News - page 1149

Siri is a pretty handy virtual assistant on your Apple Watch. It can tell you the temperature, convert measurements, send text messages, and do several other things without you having to take your iPhone out of your pocket.

The one thing you should never have to do, however, is ask it what time it is because you’re wearing a watch, and that’s the minimum of information it should provide you without you having to ask. Seriously, just bring up your wrist. The time is right there.

But if you’re thick as a brick and ask Apple Watch Siri what time it is, it’ll come back with one of over a dozen silly responses. Check out our results below:

If you ever dig into the privacy policies of app developers, be prepared for a shock. This is where they confess their sins: invading your privacy, selling your data, and pestering you with popups and unwanted ads.

As the App Store becomes increasingly crowded and competitive, many developers struggle to make a profit. Some turn their attention to alternative sources of revenue, and the quality of their apps suffer as a result.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are the 10 rules for developers to keep things “classy.”

Every week, we pull together all the great stuff from the past week of Cult of Mac’s coverage of Apple, culture and technology news into a slick Newsstand magazine.

This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, then, has all the details we can share about the upcoming iPhone 6s (with more to come in the months to follow, for sure), a few more Apple Watch details, a review of an amazing iPhone camera add on, a profile of the best Apple analyst around, and a look at the oddest little waterproof Bluetooth speaker you ever did see.

All of this and much, much more. Check it out.

Leander is having a bit of a moment. One of his favorite features of Apple product design is missing on his shiny new MacBook.

Jony Ive, what have you done with the magnet?

You can commiserate with our Editor and Publisher over the loss of the magnet that secured the cable to the charging port in the latest Kahney’s Korner video.

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FSWI) has announced today that for the first time since 2009 exports of traditional timepieces are down, and it looks like Apple Watch is to blame.

Apple has launched a replacement program for certain iMac models with 3TB hard drives. If you bought a 27-inch iMac with a 3TB hard drive between December 2012 and September 2013, you might be eligible for a free replacement hard drive.

An Apple spokesperson claims that the company will not remove artists who decline to sign up for Apple Music from the iTunes Store.

This is the latest development in the tense negotiations leading up to the streaming service’s launch on June 30, with indie musicians and labels claiming that Apple is trying to bully and coerce them into putting their music on the new platform.

Pinterest is looking for fresh blood to inject some more life into it’s mobile experience this year, so the company announced that it has nabbed Scott Goodson, a former Apple and Facebook engineer, to come in and improve the app’s performance across various platforms.

Google I/O and WWDC have been and gone, and Google and Apple have laid out the plans for their next major platform updates — Android M and iOS 9.

Now that we’ve had a chance to let those announcements sink in, it’s time for Cult of Android and Cult of Mac to battle over which is best in another Friday Night Fight. Let us help you decide which one will reign supreme when they roll out to the public this fall.

The last iPad with a non-Retina display was sent to the grave today, almost three years after its debut.

Apple quietly pulled the iPad mini from its online store, leaving just the iPad mini 2 and 3 behind to go with the iPad Air 2. In doing this, Apple made a significant milestone stone: the Apple Store no longer sells non-Retina iOS devices.

A New York elementary school has taken the bold move of upgrading 75 percent of its third and fourth curriculum to iPad, meaning that students spend three-quarters of each day using their Apple tablets.

Jackson Avenue School is currently in its fifth year of a district initiative providing all students in grades 3-9 with iPads for digital learning.

“Did you hear what Newt Gingrich said about the Apple Watch?” sounds like the opening line to a Stephen Colbert joke. In fact, it’s a genuine question, since the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and “keen observer of technology” just published his first review for Mashable — offering his thoughts on Apple’s debut wearable device.

Testing out an Apple Watch Sport, Gingrich recounts a day spent on airplanes and in McDonald’s restaurants (yes, really!), before giving his final verdict on Cupertino’s first crack at a smartwatch.

Check out the highlights below:

We all know that the Apple Watch doesn’t exactly have great battery life. At best, it’ll get you through the day. But, of course, one of the big sells of the Apple Watch is that it’ll save your iPhone battery life, because you don’t have to pull it out as much.

Of course, then you end up in a Catch-22. Your Apple Watch depends on your iPhone to work properly, but without pulling out your iPhone, you can’t tell how much battery you have left, therefore risking both your Apple Watch and your iPhone crapping out on you in the middle of the day. If only the Apple Watch could tell you your iPhone’s battery level.

It can’t, but luckily, there’s an app for that. And it might be the loveliest one yet.

Color blindness is an extremely prevalent disability, especially amongst men: according to official statistics, 1 in 12 men are color blind (although women fare better, at a rate of only 1 in 200). These rates of color blindness are part of the reason why Google places such importance in their Material Design guidelines on designing with color blindness in mind. For example, by not relying on color alone to relay critical information within an app.

But no matter how well programmed an app is, it’s not going to help someone who is color blind see colors… or is it? Red Stripe is a new app by developer Michel Fortin that aims to do just that.

Apple has been rewarded for its work in making technology accessible to blind users with a Helen Keller Achievement Award, given at an New York event yesterday evening.

Organized by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Apple was specifically praised for VoiceOver, the iOS feature which reads out descriptions of everything happening on a device’s display.

Apple may not have any immediate plans to support 4K content in its next-generation Apple TV, but if true, the decision wasn’t one the company came to lightly without weighing up all the options.

In fact, according to a document leaked to WikiLeaks as part of last year’s Sony Pictures hack, Apple has been testing and licensing select 4K content from Sony since at least 2013.

Apple Music will boast over 30 million songs when it launches at the end of June, but Taylor Swift has decided to leave a blank space where her 1989 album would’ve been.

Apple’s rolled out some much-needed changes to how Apple Watch preview screens look in the App Store.

Have you looked at those shots lately? They look weird. And depending on which version of iOS you’re currently running, that could mean “horrible” or “way better than before, holy crap.”

A new Apple patent could add a startling amount of functionality to your iMessages.

The tech would let you schedule pre-written texts and even send new ones automatically based on context the app draws from elsewhere on your iPhone.

Tom Ford unveiled his Spring 2016 collection this week in London, and while the fashion designer’s newest fanciful dinner jackets drew in a flock of celebrity, the Apple Watch made a surprise appearance in the ready-to-wear collection.

Rather than designing a fashionable Apple Watch band, the forward-thinking designer bridged Apple’s timekeeping accessory to the past by turning it into a pocket watch attached to a chain.

Here’s another look at it:

Traditional watch manufacturers are struggling to find a solution to take on Apple Watch, but Original Grain has taken the ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ cliche a bit too literal with its newest watch collection.

The company launched a new Kickstarter today for its new traditional watch, The Barrel, that comes with a very non-traditional feature called The Duo Connection clasp that lets you wear you Apple Watch on the same wrist.

The Apple Watch has only just landed in Apple Stores, and already a bevy of Apple Watch 2 rumors are basically rendering it outdated.

According to a new report, not only is a second-generation Apple Watch coming next year, but it will boast an added FaceTime camera, greater levels of iPhone independence, and extra high-end $1000+ models.

We rely on our iPhone for so many facets of our life, but as a camera it has become a disruptive force in the photography world. The “Shot with an iPhone 6” advertising campaign is likely making traditional camera companies shutter – pun intended – as sales of consumer cameras continue to fall.

It’s a go-to tool for professional photographers, who have done everything from publish books with iPhone photography to shoot commercials for corporate clients. But there are limitations and sometimes it would be nice to supplement a smartphone’s camera with the punch of a DSLR camera.

DxO, the makers of sophisticated imaging software, may have the ONE camera to do this. The ONE is a palm-sized camera that plugs into your iPhone with functions and optics that have the potential to deliver greater image quality.

If you weren’t in the crowd at Re/code’s recent Code Conference, you can now check out the video of Apple Operations guru Jeff Williams’ interview with Walt Mossberg from the comfort of your home.

In a wide-reaching half-hour conversation, Williams touches on everything from Apple’s plans to disrupt the car industry, to Foxconn suicides, to Williams’ own wish for a Star Trek-style tricorder in future iPhones.

Check out the video below.

Cable boxes couldn’t be hooked up fast enough in August of 1981. People said I want my MTV.
 
Music videos blew our minds as we watched for hours on end a steady rotation of our favorite rock and pop stars who not only sang their music, but became characters in an elaborate, often hyper-sexualized narrative with a backdrop of visual effects and exotic locations.

But a version of what became the music video craze nearly seduced Americans in the 1960s with the Scopitone, a jukebox topped with a large screen that played short Technicolor films of singers performing on a crazy set that often included bikini-clad dancers.