News - page 1177

34 million smartwatch displays will ship in 2015, and 49 percent of them belong to the Apple Watch.

Thanks to Apple entering the market, smartwatch display shipments are set to increase 250 this year, according to a new study of over 35 suppliers, who expect Apple to be the biggest player in the smartwatch market 

When people talk about Apple’s Irish operations, it’s normally negatively, regarding questionable tax practices. But the company operates a 4,000-person factory in Cork, Ireland, that builds iMacs — and it’s the only Apple-owned manufacturing facility in the world.

The Irish Examiner recently got a peek inside the secretive Apple manufacturing plant in Cork. Check out some photos below.

The Typo Keyboard is dead. Long live… well, other iPhone 6 cases, we guess.

In a rare win for BlackBerry, the company today announced that it has come to an agreement with Typo, the Ryan Seacrest-funded company behind the BlackBerry-style iPhone keyboard. The agreement means that Typo will cease selling its keyboards for any device under 7.9-inches in size.

Being an Apple manufacturer is a pretty lucrative market if you can get in on it, which is why it’s no surprise to hear that Apple’s existing partners are constantly fending off challenges from upstarts promising to do whatever they can do — only cheaper and better.

According to a new report, Japanese manufacturers are currently making a concerted effort to secure more orders from Apple, which currently deals mainly with companies based in Taiwan and China.

If the Japan-based companies do manage to muscle-in on the Apple supply chain, it could result in iPhone manufacturing becoming even more of an international affair than it already is, while also having a potentially massive impact on existing Chinese iPhone makers.

Apple’s plans for its relaunched Beats Music streaming music service, rumored to be revealed at next week’s WWDC, took another step forward this weekend.

A new report suggests that Apple is currently in talks with Drake, Pharrell Williams and David Guetta for them to come on board as guest DJs for iTunes Radio. As three of the biggest names in music, having these artists on its roster would give Apple a massive selling point in its upcoming streaming music war with rivals like Spotify.

Have you ever thrown away something you regretted later on? If so, you have something in common with the San Francisco Bay Area woman who recently junked a vintage Apple-1 computer — one of just 200 surviving machines created by Steve Jobs and the Woz way back in 1976.

Fortunately the ultra-rare desktop was recognized by a member of the recycling firm she left it at. They sold it to a private collector for $200,000, and now want to track down the unwitting donor to give her the 50 percent they say the company owes.

This week: Jony Ive’s big promotion has him handing over the keys to Apple’s legendary industral design lab, so we have to wonder… is this step one in an Ive succession plan? Plus: the surprising suitability of Ive’s replacement, Richard Howarth; Apple VP Jeff Williams lets some curious Apple car comments slip; why Apple Watch will get a lot faster come fall; Leander reveals his fetish for the weird whispering women of Youtube; and stay tuned till the end for a very romantic Get To Know Ur Cultist!

Our thanks to CultCloth for supporting this episode. If you’re obsessive about keeping your iPhone, iPad, Mac, DSLR, glasses, and other gadgets in sparkling clean condition, you’ll love ‘em. Use code “CultCast” at checkout to score a free 8×8 CleanCloth.

After a brush with cancer prompted me to take my health more seriously, I began using run trackers to start my journey from dad bod to six pack.

At first, running was the only exercise I did. It helped me lose my love handles, but I ended up looking too skinny. I decided it was time to put on some muscle. While Apple Watch and other wearables are great for running, they’re not much help when it comes to bulking up. As I soon discovered, some of the best fitness gadgets don’t fit on your wrist.

Why is Jony Ive’s big promotion so great for Apple? Find out what Leander thinks in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. In addition, meet the men filling the design guru’s shoes, see how Apple Watch apps will get a speed boost, learn how to beat the Unicode of Death and a ton more iPhone and Apple Watch tips, and see just how Google is challenging Apple on its own turf.

All this, and much more, in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.

Apple has become the most valuable company in the world thanks to the incredible success of the iPhone. Over half a billion iPhones have been sold since the original was released in 2007, but do you ever wonder what the smartphone would look like had Apple made it back in 1984?

Pierre Cerveau reimagined Apple’s flagship product in his neat “Macintosh Phone Concept” that takes inspiration from one of Apple’s other killer products — the Macintosh 512k.

Take a closer look:

You know something’s up at Cult of Mac headquarters when you see Leander sitting with his fingers steepled, exuding an air of complete calm.

It’s like a zen garden around here ever since I told him about ASMR videos, the strangely addictive YouTube phenomenon that turns quiet sounds into something like an aural orgasm.

Now he can’t get enough of the weirdly creepy clips — and I feel a little like a guy who inadvertently turned his friend on to crack.

Okay, so it’s not really Apple news, but — honestly — who could complain about a robot cheetah on a Friday afternoon?

Given Google’s disappointing lack of killer robots at its oddly boring I/O keynote yesterday, MIT has fortunately stepped up to the plate by unleashing a new video of its metallic quadruped autonomously leaping hurdles like some kind of horse Terminator.

Check out the video below. Then start running.

Nerds and geeks alike are satirized and celebrated in CBS’s hit television show The Big Bang Theory, which has aired since 2007.

The very same intelligent kids that the show lionizes will now have a chance to study science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects at UCLA, thanks to a new endowmnent from show co-creator Chuck Lorre and some of the cast and crew of the show.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Maybe one of the recipients will become the next Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates.

Facebook and GIFs seem like they’ve both been fixtures of the Internet forever, but it has taken until 2015 for the two to finally hookup.

Starting today, Facebook users can annoy friends with the most amazing GIFs the web has to offer. Unfortunately, you can’t upload your favorite GIFs directly to Facebook but you can embed them from other websites.

Here’s how to do it:

7 of the 15 artists with an ownership stake in Jay Z’s troubled Tidal streaming music service may have their music pulled from it as a result of Jay Z failing to reach a music licencing agreement with Sony, which owns many of the streaming rights to the musicians in question.

Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Jack White, Calvin Harris, J Cole, Usher have all released albums under one of Sony’s labels, while even Jay’s own wife Beyonce could see her music vanish from her husband’s attempt at a challenger to digital music giants like Spotify and Apple.

One man’s astonishing collection of Apple gear is for sale on eBay right now, making an instant Mac museum just a click away for the right bidder. The auction starts at $100,000, with a Buy It Now price of $300,000 — a drop in the bucket for a certain CEO who’s on his way to the billionaire’s club.

“I would love for Tim Cook to buy it all,” said seller Steve “Mac” Abbott in an email to Cult of Mac running down his list of ideal buyers. “First it means he would want to display it, unlike Steve [Jobs], and that Apple would sponsor its own history…. Next would be a well-heeled Apple guy, and after that whoever can convince me that it can be seen. Then, ‘Show me the money.'”

Chances are you’ve heard about the iOS bug that lets users send a string of text to another iPhone owner that causes their Messages app to crash and their iPhone to reboot.

Although Apple has yet to fix the Messages bug with a software update, it has published an official support document containing a temporary workaround for solving the problem.

Apple is such a strange and secretive company, the news that Jony Ive has been promoted is instead widely interpreted that he’s on his way out.

The Telegraph revealed Monday that Ive has been promoted to Chief Design Officer and freed from the day-to-day running of Apple’s Industrial Design studio.

This was greeted with speculation that Ive is actually stepping back. He’s taking it easy, many theorized, easing into semi-retirement. He’s already halfway out the door, and will soon move back to the United Kingdom, seems to be the consensus among pundits.

I think this is Kremlinology in the extreme. And a little perverse. Apple is often obtuse, and sometimes disingenuous or even dishonest, but I think this news should be taken at face value.

Apple has characterized the move as a promotion, and it is. Ive has been moved up into a rare position that gives him a ton of freedom. He now has the breathing room to be what he really wants to be: a pure designer.

In fact, the promotion allows him to take on an even stronger and more Steve Jobs-like role. We will see more design work from him, not less.

Google announced a new version of its low-cost Cardboard virtual-reality headsets today at its I/O developers conference, and it’s giving some attendees a wicked case of déjà vu.

Imagine exploring a creepy house full of eerie and unfamiliar sounds, supernatural horror dripping from every bannister and behind every mysterious, creaking door.

Now imagine entering such a disturbing environment when you’re blind.

Cassie is the blind young protagonist of Perception, a horror game from many of the folks that worked on Bioshock Infinite and Dead Space, and she’s been dreaming of this house for some time now. When she finally figures out it’s real, she heads off to investigate it, using only echolocation–sound into visuals–to confront and solve the ghostly mysteries within.

There’s a gloriously tense trailer, too, from the perspective of the wisecracking teen, Cassie. Check it out.

The best way to check the weather is usually pulling up an app or website, turning on a TV, or simply going to a window and looking outside. But what if you had a gorgeous device on your desk that could actually show you what’s going on out there?

Tempescope is that pretty little thing; it simulates present and future weather conditions inside of a clear acrylic case.

Stop taking pictures of your “stupid face,” Thomas Hurst says. Think history, legacy and every day, unposed moments.

Hurst believes he has the tool to help you make more meaningful photos and the veteran photojournalist is trying to raise $25,000 on Kickstarter to bring the COVR you need to snap candid photos with your iPhone 6.

Apple has finalized an acquisition for the augmented reality company Metaio in a move that could soon bring the German firm’s AR tech to iOS and other Apple devices.

Metaio, which specializes in creating augmented reality tools for other businesses as well as other computer vision solutions, mysteriously announced last night that it would stop selling its services, but filings with the German government reveal that the company has transferred all of its shares over to Apple.

Take a look at their incredible tech in action:

From smartphones to the Internet of Things, Google wants to be woven into the fabric of our lives.

The company detailed some of its latest hardware and software projects — some truly innovative, some strictly playing catch-up — during the annual Google I/O developer conference Thursday.

From the iterative improvements coming in Android M to the blue-sky thinking of Project Brillo, everything plays into Mountain View’s master plan, which Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president in charge of Android, Chrome and apps described as “putting technology and computer science to work on important problems that users face” — and doing it “at scale for everyone in the world.”

Google’s goals are similar to Apple’s: Both companies are trying to integrate their products (and possibly their worldviews) into every facet of our lives to make tech personal and useful. In many ways, Google’s approach is far more ambitious.

Here are the six things you need to know from the Google I/O 2015 keynote.