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News - page 1142

Amazon takes on Dropbox with Cloud Drive app

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Amazon's Cloud Drive app made its debut on iOS.
Photo: George Tinari/Cult of Mac

Amazon is getting more serious about taking a piece of the cloud storage action. Over the holiday weekend, the company released its Amazon Cloud Drive app for iOS, letting you finally access your files in Amazon’s cloud from your iPhone or iPad.

The app competes with the likes of Dropbox by enabling you to view your files anywhere, but falls short in a number of key areas.

Save 75% on a lifetime of password protection and management with SplashID Pro [Deals]

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Whether you’ve got them jotted down on a yellow notepad, in a document file, or scrawled on a stack of napkins hidden in your mattress, you’ve got to have a way keeping your passwords, financial info and other sensitive data secure and accessible when it’s needed. SplashID Pro’s Lifetime Plan gathers all those errant bits of info, puts them in one place, locks them up and hands you the only key.

Oreo’s new cookie takes a bite out of Apple’s playbook

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Photo: Nabisco

Every summer Oreo comes out with a crazy new limited edition cookie to get you to stuff your face with more delicious cream filling. This year’s no different except instead of using watermelon, birthday cake, or lemon creme filling to tempt you, the company has taken a bite out of Apple’s playbook by making the Oreo impossibly thin.

This rapper recorded his entire album at the Apple Store

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Prince Harvey in his studio, aka the Apple Stpre
Prince Harvey in his studio, aka the Apple Store
Photo: Matthew Narvin/The Daily Beast

Recording a rap album is tough, expensive work. Sure, you can bust out a crappy demo on computer if you can’t afford studio sessions, but when Brooklyn rapper Prince Harvey’s laptop got stolen, he found the next best thing to busting out beats at the library: The Apple Store in SoHo.

iPhone 6s could be slightly thicker than its predecessor

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Leaked alleged schematics showing the iPhone 6s.
Leaked alleged schematics showing the iPhone 6s.
Photo: Engadget

Apple tends to focus on internal components rather than external changes when it comes to its incremental “s” releases.

However according to a new leaked schematic, this year the company might think a bit different — with a slightly redesigned iPhone body that, surprisingly enough, could turn out to be marginally thicker than last year’s model.

Pegatron needs you! iPhone builder to take on 40k workers for new models

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Apple is hoping for big things from its next-gen iPhone.
Apple is hoping for big things from its next gen iPhone.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple is predicting big things for its next-generation iPhone 6s — and for Apple’s manufacturers, big orders means hiring a big workforce to deal with it.

A new report today claims that Protek, a Pegatron subsidiary based in eastern China, is hiring 40,000 additional workers to cope with the iPhone 6s manufacturing it’s scheduled to start work on next month.

The best apps you might have missed this week

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Hopefully you won't be doing any work this July 4 weekend, but Scanner Pro 6 is definitely worth a download for the next time you have to scan a document.Essentially transforming your iPhone camera into a miniature document scanner, all users have to do is point and tap to scan a document to their handset. A batch-scanning mode meanwhile lets you simply pass multiple documents in front of your iPhone, with the app intelligently scanning each one in turn.Perhaps best of all is the new Scan Radar feature which detects images in your camera roll — meaning that you can scan images even if you don’t happen to have Scanner Pro 6 open at the time.Available on: iPhone/iPad

Price: $2.99 (on sale)

Download: App Store

Hopefully you won't be doing any work this July 4 weekend, but Scanner Pro 6 is definitely worth a download for the next time you have to scan a document.

Essentially transforming your iPhone camera into a miniature document scanner, all users have to do is point and tap to scan a document to their handset. A batch-scanning mode meanwhile lets you simply pass multiple documents in front of your iPhone, with the app intelligently scanning each one in turn.

Perhaps best of all is the new Scan Radar feature which detects images in your camera roll — meaning that you can scan images even if you don’t happen to have Scanner Pro 6 open at the time.

Available on: iPhone/iPad

Price: $2.99 (on sale)

Download: App Store


Photo: Readdle

Running with Apple Watch, a beginner’s guide

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For your first run, select an “open” goal
For your first run, select an “open” goal
Photo: Graham Bower / Cult of Mac

If you bought an Apple Watch hoping it would help you get fit, but you haven’t been on your first run yet, maybe you need of a little more encouragement. So here’s some advice from a reformed couch potato.

The first workout is the hardest. It gets progressively easier and more rewarding from there. You just need to know how to get started.

Sea change: Apple Music & Beats 1 hit all the right notes

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All the news you can use about Apple Music and Beats 1.
All the news you can use about Apple Music and Beats 1.
Cover Design: Stephen Smith

This week was all about the launch of the surprisingly fantastic Apple Music streaming service and the Beats 1 24/7 radio station here at Cult of Mac, and we’ve pulled all the cool info you’ll want about these two new Apple services into one delightful Cult of Mac Magazine issue.

Of course, we’ve got our first hands-on impressions of Apple Music and Beats 1, how Twitter and early reviews praised the service (and said goodbye to Spotify), all the details on albums you won’t find anywhere else, and a great tutorial on how to record the live Beats 1 audio stream right on your Mac.

Let’s get started, then, shall we? You can download and subscribe right here, too.

Run the Jewels are getting their own Beats 1 Radio show

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Run the Jewels are taking over Beats 1
Run the Jewels are invading Beats 1
Photo: Nick Gazin

Beats 1 already boasts a superstar cast of DJ’s but they’re about to get a new pair of hosts in the form of rap group, Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike and El-P are set to take over Beats 1 every Friday at 6PM PT for their very own show called “WRTJ.” The show will follow the duo as they complete the Run the Jewel world tour and talk about music, as well as the merits of unicorns and dragons.

Check out the teaser El-P published today:

What Apple eventually got right in its awkward ’80s video

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Apple concept video 1987
Sometimes, I ask Siri for personal advice. It usually steers me wrong.
Photo: Apple

In 1987, Apple created a video set in 1997 that was all about how much better the world was with all of the amazing Apple products the company was going to create. Almost 20 years later, some of the predictions in this ’80s-tastic fantasy film are true, and some are laughably (and thankfully) absent from current hardware.

Check out the video below, but brace yourself for some really bad jokes.

Calm down and rock on; Apple isn’t adding DRM to your music

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The only problem is when you start deleting files without a backup. Don't do that.
Photo: Apple

No, you won’t lose all your DRM-free iTunes music. At least, not without deleting your actual files and not having a backup. Apple isn’t adding DRM to your iTunes files, either.

The reality here is that Apple will not automatically remove any iTunes music files you own on your computer and replace it with a digital rights managed (DRM) file.

However, the convergence of iTunes Match, Apple Music, and the new iCloud Music Library can be confusing, and there is a small potential to re-download files you’ve deleted from your Mac as DRM-protected Apple Music files.

Luckily, the folks at iMore have a pretty fantastic, clear explanation of what’s going down here, and a pretty neat way to check and see which of your music files have been matched, uploaded, or purchased. Even John Gruber linked to it, so you know it’s good.

Photographers add Foo Fighters to their Taylor Swift contract battle

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The Foo Fighters will perform at RFK Stadium and one news outlit is boycotting over its photo agreement.
The Foo Fighters will perform at RFK Stadium and one news outlit is boycotting over its photo agreement.
Photo: Jo/Flickr CC

Taylor Swift’s bold rant against Apple over royalties continues to echo in the ears of photographers.

A quick recap . . . Swift used her Tumblr page to chide Apple for initially not paying musicians during the trial period of the new Apple Music. Then a music photographer in England called her a hypocrite because the contract her people force editorial photographers to sign before shows says Swift has the right to use those photos for free to promote her brand.

Apple backed down, but the good publicity-bad publicity for Swift has photographers and photo editors taking second looks at the contracts of other musical acts.

Post-Apple Music, should Apple form its own label?

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Apple Music probably couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start. Following its launch on Tuesday, the service has been widely praised by fans and critics for its user experience and terrific Beats 1 radio — but what’s next for Apple and its Beats team?

Friday-Night-Fights-bug-2Could the Cupertino company launch its very own music label? It has the talent, it has the resources, and it has already revolutionized the music industry once before. But does the move make sense?

Join us as we discuss that very question in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.

John Sculley drew ‘Mac phone’ concept for Steve Jobs in 1984

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John Sculley drew a 'Mac phone' concept for Steve Jobs back in the 80s.
Photo: Web Summit/Flickr CC

Former Apple CEO John Sculley dropped some interesting new tidbits about Apple’s history in a recent interview. He said that all the way back in 1984, Jobs was dreaming up the idea of a “Mac phone.”

This “Mac phone” would be a desktop device that acted as a phone, but ran a version of the Mac’s software.

iPad Pro could arrive later this year, with a little help from Sharp and Samsung

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The iPad Pro could delay the iPad Air, cancel the iPad mini.
The iPad Pro is on its way.
Photo: CURVED

Apple is turning to both long-time manufacturing partner Sharp and long-time “frenemy” Samsung to help build the displays for its eagerly-anticipated 12.9-inch giant-sized iPad Pro, according to a new report.

Sharp is said to have provided a small test batch of the enormous 264ppi, 2,732×2,048 displays in June, which met with Apple’s high production standards. However, Cupertino is also said to have given Samsung a back-up role building screen panels — suggesting that Apple is expecting big things with this next-gen device. Pun intended.

Master Amazon’s web services from the ground up with this bundle for 89% off [Deals]

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Finally, a boot camp where you’re encouraged to get your head in the clouds…er, the cloud. If you’re trying to establish any kind of cloud-based service, for yourself or a client, Amazon’s Web Services takes away the massive problem of actually having to build a server farm. That simplifies the work of setting up any service or application, and can help save (or make) you a lot more money, but only if you know how to use it. To help get your rear in gear, Udemy is offering the Amazon Web Services Engineer Bootcamp Bundle, a set of four critical courses. Clocking in at 24 hours’ worth of instruction on how to tap the potential of Amazon’s cloud, right now it’s 89% off the usual price — but like a vapor, this deal will disappear before long.

Brad Mangin is one of sport photography’s best shooters – even with an iPhone

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Brad Mangin's portrait of a high school football player was selected for Apple's
Brad Mangin's portrait of a high school football player was selected for Apple's "Shot on iPhone 6" ad campaign.
Photo: Brad Mangin/Apple

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

Brad Mangin’s friends gave him a good ribbing as “the last photographer on the planet” to carry a flip phone. They all had iPhones and couldn’t believe it took him so long to not only own one but discover the picture quality of the phone’s camera.

 
Laughter would turn to admiration in less than a year’s time. Mangin would go on to use his first iPhone to produce a robust baseball essay for Sports Illustrated and get a book deal with his iPhone pictures.

Woz: Entertainment trumps accuracy in new Steve Jobs trailer

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Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak in the forthcoming Jobs biopic.
Seth Rogen plays Steve Wozniak in the forthcoming Jobs biopic.
Photo: Universal

The Woz wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest fan of the Ashton Kutcher-starring 2013 movie Jobs, whose script he infamously dismissed as “crap.” But what did he make of the trailer for Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, which landed earlier this week?

In an email correspondence, Wozniak gives something of a mixed view — essentially dinging the film for its accuracy, but arguing that its heart is in the right place.

iPhone set to reach record shipments as new models enter production

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iPhone 6s is on the way.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple will ship 50 million iPhone units in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to a new report published today which claims that companies in the iPhone 6s supply chain have started delivering finished components to Foxconn and Pegatron for final assembly.

If accurate, this means that the iPhone 5s, 6, 6 Plus, 6s and 6s Plus will hit combined shipments of 230-240 million units in 2015 — up from the 192 million units Apple shipped last year.