Cult of Mac has some fine deals on offer this week, offering discounts on a lifetime of WordPress themes and secure mobile connections, an exclusive 3Doodler bundle, and plenty more.
This week: how to train Apple Music to dish up better tunes; Microsoft calls it quits on the phone game; iOS 9 and El Capitan betas go public; awkward stories from Disneyland; and the REAL REASON Apple is building a “Spaceship” campus…
Our thanks to Bushel for supporting this episode, the simple-to-use cloud-based tool that anyone can leverage to manage the Apple devices in their workplace. Get Bushel for free for up to 3 devices when you sign up at Bushel.com/cultofmac.
Show notes ahead, my friends.
It’s always a good time for a great deal, and we’ve got some good ones ending soon. Get in on dramatically dropped prices on top products like Dragon Dictate, REMXD bluetooth headphones, and lots more before they drop off the map!
A long time ago (well, three days ago) in an App Store far, far away, Disney finally dropped its official Star Wars app ahead of the release of this winter’s Episode VII movie. Bringing you all the breaking news and interactive features you can shake a lightsaber at, the app will let you know the second a new trailer drops or any other big announcement is made.
On top of that, the app lets you unlock 3D characters for a special Augmented Reality camera feature, take and share a Star Wars selfie, and so much more.
Download it you probably should.
Available on: iPhone/iPad
Price: Free
Download: App Store
Apple’s fitness apps are surprisingly limited given that is a core selling point of Apple Watch. Even basic features like mapping runs and challenging friends are currently missing. And from what we’ve seen so far, watchOS 2 won’t address these shortcomings.
Here’s my wish list of 10 things I’d like to see Apple do to get its fitness apps in shape.
This week, we’ve got a ton of even more great stuff for you all in one place. Check out our guide to getting Apple Music on your iPhone so you can listen without burning up all your data on streaming, our beginner’s guide on running with the Apple Watch, a profile on one of the best sports photographers out there who also happens to use an iPhone, a hilariously true interview with the developers behind, yes, the Farty Troll game, and the straight skinny on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan public betas.
Get all that (and more!) in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. Download and subscribe right here, too.
After outselling all Android Wear watches within 24 hours, Apple Watch looked set to be the device that would finally give smartwatches their big break. But according to a recent report, sales of Cupertino’s first wearable have since nosedived 90%.
It’s wise to take that report with a pinch of salt, but it got us thinking; if Apple’s first smartwatch really is a flop, which company can make a wearable worth wearing, and do wearable devices have a future at all?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question.
Tim Cook and Eddy Cue were in Sun Valley, Idaho this week for Allen & Co’s annual gathering of the richest and most successful people in media and technology. The gathering includes multiple days of hobnobbing with fellow elites where Cook has become a staple for the past two years.
Last year Apple’s CEO made headlines by telling a reporter to throw her Samsung away. This year Cook was mum when reporters asked him questions, but he was spotted chatting with some of his fellow tech titans, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates:
There are a dozen-odd ways to chat with people these days, from IM to Twitter direct messages to apps like Slack, Snapchat and GroupMe.
If you want to create your own with no more fuss than typing in a unique URL in your web browser, though, you can’t go wrong with hack.chat, a new, bare-bones, no-frills approach to private chat that looks like something out of the DOS era. And I mean that in a good way.
It’s dead simple to use (though you can also run your own server) and incredibly disposable. Perfect for those quick chats you need to make happen that you may not want on something like Slack, which keeps an archive of all the inappropriate comments you’ve ever written.
After invading sport stadiums across the country, Apple Pay is preparing to make an appearance at the biggest baseball game of the season: the 2015 MLB All-Star Game.
Let’s face it — you wouldn’t have an Apple Watch if it wasn’t nice to look at. Now you can give your watch a gawk-worthy place of privilege whether it’s on or off your wrist, with TRNDLabs’s Natural-Wood Apple Watch Charging Stand, going for just $19.99 in this very limited-time Cult of Mac deal.
The next time you buy tickets to see famed stage actress Patti LuPone in a show, just leave your cell phone at home.
The Tony and Grammy award winner delivered her exit line during her performance of Shows for Days at the Lincoln Center Wednesday night and then walked up to a woman in the audience at the end of the second row and snatched her phone from her hands.
According to several audience members, the woman had been texting throughout the show. New York City long ago passed an ordinance banning cellphones from theaters, but that hasn’t stopped many from bringing their devices – and using them – during shows.
With Apple Music making waves, a dedicated music-playing device like the iPod suddenly seems more relevant than it’s been in years. Which is why it’s great to hear that Apple is reportedly planning to introduce a refreshed lineup of iPod touch, nano and shuffle media players on Tuesday, July 14.
The upgrades are said to involve new colors — including electric blue and fuchsia, along with classic black, pink and a slightly darker gray option. However, the iPod touch is also likely to receive a major boost, upgrading its current A5 processor to a new 64-bit one. Woop woop!
Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.
Brendan Ó Sé aimed his iPhone camera, composed on screen the wavy painted lines on a Copenhagen street and snapped the photo as four people entered the frame from different directions.
For reasons Ó Sé cannot explain, he titled the photo, God will send a sign. When he does, be prepared.
Not long after, Ó Sé received widespread attention for the photo after it was selected by Apple to be part of its “Shot on iPhone 6” advertising campaign. There were billboards in several countries, magazine ads, an international award and interview requests.
Ó Sé was not prepared. He was kind of floored.
With unparalleled numbers of orders from Apple, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus may be the handset everyone’s talking about right now, but don’t think that Cupertino has given up on its previous record-breaker, the iPhone 6.
The company has debuted not one, two, three, but seven new ads and commercial spots showing off Apple’s current-gen iPhones. Check them out below:
The iPhone 6s is on the way, but that’s not going to stop forward-looking Apple watchers from speculating about future phones — like, say, 2018’s iPhone 8.
Alongside regularly-demanded features like wireless charging, designer Jermaine Smit has come up with an unusual dual-screen concept reminiscent of Russia’s YotaPhone — which would offer a 2K display on one side and a low-power screen on the other.
Check out a video below:
Apple has a history of blasting fart apps from its App Store. But when is a fart just a fart, and when is it art?
Scott Kurtz, artist and writer of popular webcomic PvP, and his business partner Cory Casoni decided to find out with Farty Troll, a Flappy Bird clone about propelling a flatulent, blue giant named Skull through a maze of coffee cups using nothing but his own wind. Apple repeatedly rejected the app, but after a bit of straining and a lot of effort, it has finally come out.
It all started a year ago as part of Kurtz’s comic, which is about the employees of a magazine who were transitioning into game publishing.
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Let’s be clear: It is incredibly dangerous to do anything with your phone while you’re driving. You shouldn’t be texting, checking your mail, or swiping through Tinder when you should be focused on all of the people and giant, dangerous machines around you.
But Toyota knows that despite all of the warnings and common sense, some people are just going to chance it anyway. So a new radio ad it’s running in Sweden is taking the choice out of their hands.
You can see the promotional video about the ad below.
A major pharmaceutical company is looking at how it might use ResearchKit to create new, potentially life-saving medicine.
Purdue Pharma, maker of painkiller Oxycontin, would be the first company to use Apple’s open-source, data collection platform for commercial use.
Excited about the new Heroes: Reborn series coming back to television? Want to relive highlights from the original Heroes series in preparation for the reboot set to air this fall?
How about an entire prequel series that explains how the world has changed since Heroes? You’re in luck, then, as NBC has created a digital series that does just that: Heroes Reborn: Dark Matters.
If you want to see it, though, you’ll need to download the Heroes: Reborn app, which is only on iOS.
Along with releasing the first ever public beta of iOS 9, Apple has also opened up OS X El Capitan to the public for beta testing as well.
Developers have been toying around with Apple’s latest iOS 9 betas for over a month now, but starting today, everyone can download and install the latest iOS 9 beta, even if you’re not a developer.
Slack is ingraining emojis even deeper into your work environment whether you like it or not. Users were already able to send emojis casually while chatting, but now anyone can specifically react to messages in Slack with emojis. It’s pretty easy to get creative with this, and it’s sure to spice up the chat with your co-workers.
Conan O’Brien and sidekick Andy Richter head off to Comic-Con International this week on the late night television show.
Instead of taking the train down, Richter decides to take a road trip. Conan is excited!
What happens next is a thing of beauty, as Team Coco blasts on down the Fury Road in a auto-monster straight out of Mad Max’s latest big-screen adventure. Check it out in the video below.