News - page 1211

Okay, so all eyes are currently trained on the Apple Watch, which arrives later this month. But April also represents another important benchmark for Apple: five years ago today the iPad went on sale for the very first time.

To celebrate, we’ve scraped the dark recesses of the Cult of Mac archives to bring you a whistle-stop tour of the glorious 60 months we’ve spent in the company of Apple’s breakthrough tablet.

Whether you’re after a zero-gravity Garage Band symphony or a reminder of the time the Queen of England bought an iPad 2, keep reading for a trip down memory lane.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is the hottest ticket in town when June rolls around. Before a lottery system was introduced for distributing passes last year, the week-long event sold out in a little over a minute.

For those who aren’t lucky enough to get into Apple’s main event, there is AltConf. Created by developers for developers, the indie conference will run alongside WWDC again this year — and it’s expected to be bigger than ever.

Drexel University won our hearts two years ago with its invention of a MacBook vending machine for students. Now the school is taking its tech to the next level with a vending machine that spits out iPads.

The vending machine isn’t just for students, either. Residents of Philadelphia’s Mantua and Powelton Village can use their Free Library of Philadelphia cards to sign in and check out an iPad.

Here’s what the machine looks like:

Ah, Pong, the first video game I ever played! If you’re like me and feeling nostalgic for the retro-goodness of Pong, Pac-Man, or even Space Invaders, boy are you in luck.

Pacapong is a new free game that mashes up all three of these fantastic classic video games into one lovely multiplayer package that you can play on your Mac (or PC/Linux box) right now. How they all fit together is a mystery even the developer isn’t aware of.

“I’m actually not sure why,” developer Dick Poelen tells Cult of Mac, “but it started with adding Pac-Man and the maze to Pong. That seemed to make sense.”

Airbnb has revolutionized the way we travel by allowing people to rent rooms on the fly in 190 countries around the world. Now that President Barack Obama is finally opening U.S. relations with Cuba, Airbnb is taking over Havana and other cities in the communist island nation.

The DIY rental service says it already has more than 1,000 listings available in Cuba. You have to be a U.S. citizen to stay at the Airbnb rooms, but you could score an awesome retro-chic rental for super-cheap.

Cast your eyes on a few of the glorious places you can rent.

A zombie survival game called Apocalypse Rising doesn’t sound like a story that should have a happy ending. For game developers Ethan Witt and Gus Dubetz, this doomsday is not about plagues, oceans of blood or even the walking dead.

This apocalypse pays for college.

Aside from better battery life, a waterproof iPhone has to be one of the most-requested upgrades Apple could make to its smartphones — a feature that H20-defying rivals like the Xperia Z1 haven’t wasted a moment bragging about possessing.

But a new patent application published today suggests a waterproofed iPhone could finally be on the way, thanks to a method for sealing buttons specifically designed for iOS devices.

A new, improved version of the Apple Watch’s Force Touch technology could be coming to Apple’s next-generation plus-sized iPhone — and according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo it may be a significant enough upgrade to persuade Apple to call its next handset the iPhone 7 instead of 6s.

Anatol Josephwitz passed the time in a Siberian prison camp and ignored the bitter cold by imagining an automated photography machine he had not yet invented.

Nearly 95 years later, the photo booth is as tough a survivor as its inventor.

Photo booth adventurers across many generations have described a magic that takes place when the curtain is drawn and the camera is awakened by placing a few coins in a slot. Inhibitions fall and an authentic inner self emerges on a strip of four photos. Best friends smash their faces together, a girl on a boy’s lap gives him his first kiss, and a wide-eyed college kid proudly mugs for a shot that will get pasted into a first passport.

Many of the so-called dip-and-dunk chemical machines, the kind found in arcades, amusement parks and bus stations, are disappearing, but replacing them are booths with digital cameras and dye-sublimation printers.

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales hit a new all-time high in urban China in February, capturing a massive 27.6 percent of the smartphone market. For those keeping track at home, that’s an impressive increase of more than 2 percent from the 25.4 percent recorded just one month earlier.

Driving the jump was Chinese New Year, which saw a large number of new activations take place amidst the festivities. It’s no wonder that Tim Cook has claimed that it’s only a matter of time before China overtakes the United States as Apple’s biggest market!

The Apple Watch was created under crazy, sleep-deprived conditions, with its first working prototype being an iPhone strapped to the wrist with a Velcro strap, and the Digital Crown represented by a custom dongle plugged into the bottom of the phone via the headphone jack.

Those are a couple of the revelations from a new in-depth article, reporting on the creation of Apple’s eagerly anticipated wearable device.

Apple’s not even announced its rebranded Beats Music streaming rival to Spotify yet, and already it’s under investigation from regulators.

According to a new report, multiple record labels and digital music companies have been contacted for questioning by the European Commission for what could be a redo of the Apple’s antitrust ebooks controversy, in which the company was forced to shell out $450 million in damages.

The mystery part: since such investigations are usually triggered only by a formal complaint to the commission, there’s plenty of finger-pointing going on regarding who’s responsible for throwing accusations Cupertino’s way. In true Clue fashion, was it an existing streaming music provider, in the dining room, with the endangered business model?

All will (presumably) be revealed.

What if you combined the viral nature of Vine with the mini-story capability of Snapchat? That’s what Facebook is trying to do with Riff, a new app that’s available for download today.

The 12-inch MacBook with Retina display is sexy to behold, but its specs may leave more to be desired.

Thanks to some new benchmarks, we have a clearer picture of what to expect from the new MacBook’s processor. And it’s basically as powerful as a 2011 MacBook Air.

April Fools’ is the day that a lot of tech companies announce fake products to get a laugh. Some are good, but most suck.

Tesla has arguably won April Fools’ Day this year with its spoof of the Apple Watch.

More details surrounding Apple’s unreleased TV streaming service are leaking out as its Worldwide Developer Conference approaches in June.

There’s still a lot we don’t know for sure, but a new report sheds light on how Apple is proposing to handle the actual streaming of live TV to its millions of users.

To best honor the man beloved for playing Mr. Spock, Phi Vu did what comes most logical to him. He used his talents as a 3D artist to create a bust of the late Leonard Nimoy.

The result is a bronze-colored likeness of the regal Starfleet first officer that rivals anything that could be created on the Enterprise’s holodeck.

The 1/3 scale bust has the high cheekbones, a brow lifted by severely angled eyebrows, and those signature Vulcan ears.

Dish has reached a new agreement with Turner Broadcasting to keep TBS, TNT, and CNN on its Sling TV service. That’s great news for cord-cutters, but what’s even better is that HBO is coming aboard too — and in time for the new season of Game of Thrones!

Matt Stopera had his iPhone stolen last February from his favorite bar in New York City. Like most of us, he was upset, but not overly so. Matt got a new phone and went about his life.

A year later, odd pictures of a Chinese man standing in front of an orange tree started appearing on his new iPhone, via iCloud.

Unlike most of us, Matt is a blogger on Buzzfeed. He wrote up a quick post on the site about the photos appearing on his iOS device, and got some attention for it. What happened next is nothing short of amazing.

Apple’s partnership with IBM has birthed eight new enterprise apps that the companies announced today on Apple’s Business apps page. The new MobileFirst apps focus mostly on healthcare by providing hospital techs and nurses new methods to access patients records, log data and track progress.

Along with the four new healthcare apps, IBM and Apple also created apps for insurance agents, flight attendants, retailers and industrial production.

Take a quick tour of the new apps below.

Apple’s new MacBook won’t go on sale for another week-and-a-half. But if you want to get an advance glimpse of the next-gen notebook, you can check out a new unboxing video, which shows off the device’s ultra-thin form factor for the first time in all its glory.

The video’s in Vietnamese, but if you’ve been keeping up with our coverage here on Cult of Mac, you should know what to expect — from the edge-to-edge keyboard to the minimalist USB-C port. Did I mention how much I want one?

There’s not a more annoying day of the year to get on the Internet than April Fools’ Day. Ready or not, it’s here, and companies are spewing out a wave of fake product announcements, some of which we actually wish were real.

Don’t get pranked by this year’s jokes. We’ve rounded up the best and the worst of this year’s Internet jokes so you can laugh along, rather than being that embarrassing friend on Facebook peddling news that Tupac has come out of hiding.

Apple’s China trade-in program only went live today, but already it’s on the receiving end of criticism, as would-be sellers are disappointed to find that Apple is offering far less credit than is offered by private third-party buyers.

Welcome to the club, we say.

Here’s a pretty incredible story: The CEO of Apple touchscreen glass supplier Lens Technology has been named China’s richest woman, after demand for her company’s output saw shares climb 10 percent in a single day.

What’s impressive isn’t just that an Apple supplier rakes in enough cash to accumulate a $7.1 billion fortune, however, but rather the journey that 44-year-old Zhou Qunfei has taken to get there. Prior to getting into the glass manufacturing business as an executive in 2004, Qunfei worked on the factory line for another glass-maker in tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen.

Apple continued its drive to grow its brand in China today with the announcement that customers in the country can now trade in their old iPhones and iPads to let them upgrade to the latest models.