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Apple’s 3-D mapping tech would turn your iMac into an Xbox Kinect

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Mouse, what mouse?
Photo: USPTO/Apple

New technology dreamed up by Apple would allow users to control an interface by simply striking a pose. This would work by having Apple devices generate a depth map for identifying “a head and at least one arm of the humanoid form” from any image in which one appears.

A way to switch on our next Apple TV by waving a hand or turning your head toward the screen? Yes please!

Apple’s bold plan to convert casual music fans into streaming subscribers

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Apple needs no shelter, thank you.
Apple is hoping to move you from a music collector to a file-streamer.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Imagine clicking iTunes’ “Buy” button to purchase the latest record from Drake or Pharrell Williams, only to get a popup from Apple suggesting you’re behind the times.

That’s what might happen as Apple uses its massive consumer base to push streaming music on the masses, even going so far as prompting iTunes users to switch from buying songs to subscribing to a cloud service.

That sort of mid-purchase upsell is just one possible element of Cupertino’s strategy to shake up the music industry again, and the Apple streaming music plan just might be crazy enough to work.

Cruiseable cuts through the hassle of high-seas vacations

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Find a cruise that matches your style and budget without a lot of travel industry tricks.
Find a cruise that matches your style and budget without a lot of travel industry tricks.
Photo: MSC Cruises

If you’ve ever tried to book a cruise through a portal like Cruise.com or — heaven forbid — via a cruise line’s website, you know that it can be an incredibly confusing and costly experience.

The thing is, though, that it doesn’t have to be. Cruisable is a startup that hopes to take the obfuscation away and let you find affordable and/or incredibly fantastic cruise vacations with a website and app that won’t try to trick you.

“Cruises can be cheaper than other getaways,” said CTO and co-founder Giacomo Balli, “as low as a couple hundred dollars.”

Apple Watch will be able to control your Volvo in no time

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Apple Watch and Volvo are ready to roll.
Apple Watch and Volvo are ready to roll.
Photo: Volvo

Owning a car sucks mostly for one reason: I’m always losing my keys.

Like this morning on the way to the coffee shop when I somehow managed to lose my key after I already got in the car. Keys were not made for me, which is why I might need to upgrade to a Volvo someday because the company just revealed it’s ready to turn Apple Watch into the key to your car.

Older Macs are vulnerable to dangerous new bug

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mac security
A new Mac security problem has been discovered.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Older Apple computers may be susceptible to a new zero-day vulnerability discovered by a security researcher, who found the flaw can be used to install rootkit malware that’s nearly undetectable and very hard to remove.

Apple’s fitness guru hits the road for tour of Asia and Australia

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Jay Blahnik, Apple'
Jay Blahnik, Apple's Director of Fitness and Health Technologies
Photo: Apple

Apple Watch could become one of the most important devices you can shackle yourself to, so to amp up the Apple faithful into more heatlh-focused nerds, Apple has sent fitness guru Jay Blahnik on a special events tour in Australia, China and Japan.

Blahnik is touring the areas to talking to some of the biggest personal trainers about the intersection between fitness and technology. At the Apple Store in Sydney, Australian personal trainer Michelle Bridges sat down for an interview with Blahnik to talk about some of things she’s learned from filming the Australian version of The Biggest Loser.

You can watch part of their interview below:

Jon Snow and Agent Carter tag-team a romantic WWI drama

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War is hell.
War is hell.
Photo: Sony Pictures Classics

If you can’t get enough of Marvel’s Agent Peggy Carter, played to perfection by Haley Atwell, or Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow, broodingly acted by Kit Harrington, here’s a new movie that stars both of them: Testament of Youth.

It’s a deeply romantic period piece set in Britain during the first world war, based on a memoir by Vera Brittain, a young woman who overcame the serious sexism of her day to attend Oxford University, only to have her studies interrupted by the war.

Inside Apple’s secretive iMac plant in Ireland

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Apple's Hollyhill, Cork factory is the only Apple-run manufacturing facility in the world.
Apple's Hollyhill, Cork factory is the only directly Apple-run manufacturing facility in the world.
Photo: Irish Examiner

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.

Typo’s BlackBerry-style keyboard for iPhone is dead

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Want to turn your iPhone into a BlackBerry. No? Then this case probably isn't for you.
Want to turn your iPhone into a BlackBerry. No? Then this case probably isn't for you.
Photo: Typo

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.

Move over China! Japan wants to take over iPhone manufacturing

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Foxconn employees accused of $43 million iPhone scam
Tim Cook meeting an iPhone manufacturer in China.
Photo: Apple

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 plans to bring in more A-list names for Beats Music relaunch

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Apple is producing videos for some big name artists.
Names like Drake will set Apple's new service apart.
Photo: Drake/Instagram

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.

Bay Area woman accidentally junks $200,000 Apple-1 computer

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Apple-1
A previous Apple-1 which went up for auction.
Photo: Auction Team Breker

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.

Jony Ive chooses his successors, this week on The CultCast

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There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.
Photo: Objectified

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.

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7 fantastic Apple Watch apps you need right now

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Unlike my brethren in Cult of Mac’s shiny San Francisco HQ, I’m British — which means that weather is a minor obsession which dominates the majority of my waking thoughts and conversation.There are a number of different meteorological apps for Apple Watch, but Weather Nerd is maybe my favorite: offering detailed notes on rain (

Unlike my brethren in Cult of Mac’s shiny San Francisco HQ, I’m British — which means that weather is a minor obsession which dominates the majority of my waking thoughts and conversation.

There are a number of different meteorological apps for Apple Watch, but Weather Nerd is maybe my favorite: offering detailed notes on rain ("10 minutes away”), forecast comparisons with the previous day, and far more. Oh, and its forecasts are super-precise, too.

Download: Weather Nerd ($3.99)


Photo: Weather Nerd

From dad bod to six pack: Essential gear for bulking up

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IMG_5165 (1)
Some of the best fitness gadgets don’t fit on your wrist.
Photo: Graham Bower / Cult of Mac Photo: Graham Bower / Cult of Mac

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.

ICYMI: Why Jony Ive’s big promotion is great for Apple

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Get the scoop on Ive's new promotion and much more!
Get the scoop on Ive's new promotion and much more!
Photo: Stephen Smith

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.

What iPhone would have looked like back in 1984

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mac_01

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:

Kahney’s Korner: Addicted to ASMR

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Leander's got a new addiction: ASMR videos.
Leander's got a new addiction that might be even stronger than the Apple Watch.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

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.

This robot leaps hurdles like a Terminator horse

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Sarah Connor won't get away so easily next time.
Photo: MIT

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.

Big Bang Theory goes from fiction to fact with new scholarship

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Cast and crew have contributed to help needy students attend UCLA for math and science.
Cast and crew have contributed to help needy students attend UCLA for math and science.
Photo: Warner Bros. Television

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.