Apple just had a killer quarter. In fact, it was the most profitable quarter for any company in history. As such, Apple stock is up 5 percent since Wednesday trading.
But has Apple peaked? Not according to legendary investor Carl Icahn, who recently told CNBC that he was not only raising his own Apple stock price target, but called buying AAPL a “no-brainer.”
This sort of promotion is what got TracFone in trouble. Photo: StraightTalk
Although unlimited data was a promise carriers like AT&T once used to lure potential customers to their network, it doesn’t really exist anymore. Even if you have an unlimited data contract, carriers will throttle your connection once you push a certain data allowance every month.
Yet it’s starting to look like the Federal Trade Commission might be moving against carriers that throttle so-called “unlimited” connections. The FTC just smashed TracFone with a $40 million fine for throttling customers of its unlimited data service.
The Curtiss Autoplane in 1917 is considered the first flying car. It hopped but never got far off the ground.
The first airplane was in flight for 12 seconds and flew 120 feet. But it was enough to send imaginations airborne.
Not long after Kitty Hawk, aviators were trying to figure out how to fly a car.
Glenn Curtiss was the first with the Autoplane in 1917. It had a triwing, looked like a Model T and hopped. Before he could actually get its wheels off the ground, World War I broke out and Curtiss diverted his energy toward building aircraft for the U.S. Army.
While we have figured out how to put people in space, we’re still tinkering with a future that has yet to arrive. If you’re waiting for George Jetson’s future, consider that the car his family flew around in was a 2062 model.
This web app will put Apple's historic earnings in more human terms. Photo: Cult of Mac
Yesterday, Apple announced that it had a monster quarter. In Q4, it sold 74.5 million iPhone sales to go along with $74.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in profits. Not only that, but it broke the record for the most money made by any corporation in history.
Having a hard time figuring out how to quantify numbers like that? Check out this incredible visualizer.
eBay is planning an Apple Watch app. Photo: Apple Photo: Apple
At least one of the big boys is planning on developing an app for the Apple Watch. eBay has posted an ad listing, looking for a developer to help them come up with a bidding app for Cupertino’s new smartwatch.
iTunes downloads have fallen on hard times. Except for the App Store, of course. Photo: Apple
Everyone at Apple should be patting themselves on the back after a record-shattering Q1 2015 financial quarter, in which the company raked in $74.6 billion in revenue and an impressive $18 billion in net profits.
Now that Apple has filed its 10-Q quarterly report with securities regulators, we now know why: Outside of the App Store’s continued success, iTunes was one of the few areas of Apple business that declined over the last three months. How badly? Read on to find out.
Before we had iPhones to game on, we had these. They didn't even make phone calls. Photo Phil Monger/Flickr CC
Every gamer over a certain age has a fondness for the 8- and 16-bit titles they grew up with, so it’s no surprise developers born in the 1980s are now creating nostalgia-infused iOS games harking back to the glory days of the Genesis and S.N.E.S. But which of these should you be playing? Fortunately, Cult of Mac can be your guide.
Pop in another quarter, click the button below, and find out what you need to download to truly be down with the kids thirty-somethings.
Tangerine has been a breakout hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The indie flick is drawing crowds thanks to a plot that features transgender prostitutes, Hollywood, meth addicts, pimps, and beat cops. But the craziest thing about director Sean Baker’s film is that instead of using a professional camera rig, he shot it all on the iPhone 5s.
This bread has legs. No, not really. It's a metaphor. Photo: Bossa Studios
Yeah, you read that right – this is a video game where you play as a piece of bread on an epic journey to become an actual piece of toast.
I Am Bread has been out on Steam Early Access since December of last year, and now the developers at Bossa Studios have let it slip that the game will indeed come out on iOS, as soon as they finish up the PC/Mac version.
If you’ve seen the massively viral hit game Goat Simulator, you’ll immediately have a sense of how this one plays out. You’ll hit various keys on your keyboard or buttons on your controller, and move a slice of oddly movable bread around, trying to find some way to toast yourself. Here’s a quick video to visualize it.
Yahoo has been vying for the default search spot in Safari, and 2015 might be the year it finally happens. Photo: Yahoo
Thanks to contractual obligations that are purportedly ending this year, Google’s days as Safari’s search provider could be numbered. And Yahoo wants to take its spot.
During Yahoo’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, Marissa Mayer reiterated her interest in being Safari’s main search engine. “The Safari platform is basically one of the premier search deals in the world if not the premier search deal in the world,” she said in response to a question about Yahoo’s plans for search.
The official cast of Steve Jobs has been announced. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs movie has been down a hard road on its way to production. Disasters like fickle actors and directors have plagued the project, but filming is finally underway in San Francisco as we speak, and for the first time ever, we have an official cast list.
Universal Pictures announced the official cast for the movie this week as filming has already wrapped up at Jobs’ parents garage. The logline confirms the film will be “set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 2001 with the unveiling of the iPod. The film takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.”
We already knew Michael Fassbender has been tapped to play Jobs, but the official cast list includes a few surprises — like the three different actresses that will play Steve’s daughter — and a veteran Apple PR guru we didn’t see coming.
Here’s the full cast alongside the real-life people they’ll play:
Let’s face it: iPhoto sucks. It’s slow. It’s buggy. It’s hopelessly burdened by skeuomorphic elements. It’s just behind the times.
That’s why we were excited when Apple said last year it would phase out iPhoto for a brand new app with a feature set somewhere between iPhoto and Aperture. The successor app was supposed to be available in early 2015, but it appears that Photos for Mac has been delayed.
This guy did LSD with Steve Jobs in college. Photo: CNNMoney
What would it be like to drop acid with Steve Jobs?
Daniel Kottke was one of Apple’s first employees, but he knew Jobs from even earlier days at Reed College. The two bonded over their love for meditation and eastern spirituality at Reed. They also did a lot of LSD.
Smart Folders are my jam. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
A longtime Cult of Mac reader wrote in with a question about some odd-looking folders she sees on her Mac.
“The ‘All Pictures’ folder has a sprocket looking icon,” she writes. “Same with All PDF documents and Recently Changed documents.
Are these files located elsewhere and if I deleted a file from one of the above folders does it remove it from all my files? Don’t understand the purpose of these.”
Excellent question, for sure. Let’s take a look at what these folders are, and how to use them to their full potential.
YouTube is finally HTML5 first. Photo: VentureBeat
Let’s flash back to April 2010.
That was the month that Steve Jobs penned his famous “Thoughts on Flash” memo, in which he soundly rejected any and all reasons for Apple to adopt Flash on the iOS operating system.
Jobs famously said that Flash was too battery-hungry, too unreliable, too insecure, too slow and too closed to be a wise platform for the mobile-first developers of then-tomorrow. And people scoffed at the time.
When Apple releases a major update like yesterday’s iOS 8.1.3, it’s usual for the company’s coders to fix (or, in other words, break) all known jailbreak exploits.
Not so surprisingly, the latest update is no different. It fixes several exploits that are necessary to run the iOS 8.1.2 jailbreak. But in a classy move, at least Apple gave a hat tip to the jailbreak team for calling their attention to the exploits.
The iPhone has gotten considerably better over the years, but which iPhone is the loudest?
iClarified ran the numbers in a recent video, in which a decibel meter was placed beneath the speaker of every Apple handset so far while they played sound at maximum volume.
Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt shaking hands at the original iPhone launch event. Photo: Apple
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is the anti-Apple. He’s square where Apple is cool, he’s a sputtering doofus where Apple is collected, and he’s prone to hyperbole whereas Apple tends to undersell its products. For example, Schmidt said in 2013 that Android was more secure than the iPhone (LOL).
Given all that, who do you think Schmidt’s personal hero is? Boutros Boutros-Ghali? Shocker! Wrong. It’s Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, naturally. Not that many of those lessons have rubbed off on him, mind you.
There’s no doubt that technology like iOS 8’s Continuity feature make it easier to transfer work between your Mac and your iPhone or iPad. However, nothing about Apple’s creation comes close to matching the sheer, unadulterated excellence that is Pushbullet.
Coming freshly off a $1.5 million dose of venture financing, the Pushbullet app is now freely available for Mac, iOS and Safari — providing a better way of transferring files between your devices with a simplicity we could only previously dream of.
All you have to do is install the app on both your mobile and desktop device, link the two together, and — hey presto! — you’ll never have to email yourself attachments again.
Everything you wanted to know about the Steve Jobs movie (but were too afraid to ask.) Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC
Recently I wondered here on Cult of Mac how much of the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic, penned by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin, was going to take place in flashback.
For those who haven’t been keeping track, until now everything we’d heard suggested that the movie would be divided into three acts, with each one taking place backstage at a major Jobs product unveiling. The first part will take place before the original Macintosh launch, the second will deal with NeXT Computer, and the third will be Jobs’ introduction of the iMac (not the iPod, as previously suggested) upon Jobs’ return to Apple.
While that all sounds well and good, recently we’ve heard about scenes for the movie taking place at Jobs’ childhood home (modified to look as it would have in 1976) and a cafeteria at U.C. Berkeley, circa 1983 — neither one fitting with the entirely backstage narrative we’d been sold on.
Apparently these suspicions were correct, as a new report suggests that the movie will also contain flashbacks to several other points in Jobs’ life. Find out what they are after the jump:
Tim Cook has a lot to be happy about. Photo: Apple
Apple closed its earnings call this afternoon after announcing an unprecedented 74.5 million iPhone sales to go along with $74.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in profits. It broke the record for the most money made by a corporation in history.
While breaking down the Q1 2015 numbers, Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri also gave us some juicy details about what’s in store for 2015 by hinting at new products in the pipeline, as well as subtly dropping the Apple Watch’s release date.
We’ve combed through the numbers and the conference call and found seven huge new revelations every Apple fan needs to know:
Apple Watch will ship in April, according to Tim Cook. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
During today’s historic Apple earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a subtle bomb on Apple fans by revealing that the Apple Watch is slated to launch in April.
“I’m using it every day and I love it and I can’t live without it,” Cook said.
While he didn’t give a specific release date for the wearable, it’s the first time Apple’s narrowed down the launch beyond “early 2015.” Cook said Apple considers “early” to be sometime within the first four months of the year, so the Apple Watch is right on target.
Apple shattered records again this quarter. Photo: Pierre Marcel/Flickr CC Photo: Pierre Marcel/Flickr CC
The numbers are finally in for Apple’s Q1 2015 financial quarter, and just as predicted, Apple blew away its own projections with a record-breaking $74.6 billion in revenue, leading to $18 billion in net profits. Both profit and revenue topped Apple’s previous records set in Q1 2014.
Apple’s record-breaking quarter was aided in large part by unprecedented demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Total iPhone sales hit an astounding 74.5 million, while only 65 million was expected. The iPad experienced decent holiday sales, with 21.4 million sold, and Mac sales didn’t disappoint either. With 5.5 million sold, it’s no wonder Tim Cook called the quarter “simply phenomenal.”
Despite the better-than-expected performance, AAPL shares were down 3.51 percent to $109.53 per share by close of market today. Take a look at the impressive numbers in Apple’s announcement below:
They're gonna cancel my insurance! Photo: React/YouTube
The Grand Theft Auto series is known for its violence; you’re usually cast as a thug or criminal of some sort, and set loose on a rampage across an open world landscape, able to steal cars, beat up civilians, and even gun down the cops.
Watch as these older folks do just that in Grand Theft Auto V, reacting to the crazy violence with fear, loathing, and a little bit of evil joy.
Along with this morning’s iOS 8.1.3 update, Apple also has some new goodies for Mac users with the release of OS X Yosemite 10.10.2.
The update fixes a problem that caused Wi-Fi to disconnect. The latest version also includes a number of bug fixes for Spotlight, Bluetooth headphones, iCloud Drive and VoiceOver, while also improving stability and security in Safari.
The update is available now in the Mac App Store. Here’s a full list of the changes: