If you game on a Mac, or an iOS device, you’ve probably never played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. But that’s something that has now, quite miraculously, changed: After more than a decade, KOTOR 2 is finally available for Mac, and the game is (quite literally) better than it has ever been.
We’ve already got one “must see” tech-themed movie coming up this year with the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic, but Hollywood’s not done when it come to giving technology the big screen treatment.
In a deal reported to be worth close to seven-figures, Sony Pictures Animation has reportedly beaten out two other major studios to win the rights to a movie based on none other than emojis.
Android’s Lollipop and iOS 8 were announced at virtually the exact same time, but iOS 8 is obliterating it in terms of user adoption.
According to figures released by both Apple and Google, iOS 8 has 85 percent adoption among eligible iPhone and iPad users, while Lollipop is struggling its way to a mere 12.4 percent.
In what will surely be met with a sigh of relief from developers, Apple has stopped people running beta versions of iOS from writing reviews of apps in the App Store.
Many of these reviews tend to be negative because developers have yet to optimize their apps to run the latest prerelease software version. As a result, apps run on a beta version of iOS are far more likely to crash, or feature bugs.
Were you interested in Znaps, MagSafe adapter for Lightning connectors that we posted yesterday? You might want to hold off on ordering them. There’s a big possibility that patent issues could derail them from being delivered as promised.
It seems like just yesterday in many ways that Apple released the first iPhone, but it was actually the better part of a decade ago. Even so, it took the better part of that “better part of a decade” for the competition to catch up, as this great video, showing the evolution of smartphones, shows.
Apple had a massive quarter, beating its own internal estimates, and yet still saw its stock slide following yesterday’s earnings call.
You know who had it much, much worse, though? One-time rival Microsoft, which reported its highest-ever net loss for the quarter after writing off billions for the failure of its Nokia handset division, and witnessing plummeting demand for PCs.
The Bad Blood between singer Taylor Swift and concert photographers is history – unless she writes a song about it.
Swift’s legal team has agreed to revise the photography contact for her 1989 World Tour after a widely reported backlash from photographers and boycotts of some of her shows.
They were reacting to Swift’s open letter to Apple complaining about its initial decision to not pay artists during the trial period of Apple Music. Apple backed down. Photographers, however, called her a hypocrite because of an overreaching photo agreement that gave her unlimited free use of any photos taken at her show, plus the right by members of her team to forcibly remove images from their cameras.
We didn’t get Apple Watch numbers, but Tim Cook and Luca Maestri delivered plenty of good news about Apple’s current financials and future prospects during Tuesday’s earnings call. Amid all the canned statements and bewildering biz speak, they dropped some tantalizing tidbits.
Cook and Maestri teased us with plenty of bullishness — and a little debunking — about impressive Apple Watch sales and consumer responses to the new device. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Apple hit record numbers again this quarter, with massive sales of both iPhone 6 and Macs across the globe.
Here are the highlights from today’s third-quarter 2015 Apple earnings call.
Apple’s stock is taking a hit after today’s Q3 2015 earnings call. At the time of writing, AAPL is down 6.72 percent in after-hours trading to 121.97. Yikes.
iOS 9 beta 4 is out for developers two weeks after beta 3’s release as expected. It’s time for the usual roundup of new goodies in the latest beta and beta 4 doesn’t shy away from the tradition. It’s not nearly as big of a release as last time with Apple Music and Apple News both making their debut, but beta 4 still brings some nice improvements and tweaked features. Let’s get right into it.
Apple didn’t officially announce any Apple Watch sales numbers during today’s earnings call, but according to Tim Cook, the company has already beat its own internal expectations.
While the official number of units sold remains a secret, the Apple exec said the number of Apple Watches sold in the first nine weeks was greater than the number of iPhones or iPads the company sold in the same period after they launched.
Apple’s new streaming music service is coming under fire from the Federal Trade Commission for possible anti-competitive practices.
The recently launched Apple Music costs $9.99 per subscription (or $14.99 for an up-to-six-person family plan), with the first three months free. Competing services like Spotify or Rdio are subject to Apple’s 30 percent take from any app sold on the App Store, which makes the FTC uncomfortable, as Apple Music is not subject to the same rules.
Apple’s earnings fell just shy of Wall Street’s expectations for third-quarter revenue despite continued strong sales of the iPhone 6, which helped the company bring in $49.6 billion in gross revenue and $10.7 billion in profit.
Perhaps even worse for AAPL, the company’s fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of analysts’ best guesstimates.
Along with the release of new betas for iOS 9 and watchOS 2, Apple has seeded a fourth beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan to developers today. The release comes nearly two weeks since the last beta was made available to developers are well as public testers.
Apple has released a new set of betas for the mobile operating systems it announced at WWDC 2015 in June. iOS 9 beta 4 and watchOS 2.0 beta 4 are now available to registered developers, nearly two weeks after Apple seeded the previous betas.
Square continues to add to its lineup of small business tools, especially for owners and managers who want an overall better grip on their businesses. It’s introducing a new Dashboard app that does just that: it lets owners track sales in real-time right from an iPhone. Still, the only requirement is a free Square account.
Apple is set to report its financial results from Q3 2015 to investors this afternoon and, as usual, Cult of Mac will be here to liveblog all the action, from the numbers down to the analysts’ questions.
Apple Watch sales have been looming large in the minds of investors and analysts now that the device has been available for a full quarter. We don’t expect CEO Tim Cook or CFO Luca Maestri to announce the Watch sales as their own category, but there’s sure to be plenty of speculation as to whether the new wearable has met sales expectations.
Today’s earning’s call is set to kick off at 2 p.m. Pacific, but we’ll be kicking off the liveblogging party early with a breakdown of all the numbers. Bookmark this page and join us for the Apple earnings bonanza.
When Apple created the MagSafe power connector for its highly desirable line of MacBooks back in 2006, the world changed. Gone were the days of tripping over your power adapter cord and pulling your entire MacBook down onto a cold, uncaring floor.
These days, your iPhone and iPad have a similar problem, with a Lightning cable that connects so securely to the power port that if you happen to walk by and trip on the cable, you’re gonna fling that oh-so-precious device right to the ground, dashing its poor little silicon brains out.
This Kickstarter project, ZNAPS, aims to fix this design nightmare with a magnetic Lightning cable adapter that will transform the way you charge your Apple mobile devices, all for an excitingly low price of $9.
We’ll get our best — though still inconclusive — estimate of how the Apple Watch is doing later today, when Apple has its quarterly earnings call. Ahead of that, though, analysts are continuing to churn out their own figures regarding how Apple’s debut wearable device is faring thus far.
The latest people to play analyst roulette are research firm Canalys, who peg Apple Watch shipments at a very respectable 4.2 million units, meaning that Apple “easily overtook Fitbit, Xiaomi and all the smart watch vendors, despite the Apple Watch’s significantly higher pricing.”
We’re still waiting for our jetpacks, but at least today’s lightbulbs are properly futuristic. The best example of how far lighting has come is the ilumi A21 Bluetooth Smartbulb, a super-efficient LED light that sports features straight out of sci-fi. And right now, it’s going for nearly half its normal price, just $49 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Apple and IBM have been collaborating on creating an excellent suite of apps for the iPhone and iPad over the past year, but starting today, IBM’s MobileFirst apps are adding support for Apple Watch.
The Apple and IBM partnership revealed today that it’s created 10 more apps that cover everything from managing employee shifts to helping government inspectors get all the data necessary while out in the field.
Take a tour of the new apps below:
Fans hoping to catch MTV’s announcement of this year’s VMA nominees on Beats 1 this morning got a rude awakening as Apple servers crashed right before the artists were revealed.
We’ve been trying to access Beats 1 radio all morning but keep getting “Request timed out” errors on all our devices. Other services have been impacted as well: People on Twitter have reported a number of issues with Apple services, including problems accessing the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iTunes Match.
Here’s a list of Apple services affected:
From predicting potential heart attacks to helping dementia sufferers, we’ve gotten used to the idea that our Apple devices have a part to play in what is referred to as the mobile health drive.
But here’s a medical application you might not have thought that your iPad would ever be able to play a role in: helping couples to conceive.
Try telling that to the Taiwanese start-up Aidmics, which is hoping to carve out a piece of the $40 billion global human fertility market with an iPad-compatible microscope and accompanying app that lets users know exactly how plentiful their lil’ swimmers are.
Apple’s quarterly earnings call is set to take place later today, but one set of figures we’re not expecting to get is the initial Apple Watch sales. Apple has already acknowledged this data be hidden in the “other products” category — alongside the iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics and accessories division.
However, while Apple is likely to keep quiet on the exact breakdown of Apple Watch sales, it will be possible to get a rough idea of how the company’s debut wearable device is faring by doing the following: