Are you ready for the thinner, radically-redesigned, 12-inch MacBook Air?
Apple certainly hopes so, because it’s reportedly piling on the pressure on to get Quanta Computer, its Taiwan-based manufacturer, to ramp up volume production of the notebook. The MacBook Air is set to be unveiled by Apple in the first quarter of this year, and to meet that kind of schedule Quanta is recruiting more workers for its production line.
And it’s not just a few workers it’s looking for, either!
Looking for a use for that old iPod nano you’ve got lying around the house, gathering dust? Why not become a credit card thief?
Okay, so that’s probably the worst piece of advice you’ve received today, but it was still good enough for a pair of ne’er-do-wells from Stockport, England.
Using an iPod nano, a bit of duct tape, and a plastic contraption which attaches to the card slot of ATMs, the duo discovered a way to record videos of people entering their PIN numbers to withdraw money — using Apple’s one-time music players as a makeshift spy camera.
There was a time when LEGO brick sets were anything but prescriptive. You’d be lucky to get a wheel or axle part, or maybe even a door or window piece in your giant set of loose bricks.
These days, of course, LEGO typically means putting together a complicated model that just doesn’t need glue (though you can certainly use it to make things permanent).
Imgur user “fickle” put up this photoset showing what a couple of enterprising young women did with their toy juice bar, from the LEGO Friends set.
“It was supposed to be a juice bar,” they wrote on the photo sharing service, (but) “a set of ED-209-inspired power armor is far better!
Apple has seeded the fourth iOS 8.2 developer this morning. The new beta comes more than one month after iOS 8.2 beta 3 was released. The upcoming iOS 8.2 public release brings Apple Watch support to iOS devices.
iOS 8.2 beta 4 is available to all registered developers in the iOS Dev Center, or as an OTA update. Apple also released a fourth beta of Xcode 6.2 with the new iOS beta.
The release notes for iOS 8.2 beta 4 don’t mention any new features, but contains numerous bug fixes as the Apple Watch launch approaches. Use of iOS 9.0 was also spotted recently as Apple has begun internal testing ahead of its release later this fall.
The exoplanet known as Kepler-16b is a gas giant near the outer limits of the habitable zone, but why should that discourage you from paying it a visit?
NASA has issued a set of three retro space-tourism posters to celebrate the discoveries of the Kepler Space Telescope, which has laid eyes on more than 1,000 confirmed exoplanets and more than 400 stellar systems.
If 16b — which is said to have a temperature similar to dry ice — doesn’t sound appealing, honeymooners might be drawn to the promise of romance with a double sunset. Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars, like Luke Skywalker’s native planet Tatooine, and the travel poster serves up this selling point: “Where Your Shadow Always Has Company.”
You don’t need a smartphone app to tell you that taping dozens of iPhones to your body might set off alarms.
So it’s hard to know what a Hong Kong man was thinking when he tried to walk through a metal detector at Fultan Port in China with 94 iPhones taped to his chest, stomach and legs.
Actually, customs officials were suspicious before he got to the metal detector. After a check of two plastic shopping bags he was carrying, officers directed him towards and metal detector and noticed his “weird walking posture, joint stiffness (and) muscle tension.”
It will be many months before developers see Apple’s first iOS 9 beta, but the Cupertino company has already begun testing the update internally ahead of this fall’s release. The software has starting appearing in analytics data for a number of sites in recent months, including our own.
As Apple continues it global expansion, India marks one of the company’s big next frontiers — with 1.2 billion citizens and a fast-growing smartphone market.
Today, the company gets some good news, in the shape of some great reports about the success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the country. Since it launched the two next-gen smartphone handsets there in October, Apple has reportedly sold a massive half a million units in the country: twice what it managed during the same timeframe in 2013.
But Tim Cook’s not done yet. He wants to get more iPhones into the country, and that means… cutting Apple’s profits?
Apple is normally pretty hot on security, but a new glitch discovered in OS X Yosemite’s search threatens to expose the private details of Apple Mail users — including IP addresses, and more — to online spammers and phishers.
The privacy risk occurs when people use Spotlight Search, which also indexes emails received with the Apple Mail email client. When performing searches on a Mac, Spotlight shows previews of emails and automatically loads external images in the HTML email.
So why is this dangerous?
Apple may be in the middle of its biggest ever month in App Store history, but it’s not resting on its laurels — having just announced a new App Store category, aimed at the littler members of Cupertino’s fanbase.
Called “Games for Kids,” the section will include everything from “cute puzzlers to accessible tower-defense games,” with a focus on children with a “wide range of skill levels and interests.”
Since a survey of youngsters aged 6-12 recently named the iPad a more beloved brand than Disney, Nickelodeon, Toys”R”Us, McDonald’s and YouTube it’s no surprise that Apple would want to continue hooking children young. And apparently that’s exactly what it’s doing.
LAS VEGAS — The iPhone is the most popular camera in the world. But it still sucks at flash photography.
Knog, the Austrialian company that makes those kickass bike lights, wants to make your nighttime iPhone pics a little bit better this year: Its newest lighting revelation is called Expose, and it’s a super-handy iPhone flash that’s also super-bright.
Expose is bright in more ways than one. Its accompanying iPhone app lets users blast light in photo and video modes, with flash, strobe or continuous settings. You can adjust the white balance and brightness, and the device weighs so little you’ll barely notice it’s in your pocket.
LAS VEGAS — Ata Ghofrani cut down on smoking and finally quit during the holidays. The only glitch was a New Year’s Eve party, which triggered a “huge spike” in his otherwise fairly smooth reduction schedule.
Ghofrani used his own invention — Quitbit, the world’s first “smart” lighter — to monitor his smoking and set a daily “budget” of cancer sticks that decreased every day.
“The key for me was to know how many cigarettes I budgeted to smoke a day and how many I had left,” he wrote in a blog post detailing his progress.
The Quitbit uses the same psychology as fitness trackers. If you can monitor it, you can manage it.
This week: As promised! With over 430,000 Instagram followers, photographer Cory Staudacher, aka @withhearts, joins us to talk mobile photography, his favorite photo apps and gear, and his tips for capturing beautiful images with your favorite iDevice. Plus, someone tries to burn down the Mrs. Doubtfire house—time for a drive-by fruiting; prepare thy wrists, the Watch may cometh in March; and details on a radically new Macbook Air.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Squarespace 7 is live, and it’s their biggest update in years. Now building a beautiful website is faster and easier than ever. Learn more at Squarespace.com/seven and use code “CultCast” at checkout for 10% off any order.
Full show notes ahead!
Hitting the gym with my girlfriend is an embarrassing affair. Not because she lifts almost as much as me, but because she’s so much better at it, with the all the right form and stuff.
“Move your knees farther apart. No, no, no. Push on the balls of your feet.”
It gets tedious as she makes sure I use the proper technique every single time, but her gripes and coaching are about to get replaced by a new wearable called Gymwatch. It tracks all your movements in the gym to make sure you’re getting the most out of your lifting workouts.
LAS VEGAS — Tons of wearables at International CES promise to help you get better at everything from brushing your teeth to perfecting your golf swing, but the last place we expected someone to toss a sensor was into our socks.
Sensoria’s Fitness Socks are aimed at transforming you into a better, injury-free runner by embedding three sensor pads into the bottom of the sock that track your stride, cadence and speed while you’re running. Coupled with the Sensoria mobile app, runners can now get direct feedback on their running style to correct things like heel striking to help them dominate their next 10k.
Incredibly sloppy security at one of Apple’s key suppliers exposed some of Cupertino’s most closely guarded secrets to anybody who could conduct a simple Google search.
For months, one of Quanta Computer‘s internal databases could be accessed using usernames and a default password published in a PowerPoint presentation easily found on the Web.
Quanta, based in Taiwan, is the world’s largest notebook manufacturer. In addition to Apple, Quanta assembles laptops and ultrabooks for dozens of companies, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sharp and Sony. The company is also supposedly assembling the upcoming Apple Watch and the long-rumored iPad Pro, though no official announcements have been made.
LAS VEGAS — Apple Pay is cool, but what if you don’t have the latest iPhone 6? The Plastc Card might be for you.
Plastc is a chameleon-like electronic card that stores up to 20 cards — debit, credit, gift and even security cards.
It’s the same size and shape as a regular card, but has a sharp and striking e-ink display. You simply swipe through the e-ink screen to choose the card you want, and swipe the mag stripe through the reader.
Instead of carrying 20 cards in your wallet, you carry just one.
LAS VEGAS — Laptop docks aren’t usually the sexiest things in the world, but the latest hardware from Henge Docks could be considered somewhat titillating.
Henge’s upcoming horizontal docking station is a beauty. Its sleek, metallic profile looks like an extension of Apple’s unibody MacBook design. But this thing doesn’t only have good looks; it boasts robust port expansion, helpful cable management and automatic docking.
A small company based in San Francisco, Henge Docks is already known for its vertical MacBook dock and Gravitas dock for iOS devices. Customers clamored for a horizontal MacBook dock that didn’t require a secondary display, and the finalized version is being displayed for the first time at International CES here this week.
Just when you think there is little left to reveal with photography, Stephen Orlando comes along and shines a new light – ribbons of light to be exact – on motion.
To imagine the push-and-pull sweep of a kayak stroke or the looping follow-thru of a tennis serve, you might think to use video and slow down the sequence of frames to get a sense of the patterns of movement bodies use to propel forward.
Orlando, of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, contains the complete trajectory of movement in a single still frame with long exposures and a simple lighting technique that seems to illuminate the otherwise invisible forces at play.
LAS VEGAS — If shedding some body fat is one of your New Year’s resolutions, you’re probably like me and looking for all the high-tech help you can get.
Activity trackers are great at logging exercise, but if you want to measure the actual progress your muscles are making, check out the Skulpt Aim — an iPod-size device that measures your body fat percentage.
The Skulpt Aim uses electroanalysis to not only determine how much excess fat you’re carrying around, but also your muscle quality. Just spritz a little water on the muscle you want to test, press the device firmly against your muscle, and within a few seconds, Aim spits out your score.
How much would you endure to get a cheap deal on a new Apple product?
When we wrote about the traditional Japanese “Lucky Bag” special offer — which gives customers the chance to buy a $300 gift bag, containing cut-price luxuries like MacBook Airs and Apple TVs — many U.S.-based Cult of Mac readers complained that they weren’t given similar promotions.
I saw their point — at least until I glimpsed something much worse: photos showing the freezing Apple fans in question, lined up outside the Sapporo, Japan Apple Store on January 1.
You know that moment when an otherwise fun special offer turns into the last scene of The Shining (spoilers!)? This is it.
Mercury is the most cratered planet in the solar system, a popular destination for asteroids and comets.
As bleak a place as this sounds, you may be able to give the pockmarked planet some personality.
The team piloting the MESSENGER spacecraft exploring the closest planet to the sun is calling on “all Earthlings” to name some prominent craters after famous people in the arts and humanities.
The deadline is Jan. 15 and inspiration can be found in pictures of the five craters on MESSENGER’s official website.
The Cult of Mac team spent the past week sweating it out in Las Vegas and gathered up a ton of hands-on looks at some of the hottest products heading down the tech conveyor belt to you in the near future.
We’ve got the two guys who’s gadget can help you bake the perfect cookie, a self-adjusting belt for when you’ve eaten too many cookies, and a sexy sci-fi car that will help you feel better about not having your futuristic flying vehicles, yet.
Be sure to click on through and see this week’s top stories, and subscribe to our free weekly digital magazine right here.
There’s a ton of reasons why a disc may get stuck in your Mac. Not only is it frustrating, but it can also bring you into a cold sweat — panicking about how to remove it when there’s no easy access.
But don’t worry: in today’s video we go over a few simple tricks to force eject your favorite album or movie without ripping apart your beautiful Mac.
Make sure to Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.
The iPhone has become such a major part of our existence, a piece of technology that we almost take for granted, that it’s difficult to remember a time when we were instead tapping away at our Moto Q, Palm Treo and Nokia E62 handsets.
But while the iPhone has gone on to revolutionize our lives (and Apple’s business) it’s not that long ago — eight years today — that Steve Jobs stood on stage at MacWorld 2007, and told the world that Apple had created a touchscreen iPod, a cell phone, and a breakthrough Internet device all-in-one.
Coming off its most profitable holiday season ever, and a record-breaking week for the App Store, it’s worth taking a moment to rewatch Jobs’ first iPhone presentation: both to see an iconic moment in tech history, and to be reminded of how far we’ve come since then!
Check it out after the jump: