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Want a shot at playing Steve Wozniak in the upcoming Steve Jobs movie?

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rogenandwoz
Seth Rogen (left), Steve Wozniak (right) and... you?
Photo: Seth Rogen/Steve Wozniak

 

Always dreamed of playing Apple’s lovable cofounder Steve Wozniak on-screen, but think you missed out on the chance when Hollywood comedian Seth Rogen was cast in the role for the upcoming Aaron Sorkin/Danny Boyle Steve Jobs biopic? Well, there may be time yet — provided you’re based in the Bay Area and are available for filming next Tuesday, February 24.

According to a casting call posted on the industry website projectcasting.com, Rogen is in need of a body double for anyone who bears a physical resemblance to the funny man actor. You could even pick up a cool $162 plus overtime for doing so.

The ad reads as follows:

Apple starts free repair program for glitchy MacBook Pros

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It's too late to take advantage of a free repair.
If you're MacBook looks like this, you may be in luck. Photo: Change.org
Photo: Change.org

Does your MacBook Pro freak out with distorted graphics or randomly restart? Then you’ll want to take advantage of Apple’s new repair program.

After deeming that a “small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts,” Apple will start fixing parts for free on select MacBook Pro models.

Secret Apple Watch boutique is under construction at Paris’ fanciest store

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Photo: Kaysgeog/Flickr CC
The Galeries Lafayette is getting a special visitor. Photo: Kaysgeog/Flickr CC

Apple Watch isn’t just a techie gadget. It’s a fashion item.

To drill that point into everyone’s heads during launch, it looks like Apple is setting up a special booth at one of the fanciest high-end department stores in Paris: Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.

Construction on a special booth at Galeries Lafayette began a few weeks ago, according to Mac4Ever. There’s no official word that the structure is for the Apple Watch, but the timing, location and large white walls all point to Apple.

Take a look at the site:

Apple is staffing up employees for Israeli R&D center

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Photo: Andy/Flickr CC
Photo: Andy/Flickr CC

Tim Cook is heading out to Israel in a few days to inaugurate what will be Apple’s biggest overseas R&D center in Herzliya, but before the place gets Cook’s official visit, Apple is already looking to expand its staff.

Apple announced that its hiring 49 more positions for the Herzliya headquarters as wells as posts at its Haifa office. The 12,500 square-meter Herzliya offices are scheduled to open this week includes a gourmet restaurant, a fish pond and green surroundings.

Some of the new job posts include the following:

Arizona wants Apple so bad it might hand out yet another tax break

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GT Advanced
From sapphire to data. And with a tax break or two thrown in for good measure. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac
Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

Thanks primarily to the memories of its botched sapphire production efforts, Apple’s not had the best of luck so far with Mesa, Arizona — although politicians in the state are desperate to keep it there.

Under a new Senate Bill put forward this week, Apple could receive between one and two decades’ worth of tax breaks for its planned Mesa data center. The tax breaks, introduced by State senator Jeff Dial, would relate to Apple primarily because of its plans to power the facility with 100 percent renewable energy.

Radio Shack may die, but its ’80s-era portable PC lives on

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The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 came out in 1983 and was a popular tool with writers.
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 came out in 1983 and was a popular tool with writers.

Some journalists remember the day the future arrived: We felt like James Bond on special assignment when our editors, playing the part of provision master Q, handed us the portable device that would allow a story to be written in the field and transmitted back to the office.

So when Radio Shack said earlier this month it would file for bankruptcy, more than a few of us flashed back to the TRS-80 Model 100, one of the first notebook-style computers.

Released in 1983, it set portable computing in motion. The TRS-80’s liquid-crystal display showed eight lines of text. The computer came in 8K and 24K versions and weighed just over 3 pounds. A later version, the Model 200, boasted a flip-up screen that showed even more text, but the original model was by far Radio Shack’s most popular, with more than 6 million sold.

OneNote update shows why iPad would benefit from a stylus

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Photo: Microsoft
Pen meets paper. Kind of. Photo: Microsoft

Anyone wanting to see what productivity tools would look like on an iPad with stylus need look no further than Microsoft’s updated OneNote iOS app.

Having just updated its OneNote app for Mac, the iPad app adds OCR scanning of text within images, alongside the neat ability to add handwritten notes — either using your finger or, better still, a third-party stylus. While this feature has previously been available for the Windows and Android versions of the OneNote app, this is the first time iPad users can get in on the fun.

IFTTT’s new ‘Do’ apps simplify everything — including its ridiculous name

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IFTTT is now a multi-app company. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac
IFTTT is now a multi-app company. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

IFTTT is ready to become more than just a standalone service in 2015. Hoping to transition to a company with multiple products, IFTTT revealed today that it has created three entirely new ‘Do’ apps — Do Button, Do Camera, and Do Note — that let you personalize and execute your favorite IFTTT recipes with one tap.

To go along with the new apps that make it simply to automate your most common Internet tasks, IFTTT has rebranded its original app to just IF. The three new apps are kind of a mixture between Yo and Workflow, giving you a new level of control for favorite services and applications.

Here’s a quick look at each new app.

8 gorgeous Lego sets you owe it to yourself to build

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A Lego Mac might be the perfect gift for the Apple fan in your life. Photo: Chris McVeigh.
The best of both worlds -- a Lego Macintosh. Until you try to use it, of course. Photo: Chris McVeigh.

Given their focus on gorgeous design and parallel rise, fall and ascent to global dominance narratives, it’s perhaps no surprise to hear that I love Lego almost as much as I do Apple products. With hundreds of sets in total — and a reported 62 bricks for every single person on Earth — picking out the greatest Lego sets of all time is tough to do.

Not all of the ones on the list below are easy to get hold of (eBay is your best bet!), but if you’re looking for a fun challenge and great way of gobbling up your spare cash before the Apple Watch arrives, you can’t do any better.

Ready to get building?

How Alto’s Adventure became your next favorite iPhone game

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Photo: Snowman
Photo: Snowman

One of Ryan Cash’s favorite games growing up was GoldenEye on the N64. “One thing I remember so clearly is that the game was hard,” he recalled. “You couldn’t just beat the game on its toughest setting if you weren’t amazing.”

Luckily for Cash, his friend Bruno was a master at GoldenEye, and he would come over to unlock cheats. “He was the guy,” Cash remembered.

Most of us probably had a Bruno growing up. Back when you couldn’t pay $1.99 with Touch ID to unlock more gems or coins. Back when games were just as fun as mobile games are now, but also challenging and dependent on skill.

With Alto’s Adventure, out today in the App Store for $1.99, Cash and the rest of his team drew from the games they love to make something unique. They’ve created a game that’s not only really fun to play, but beautiful to behold. And unlike GoldenEye, there are no cheat codes to help you get ahead.

District 9′s Neil Blomkamp will direct the next Alien movie!

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Neil Blomkamp will be officially directing the next Alien film. Photo: Neil Blomkamp
Neil Blomkamp will direct the next Alien film. Photo: Neil Blomkamp

Despite attracting the absolute best talent, the Aliens franchise has been on a bit of a rough patch for the last, oh, 30 years or so.

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus prequel? It sucked. Alien: Resurrection, a joint written by Joss Whedon and filmed by the director of City of Lost Children? It blew. Alien 3, directed by multiple Academy Award winner David Fincher? Well, I’ve personally always thought it got a bum rap, but the general consensus is: It’s terrible.

Now Neil Blomkamp, the talented South African director behind District 9 and the upcoming Chappie, has been hired to film the next Alien movie. And thanks to Blomkamp, we have a pretty good idea what the movie will be about.

Apple might allow you to customize the Apple Watch’s digital crown

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What's up with the color on the Apple Watch digital crown? Photo: Six Colors
What's up with the color on the Apple Watch digital crown? Photo: Six Colors

Here’s a small detail you might have missed about the Apple Watch. In pictures for the Apple Watch Edition, the 18-karat solid gold version of Cupertino’s upcoming wearable, the Digital Crown has a small dot at the end that matches the color of the watch strap. But here’s a question for you: Is Apple going to allow users to customize the Digital Crown as easily as they can swap out Apple Watch wristbands?

Filmmaker has mixed feelings about his iPhone masterpiece

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Tangerine was filmed with the iPhone 5s but it's cinematic feel comes from an app, a lens adaptor and several hours of post production. Photo: Sean Baker
Tangerine was filmed with the iPhone 5s, but its cinematic feel comes from an app, a lens adapter and several hours of post-production work. Photo: Sean Baker

There was the buzz going into Sundance and the applause of satisfied audiences at the end of the movie’s screening. But there was also a collective gasp as the last line of the credits rolled past.

Shot on the iPhone 5s.

Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the story of two transgender sex workers in Hollywood, was a break-out hit at the renowned film festival in January. The Hollywood Reporter said the film stands out as “crisp and vigorously cinematic.”

Oft-praised for the rich fringe characters in his independent films, Baker did not set out to change the filmmaking landscape by shooting with a cellphone. Like most indie filmmakers, he had no money.

Motorola’s CEO fires back at Jony Ive and Apple

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Motorola's CEO isn't happy about what Jony Ive told the New Yorker about his company. Photo: Motorola
Motorola's CEO isn't happy about what Jony Ive told the New Yorker about his company. Photo: Motorola

In Ian Parker’s excellent New Yorker profile of Apple’s Jony Ive, the Apple design maestro is mentioned to be disparaging of an unnamed competitor who allows customers to make their devices into “whatever you want.”

Apparently, Motorola thinks the comment was about them, and Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh is now firing back, calling Apple’s pricing “outrageous” and taking issue with Ive’s comments.

Here’s how much gold you get in the 18-karat Apple Watch Edition

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Photo: Apple
Come April, there's going to be a new gold rush. Photo: Greg Koenig

Apple hasn’t yet announced prices for its 18-karat-gold Apple Watch Edition timepieces, but if you think the top-of-the-range wearable is going to cost anything under $5,000, you’ve got another thing coming.

Greg Koenig, co-founder of Luma Labs, recently performed a calculation to find out an approximate figure for the gold content of the forthcoming 42mm gold Apple Watch. While Koenig notes that his guess is a “very rough estimate,” it still makes for interesting eye-watering (iWatering?) reading.

His guess? 29.16 grams — which translates to $853.82 at today’s gold prices. And that’s without even taking the electronics into account.

New lawsuit offers another clue that Apple is building an electric car

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iPhone
Your Apple Car is running out of battery charge. Please plug it into a Lightning charger as soon as possible. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Given that Apple can’t make an iPhone with a battery life of more than (best case scenario) a couple of days, how would it ever manage with a far more power-intensive technology like, say, an electric car?

It seems that this is exactly the question being asked in Cupertino — and the attempt to answer it has landed Apple with a new lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court.

As per the complaint, back in June last year, Apple reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers from the electric car battery maker A123 Systems. The engineers were responsible for performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries.

Coen brothers mashup is a creepy meditation on meaning of life

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Look, man, just...watch the video, ok? Photo: Gramercy Pictures
Look, man, just...watch the video, ok? Photo: Gramercy Pictures

“Sometimes the more you look,” says Tony Shaloub as Freddy Riedenschneider in The Man Who Wasn’t There, “the less you really know.”

Which, of course, sounds like the main theme of almost any Coen brothers film you might have seen; the duo tends to pack even their more mainstream film work with quirky, interesting characters who muse on the meaning of life while behaving, well, oddly.

Steven Baxter, an author, broadcaster and filmmaker, has edited all the films from the Coens’ oeuvre into one stunning visual essay that focuses on themes present in many of the Coen films.

“…this essay has the characters talk to one another across the films so we can more clearly hear the Coens’ dominant concerns: identity, miscommunication and morality,” writes Baxter in the video description. “Taken as a trinity, these elements indicate that the Coens’ true subject is the search for value in a random and amoral universe.”

Hellboy beer will wash away your devilish thirst

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Hell yes! Rogue's devilish Right Hand of Doom Red Ale looks worthy of Hellboy. Photo: Rogue Ales
Hell yes! Rogue's devilish Right Hand of Doom Red Ale looks worthy of Hellboy. Photo: Rogue Ales

Here’s a comics crossover you can drink to: Rogue Ales is bottling a birthday brew for Hellboy.

Rogue’s Right Hand of Doom Red Ale pays tribute to the demon-spawn character created by Mike Mignola. A Mignola drawing of the wisecracking, cigar-chomping, supernatural badass adorns the label, just as the comics franchise reaches legal drinking age in the United States.

Samsung tries to buy its way onto Apple Pay’s turf with LoopPay

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loop-pay
Photo: LoopPay

Samsung has bought its own Apple Pay competitor with LoopPay, a U.S. startup that makes cases and accessories for wirelessly transmitting card data with a magnetic signal.

First rumored back in December, Samsung will allegedly integrate LoopPay’s technology into its upcoming phones in an effort to ride the growing mobile payments trend created by Apple Pay.

Spring arrives early in David Hockney’s iPad art exhibition

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David Hockney, Yosemite I, © 2013 David Hockney, used with permission de Young Museum.
David Hockney, Yosemite I, © 2013 David Hockney, used with permission de Young Museum.

The eastern U.S. is still getting pelted with snow, but spring is arriving a little early across the pond in Saltaire England thanks to David Hockney’s newest gallery of iPad artwork entitled ‘The Arrival of Spring.’

The famous pop artist’s exhibition of 33 pictures went on display today at the Salt Mill gallery in West Yorkshire. Each of the five-foot high framed pictures were drawn on Hockney’s iPad during the period when he lived in Bridlington and painted the Yorkshire woods for London’s Royal Academy.

Take a closer look at some of the piece below:

Old flip-phones are the iPhone’s newest rival in Japan

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15033180686_0ffbbb65a2_k
Are flip-phones making a comeback? Photo: Oscar Avellaneda-Cruz/Flickr CC

The iPhone has been killing it in Japan lately. Apple’s smartphone marketshare in the tech-obsessed country is continuing to dominate year-over-year, even though the company had a hard time giving out iPhones just five years ago.

With the iPhone 6’s bigger screen, the company is making more of an inroads than ever, but according to a report from Reuters, smartphones in Japan are facing stiff from competition from an unlikely suspect: flip-phones.