Tim Cook gave a rare public interview on Monday night at the Wall Street Journal’s new tech conference, WSJD. The Apple CEO touched on a range of topics, including Apple Pay’s success, a big potential partnership, why the iPod classic was discontinued, and more.
Here are the biggest takeaways from Cook’s comments:
Banks and credit card companies have been heavily pushing Apple Pay already, but perhaps the biggest gesture of support so far is from Wells Fargo.
In a promotion announced today, Wells Fargo said that it will pay customers up to $20 just for trying Apple Pay.
Tim Cook has spoken out about the need for his home state of Alabama to better address LGBT rights in a speech delivered today at the Alabama Academy of Honor induction, in front of Governor Robert Bentley.
Cook discussed his admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and noted how, “I could never understand why some within our state and nation resisted basic principles of human dignity that were so opposite to the values I had learned growing up in Robertsdale, Alabama in a family that was rich in love and respect.”
He went on to say that, “We were too slow on equality on African-Americans. We were too slow on interracial marriage. And we are still too slow on equality for the LBGT community.”
Alabama remains one of the 18 states without marriage equality.
The user interface for iOS hasn’t changed much since the introduction of ‘iPhone OS’ back in 2007. Sure, Jony Ive has added some tweaks over the last few years, but you still swipe around between rows of tiled icons.
Apple’s UI for the Apple Watch though is radically different that iPhone, with circular app icons on a homescreen that can users can zoom in and out of to find their apps easier, so Lucas Menge decided to take the pretty bubbly design and bring it to the iPhone. The results are pretty amazing and bring an entirely new look to the iPhone homescreen.
Check out the full demo below:
Indie rock band OK Go has a reputation for doing wild and crazy one-shot videos for it’s new releases, and today’s reveal on NBC’s Today show is no exception.
Check out this insane short film where the band performs its second single “I Won’t Let You Down” from the new album Hungry Ghosts. They chair dance atop Honda UNI-CUBs, “omni-directional driving wheel systems” that are in the development stage. Think sitting-down Segways and you’ll have an idea.
Better yet, check out the video below, filmed in Chiba Prefecture, Japan this past August. And make sure you stay for the final, mind-blowing minute where the shot goes high.
After China, India represents Apple’s next big frontier, with 1.2 billion citizens and a rapidly growing smartphone market, that will have sold approximately 80 million handsets this year.
Which is why it’s great news that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is proving just as popular there as it is elsewhere in the world, with India’s first shipment of the iPhone 6 selling out in a lightning-fast 72 hours.
At 55,000 units, India’s first iPhone shipment may not have been the biggest one around, but it’s still impressive for a country that is still very much a developing market for high end smartphones. Last year, only 6,000 units of the flagship iPhone 5s were supplied by Apple, which also vanished from shelves very quickly.
As was the case with “Scarfgate” following Apple’s September media event, the special guest appearances by developers can often often be the unintentionally comic highlights of Apple keynotes.
That’s exactly what happened at last Thursday’s otherwise fairly predictable iPad event, when two French developers accidentally titled their montage video app presentation “It’s road trip” instead of the intended “Utah road trip.”
Yes, it’s a minor glitch, that does at least show that all demos take place live, but it was amusing nonetheless — particularly the disgusted face exhibited by the typist, who appears to be inwardly kicking himself over screwing up the presentation.
Apple, however, seems to not have been quite so amused by the glitch, since someone at Cupertino has sprinkled some postproduction magic on the Replay demo, meaning that when you watch the keynote on Apple’s website or the Apple TV app, it now reads “Utah road trip” as was intended.
OS X Yosemite is supposed to make Macs run more efficiently than ever, but some early upgraders have discovered a huge memory leak that causes memory pressure to skyrocket and productivity to drop.
The updated Mail app appears to be the culprit of the memory leak that is triggered whenever multiple files are dragged into an email to be added as attachments. Over 100 hundred users have confirmed the memory leak on Apple’s Support forum with screenshots of Mail hogging up to 24GB of RAM.
iPhone 6 owners have only started using Apple Pay to buy items at local stores, but Apple is looking to expand the technology behind its mobile payments system to eventually replace everything from building security cards, subway passes, and bus tickets.
Apple representatives have reportedly been talking to potential partners about using the iPhone 6’s NFC for other uses, reports The Information, with the aim to replace all the tickets and passes you carry in your wallet too.
Do you take pictures of all your meals to share with your friends on Facebook and Instagram? Wish there was a way to share even more of it with your FOMO-ing virtual friends?
Well, you can’t share the taste, or the smell, but 3DAround is an upcoming iOS app that lets you share the food you’re eating in all of its three-dimensional glory. And you can do it with other things too.
Although he gets most of the blame for it, skeuomorphism wasn’t really Scott Forstall’s fault. He was just following the orders of his boss and mentor, Steve Jobs. The man who gave the world the first skeumorphic consumer operating system, the Macintosh, loved computer interfaces with gaudy textures that made them look more like real-world things.
In fact, if it were not for Steve Jobs’s love of skeuomorphism, Apple’s design language might have been a lot flatter a lot earlier. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1999, the company was moving away from skeuomorphic design… but Jobs bought it back, with the famous brushed metal texture in the Quicktime app.
Apple pays more attention to the details then anyone else. Sometimes the details they pay attention to are so small, you don’t notice them at all for a long time… but once you see what they’ve done, you can never unsee it, or accept anything less.
Here’s a great example from OS X Yosemite. Compare the two images above. The top is from OS X Yosemite, the bottom from Windows 7. Notice anything? One of these images has much better typography than the other. But can you tell why?
If both of your parents are unabashed Apple fans, there’s every chance that you’ll grow up as a Cupertino addict as well.
That appears to be the case for 16-month-old North West, a.k.a. the daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. With North’s dad having previously proclaimed himself the next Steve Jobs, and her mother likely to rake in an ungodly $200 million from her very own iOS app by the end of 2014, it’s no surprise that North seems to have a budding interest in all things Apple, as well.
What kind of interest? In an interview with PEOPLE.com, Kim Kardashian described her less-than-two-year-old daughter’s extreme iPod love, with her playlist apparently including a soothing mixture of lullabies and, well, Kanye West tracks.
With its candy-like icons, gradients, and transparencies, OS X Yosemite is a major departure from the look and feel of the Macintosh operating system. But if you don’t like that look and feel, here’s a few things you can do to make OS X look less candy-like, hearkening it back to the design language of OS 9.
I still think it’s a mini miracle that Rockstar Games managed to compress the gang-banging goodness of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas onto a device thinner than a deck of cards and capable of fitting in my pocket.
That’s exactly what happened last year, however, and courtesy of a new update, the game’s remastered, high-resolution graphics now look pristine on your brand new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus thanks to the addition of native-resolution support for Apple’s next-gen handsets.
Ever been annoyed by the placement of light switches in your house? Is there never one around when you need it? The Avi-on Switch is a new light switch (with an associated iPhone app) that you can literally just stick onto your wall like a Post-It Note, no wiring required.
Two major pharmacy chains have stopped supporting Apple Pay as merchants in the U.S. take sides on which mobile wallet platform to embrace.
Reports from a couple days ago revealed that Rite Aid had started disabling its NFC terminals, thereby forbidding the use of Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Now CVS has reportedly started shutting down its NFC terminals.
This week: the iPad Air 2 reviews are in, and not everyone’s feeling the love; Cult of Mac spends a day with Apple Pay; Yosemite and iOS 8.1 Continuity features delight; a potential cure for the painful #6PlusPinch; some welcome changes rumored for Beats Music; and we wrap with our favorite movie trilogies of all time on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Titter your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.
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.
Show notes ahead, mateys.
Apple Pay is here at last. With U.S. customers giving the new payment method a try, results — and opinions — vary widely.
In this week’s news roundup, we talk about Cult of Mac’s first day with Apple Pay, the new Marvel movie leak, Christian Bale landing the role of Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic and much more. Get your weekly fix of news in just minutes.
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So you don’t have to slog through a lake of reviews and tips to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has waded through the web to compile our weekly list of the coolest new bits in movies, music, gadgets and anything else that should be on your radar.
This week we’ve been treated to a media blitz by Brad Pitt that’s produced one of the week’s funniest videos, an epic World War II tank movie, and a hilarious break-dancing competition. We’ve also found a nonfiction book with enough violence and betrayal to rival Game of Thrones, and a gorgeous iPhone 6 case that will replace your wallet much better than Apple Pay.
Take a look:
Critics are fond of saying Apple doesn’t innovate any more. But Apple’s new electronic payment system, Apple Pay, is innovation of the highest order. After a relatively smooth rollout this week, I honestly believe Apple Pay is the future of payments.
Even so, Apple Pay must clear some big hurdles if it’s to become the universal standard. For now, it’s limited to Apple’s latest iPhones and a relatively small number of retail partners, but the basic system — using your fingerprint to validate a purchase on your mobile phone — is the way we will pay for goods and services in the future.
Once again, Apple has shown the world how things should be done.
Italian firearm maker Beretta has enlisted Apple’s new design guru, Marc Newson, to create a hunting double-barreled shotgun.
Newson has created a custom version of the classic double-barrelled 486 Parallelo shotgun for Beretta, which will be officially unveiled at an event in London on November 13th.
The Apple SIM in the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 is based on an awesome idea—who doesn’t want to switch carriers with a tap of the screen? But the actual utility of the Apple SIM is pretty muddled, as evidenced by AT&T locking the SIM to its network.
Tired of the same old boring pitch that flight attendants have to give you in accordance with FAA regulations? Well, Air New Zealand decided to make its own briefing a lot more epic in the latest video for the official airline of Middle Earth stand-in country.
Watch as Elijah Wood and other cast members grace this light-hearted, good natured air safety briefing, complete with fake Gandalf explaining how to position yourself in the event of a crash landing.
Ralph Nader has a message for Tim Cook: Stop listening to Carl Icahn.
In a scathing letter to Cook published in today’s Wall Street Journal, the former presidential candidate takes Apple’s CEO to task for bending to the will of billionaire investor Icahn and issuing more stock buybacks, rather than listening to its workers and addressing the horrendous working conditions at its factories in China.
Nader’s letter proposes Foxconn workers’ hours be cut to 40 a week and their pay doubled, which would only cost Apple an extra $5.4 billion annually.