Apple's patent cover a Wikipad GameVice-style accessory capable of attaching to your iOS device. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
What is it with Apple and the gaming-related patents as of late?
Just weeks after the publishing of an Apple patent showing a concealed gaming joystick capable of being hidden in future iPhones, today the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has revealed another Apple invention related to a snap-on gaming controller for iOS devices.
As with the joystick patent, the idea here is to allow gamers to fully capitalize on the present golden age of iOS gaming, without having to block parts of the screen using their fingers for multitouch controls.
Loading a stolen credit card on Apple Pay is too easy. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac
When Tim Cook unveiled Apple Pay last year, the company hailed it as a simple contactless payment solution that also brings extra security to credit cards. Except according to one report, Apple Pay is actually making it easier for scammers to commit credit fraud.
Apple Pay’s security problem has nothing to do with Touch ID, NFC, Apple’s secure element, or stolen iPhones. All of that is locked down as tightly as Apple advertised. The problem, according to an unconfirmed report from DropLabs, is that Apple Pay is so easy to use, fraudsters don’t even have to create a physical fake card anymore.
Five years ago today, on January 27 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — giving the world its first glimpse of the so-called “Jesus tablet.”
Although not Apple’s first venture into the tablet market (that would be 1993’s Newton MessagePad 100), the iPad was the first tablet Apple had released while Jobs was running the show. And, boy, was it great!
When looking at the iPad, at first the temptation was to think of it as a giant iPhone. That’s not the case, however. In reality, Apple began work on its tablet before its now-iconic smartphone. For Jobs, the idea went back to 2002 and a conversation he had with a boastful Microsoft engineer, who bragged about a stylus-based tablet computer. A patent application from Apple followed in March 2004, with Jobs and Jony Ive as two of the inventors named.
Things have come a long way since then, but it’s worth re-watching Jobs’ original iPad introduction — just for a reminder of how much Apple’s revolutionary device has meant in the half-decade since.
The biggest snowstorm to ever hit New York City is pounding the Northeast today, and it doesn’t look like the blizzard is going to let up any time soon.
More than 2 feet of snow are expected to hit the area. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has already canceled school for tomorrow and the state announced all highways will be closed by midnight tonight. But before you hole up with your loved ones for the next few days, make sure to download these eight apps that will help you make it out alive.
Apple Pay is coming to the golf course. Photo: Apple
Apple Pay has already invaded MLB stadiums and NBA games, but next up on the list of major sports to accept Apple’s contactless payments system will be golfers.
The city of Phoenix is gearing up to host the Super Bowl this week, but the PGA is hoping to steal a little thunder with the revelation this morning that Apple Pay will make its first ever debut on the golf course at the 2015 Waste Management Phoenix Open this week.
Apple acquired TestFlight maker Burtsly last year and quickly added it to iOS in an effort to improve the iOS beta testing experience for both developers and testers. Now Apple plans to close the independent site TestFlightapp.com to Android users and everyone else, forcing iPhone and iPad owners to only test apps through the official TestFlight iOS app.
Tim Cook onstage at the 2014 WWDC. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web
Apple is set to announce record-breaking earnings tomorrow for its 2014 holiday quarter. Apple projected making $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion in revenue, but Wall Street’s consensus is that the company will blow past its own guidance and report revenue closer to $68 billion.
That’s about $20 billion more than Google’s last three quarters of revenue combined.
Growth will likely be fueled by strong iPhone sales, although the Mac is also projected to reach record sales.
A phaser prop from the original Star Trek series will be auctioned off next month. Photo: Propworx
A rare phaser pistol from the original Star Trek television series is “set to stun” when it goes on the auction block next month in Los Angeles.
It is made of fiberglass and one of only two known phasers to have survived the 1960s television series, which starred William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as the leaders of the starship Enterprise.
The phaser could fetch more than $60,000, according to the website Luxurylaunches.com when it hits the block Feb. 21 during a Star Trek auction by Propworx.
Land of the rising sales. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
China may have been a bit late to the iPhone 6 party due to a drawn-out regulatory approval period, but it seems the wait was worth it — both for Chinese customers and Tim Cook’s wallet.
Ahead of what should be a blockbuster earnings call for Apple on January 27, UBS analysts are predicting that the holiday season will be the quarter in which China finally sold more iPhones than the U.S.
Over the weekend, we showed you sexy new renders that showed the rumored new 12-inch MacBook Air and iPad Pro side-by-side. Designed by render artist extraordinaire Martin Hajek, it gave us our best look yet at what Apple’s next big products could look like.
But in the renders we saw, Hajek’s iPad Pro was missing at least one critical ingredient: the plus-size tablet’s rumored stylus accessory. Now Hajek’s back, giving us his notion of what a Jony Ive-designed stylus could look like.
The iPhone 6s could get by with a little help from Samsung. Photo: Jim Merithew
In public, the big smartphone competition may be between Apple and Samsung, but behind the scenes the faltering Samsung has another battle on its hands: with rival manufacturer TSMC over who gets to build the A9 processor for the next generation iPhone.
And while Samsung is decisively losing the battle to sell the most smartphones in the marketplace, the A9 chip orders could be one clash it is going to emerge victorious from!
Tweetbot for Mac has been pulled from the Mac App Store. Photo: Tapbots
In 2013, Twitter introduced a new policy that was designed to prevent third-party Twitter clients from gaining too much popularity. The design to the Twitter API basically capped the number of API “tokens” a third-party developer have. Each token is tied to a user, so the effect is that if a third-party Twitter client gets too popular, Twitter will stop allowing new users of that app into the service.
Over the weekend, it appears that Tapbot’s third-party Twitter app, Tweetbot for Mac, finally ran up against its token limit… and as of right now, has been pulled from the Mac App Store.
Given that Tim Cook thinks China will soon overtake the U.S. as Apple’s biggest market, it’s no surprise that Apple is taking its expansion into China seriously.
The mural was created as a collaboration between international photographer and former engineer Navid Baraty (best known for these spectacular vertigo-inducing cityscapes) and artist Yangyang Pan.
As free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows. Photo: Apple
Ever since Apple made the tactical error of giving everyone a free U2 album (#firstworldproblems), the company has been a tad on the, well, miserly side — with no Mac, iPad or iPhone discounts on Black Friday, and even the company’s customary 12 Days of Christmas giveaway canceled. Bah, humbug!
Clearly someone in Cupertino (head of retail Angela Ahrendts?) has woken up in a newly charitable mood, however, because Apple has just updated its iTunes Store app for both iOS and desktop with a new “Free on iTunes” curated section, which helps customers find content they can download without having to rack up any extra post-Christmas credit card bills.
Tim Cook announcing Apple's partnership with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty last summer. Photo: Apple
Update: Downplaying reports about the size of its impending layoffs, IBM says it will let go of only “several thousand people,” not the much-larger number reported by Forbes. We’ve updated this story and its headline to reflect IBM’s statements.
Things aren’t going well for IBM. Six months into its partnership with Apple, Big Blue is reportedly preparing for the largest corporate layoff in history.
After nearly three years of quarterly revenue decline, IBM is preparing to ax a staggering 111,800 employees, according to Forbes. Saying it does not respond to “ridiculous” rumors, IBM says the layoffs will be much smaller than that. How the layoffs will affect the company’s business with Apple remains unclear.
I got a pic with Patrick Stewart. He was thrilled.
This week: Why Apple Watch will win the wrist war, we snap a pic with Patrick Stewart but he’s not amused, the good and bad of a George Lucas-free Star Wars 7, Microsoft’s new HoloLens looks incredible, and we reveal some of our favorite apps and gear on an all-new Under Review.
Our thanks to Automatic for supporting this episode. Plug Automatic into your car’s data port, and their beautiful app will show you where you parked, learn how to save fuel with tips based on your actual driving, and even diagnose and turn off your car’s check engine light.
If you want Minesweeper in your Notification Center, better grab it fast. Screenshot: Cult of Mac
Although it’s a Windows game, I’ve never met anyone without a sweet spot for Minesweeper, the addictive little puzzle game that Microsoft debuted in Windows 3.1. Sadly, though, it never came to the Mac.
But if you love a good game of Minesweeper, we’ve got some great news. You can now play it right within Notification Center. Better act on it soon, though: Apple has a tendency to pull interesting iOS 8 widgets like this one.
The Apple Watch might be Cupertino’s most hotly anticipated product, but for my money, the two releases I’m most excited about this year are the 12-inch MacBook Air and the 12-inch iPad Pro. Outside of a few leaked images, though, we still have not seen either of these rumored devices in the flash.
Conceptual designer Martin Hajek is no stranger to turning rumors of upcoming Apple products into blisteringly sexy 3-D renders, and now he’s done it again with a series of renders showing the iPad Pro and 12-inch MacBook Air going head to head. Call it the battle of the 12-inchers, if you will!
How about the weather with some sass? Thanks to Funny Or Die, there’s an app for that.
The app can show you 5-day forecasts, barometric pressure, wind speed, humidity, UV Index, moon phases, and tides, but let’s be honest: you could use any old weather app for that stuff. You want the jokes, and this app delivers.
(Powered by Weather Underground, in case you were wondering.)
After four months, Apple has yet to fix a bad calendar bug in iOS 8.
A weird bug in iOS 8’s Calendar app has been making people pull their hair out for months. When adding events using either a Google or Microsoft Exchange server, the time zone is randomly synced to Greenwich Mean Time.
Complaints started surfacing around iOS 8’s release last September, and the issue still persists.
The iPhone 6 dominated 2014. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple enjoyed historic sales this holiday season, and while the company won’t reveal its official earnings until January 27th, based on the latest smartphone activation report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Apple dominated the holiday shopping season and accounted for 50% of all smartphone activations in Q4 2014.
Tim Cook is likely to announce another record breaking quarter as Apple nearly doubled the number of activations of its closest competitor Samsung, which accounted for a modest 26% of the market.
Sonos' new logo is trippy (Pro Tip: scroll up and down while looking at it).
We love Sonos speakers here at Cult of Mac. In fact, we can barely make it through our Faves and Raves segment on the CultCast without Leander waxing poetic for the sleek wireless speakers.
The company just teamed up with Bruce Mau Design to create a new psychedelic logo that’s nearly as entertaining their HiFi systems that let you beam sound to any room in your house. If you scroll up and down the page you’ll notice a pulsing effect on the logo, similar to a bass thumping speaker.
There’s no mention on Bruce Mau Design’s website as to whether the optical illusion is intentional. If not it’s an awesome accident. Go ahead and wiggle the page up and down to experience the the visual effect yourself.
The Rumor: Apple Watch will only get 19 hours of battery life.
The Verdict: This sounds about right to us. Some people are already complaining about Mark Gurman’s report that Apple Watch’s battery won’t last all-day. With as many features as Apple’s cramming into its first timepiece, we’re not shocked the battery is puny. Tim Cook already said you’ll have to charge it every day. It’s only a first generation device. If it lasts a full 19 hours we’ll be pleased.
Lose yourself in a city of your own making. Photo: Electronic Arts
I launched SimCity: Complete Edition last night at around 8 p.m. I played around with my new city, getting a feel for the controls, zoning for residences, commercial ventures and industrial centers.
I zoomed in and out to get up-close and bird’s-eye views of my own private Idaho (well, Squifton, if we’re being literal). I checked out the various data views, gave my city police buildings and power, water and fire departments. I added parks, more residential areas, roads and even created a neighboring city — a sleepy little hamlet that purchases power and water from the main city. Just a quick little foray into a game that I’ve been itching to play.
When I glanced up at the clock, it was three hours later.
From Abstract Sunday, an Instagram feed by illustrator Christoph Niemann. Illustration: Christoph Niemann
Artists don’t always explain themselves well.
Even acclaimed illustrator Christoph Niemann, who can articulate the mysteries of creativity better than many, doesn’t always understand the moment when the head, heart and eyes merge with skills and gifts to produce a brilliant piece. It’s like trying to put into words the act of breathing.
But every Sunday, we can behold the headwaters of his creative flow.
