VLC, the much beloved cross platform video player, hasn’t historically had much luck on iOS. But that looks about to change, with the app reportedly coming back to the App Store early in 2015… and possibly as early as today.
It’s come a long way in recent years, but even so, Internet Explorer may be Microsoft’s most reviled product: a web browser so bad it held web standards back for years. From a Mac fan’s perspective, the best that can be said about Internet Explorer is that, for the most part, you never have to use it at all: the most up-to-date versions only run on Windows.
But that could soon change. A new report suggests that Microsoft could be rebranding Internet Explorer while giving it a radical overhaul… while simultaneously releasing it on non-Windows systems like Mac and iOS.
There were more viral videos in 2014 than you can shake a stick at, and you could spend weeks watching them all. From John Oliver to the Ice Bucket Challenge, we were absolutely inundated with stuff to watch throughout the year, and that’s a great thing.
Wishing you could relive some of the best viral video moments of 2014? We’ve collected some of the best for your enjoyment:
Apple hasn’t built a device requiring a stylus since the heyday of the Newton in the 1990s, largely because Steve Jobs hated them. But a new patent published today suggests that Apple could be changing its mind — or is making a conscious effort to lead rivals and copycats astray.
Described as a “communicating stylus,” the patent describes a stylus featuring built-in accelerometers, wireless transmission, and storage — with the aim of sending hand-written notes and drawings from one device to another.
2015 is nearly upon us, but before you pop the bubbly, listen up for the tech, apps, movies and TV shows that delighted us in 2014. You’ll get it all in this very special, far too long, last-episode-of-the-2014 … CultCast.
Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.
Click on for the show notes.
Xiaomi just rode Apple’s coattails to the biggest startup valuation in world, but it appears the Chinese smartphone maker is ready to take its copying to new heights by getting into the laptop game with, you guessed it, a MacBook Air knockoff.
Apple’s new spaceship headquarters is poised to be one of the most futuristic corporate buildings in California once it touches down, but to help the campus stay connected to its roots, the company is painstakingly preserving a 100-year-old barn built by pioneers who settled the area.
Visitors at Apple Campus 2 will notice the bright red barn sitting next to the new fitness center as part of Apple’s effort to transform the land surrounding the campus from 80 percent asphalt and concrete, to 80 percent greenery and open space.
Pumping your gas is about to get a touch quicker, now that Chevron says it’s planning to bring Apple Pay to its gas pumps next year.
Chevron was the only gas station to officially support Apple Pay when it launched in October, but the bad news was you had to go into the store if you wanted to use your iPhone 6 to pay for petrol. However, according to Chevron’s Twitter account, the gas giant is working alongside Cupertino to bring Apple Pay to the pump by early 2015.
The buff and beautiful lifeguard runs in slow motion down the beach, unseen winds blowing their hair in a Hollywood-made rescue fantasy. But hey, you’re drowning, there’s no time for that.
Your savior could be a group of Connecticut high school students who have developed a drone accessory that deploys an automatically inflating life ring to a swimmer in distress in under 30 seconds.
What’s cuter than a boxer puppy named Indiana Bones fighting the forces of evil (cats)? Not much, for sure.
Directors Zach King and Jadon Gauthier have created a five-minute “remake” of Indiana Jones, and it’s completely adorable. Take a look below.
Apple’s partnership with Disney goes back way further than the latter company’s recent decision to accept Apple Pay at Disney World. At the time of his death in 2011, Steve Jobs was the single biggest shareholder of Disney stock as a result of it acquiring his company, Pixar, in 2006.
Jobs got on particularly well with Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called Jobs in 2005 and asked if he could repair the damage that had been done to the Apple/Disney relationship under former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.
That relationship is examined in a new Fortune profile of Iger, which describes his six-year friendship with Jobs as the “relationship that has most shaped his thinking.”
Apple has introduced a new 14-day return window for digital purchases made in several European countries. App Store, iTunes, and iBookstore items purchased in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and France are now eligible for complete refunds, and users are not required to give a reason for returning their order.
Europe’s largest collective of hackers, the Chaos Computer Club, claims to have come up with a way of reproducing fingerprints using only a handful of photos (no pun intended) showing your fingers.
Speaking at the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, hacker Jan Krissler, a.k.a. “Starbug,” said he had managed to copy the thumbprint of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
This was apparently done using the commercially available software VeriFinger, using a close-up picture of von der Leyen’s thumb, taken from a news conference in October, as well as some other photos showing different angles of the fingerprint.
Never able to find an open Wi-Fi signal when you need one? Maybe you should carry around this sword. Modeled after Frodo’s weapon in The Lord of the Rings, it glows when it’s within range of open Wi-Fi.
Apple Pay is set to arrive in the U.K. during the first half of 2015, according to a recent report from The Telegraph newspaper, which states that Apple is in talks with top banks in the country.
If true, this report backs up what Cult of Mac wrote recently, noting that Apple recently advertised for a new employee to help “drive the roll-out” of mobile payments in Europe and elsewhere.
But there are likely to be a few teething problems along the way.
When people opened up their brand new iPhones and iPads for Christmas, what was the first app they were most likely to download?
Well, the data’s in, and it looks like Minecraft: Pocket Edition had a pretty great Christmas, raking in more money in holiday sales than any other game in the world.
Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s troubled Steve Jobs movie has had difficulty holding onto its cast members, but there’s a way you can help change that: by putting yourself forward for a role.
Beau Bonneau Casting is looking for San Francisco-based extras to appear in the movie when it starts shooting in late January 2015.
Here’s everything you’ll need to do to stand a chance at making the movie, just in case you ever wanted to be in the audience for one of Apple’s product launches (and, frankly, who wouldn’t?).
It was a great Christmas for iOS, according to new figures released by IBM, which monitored mobile traffic for online shopping over the holidays.
What it discovered was that a massive 57.1 percent of online shopping via a mobile device was carried out using an iPhone or iPad: up 8.3 percent compared to the previous year.
While no direct explanations were drawn, this has to be due to the enormous success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which some analysts have predicted was set to sell a massive 71.5 million units over the festive season.
After previously snubbing Sony’s offer to distrubute the film in the wake of the Sony hacks, Apple is now streaming The Interview on iTunes.
Let’s face it. Deep in our hearts, we all know some colored M&M’s taste better than others. For me, it’s the red and green ones; for my wife, it’s the brown and orange ones. And Van Halen famously stipulated in all its contracts that the band should never be served any brown M&M’s, requiring some lowly stagehand to pick them all out by hand from a bowl before every show.
These days, things would be easier. Case in point: This simple machine, which was custom-rigged out of just an iPhone and an Arduino to individually sort M&M’s by color, no human intervention required.
Riding high on the success of his iPhone video editing app Videoshop, developer Joe Riquelme decided to splurge on his parents for Christmas.
How much did he splurge? Let’s just say that he made every other kid on Earth look like little ingrates by comparison.
He paid off his parents’ mortgage in full. And he documented it for the rest of us, just so we could share in the joy.
Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine is in fresh talks with the world’s top musicians, in hopes of landing more exclusive album deals for iTunes, reports The New York Post.
Apple is looking to replicate the success Beyonce had with her exclusive iTunes album in December 2013, by signing other hot artists to drop their albums early on Beats Music and iTunes. But according to industry sources, the idea of artists making side deals with streaming services is not going over well with record label executives.
Nike is re-releasing the Zvezdochka, a line of space-inspired sneakers first designed for the company 10 years ago by Marc Newson, Jony Ive’s BFF and Apple’s newest star designer.
Notice anything about them? Yup. They look just like the iPhone 5c case. Got to make you wonder if the iPhone 5c case was designed by Newson, don’t you think?
If you’re like me, you’ve probably had that experience of giving an older relative a gift of tech for the holidays, only for it to go unappreciated. In this absolutely priceless video, though, one family turns that situation on its head, tricking their very sweet grandmother into thinking she’s been given an iPhone she has absolutely no use for… until she discovers it’s made of chocolate!
Christmas may be over here in the United States, but the season’s just starting in Japan. Apple has just announced that it will kick off its annual “Lucky Bag” celebration in its Japanese retail stores starting January 2.
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