News - page 1165

Apple Pay today makes its debut in the United Kingdom, nine months after it launched in the U.S., and it has been greeted by plenty of support from local banks. Those with a supported device can register their credit and debit cards now through the Passbook app on iOS.

I didn’t have high hopes for Suicide Squad, the upcoming action movie that pits a team of supervillains together on a top secret government mission, but now that the first trailer for David Ayer’s action-packed film has been teased to fans, I’m starting to become a believer.

Will Smith, Cara Delevingne, and Viola Davis all make an appearance in the first trailer that debuted at International Comic Con 2015 over the weekend, but Jared Leto manages to steal the show as the Joker with a menacing appearance in the last few seconds.

Check it out:

Though Adobe Flash has been dying a slow death over the past few years, it’s far from dead yet. However, it seems like some people are getting pretty impatient with it and Facebook’s new chief security officer Alex Stamos is one of those people. He publicly tweeted yesterday calling out Adobe to just set a date already to kill Flash and make an announcement to put an end to its misery.

Siri can be used to quickly access a huge library of sound effects. Ask it to play fireworks, a babbling brook, or even a machine gun and Apple’s digital assistance will pull out the perfect sound effect. But if you ask Siri to ‘play loud farts’ you’ll get an unexpected surprise.

While Apple hasn’t been adding DRM to your music, there must have been some issue with the service when paired with iTunes Match.

iTunes 12.2.1 is out now, and it contains a fix for any iTunes Match users who saw iTunes change some songs from Matched (which gives you access to high-resolution audio files that you own) to Apple Music (which will disappear if you let your subscription lapse).

European leaders have finally agreed to a bailout plan with Greece this morning. The country’s financial crisis at one point capped how much cash citizens could withdraw daily, so Apple has decided to help its customers out by providing one free month of iCloud to current subscribers.

Amateur hour is over — it’s time for an iPhone cable that means business. Avoid the fray, the tangles, the scuffed up grossness that is the stock iPhone cable after just a few weeks of regular use by stepping up to the Titan MFi-Certified Lightning Cable. It’s built to be tough, but with the Cult of Mac special price of $24.99 it’ll be gentle on your wallet.

The iPhone is the gold standard for modern design – and that sometimes gets in the way of some of its amazing functions.

Take photo and video. Even the most serious photographers and filmmakers can create high art with an iPhone, but conventional cameras, no matter how clunky they seem today, were designed with grip and stability that is missing from an iPhone.

A startup company has created an iPhone 6 case that converts the iPhone into a retro-looking handheld movie camera, complete with cinematic lenses, a viewfinder, film trigger and a mount for mics and lights.

We’ve heard about iPhone-related crime before, but here’s one that’s new: A U.K. man in London who was arrested by police after charging his iPhone on a train.

45-year-old artist Robin Lee was approached by a police community support officer on board the train last Friday, warned that he was “illegally extracting electricity.” When Lee arrived at his destination, police officers were waiting to arrest him.

A whopping 9 out of 10 patent lawsuits filed against tech companies in the first half of 2015 were brought by NPEs (non-practicing enterprises, a.k.a patent trolls), a new report reveals.

Thanks to its status as the world’s most valuable company, Apple was the number one target of these attempted lawsuits — with the Eastern District of Texas being the favored location for patent trials on account of their tendency to side with trolls and award large sums of damages.

Apple is getting one step closer to becoming its own record label by creating its own artistic content — having recently produced in-house music videos for top-name artists such as Drake, Eminem and Pharrell.
The videos — which include Em’s “Phenomonal” and Pharrell’s “Happy” — debuted on Apple Music. Future artists Apple will reportedly be producing videos for include M.I.A., Purity Ring, Diddy and James Bay.

Anyone wanting an illustration of why smartphone unit sales are not the single most important metric for judging success should check out wealth management company Canaccord Genuity’s findings about Apple’s iPhone sales versus profits.

According to Canaccord Genuity, despite selling less than 20 percent of all smartphones, Apple rakes in a massive 92 percent of operating income. Samsung, by contrast, ekes out just 15 percent to take second place. Everyone else basically broke even or lost money.

Apple has no problem placing massive orders for its upcoming iPhone 6s and 6s Plus units, but according to a new report the company is treading a bit more carefully when it comes to orders for the upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Reportedly set to arrive in late November this year, sources in Apple’s supply chain say that Apple’s component orders for the giant-sized tablet have been lower than most people expected — although no specific numbers are mentioned.

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!

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.