You probably spent a lot on your iPhone, and you don’t want something like your car and house keys scratching it up when you cram all of them into the same pocket.
Sure, you could slap a case on there. Or you could keep your keys and phone in separate pockets. That’s what I started doing, but that was mainly because I had a hole in the secondary pocket, and the phone was the only thing that wouldn’t fall through it when I walked.
Are you eagerly awaiting the arrival of the self-driving car so it can save you from the stress and possible injury caused by people who swerve around in the streets like maniacs? Or do you hate the idea of a driverless auto because it won’t let you weave around all those slow a-holes who won’t get out of your way?
Regardless of how you feel about vehicles that don’t need your help to manage your commute, they’re coming, and change is often scary. especially if the free-wheeling roadster in question is a superfast Audi RS 7. And if you’re wondering what you look like when you’re sitting in a hunk of metal traveling at over 135 miles per hour with no control over the steering or brakes, Audi has you covered.
2014 has been a huge year for music and like many of you we’ve spent the past twelve months sifting through the hottest album releases, starting with Beyonce’s mega-album and culminating with the other wordly music bomb D’Angelo just dropped on the world after 15-years in hibernation.
iTunes saw declining revenues for the second year in the row, but the music industry and its superstars were as strong as ever, blasting out new albums that challenged convention. There were also a host of newcomers that shocked us with their maturity and sound as they tried to knock established artists from the top spots. Want to know our favorite songs and albums of 2014? Take a look below to find out:
Luxury Swiss watch makers were originally dismissive of Apple Watch, but now that its launch is inching closer, their tone is changing. TAG Heur’s chief squirmed in front of the press today and announced that his brand is working on something that might be totally amazing. They’re just still looking for partners to make it happen.
Jony Ive prophesied in September that Swiss watchmakers were in “trouble” thanks to his new creations, and it’s looking like he was right. TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver said his company is creating a product to take on Apple Watch, but only if it “can be first, different and unique.”
Biver told reporters that TAG has already struck several partnerships for the watch, and they’re also considering acquiring a few companies to speed up the process.
App Santa is back for the holidays with a very impressive collection of over 40 discounted iOS and Mac apps. You can score up to 80% off on some real gems, including Clear, Tweetbot, Day One, and Deliveries.
Organized by Realmac Software, App Santa represents an extremely high caliber of indie app developers. And if you’ve been holding out on buying any of their apps, now is the time to pounce. The promotion lasts today through December 26th.
This deep sea snail is covered in spikes, has purple blood and lives in the most extreme ocean environments. So of course the scientists that discovered it had to name it after their favorite punk rocker, Joe Strummer of The Clash.
In a study cleverly named “Molecular taxonomy and naming of five cryptic species of Alviniconcha snails (Gastropoda: Abyssochrysoidea) from hydrothermal vents,” researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute detail five new species of snails, one of which gained the scientific name A. strummeri to honor The Clash frontman.
This post is brought to you by IdeaSolutions, creator of AirBrowser.
Would you like to surf the web, watch streaming videos, read newspapers and do everything else you normally do on your Mac browser, in full screen on your TV? Pinch to zoom, swipe, bookmark pages — all using your iOS device as a remote control?
AirBrowser let’s you do all these things. You can get the full desktop browsing experience on your television, with all the sites you visit optimally scaled to fit your TV’s screen size. Read on and watch the AirBrowser video for more info on this easy-to-use app.
Apple fans in Russia can no longer buy new iPhones or Macs, reports Bloomberg. The company has stopped all sales in the country due to ‘extreme’ Ruble fluctuations.
All Apple products were pulled temporarily from the online store in Russia this morning, and Apple’s not saying when they’ll be coming back.
The verdict is in, and after nearly a decade of legal wrangling, Apple has prevailed in the class-action lawsuit seeking over $1 billion in damages by iPod owners who claimed the company conspired to kill competing music services by adding restrictions to iTunes.
The eight-person jury found Apple not liable of adding DRM restrictions as an anti-competitive move toward rival players like RealNetworks from 2006 to 2009. The Verge reports that the jury unanimously delivered the verdict this morning and said that iTunes 7.0 is a “genuine product improvement” that increased security for consumers.
You’ve collected all the coins, you’ve beaten all the enemies, and you’ve finally gotten to the right castle and saved the princess.
Now, in order to avoid a nasty time paradox, you’ll have to do it all again. In reverse.
Spoiler Alert, from developer MegaFuzz and publisher tinyBuild Games, is the first platforming game you’ll play backwards, un-collecting every coin and un-killing every monster to make it back to the beginning. This is the first time the game is on iOS, as well.
Check out the trailer below for a quick taste of gameplay.
T-Mobile revealed the next stage of its ‘Un-carrier’ plan this morning with the introduction of a new feature called ‘Data Stash’ that’s pretty much just like AT&T’s old rollover minutes, expect for your data plan.
The new plans automatically roll any data you don’t use for the month into your Data Stash. You can then tap into the saved gigabites anytime you need some extra data to keep you out of those nasty overage fees. To make the new feature even more alluring, T-Mobile says its tossing in 10GB of free data for every line on your family plan.
Apple Pay’s list of supporters is continuing to grow this week, as Apple announced this morning that dozens of new banks, retailers, and start-ups have signed up to bring Apple’s mobile wallet to their customers.
The company’s new e-commerce product hasn’t even been out for two full months, but thanks to its aggressive launch, Apple Pay now supports so many credit cards and banks that it covers about 90% of the US credit card purchase volume.
The New York Times reports that Apple Pay is coming to ten new banks today, and starting on Friday, Orlando Magic basketball fans will be able to use Apple Pay at any of the Amway Center retailers and food and beverage stands.
If there’s one thing we humans like to do, it’s make music. Seriously, we’ve been doing it since prehistoric times, so it’s no big surprise that we’d find many ways to bring music to our latest tool: the iPhone and iPad.
While there are a ton of different ways to play or make music on your iOS device of choice, here are nine rather weird ones, plus some fantastic videos to hear and see just how its done.
Maci Peterson made a Christian man blush with a text message she sent to plan a first date.
“I wanted to know where to meet, D.C. or Maryland,” she told Cult of Mac. “So I typed, ‘Are you in DC or MD?’ and AutoCorrect changed it to, ‘Are you in D.C. or Me?’ I was so embarrassed.”
Peterson recovered and hopes she is on the verge of saving us all from stumbling fingers, drunken texts and the bewildering algorithms of AutoCorrect. Her new app, On Second Thought, launches this week for Android devices with a version for iPhone users due out early next year.
Third-party developers are already making apps for the Apple Watch, but they’re doing so with one hand tied behind their backs.
Coders that Cult of Mac spoke with are pleasantly surprised by the opportunity to bring apps to the Watch so early, but many note they must abide by severe limitations to get their apps ready for the Apple wearable’s launch next spring.
We don’t know when Apple Watch will hit stores, but if you can’t wait to strap your wrist with the most luxurious Apple product ever created, Mervis Diamonds has the perfect band to match the 18k gold Apple Watch you’ve been lusting after. And it’ll only set you back $30,150.
The battle for your eardrums is about to heat up in 2015, as a new report suggests Bose is planning to take on Beats with its own music streaming service next year.
Bose is quickly trying to transition into a media company, according to Hypebot which reports the company is readying its own “next generation streaming music platform” to take on Apple, Pandora, and Spotify. Details of Bose’s music streamer have been kept secret, but it isn’t being shy about its ambitions to poach some of Apple’s top designers.
The latest App Store rejection controversy has surrounded a critically acclaimed game called Papers, Please. When developer Lucas Pope finally brought the title to iPad, he was forced by Apple to remove all nudity, no matter how pixelated.
Never mind that the nudity in question was not “pornographic content” as Apple billed it, since it only showed when people went through body scanners in the game. After talking with Apple, Pope said the decision was chalked up to a “misunderstanding,” and he’s been allowed to add nudity back to Papers Please in the App Store.
If only we could float above the noise, the dirt and the concrete. What we would see is something peaceful and beautiful.
A graphic designer from Brazil is serving up that kind of serene macro view of the world as wallpaper for our smartphones. His Tumblr blog, Aerial Wallpapers, is loaded with a wonderfully curated collection of satellite photography images.
Joao Paulo Bernades looks for colorful, graphic, Creative Commons-licensed images of Earth from NASA and Airbus Defense and Space, then crops and scales them to fit the iPhone 6. The images appear to be scalable for other devices.
Apple was found guilty last year of colluding with publishers to raise ebook prices, but now that the antitrust case is being heard by the Second U.S. Court of Appeals, two out of the three appellate judges are starting to see things Apple’s way.
The appeals case kicked off this morning with Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart attempting to compare Apple to a driver taking a narcotics dealer to a drug pick up. The analogy was supposed to make the point that if Apple knew publishers were conspiring to fix ebook prices, it was just as guilty as them for facilitating the conspiracy. However, Fortune reports that Judge Denis Jacobs laughed off the analogy, pointing out that drug trafficking is one of the few “industries in which the law does not look with favor or new entrants.”
The comment drew a chorus of laughs in the courtroom, but Judge Jacob’s concerns went even further, as the the judge questioned whether the government should have even brought the case to court.
Can you hit your targets when playing an Xbox shooting game? If so, the Navy might just want to put a video-game-like controller in your hands. Except this version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will have you aiming a ship-mounted laser at real enemies.
A Navy video shows a new laser weapon system successfully zapping a small target on a moving ship, shooting an unmanned aircraft out of the sky and picking off other targets at sea.
Star Trek Captains Picard and Kirk could talk to any alien, no matter how different it was from humanity, thanks to the universal translator, a magical sci-fi device that explained away why strange civilizations in far-away solar systems all spoke English.
That future just got a little less far-fetched, thanks to Skype Translator, a new preview service that uses technology from Microsoft Research to translate two different languages back and forth in real time.
This is heady stuff, as school kids in Seattle and Mexico City seem to instantly recognize when they chat back and forth in English and Spanish via the Skype service in the video below.
Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak revolutionized the computer world with the invention of the Apple II, but back in 1977 when they created the unbelievably simple home PC, few people realized the enormous impact it would have on the “small computer field.”
Case in point, look at this article from the Homestead High School newspaper talking about its alumnus’ new company Apple Computers, in a ‘aww isn’t that cute, they sold 200 computers’ sort of way. The article above was published in the The Epitaph on May 20th, 1977, just a few weeks before the first Apple II units went on sale, and went on to become the first computer to sell 1 million units.
At the time of publication Apple had just moved out of the garage and into an office in Cupertino with eight total employees. One of Apple’s first employees, Chris Espinosa was still in high school at the time and was interviewed by the paper for the article on Jobs and Woz’s new company. Along with revealing that you used to be able to get Apple’s top software engineer to build you a custom app to do whatever you want, the high school junior presaged the idea of a Genius Bar, decades before the first Apple Store opened.
You can read the full article below:
What do you get for the Apple nut in your life? You know the type. They live and breathe Apple — but they already have every Apple product under the sun. Plus all the accessories.
iPod? Got it. iPhone wallet case? Got it. Steve Jobs bobblehead? Got it.
Well, I’ll bet a testicle they don’t have some of this stuff.