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This selfie stick alternative is simply brilliant

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Seflie sticks are a big no-no at Disneyland
It's time to upgrade from the selfie stick.
Photo: CollegeHumor

 

Selfie sticks are quite possibly the worst thing mankind has ever invented. They’re annoying, long, and narcissistic and you can’t go to a concert, museum, landmark, or pretty much anywhere else in public without running into fifty dudes trying to wrangle their piece of metal into the perfect pic.

Luckily, some brilliant designers have devised a cool solution that lets you get nice photos of yourself, without annoying everyone around you.

Check it out:

Apple Watch now has over 6,000 apps

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Some of the apps available on Apple Watch.
Some of the apps available on Apple Watch.
Photo: Apple

Developers are churning out the Apple Watch apps way faster than the first wave of iPhone apps that launched with the App Store. According to new data provided by App Annie to Cult of Mac, the number of Apple Watch apps has double since the device debuted on April 22nd.

The internet is for porn, and so is this new app based on Popcorn Time

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What? We had to try it out. For science!
What? We had to try it out. For science!
Screen: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Popcorn Time is an open source app for Mac that allows users to stream movies from bit torrent sites that have ripped movies on them.

The tech made a huge splash, but is now sadly defunct, even while its creators still proclaim that the technology is legal.

However, some other folks thought the technology was perfect to help us all with another internet activity that a whole bunch of us still enjoy: porn.

Porn Time, based on the same code as Popcorn Time, is now available for Mac, Windows and Linux, so grab a towel and check it out.

Apple Music’s cool free features will cost Android users $10 per month

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price-beats1
The only way to get Apple Music on Android is to pay up.
Photo: Apple

Steve Jobs hated Android so much he once said Apple would never make an iTunes app for Android because he didn’t want to do anything that would make Android users happy. At yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Tim Cook sang a different tune by announcing Apple Music would be available on Android too. What he didn’t say was everyone with an Android phone is going to have to pay. Even for the free features.

Gadget lets you hear music without wrecking your ears

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The Aumeo audio device, right, boosts clarity of sound so that your don't risk hearing loss by increased volume.
The Aumeo audio device, right, boosts clarity of sound so that your don't risk hearing loss by increased volume.
Photo: Aumeo

The best Beats headphones can’t help you if your ears are unable to hear certain subtle sounds. You can crank up the volume, but that only puts your hearing in peril.

The creators of Aumeo want to change the way you listen to music with an audio device that profiles your hearing – testing it with a smartphone app to find the frequency suited for each level – and offers sound-rich audio that lets you take your thumb off the volume button.

A person’s hearing is as unique as their fingerprints, but electronic audio devices provide more of a “one-size-fits-all” range of volume, according to Aumeo co-founder Paul Lee.

The Martian trailer shows stranded astronaut surviving the red planet

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Duct tape does actually fix everything.
Duct tape does actually fix everything.
Photo: 20th Century Fox

Based on the highly acclaimed novel of the same name, The Martian will chronicle astronaut Mark Watney’s incredibly plausible scientific survival on the surface of Mars for four years in a habitat designed for 30 days.

With Matt Damon in the title role, an all-star cast and Ridley Scott in the director’s chair, The Martian is shaping up to be the one film science nerds must see this summer.

The official trailer came out Monday and you’re going to want to see it right now. Too bad you’ll have to wait until the end of November.

This year’s WWDC keynote was a mere ‘S’ upgrade, but that’s OK

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Will Apple hold WWDC on June 13 - 17 this year at the Moscone Center?
Apple maps out its future each year during WWDC at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Every other year Apple releases an “S” version of the iPhone. Later this year, we’ll see the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. The “S” models generally deliver modest improvements — better cameras, better networking, faster chips. But the basic design remains the same. The “S” suffix means the same, but better.

And so it goes with this Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. In terms of announcements of import, WWDC 2015’s kickoff was an “S” upgrade. It built on the spectacular announcements of last year, but didn’t break huge new ground.

And that’s OK. “S” upgrades are often underrated.

All of the Apple Design Award winners (and why they won)

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Apple Design Award winners WWDC 2015
Here are your 12 winners of this year's Apple Design Awards.
Photo: Apple

The Apple Design Award winners are in, and they showcase the cutting edge of game and app design.

At a ceremony Monday at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple handed out 12 awards to the best apps of the past year. Games scored half of the nods, with some really cool productivity, finance and utility apps also taking honors.

Here are all of this year’s winning apps — and why they won.

Sorry Sonos lovers, Apple Music won’t play on your speakers

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Apple-Music
Apple Music is a music service like no other.
Photo: Apple

Apple Music could be the best music service for mobile devices ever created if it lives up to the hype Eddy Cue danced into it during today’s keynote, but it won’t play nice with Internet connected speaker systems like Sonos.

Sonos speaker lovers won’t be able to jam out on their favorite tunes through Apple Music, the company revealed in a statement today. While Sonos has been a supporter of Beats Music since 2014, the company confirmed says Apple’s not ready to focus on home listening yet:

Hit list: All the apps and services Apple tried to kill at WWDC 2015

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Tim Cook WWDC 2015
Apple's had some bold words for its competitors today.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

Once again, Apple has shown its desire to be your go-to for everything you do in your life.

During its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this morning, the iPhone maker talked up software updates, services and new functionalities aimed at making several of its competitors’ offerings redundant.

Here are the things Apple’s trying to take out with new stuff at WWDC 2015.

Apple’s predictive keyboard has never heard of ‘El Capitan’

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Meet OS X El Capitan's best features.
Meet OS X El Capitan.
Photo: Apple

I’ve finally been able to start processing Apple’s overly long WWDC that was packed with celebrity appearances, tons of great software, and Eddy Cue’s horrible shirt. All of my nerd friends are chatting about iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, which is kind of hard to do because Apple hasn’t added ‘El Capitan’ to its predictive keyboards yet.

Try texting your buddy about how stoked you are for the ‘El Capitan’ beta from Mac and it’s automatically corrected to El Capital, which actually might have been a better name for it now that it’s suggested.

This is me in basically every chat window today:

Want to look like Drake? eBay has your vintage Apple jacket

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Drake talks Apple Music at WWDC.
Drake talks Apple Music at WWDC.
Photo: Apple

While Eddy Cue was busy winning this year’s worst-dressed award for WWDC 2015, hip-hop icon Drake surprised us all by hitting the stage with a vintage Apple jacket that oozed fashion from every stitch.

The hip-hop icon said he used “this tool called the internet” to score his dope threads, and you can, too, thanks to a number of eBay auctions that are selling vintage Apple jackets just like Drake’s. We haven’t found one yet with the exact same brown leather sleeves, but you can score an all-black Apple jacket that looks pretty similar for $350. If that’s out of your price range there are a bunch of other stylish options.

Check out some of the awesome Apple jackets below:

What if Apple’s Beats 1 turns out like BBC’s Radio 1?

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dj
DJ Zane Lowe is heading up Apple's Beats 1 live radio station. If it's anything like the BBC's Radio 1 -- where Lowe made his name -- it could be the great music discovery mechanism that digital music's been looking for.

Please, please, please let Apple’s Beats 1 radio station be good.

Of all the announcements at Monday’s WWDC keynote, that’s the one I personally am most excited about. When it launches June 30, Beats 1 will be a 24-hour global radio station run by three DJs from three different cities around the world.

I’m a music junkie. I listen to music radio all the time, especially Radio 1, the BBC’s flagship radio station in London. To be honest, a lot of it sucks, but a lot of it doesn’t. It allows me — an expat Limey living in California — to keep tabs on Britain’s awesome musical culture.

And that’s what I’m hoping for — that Apple’s billions will privately fund a radio station that’s like the BBC’s publicly funded Radio 1 — on a global scale.

Apple hinted at such ambitions in the launch video played during Monday’s keynote. Done right, it could be the great music discovery mechanism the entire music industry’s been looking for.

Apple Music puts a human face on the mess that music’s become

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Iovine
Jimmy Iovine talks up Apple Music at WWDC 2015.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s big idea for transforming the way we experience music is bringing a personal touch — and a simple, unified platform — to the tangled technological mess that music’s become in 2015. Apple Music is classic Apple: putting a human face on technology that threatens to overwhelm us.

Tim Cook brought out high-profile artists, and Apple’s team of industry insiders, to show off what he called “the next chapter in music” today at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

“I know your are going to love it,” Cook said, introducing Apple Music. “It will change the way that you experience music forever.”

Here’s what Apple Music will bring to your ears.

Everything new and exciting in iOS 9

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iOS 9
Apple talked up iOS 9 at the WWDC keynote this morning.
Photo: Apple

Apple spilled all the details on iOS 9 at its WWDC keynote today. The new operating system will be rolling out to iPhones and iPads this fall — here’s what you have to look forward.

Watch Apple’s History of Music video right here

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Apple Music is coming.
Apple Music is coming.
Photo: Apple

Apple put on one of its biggest shows ever for WWDC this year. Not only did the conference kick off with a hilarious video starring Bill Hader, Matt Walsh, Danny Pudi and others, but they also had a series of great short videos to promote some of the company’s new products.

The new ‘History of Music’ clip might have been my favorite new video from Apple today. It showed not just how the iPod and iTunes changed music, but also tossed in nods to vinyl records, radio, and the days of burning one mixtape after another onto CD. We’re still waiting for Apple to upload its star studded videos to YouTube, however you can get a look at the company’s ‘History of Music’ video right now.

Watch it below:

Eddy Cue talks music, but Twitter can’t stop talking about his shirt

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worst-shirt-ever
Eddy Cue's pinkish untucked shirt struck a distracting off chord with many on Twitter.

During the part of the WWDC keynote where cool is most required, the Apple Music rollout, Eddy Cue took the stage in an untucked, salmon-colored shirt and proceeded to dance. Twitter gasped, laughed and even threw up a little as Cue extolled a new service that is supposed to be hip enough make us all dump Spotify.

Twitter followers streaming the Worldwide Developers Conference, already grumpy about the drawn-out opening, were tired and hungry when Cue and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine took their turn onstage. Some feasted on Cue’s appearance.

“Eddy Cue is one undone shirt button away from getting kicked out of Margaritaville,” wrote Jessica Misener. “Eddy Cue is like everyone’s dad at a wedding, but if everyone’s dad at a wedding was 10X more excruciating,” wrote Guardian Tech.

Square’s new card reader will bring Apple Pay to everyone

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Square is getting Apple Pay support
Square is getting Apple Pay support.
Photo: Square

About 95 percent of the coffee shops and stores I frequent in the Phoenix area use a Square reader or terminal to process payments, and virtually none of them support Apple Pay. That could soon change, though, thanks to a new contactless payments terminal from Square that will bring Apple Pay to businesses small and large this fall.

Everything you need to know from WWDC 2015

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Tim Cook announces “one more thing” at WWDC 2015.
Tim Cook announces “one more thing” at WWDC 2015.
Photo: Apple

With upgrades to iOS, OS X, Apple Pay and watchOS, Apple is ready to take its massively successful platforms to the next level.

Find out what’s in store for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch as Apple builds on previous greatness — plus get an earful of a new little project called Apple Music — as revealed today at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.