News - page 1135

You can’t stop staring at the new 12-inch MacBook, especially the gold one. It’s lighter and smaller and while it has all the computing power of your suddenly-bulkier model, you’re not sure about life with a single USB-C port.

A Miami startup, led by an electrical engineer, has designed adapters that will allow you to plug in all your peripherals and then gradually cut back as you move to a more wireless future.

The Cusby Building Blocks plug into a USB-C port with each offering a more traditional plug-in, like the current standard USB-A port, another with an HDMI video-audio port or another with an extra USB-C port.

We are one step closer to the end of Touch ID as we know it.

Following on from Apple’s recent patent filing concerning “finger biometric sensing pixels” for future iPhones, tech R&D company Sonovation has announced that it’s discovered a way of putting ultrasonic biometric sensors under Gorilla Glass — by bonding the sensors directly onto the display panel. Better yet, it works accurately even when fingers are wet, dirty, or oily.

The Apple Watch is a great way to unlock all sorts of aspects of your life, from better health to your bank account. Heck, it’ll even unlock your Mac. But will it unlock your door? It can now.

Do you jailbreak? Might want to watch your Snapchatting, then. The video messaging platform is starting to lock out users who uses Snapchat-related jailbreak tweaks to hack the core features of the service.

Apple’s crowdsourced “Shot on iPhone” ad campaign has been described as a “game changer” by Cannes Outdoor Lions jury president Juan Carlos Ortiz, but — let’s face it — most of the videos we shoot daily on our iPhones aren’t the kind of artistic masterpieces Apple chooses to highlight.

With that in mind, Elite Daily has put together a hilarious compilation of “honest” iPhone 6 ads, which are a bit closer to reality for most folks. Check them out below:

If you want to hear who this year’s MTV Video Music Awards nominees are, you’ll hear it on Apple Music’s Beats 1 channel first. Even before you’ll hear it on MTV!

Project Titan, Apple’s hundreds-strong initiative to create a next-generation electric car, is continuing to ramp up.

Word has it that Cupertino has just hired one of the industry’s veteran manufacturing executives to help push the so-called Apple car to market.

If the granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and “breathtaking water views” don’t sell you on moving into East Beach Marina Apartments, maybe the offer of a free Apple Watch will.

Just lease one and move in by the end of July, and you’ll nab a free Apple wearable that will help turn you into the perfect neighbor.

Give Aaron Johnson the chance to give you his elevator pitch and he just might convince you that you need a tabletop photo studio.

But even if you accept his points, you probably don’t have studio know-how or the room for the lights, the tripod, backdrops and a ladder.

Johnson answers with the SHOTBOX, a collapsable tabletop studio with seamless diffused lighting with a setup that can have you camera-ready in seconds. The SHOTBOX is designed for iPhone and other smartphone users who want to make simple product pictures, digitize family photos and copy documents.

Not long after debuting to a pretty successful launch, Filters for iPhone is up for sale. Developer Mike Rundle explains that he has a full-time job plus children to feed and his little side project of love deserves more attention than he can give. His asking price? $10,000.

Spotify doesn’t want to go down without a fight.  The service is debuting Discover Weekly, a new playlist for every user that updates every Monday with unique recommendations for each person. One of Apple Music’s advantages over Spotify is its personalized playlists for users’ tastes, and now Spotify is matching it.

You can charge your smartphone while cycling or running with an accessory also designed to keep you alive on the road.

Sounds like a lot to ask of a battery pack, but the Boost Pack by BSEEN does both with a rather simple design.

The Boost is a belt pack with an LED light panel that stays lit or flashes. It also holds your smartphone and a lightweight 4000 mAH rechargeable travel battery pack to keep your phone charged.

Even if you’re a specialist in an area of digital design, understanding the basics in other parts of the wide field of UX/UI, web, game and mobile design will vastly expand your perspective and marketability. A broader outlook is just what you’ll get from Udemy’s Learn to Design 2015 Course Bundle, a sprawling buffet of design knowledge, now going for a whopping 93 percent off the normal price, just $59.

Everyone writing about the supposed failure of the Apple Watch may want to check out analyst Ben Bajarin’s latest reporting — suggesting that the Apple Watch has a massive 97 percent satisfaction rate among early adopters.

For those keeping track at home, that’s higher than both the original iPhone (92 percent) and the original iPad (91 percent). In fact, only the current iPhone (99 percent satisfaction) scores higher.

Other than the small matter of it not making phone calls, what’s the difference between the iPhone 6 and the sixth-generation iPod touch that Apple released last week?

That’s the question iFixit tried to answer with its teardown of Apple’s newest music player.

For all those people writing off the Apple Watch as a failure just a few months after its launch, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has a simple message: Slow down on the quick judgments.

In a new note to investors, Munster claims that the Apple Watch is doing about as well as he expected so far, but doesn’t predict that it will truly hit its stride until 2017 — when sales of the wearable device will be around 40 million units, or approximately 9 percent of Apple’s revenue.

Here are his full comments:

SAN FRANCISCO — Teddy Winthrop is forgetful, a trait he inherited from his dad.

His father implored him to get a Day-Timer, an executive planner that was wildly popular in the ’80s. But the young entrepreneur dismissed the idea — his personal organizer was his iPhone. And that’s when it hit him: The world needed a Day-Timer for the iPhone.

So he started a company, Edward Field, selling beautifully made leather iPhone wallet cases. It’s going well so far, thanks partly to experience he gained working for his brother, the brains behind American Giant, manufacturer of the “world’s greatest hoodie.”

If you’re like me, you probably spend a lot of time in Instagram during the day. In fact, if you’re like me, you probably spend so much time in Instagram that you wish it was integrated right into iOS, just a swipe away from no matter where in the operating system you are.

Apple’s never going to get around to baking deep integration to the Facebook-owned Instagram into iOS, but here’s the next best thing: a new app that puts Instagram right in iOS 8’s Notification Center.

A 21-year-old Amazon employee in India has been arrested for allegedly stealing $12,500 worth of electronics — including numerous Apple devices — while working in the packing department of the company’s warehouse.

Pramod Bhamble placed orders himself, but instead of packing the correct products, he stuffed the container full of the equivalent weight of iPhones, iPads, cameras and high-end watches before mailing the order to his home.

Adweek has released its Creative 100 list, honoring the people it views as the “current masters of the creative idea” across advertising, branded content, technology, products, and pop culture.

While it’s no surprise that Apple would make such a list, what is interesting is that none of the usual suspects appear. There’s no sign of Jony Ive, Angela Ahrendts, or even Tim Cook. Instead, the people Adweek claim are driving Apple’s creativity today are Richard Howarth and Alan Dye.

In case you don’t immediately know the names, this is the pair who now control Apple’s Industrial Design studio and UI departments, after Jony Ive was promoted to chief design officer to do more “blue sky thinking.” Here’s what Adweek has to say about Howarth and Dye:

Attention: jailbreakers. A new hack has just hit the Cydia App Store that allows you to “unjailbreak” your iPhone. And it’s surprisingly useful.

A reputable analyst is predicting the Apple Watch Sport will come in yellow and rose gold. And we won’t have to wait for the Apple Watch 2 to get those colors: They’ll be available alongside the iPhone 6s later this year.

Apple’s on a roll with new iPhone ads. A little more than a week after debuting a series of news ads as part of their “If it’s not an iPhone” marketing push, Cupertino has supplemented it with a new ad, focused on the kaleidoscope of wonderful apps available for the iPhone 6.

This week saw some prime deals at Cult of Mac. Check out the slashed prices on high quality bluetooth headphones, indestructible cables for your iPhone or Apple Watch, and plenty more.

This week: we all love the popular products, but this episode we’ll remember some of Apple’s biggest blunders! Plus: why the new iPods might be the last iPods; Apple’s missing back to school promotion; and the perfect way to motivate your lazy workforce…

Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. If you’re waking up with numb limbs or back pain, Casper’s American-made mattresses can help, and with a price far lower than you’ll find in the stores. Learn more and save $50 off any order at Casper.com/cultcast.

Show notes ahead and they’re quite good.