.
According to new figures released by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, tablet shipments fell 7 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2015 to a total of 44.7 million units.
The original Boot Camp ran on an Amiga. Photo: Reddit
Does your Mac also boot into Windows? Mine does, and it’s a pretty great perk of owning a Mac since 2006. But modern Intel-based Macs aren’t the only ones that can dual boot operating systems.
Proof? This Amiga from the 1980s booting up Mac OS 6.0.1, the result of a particularly clever hack from the vintage computing archives.
Approaching half of iPhone 6 users have tried Apple Pay. Photo: Wells Fargo
42 percent of iPhone 6 users in the U.S. have used Apple Pay, according to new research from analysts at the The Auriemma Consulting Group.
The same study suggests that Apple Pay is no one-off novelty either, since 84 percent of these users have used Apple Pay for more than three transactions in store, while 76 percent have used it to pay for items in-app.
Moving to Apple Music is just a click away. Photo: Move To Apple
Maybe you’re like me, and you’re interested in trying Apple Music. Maybe, though, you feel locked in to Rdio or Spotify, because over the years you’ve set up an extensive library of favorites and playlists. Favorites and playlists you count on.
Well, good news! Migrating your whole life to Apple Music is just $4.99 away.
Alympus is the new jailbreak tweak to beat. Photo: Alympus
iOS engineers must keep their eyes on the jailbreak scene. In the past, popular jailbreak tweak Auxo showed what iOS’s approach to multitasking should be like years before Apple made its best ideas part of the core operating system.
Let’s hope this pattern holds with Alympus. It’s a new tweak that radically improves, for the better, iOS 8 multitasking.
This year's most enjoyable iOS puzzler? Photo: iFun4all
Anyone who enjoyed last year’s smash hit Flappy Bird should take a minute to check out the excellently (if ironically) titled new iOS puzzler, Red Game Without a Great Name.
Putting you in control of a mechanical bird maneuvering its way through 60 levels of steampunk-inspired obstacles, the game takes a page from the Flappy Bird playbook, but tacks on the challenging addition of swipe-based teleportation for a genuinely original proposition.
Apple's new Hong Kong store in all its glory. Photo: Bien Perez
Apple is set to open its 23rd Apple Store in China this week — with Hong Kong’s fourth retail outlet opening its doors, Thursday local time, in the city’s tourist-heavy Tsim Sha Tsui district.
This represents another step in Apple’s massive Chinese retail expansion, which Tim Cook has said will result in 40 stores in China by the middle of 2016.
Would you buy an apparently new iPhone from a random person on the street without thoroughly checking out the contents of the box first?
If you answered “obviously no,” then you’re certainly smarter than the Detroit Metro PCS business which bought “iPhones” from a group of three Detroit-area teenagers only to discover, upon opening them, that they were filled with Play-Doh bricks instead of smartphones.
Yahoo could relaunch its Messenger app tomorrow. Photo: Yahoo
Those of us old-school instant messaging warriors remember the day when Yahoo! Messenger was the king of the IM clients. The purple search giant is hoping that day may well be at hand again.