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.
Apparently, it isn’t enough that our phones, appliances, TVs, thermostats and light bulbs are getting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections so we can control them remotely and teach them our habits. No — some enterprising souls are looking at their stuff and just gasping at how dumb all of it is.
And so, things that we may never have thought of slapping the “smart” prefix on are getting all wired up and clever. Here are a few of the more interesting ones.
It is one thing to read about a madman. But what if you could feel like those were your hands around the victim’s throat, eyeballs bulging, his gasping breath brushing against your face?
Charles Dickens’ A Madman’s Manuscript feels all the more creepy when you experience the book in interactive form with the new iPhone and iPad app by iClassics.
If digital media is tearing us away from analog books, then the growing collection of illustrated works reimagined by iClassics ensures classic tails not only stay alive but get a new life with illustrations that move with the touch of your screen.
We still don’t even know if Apple is really building an car (even though there are a lot of signs that it is), but whatever the iPhone-maker’s next play in the auto-market is, the company’s about to generate a lot of innovation and competition in the market, says Ford CEO Mark Fields.
Wireless charging has been on Apple fanboys’ wish list of iPhone features for a few years now, and while it’s unlikely that Apple will bring the technology to the iPhone 6s, Qualcomm just made a breakthrough in wireless charging that would be perfect for the iPhone’s metal body.
OnePlus this week announced its long-awaited OnePlus 2, and despite its sub-$400 price tag, it has all the features and specifications it needs to give the latest flagships some tough competition — including Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 810 processor, up to 4GB of RAM, and a much-improved camera.
But OnePlus smartphones are all about beating the latest flagships. Does the OnePlus 2 have what it needs to do that? Find out below.
When Motorola announced its new Moto X Style earlier today, the company said it had one of the top three smartphone cameras in the world, based on testing by the experts at DxOMark. Now those test results have been published, and it turns out Motorola was not lying.
Its new handset is actually ranked the second-best smartphone camera to date, second only to the Galaxy S6.
In great news for music lovers, T-Mobile is adding Apple Music to its “Music Freedom” program, meaning customers can now listen to Apple’s streaming music service without using up their monthly data allowance.
T-Mobile already offers Spotify, Pandora, Google Music and more than two dozen other streaming services on Music Freedom, and users were apparently clamoring for Apple Music to be added to the list.
Motorola today announced two new additions to its flagship Moto X lineup in the Moto X Style and the Moto X Play. Both handsets deliver flagship specifications and high-end designs that are customizable through Moto Maker, and they cost a lot less than their rivals off-contract.
But how exactly do Motorola’s new devices stack up against those rivals? Find out in our handy comparison chart below.
Some of the streaming numbers on Apple Music’s biggest tracks — particularly on newer hip-hop songs — are said to be rivalling the number of listens on Spotify, according to a new report.
Apple Music has only been around for a month, but music label insiders claim it has already surprised people by attracting more than 10 million subscribers.
Apple Pay rolled out in the U.K. this month, and today the service got a bit better, as Apple now supports HSBC and First Direct credit and debit cards in the country.
That brings the total supported U.K. banks and card providers to nine — including Natwest, Santander, Nationwide, RBS, Ulster Bank, HSBC, First Direct, MBNA, and American Express.
I dropped everything to make apps for the Apple Watch. I’ve owned the Watch from day one and I admit it is has its shortcomings, but oh my does it have potential.
The device convinced my co-founders and me to start Tap Get to work exclusively on Apple Watch apps — early, while the rest of the world is still making up its mind about smartwatches and other wearables.
The iPhone 6s is still a couple of months away from going on sale, but if you’re hoping to offset the cost of buying a new iPhone by selling your old handset, now’s the time to do it.
That’s because resale values drop by around 10 percent in September and October, according to gadget trade-in site NextWorth, which analyzed thousands of eBay sales. If you wait until November or December, meanwhile, be prepared to lose around 30 percent of current resale value.
Apple has scrapped plans to release a new iPhone with a 4-inch display, according to Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri.
Arcuri claims that Apple was previously considering an “iPhone 6-looking version of the iPhone 5c,” which would include the same internal components as the iPhone 6, but with the smaller form factor Apple ditched when it made the decision to go big with its smartphones.
But no more!
Just in case there are still people out there asking what the Apple Watch does, Apple has debuted three new ads showing off some of the great apps you can use on its breakthrough wearable device.
Covering music, fitness and travel, the apps run the gamut from Shazam and Instagram to MLB At Bat, Yelp and Apple’s own Activity app. They follow on from another series of spots Apple recently released, showing off additional travel and fitness apps on the Watch.
Although Apple hasn’t yet publicly revealed Apple Watch sales, Tim Cook said during last week’s earnings call that the company is more than happy with the number of devices it’s sold so far. Users seem happy, too, with reported higher satisfaction rates than were enjoyed by either the first generation iPhone or iPad.
Check out the ads below:
Less than a week after the release of EL Capitan beta 4, Apple has seeded a fifth beta to developers this afternoon, full of new fixes for developers.
The Aaron Sorkin-penned film Steve Jobs has been chosen as the centerpiece movie of the 53rd annual New York Film Festival and will be screened at the the event on Saturday, October 3rd.
Starring Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, the film is based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography. The movie won’t be released publicly until this fall, but NY Film Festival director Kent Jones’ review heaps praise on the film, calling it “dramatically concentrated, yet beautifully expansive; it’s extremely sharp; it’s wildly entertaining.”
Director Danny Boyle had the following to say about the honor:
After exclusively debuting Drake’s Meek Mill diss track “Charged Up” last night on Beats 1, Apple Music scored another excellent exclusive today, only this time from Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
Watch it below:
Apple executives are joining top brass from 12 other major U.S. corporations at the White House today to announce a $140 billion pledge in new investments to decrease their carbon footprints.
The 13 companies which also includes Microsoft and Google, are joining the Obama Administration’s push to lead the effort against climate change ahead of the the United Nations climate-change summit in Paris later this year by launching the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.
Autonomous weapons that have the power to track and kill targets with Terminator-like efficiency aren’t just a Hollywood fantasy anymore.
Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and hundreds of AI and robotics researchers say the technology to build autonomous weapons that select and engage targets without human intervention is feasible within years, not decades. And we need to ban it now.
Get ready to say au revoir to that unwanted Google+ account you randomly get a friend requests on once a year.
Google announced today that in the coming months the company will allow you to create a YouTube Channel, or Gmail account, without creating a Google+ account. And for those of us who were forced onto Google+, there will be an option to finally remove your public profile.
Apple Music’s edge over streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora means that Apple gets to take a 30 percent cut of rivals’ App Store subscriptions — thereby forcing them to jack up their prices or lose money.
It’s the subject of a current FTC antitrust investigation, but according to Rutgers University law professor Michael Carrier, while it may be harsh, it’s probably not illegal.
The iPad mini 3 was a virtual afterthought last year, but in 2015 it’s going to get a serious upgrade, according to a new report.
Instead of the glorified iPad mini 2 we got with last year’s launch, the iPad mini 4 is said to be a miniature version of the iPad Air 2. That means 8-megapixel rear iSight camera, anti-reflective coating on a fully laminated display, and 6.1mm thickness.
Oh, and contrary to previous rumors, we might get a new iPad Air this year, too.
Drake showed himself to be smarter than many musicians (or at least to have better advisers) when he ducked out on the opportunity to be part of Jay Z’s Tidal debacle and instead went full-bore with representing Apple Music.
From posing with his Apple Watch Edition and rocking a sweet vintage Apple jacket at the Worldwide Developers Conference, to having his own show on Beats 1, Drake’s about as Cupertino as it gets these days. And according to the new track he dropped over the weekend, he’s more than happy about it — even if he’s still “got love” for the folks at Tidal.
Welcome to the new Cult of Mac! You probably noticed that we’ve freshened the place up a bit.
We have a new, minimalist design that we trust is easy to read and a pleasure to visit. We have new fonts, cleaner navigation, improved photo treatments and stories that are color-coded by category (news, reviews, how-tos and so on).
We also have a new, modern code base, which we hope will be a solid platform for lots more exciting things to come.