The more we hear, the more Apple’s reported web TV service sounds like a dream come true for cord-cutters!
With previous reports suggesting the subscription service will offer around 25 channels in total, a new Wall Street Journal report claims Apple is busy talking with both Discovery and Viacom about the venture. Deals with those companies could bringing channels including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon to viewers.
My Cult of Mac colleague Buster Hein recently wrote that the new impossibly-thin, gorgeously Retina displayed MacBook “isn’t for you, it’s for the future” — meaning that it’s there to show us where the MacBook will go in the next few years, rather than being 2015’s “must own” notebook.
That may well be true, but according to supply chain sources, it’s still likely to make up a pretty sizeable slice of Apple’s overall Mac sales in the year to come.
Citing panel supply chains, the 12-inch beauty is expected to represent between 15-20 percent of Apple’s overall MacBook shipments this year: making it the single largest source of growth in the MacBook series throughout 2015 in the process.
Over and over you hear stories about Steve Jobs being, well, a jerk. A recently released anecdote, however, tells a different story: Jobs apparently cared so much about workaholic Tim Cook having a life outside Apple that he phoned Cook’s mom to talk about it.
It’s pretty charming — and just about the polar opposite of the clichéd anecdotes that paint Jobs as a screaming, slave-driving perfectionist who only looked up from his work long enough to yell at some poor, quivering employee.
Tim Cook tells how Apple avoids Microsoft-style screw-ups, how many Apple Watches the company plans to sell, and why he keeps Steve Jobs’ office exactly as he left it in a new interview filled with fascinating tidbits.
The interview in Fast Company comes in the run-up to the March 24 launch of Becoming Steve Jobs, a biography by veteran journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. The book is viewed by some Apple execs as a corrective following Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio, and this is Cook’s well-timed salvo in the campaign to set the record straight.
Here are the parts we found most interesting.
Young Apple fans may not remember the unveiling of the original iMac that put Apple back on the map, but now you can experience what it was like to learn all about Jony and Steve’s candy-colored creation on the World Wide Web like it’s 1997 all over again.
Relive the thrills and horrors of what it was like the surf Apple.com back in 1997, thanks to the folks at Open University who created a series of GIFs that capture the the web of the late-90’s thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
Apple’s old website didn’t look too bad back then, especially s hideous compared to most websites at the time, which heavily featured crappy graphics, block graphic links, and clumsy navigation, Apple’s website stands out from the other options at the time.
For a full run-down on the history of Apple.com’s design changes through the years, check out our feature here.
The name’s Jobs, Steve Jobs.
Sony has released the teaser poster for its upcoming, eagerly-anticipated new Bond movie, Spectre, and — correct us if we’re wrong — but doesn’t it look as though 007 has ditched the customary tux to slip into something a little more… Jobsian?
In what may be the most exciting James Bond/Apple crossover since the famous fake letter from Sean Connery to Steve Jobs, style icon James Bond cosplaying as Apple’s late CEO is perhaps the best compliment Apple can be paid as it continues to take on the fashion world. Certainly, the likeness hasn’t escaped the Interwebz, whose denizens have already jumped into action with the appropriate parodies:
Citizen George is slated to be a full-length independent film about a director who creates a hugely popular space opera film trilogy (read, George Lucas and Star Wars), only to end up releasing disappointing film prequels 20 years later.
So far, so basic, right? The catch here is that you have to choose the type of movie this fan film will end up being. Want a dramatic story about a serious film auteur and the perils of fame and fortune, like Citizen Kane? Drop some cash into the Drama tip jar. Want a wacky, time-travel comedy like Austin Powers? Slide your money into the Comedy tip jar.
Apple is planning its own cable-free TV service for a fall launch, and it’s pulling out all the stops to lure potential content partners.
According to a new report, networks Apple is courting have been offered complete access to viewer data, such as what shows they watch and when they watch them. It’s an unusually friendly negotiating approach for Apple that signals the company really wants to get the service off the ground soon.
Filming for the upcoming Steve Jobs moving got underway yesterday at the San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House for a major scene in the movie where Steve Jobs unveils the NeXT computer in October 1988.
The set was crowded as hundreds of people arrived to be extras in the picture, and Danny Boyle’s production crew tried to make the scene as authentic-looking as possible. They even put up fake NeXT posters around the opera house, showing Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs posing with the NeXT cube.
It seemed like it took accessory makers forever to make battery pack cases for the iPhone, but companies are wasting no time with Apple Watch accessories, and the first portable battery for Apple’s wearable is already here.
Nomad introduced its answer for the Apple Watch’s battery woes with the Pod, a small portable power station for your Apple Watch that will keep it ticking well past the 18 hour battery life Tim Cook promised.
What’s good for endangered birds of prey might actually prey on GoPro’s hold on the point-of-view camera market.
Sony’s 2-ounce Action Cam Mini has been flying high since its release in September, thanks to an organization that has been strapping the tiny HD video camera on the backs of eagles to raise awareness about threatened species.
Darshan, an imperial eagle, flew Saturday from the world’s talent building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. As he sought his handler, he gave BBC viewers a breathtaking five-minute live view before making a quick drop, following a signal to land.
These days, Apple has one of the better cloud infrastructures in the world. Even so, the sheer demand for a new version of iOS or OS X on release day can bring Apple’s network to its knees. Apple’s servers simply can’t keep up with the demand.
But Microsoft might have found a better way. In the latest version of the Windows 10 operating system beta, there’s an option to download app and OS updates from multiple sources: not just Microsoft’s cloud servers, but all local network or PCs on the internet.
In other words? The future of updating operating systems might be a lot like updating World of Warcraft.
Chalk one up for Cupertino! A federal jury in Texas (where else?) said on Monday that Apple didn’t infringe on five wireless tech patents belonging to the patent licensing company Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc.
The verdict comes as a relief, since it follows one month on from a jury in the same Texas courthouse ordering Apple to pay out $532.9 million for iTunes-related patent infringement: one of the biggest examples of damages awarded in patent history.
When Dutch conceptual artist Martin Hajek heard that the next iPhone 6s might come with a rose gold option, he just had to see what it would look like. So he took his ultra-realistic renders of the iPhone 6s and the Apple Watch and dipped them in fancy rose gold.
If you’ve ever walked into a flagship Apple Store unconvinced of the magic of Cupertino’s products, a wondrous curvy, glass staircase might have softened your psyche.
Apple’s retail outlets are almost as well known for award-winning architecture and eye-catching staircases as for the MacBooks, iPads and iPhones on sale. But Apple Stores aren’t the only places to make vertical trips seem like a magical journey.
You know that old saying about buses: you wait ages for one and then several turn up at the same time? Well, according to analyst Timothy Arcuri from Cowen & Co, the same is about to prove true of Apple Watches.
In a new note to clients, Arcuri claims that an Apple Watch version 2.0 will turn up later this year and that, unlike its predecessor, it won’t require an iPhone to be tethered to it in order to work. Arcuri also thinks this will be Apple’s first device to boast an OLED screen exclusively supplied by Samsung.
MacBook Pro owners the world over are complaining that the antireflective display coating on their mid-2012 to mid-2014 models is rubbing off. And to our eyes, the problem seems bad enough to warrant a recall.
Taking macros of your monitor or American Apparel hoodie with your iPhone is so last year.
A Make Magazine tutorial shows you how to make a powerful microscope with up to 375x magnification using just your iPhone, a clear plastic panel, a piece of plywood and some inexpensive hardware.
If you’re a DIY-er that knows how to drill holes and take apart a laser pointer on a keychain, you could be taking super up-close pictures of cricket legs and your cat’s tongue before you know it.
Although he ultimately ran the show at Apple until the middle of 2011, Steve Jobs began thinking about succession plans as early as 2004, when he was just 49 years old, according to a new Fast Company excerpt of the upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs.
2004 was one year after Jobs had a medical scan which revealed he had a tumor in his pancreas. While it was later revealed to be a rare type of pancreatic tumor which grows slower than usual, at the time Jobs was told that he should expect to live no longer than three to six months. 2004 was, of course, years before Apple unveiled the iPhone and iPad: two of the devices for which Jobs is best remembered.
The book excerpt also reveals that, right up until the very end, Tim Cook was convinced that Steve Jobs had a longer role to play at Apple as chairman.
The war regarding whether Apple did or did not invent the USB-C connector witnessed a pretty decisive development this morning, as Apple was awarded a patent describing a slimline reversible input/output electrical connector for transferring a variety of data types including HDMI, audio, USB and video.
The patent was filed by Apple in the third quarter of 2013, but only published today. It names Eric Jol, Albert Golko, Mathias Schmidt and Jahan Minoo as its inventors: all current Apple employees, with the exception of Schmidt who now works at Nest Labs, founded by former Appler Tony Fadell.
It’s looking like 2015 will finally be the year that Apple’s dream TV service becomes a reality.
After years of reports that the company has been trying to get its own TV subscription off the ground, June is on track to be the month it’s debuted for the world to see. The service will reportedly offer around 25 channels and cost a little more than the competition.
Apple might have just leaked some packaging for the upcoming Apple Watch.
The Apple Jobs website received a nice update today — including a new image of what appears to be some of the Apple Watch packaging that will hit Apple Store shelves April 24. The boxes look too thin to hold the Apple Watch and its inductive charger, so they’re more likely just for bands, but we couldn’t help but notice they look just like Swatch’s iconic boxes.
Here’s a comparison shot:
If you are broke after buying an iPhone, do yourself a favor and leave it in the box until you can afford a proper cover.
The quickie DIY cover demonstrated in the video below is neither smart nor attractive, but it does demonstrate just how much thought people put into different ways to live with their devices.
The balloon trick, while probably keeping part of the phone protected from rainy weather, renders the camera useless. On the plus side, if you drop your phone from a great distance, the balloon should keep your broken bits together.
A new trailer for the upcoming Jurassic World video game re-creates some of the best moments of the Jurassic Park franchise using everyone’s favorite multicolor bricks.
I’m a massive fan of both Lego and Jurassic Park, so a combination of the two is pretty much guaranteed to hit the sweet spot. If you don’t absolutely lose it when you see Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm make a Lego-size appearance, I don’t know what to tell you, but I think there’s no way we can be friends. Lego incarnations of Richard Attenborough, Sam Neill and Chris Pratt also make an appearance, in addition to the expected plethora of dinos.
Check out the trailer below.
One of the most highly anticipated rap albums of 2015 has landed on iTunes a week early.
To Pimp a Butteryfly, the follow-up to Kendrick Lamar’s highly acclaimed album good kid, m.A.A.d city is slated for wide release on March 23rd, but thanks to an error with iTunes pre-order, customers can access the hot new album right now.
