A serious security flaw affecting approximately 1,500 iOS apps makes them vulnerable to hackers looking to swipe passwords, bank account info and other sensitive data, according to a new report.
The bug, which security analytics firm SourceDNA identified last month, has been fixed in an update to the open-source code that contained the vulnerability. However, some app makers have not yet updated to the newer version.
Luckily, you can search to see if your favorite apps are vulnerable.
Apple Watches are a step closer to hitting our wrists.
Some who preordered watches earlier this month took to Twitter Monday to excitedly report that their order statuses changed from “Processing Items” to “Preparing for Shipment.”
Depending on how quickly you got online in the early hours of April 10, you could be in the first wave of Apple Watches scheduled to arrive on doorsteps in the United States between Friday and May 8.
Like an autopsy performed on a cadaver that’s yet to be born, slick new renderings dissect the Apple Watch and show off its shiny guts.
Since few normal people have an actual Apple Watch in hand, concept artist Martin Hajek created the images using information gleaned from Apple’s website and industrial porn videos about the making of the smartwatch.
Soon you’ll be able to control the cute new robotic star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens with your iPhone.
The toy version of BB-8, the droid with an R2-D2-style head perched precariously atop a rolling round body, will pop up in Disney stores later this year. While pricing isn’t yet known for the Star Wars toy, it will be made by Sphero, whose roly-poly robotic toy caught the eye of Disney chief Robert Iger.
There are many ways for photographers to display and share work: Build a website, post on Facebook, spread your brand on Instagram or create a repository on Flickr.
But the few mentioned above are not perfect, especially when it comes to displaying photo stories and essays.
Imagine quickly creating an elegant, magazine-style splash with the best features of social media on a simple computer platform. Stampsy wants to help visual storytellers leave an impression with their work.
Catalin Marin should be walking around the streets of Dubai with a new iPhone – and not the one he dropped from a building 40 stories high.
Not only did Marin’s phone survive, it was rolling video the whole way down. When he got to his phone, he was able to watch it play back.
“I had a bit of a mishap this morning,” he wrote on her Instagram feed to introduce the 15-second video. “Shooting from the 40th floor, my phone decided to go for a ride into the wind. Forty floors down, not a scratch in sight.”
Apple is leading the charge in environmental responsibility, and it’s only just getting started.
That’s the message from the company’s 2015 progress report, which details all the ways Apple is striving “to leave the world better than we found it.”
Spotlight got a major upgrade with OS X Yosemite, but what if it could do even more?
The new 1.0 release of Flashlight is so good that Apple hired its developer, Nate Parrott, to work as an intern on Spotlight.
Flashlight is a little like Alfred and LaunchBar, expect it hooks directly into Spotlight and adds over 160 actions. That means you may need to never use a third-party app launcher utility again, although many power users will likely stick with their current setup.
So what exactly can Flashlight do? The list is too long to put here, but some options include: creating calendar events, creating reminders, opening URLs, translating text, calling numbers, sending iMessages, checking the weather, ejecting disks, copying emojis, and turning on a screensaver.
Available on: Mac
Price: Free
Download: Flashlight website
We cover all the best Apples stories on each week’s CultCast, but this week we take it to the next level. Hit play to hear: why trying on the Apple Watch will make you a believer; our WWDC hardware predictions; why a recent acquisition might mean a revolutionary new iPhone camera; and Leander reviews the new Macbook.
Our thanks for Freshbooks for supporting this episode. FreshBooks is the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. It also makes tax time a cinch. Get started now with a 30-day free trial.
Full show notes ahead!
Apple’s new Activity and Fitness apps for Apple Watch might signal the end of the company’s long partnership with Nike.
So what does this mean for the millions of us who were introduced to Nike+ by Apple in 2006 and have been logging our runs this way ever since? Are we about to get caught in a Kramer vs. Kramer-style tug of love?
If Batman’s going to take on Superman, he’s going to need some extra protection and firepower. The first trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice gives us our a glimpse of the armored batsuit — complete with glowing white eyes — the Dark Knight will don in the superhero smackdown flick.
I think we can safely assume Jony Ive isn’t designing products for Bruce Wayne. The armored batsuit looks anything but thin and light.
We’re starting to learn more about what excommunicated Apple executive Scott Forstall is up to after years of flying under the radar. The former head of iOS is an advisor to Snapchat, and although he will likely continue to be involved in the tech scene, his interests are quite eclectic.
The man who was famously kicked out of Apple after numerous disputes that ended in the Apple Maps disaster is now a Broadway producer.
Luke Skywalker does his best flying with R2-D2. Now customers of Japan’s All Nippon Airways can fly with the beloved Star Wars droid, thankfully without taking fire from TIE fighters.
Is this a new era of marketing directly to stoners?
In Ben & Jerry’s new ad for its in-shop confection, the Brrr-ito, a young woman wearing an ice cream server’s uniform runs into a room of slack-jawed young men staring at a screen showing a boring old ice cream bar.
What happens next should be no surprise to those of you who remember Ridley Scott’s famous ad for Apple in 1984 introducing the Mac.
The analog types can argue technology has removed a lot of the magic from photography. The wonder is gone. We see the picture on our screen the very moment after it’s taken. The crappy shot from today would be cherished 10 years down the road, but you’ll never realize it because you deleted the picture.
Photojojo has developed an app to restore the wonder and magic. It turns your iPhone into a disposable camera – well, the wonder part anyway. You keep your phone.
Download the app for free on iTunes. You then pay $12.99 each time you want a camera in the app. On each camera are 27 exposures that become a set of prints sent to your doorstep about 10 days after the 27th pictures is snapped. You do not get to see the photo after you have made it – classic wonder – so the app prevents you from foolishly deleting some eventual important piece of your personal story.
The Apple Watch is on display at the Salone Del Mobile design exhibition in Milan, Italy today. Attendees can see the Watch at the Carlo e Camilla in Segheria, a classy restaurant that’s been converted into an exclusive display area.
The high profile showcasing has Apple designer Marc Newson and longtime marketing exec Phil Schiller in attendance. Newson helped design the Watch with Jony Ive and was brought onto Apple’s payroll last year. Schiller is in charge of all the marketing behind Apple’s products.
This year will reportedly mark Apple Pay’s expansion outside of the United States. The mobile payments service is on track to arrive in Canada as soon as this fall.
Stop chewing your fingernails now. You may be biting off a new frontier in wearable technology.
Researchers at MIT have devised a way to turn the thumbnail into a wireless trackpad that will allow users to control their devices when their hands are full.
Imagine using the neighboring index finger, moving it across the thumbnail to help answer the phone while cooking, send a text message or toggle between symbol sets while texting.
The greatest Apple mystery of the last few years hasn’t been the next iPhone or Apple Watch, but a man named Scott Forstall.
Since getting kicked out of Apple in late 2012, the former head of iOS and friend of Steve Jobs has had absolutely no profile in the tech scene whatsoever. He rarely even gets spotted in public. It’s like he’s fallen off the face of the earth.
Until now.
This week, Leander takes some time to try on the Apple Watch in-store, finding out whether the hottest smartwatch out there is worth your time or money, David heads into an Apple Store on Magnificent Mile in Chicago for a fitting and to get some customer reactions, plus a ton of news about this latest wearable tech that you’ll want to read from cover to cover. We’ve also got Stephen with some travel tips for you and your trusty MacBook, as well as Luke’s take on why you want to upgrade your iOS to 8.3 right away (hint, it’s not emojis). Rob also walks you through a couple of how-tos, including one way to make sure your iOS gaming sessions aren’t interrupted with a simple tweak to Do Not Disturb.
Make sure to head on out and download Cult of Mac Magazine to get your own “hands” on the great content we dose you with every week.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is demanding a multimillion-dollar refund from Apple following a failed iPad program that was set to give more than 640,000 students a tablet for education.
It is thought that the Board of Education is exploring the possibility of litigation against the Cupertino company as it seeks to claim back money that has already been lost on the scheme.
J.J. Abrams whetted our appetite for more lightsaber dueling action with the first Episode VII teaser last year, but today’s release of a new trailer has got us counting down the days until Christmas.
We’re still eight months away from Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ public release, and while plot details for the highly anticipated movie are being kept under wraps, there’s a ton of fresh info to glean from the new trailer. We’ve diced the entire trailer up into GIFs so you can rewatch each scene to look for new clues.
Here are 18 things we learned from the new trailer:
You rarely see Google Glass anymore, but if Recon Instruments has its way, you’ll be seeing plenty more head-mounted displays in the future.
The Recon Jet, launched Thursday, is a pair of smart eyeglasses for sporty activities like running and biking. Bristling with sensors, the device shows all kinds of biometric data and social stats on its tiny heads-up display. Paired with a smartphone, it can take pictures and video, send and receive status updates, find friends and family on the piste and much more.
But sports is just a start. If Recon is successful — and that’s a big if — we may be seeing smart glasses in a lot more places. Recon is betting hard that the face is the place for smart wearables.
Anastasia Medrano was anxious about her father’s health and it was an iPhone app that helped deliver peace of mind within seconds of the doctor giving him a good prognosis.
When the doctor said the cancer was in remission, her brother immediately alerted Medrano and another sibling with a new app called GrandmaSays, which allows families of a sick or elderly loved one to communicate medical updates, coordinate visits and share memories with text and photos.
“We’re kind of scattered and it falls on my one brother to take my dad to appointments,” said Medrano, of Irvine, Calif. “Rather than make severals calls, he can share the information in one place. We were hoping for the all clear and it was nice to get that ping on my phone.”
“The Force is strong in my family,” says Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker voices over this second teaser trailer for the hotly anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie that will hit the big screen this coming December. “My father has it, I have it, my sister has it. You have that power, too.”
That’s how the nerdgasmic second trailer begins, and then slams into some seriously amazing scenes from the upcoming film, including a massive, crashed Star Destroyer, close ups of new stars Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, and Daisy Ridley, and a brilliant moment of fan service with everyone’s favorite smuggler and his humongous furry sidekick.
“Chewie,” says Han Solo, “We’re home.”