This week we’ve got a magazine positively laden with great stuff: a piece on how great Apple Music actually is, a look at how veteran music service Rhapsody struggles for relevance, a chat with the young hacker who added custom watch faces to Apple Watch, and quite a few helpful how-to tips.
If you want a full-to-the-brim Apple news experience this weekend, be sure to download the latest Cult of Mac Magazine, or subscribe if you’re into that sort of thing!
Apple stock continued to tumble Friday, closing at $105.76 — down more than 20 percent from its all-time high of $134.50 earlier this year.
The precipitous drop is in line with dozens of other big-name stocks that have taken a turn for the worse in 2015, but what’s driving the downturn?
Riot Games, developer of insanely successful online battle arena game League of Legends, has created a new game as a love letter to its fans. Titled Blitzcrank’s Poro Roundup, the side-scrolling game is available for Android, iOS and as a web app.
Apple fans have good reason to love the Cupertino company, which continues to revolutionize new product categories and deliver hugely successful products year after year. But how far should that love go?
Some might say there is a group of fans who are irrationally loyal to the Apple brand, devoted to buying its latest products just because they sport the Apple logo, and dismissing all competitors just because they don’t. But is there really a “Cult of Apple?”
Join us as we battle it out over that very question in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.
In the news business, a story that has legs stays in our heads, conversations and spins off follow-up headlines. Such was this week’s major newspaper expose describing Amazon as a hellish pressure cooker where employees cry at their desks.
Not everyone agreed with The New York Times piece that drew this conclusion after interviews with more than 100 current and former workers. Now even a Times editor is questioning whether the story was fair.
Hip-hop producer and Apple employee Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre, has been all over the news the past week thanks to his hit new album Compton and the movie Straight Outta Compton, which chronicles his rap group NWA’s rise to fame in the late ’80s.
Not all the attention surrounding Dre has been positive though, as critics have lampooned the Dre-produced film for glossing over some of the less-savory bits of NWA’s history, like the time Dre beat up Dee Barnes and a few other women. In an effort to stem the backlash, the first billionaire in hip-hop released a statement this morning, apologizing to the women he’s hurt.
Here what the doc had to say about the past:
Apple is looking to bring even more fitness sensors to your wrist by creating special Apple Watch bands that will take advantage of the device’s hidden port, according to a new rumor.
Apple has been slowly poaching some of Daimler’s top talent for its own car project that is nearly ready for testing, but according to Daimler CEO, Dieter Zetsche, it wouldn’t be totally inconceivable for Apple and the Mercedes-maker to work together on a future automotive project.
Zetsche said that “different types” of cooperation with Apple and Google are possible in the future, as carmakers have realized they need software experts and telecoms to help create the next-generation of automobiles.
Another year, another massive operating system update to learn and master. If you design games for mobile, you’ll soon have to reckon with the sweeping changes in the upcoming iOS9 update. Here’s your chance to get ahead of the curve with a comprehensive bundle of 8 game-building lessons for just $49 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Got an iPhone and want to try out the competition?
For just $1, Samsung will let you test drive its brand new Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, or Galaxy S6 edge for 30 days — and provide you with free cellular service during the trial.
The rumored 4-inch iPhone 6c will boast an A8 processor, Touch ID and Apple Pay, according to a new report coming out of the Apple supply chain in China.
There’s more evidence that preorders for the iPhone 6s will start on September 11, courtesy of a screenshot showing what appears to be information relating to a French mobile carrier.
A post containing selfies taken by a group of iPhone thieves has gone viral on Facebook, being shared more than 100,000 times since being posted by the handset’s rightful owner yesterday.
Call me cynical, but when I saw the latest ad in the “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” series Thursday afternoon, I felt a little uneasy.
Sure, there’s over a million stores you can use Apple Pay in, but if this ad is to be believed, they’re all the same corporate-owned stores you’ll see in every mall across the US.
Ugh.
Check out the Apple Pay video below.
Apple’s Marc Newson is one of the best designers in the industry. His plane-inspired Lockheed Lounge chair was reflective, smooth and looked incredibly uncomfortable. And we’re still enjoying the look and feel of our Apple Watches, even if the other night a drunk girl at a bar made fun of me for wearing mine in public. And that was hurtful.
But Newson isn’t just about shiny devices and even shinier chairs. He’s recently teamed up with luxury accessory designer Montblanc to create the Montblanc M, a classic fountain pen that looks like it came from the future.
There are a million reasons to hate group selfies, but now there’s a new one: Pose with the wrong person and you could wind up with head lice.
A 14-year-old modder has apparently managed to replace his Apple Watch’s bubbly default home screen with something a little boxier and more classic: iOS 4.2.1, which launched all the way back in 2010.
Billy Ellis, a self-described “iOS app and tweak developer,” posted a video of his project on YouTube. Check it out below:
“I guess I’m known as that firmware-poking guy,” says Hamza Sood, the young hacker who most recently found a way to create and add custom watch faces to Apple Watch.
Cult of Mac chatted with the London-based 19-year-old via email to find out more about what makes him tick.
In support of the Apple Watch’s increased availability in the U.K., Apple has taken over all 24 windows at the iconic Selfridges’ shopping center in London to promote the new timepiece.
Apple opened a store within a store concept a Selfridges’ earlier this year. The gigantic new displays mimics the Apple Watch’s floral clock faces, with some flowers reaching up to 1.8 meters in height.
Here’s another look:
Seminal magazine-style news aggregation app Flipboard is aiming to compete with Apple News by introducing a system that lets users rate stories and ultimately adjust the mix of their home feed.
“No matter where you are on Flipboard, if you see something you like and want to get more of it in your Cover Stories, tap ‘More like this,'” says the Flipboard website, “If you’d rather see less of something, tap ‘Less like this.’”
Dust off your father’s Miami Vice suit and start growing a mullet. (Get it permed in back, too.) A new app turns your iPhone’s camera into a 1985-style VHS camcorder, complete with terrible quality and a date stamp.
If you’ve been using Google’s Chrome browser on Mac, you’ve been missing out on some serious performance gains made by Apple with its Safari browser: Not only is Cupertino’s favorite browser faster than Chrome, it also saves battery power.
But Chrome is looking to catch up with a coming update that some Mac users are raving about.
Sony’s second-generation SmartBand 2 is here, and it’s a big improvement over its predecessor. The wearable’s new design packs an intelligent heart rate monitor that constantly measures your excitement and stress levels throughout the day.
Apple could release its 4-inch iPhone 6c in November, according to a new rumor coming out of the supply chain in China.
The report claims that the handset is being assembled by regular Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, which has started “mass-increasing” its workforce to deal with the task of building not one, not two, but three different iPhone models.
Sometimes trademarks are about defending brand names you’ve spent years and millions of dollars building up. Other times they’re meant as jealous, petty ways of striking back at people who are doing better than you.
Guess which category Swatch’s decision to trademark Steve Jobs’ iconic “One more thing” signature phrase falls under.