News - page 1267

If you needed any more confirmation that Windows Phone is dead in the water, two of its most high profile supporters have abandoned it for the iPhone.

Veteran Microsoft journalists Ed Bott and Tom Warren both published essays this week in which they criticized Windows Phone for its shortcomings and announced that they’ve stopped using Windows Phones personally. Citing a lack of carrier and third-party app support, both agreed that Windows Phone has missed its shot at being a real competitor in the smartphone market.

Apple scooped up a couple architectural awards this week for the stunning engineering behind its magnificent Glass Lantern store at the Zorlu Center in Istanbul Turkey.  The judges said it ‘takes structural glass technology to a new dimension’, and even though we’ve never been inside the Zorlu store it’s not hard to see why it’s getting showered with awards after looking at these pictures.

The Zorlu Store is the first Apple Store created by the same architectural firm behind the new spaceship campus in Cupertino, and it looks like the same amount of attention to detail and minimalist thought that goes into the creation of an iPhone was also poured into the new award-winning Apple temple.

Take a tour of the exquisite store below:

We’ll admit it: we were all squeeing like fanboys when we saw the official trailer for the upcoming sequel, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

We may have watched it quite a bit more than once, but the YouTubers below have taken their fandom to another level, with some really well crafted remixes of the official short film.

Check out trailers below starring the cast of (and scenes directly from) the original trilogy, the trailer as Wes Anderson would do it, and a bizarre rendering of it all with pets in place of human actors. Oh, and there’s also the obligatory Lego version, as well, so be sure to scroll all the way down.

Apple’s splash into home automation with addition of HomeKit to iOS 8 is expected to have a huge impact on sales of smart home devices in 2015 according to a Park Associates report that found 37% of U.S. households plan to purchase one or more devices next year.

The rising popularity in smart home device sales has been aided by both Apple and Google introducing new solutions in 2014. The research firm discovered retailers are getting ready for smart home devices to hit the mainstream by expanding shelf space for items like Nest thermometers, Philips Hue bulbs, smart door locks and other items.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to make a music video, and maybe you shouldn’t be. Turns out, rocket scientists can’t dance.
NASA released a parody video on YouTube Thursday called “All About That Space,” designed to raise excitement about Orion’s recent first test flight.

The lyrics of Meghan Trainor’s monster hit “All About That Bass” were re-engineered by the Pathways Interns of NASA’s Johnson Space Center to lead the viewer on a behind-the-scenes look at the men and woman hard at work on space travel.

Apple has won another architectural award for the innovative glass engineering used to create its impossibly perfect glass lantern store in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Apple Store at the Zorlu Center in Turkey took home the Supreme award for structural engineering excellence from this year’s Structural Awards, and was also honored for its excellence in structural design for a retail building.

As promised — and after a tiny storm of controversy over Apple’s initial rejection of the app over so-called pornographic content — the award-winning dystopian document thriller Papers, Please is now available for iOS.

Speculation about who is going to build Apple’s A9 processor may be coming to a halt, as Korea’s Electronic Times reports today that not only has Samsung won the contract from Apple, but it’s also entered production.

As per the report, Samsung began fabrication on the new system-on-chip yesterday at its chipmaking facility in Austin, Texas, using a 14 nanometer process.

Back in the skeuomorphic days of iOS 6, we were big fans of Auxo, an innovative iPhone app switcher that supercharged the iOS multitasking bar with live app previews, gestures, settings toggles, and more.

When iOS 7 was released, Auxo was updated to support Apple’s newer, flatter operating system, but it’s only now that Auxo creator Sentry_NC is getting around to update it to iOS 8.

A working Apple-1 computer has sold at a Christie’s auction for $365,000: more than 600x the $600 that was paid for it back in July 1976, when it was bought from Steve Jobs.

While the figure is certainly sizeable, however, it’s also a bit of a disappointment when you consider that just two months ago, a similar machine fetched an eye-watering $905,000, when it was acquired by the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan, to be part of its ongoing collection. “It’s very rare to be able to collect the beginning of something, but the Apple-1 is exactly that,” Henry Ford curator Kristen Gallerneaux told Cult of Mac shortly after that auction had concluded.

Yesterday’s Christie’s auction in New York had expected the Apple-1 to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000, although there had been some speculation it could break the $1 million mark.

The Apple-1 came complete with a mounted cancelled check for his purchase, made out to Apple Computer by original owner Charles Ricketts.

This week, we’ve got an amazing bunch of content for you, all cleverly bundled together into one fantastic high-quality digital magazine. It’s like all the best Cult of Mac stuff you might have missed crammed into a delicious metaphorical pastry that’s just brimming with sweet goodness.

Check it out below, and enjoy!

On Monday, we reported that Apple has yanked Transmit from the App Store over a weird iCloud Drive rule.

The app, from beloved Mac and iOS developer Panic, allowed you to upload content from iCloud Drive, which is seemingly obvious functionality for a file transfer and FTP app like Transmit to have. But Apple objected, and not only made Transmit pull the “Send to iCloud” option, but the ability to send documents to other services and apps.

But good news! Transmit’s back on the App Store with the “Send to iCloud Drive” functionality restored.

If you’ve ever dreamed of using an Xbox One controller to play games on your Mac, today is your lucky day — thanks to a new application which recently appeared on GitHub.

Created by user Guilherme Araújo, all you have have to do to use the controller is to open his code in Xcode and run it.

Happy gaming!

Don’t like using your credit card online? No problem. Apple has just updated its online store to allow you to pay for anything the company sells online using PayPal.

More than 100 protestors — consisting of unionized security guards from San Francisco, fast-food workers and members of other unions — gathered at Apple’s 1 Infinite Loop headquarters yesterday to protest working conditions for service workers in Silicon Valley, where tech workers can strike it big, but other people struggle to get by.

The demonstrators brought with them a petition signed by 20,000 people, calling for Apple to lead a charge better working conditions not just at Apple, but in the Bay Area as a whole. They carried a sign reading, “Apple dodges taxes, we pay the price.”

First debuted with Android L, Material Design is Google’s new in-house unified design ethos, Material Design. Boiled down, it’s a series of UI/UX tricks that makes Google’s web properties not feel unified with one another, but like digital paper, folding and unfolding underneath your fingertips no matter what device you use.

Android L, of course, has already seen a Material Design revamp, but now we’re starting to see Material Design creep to Google’s iOS app.

Though he’s toyed with escape games for years, Turkish developer Maruf Nebil didn’t get hooked on the genre until 100 Floors hit the App Store in 2012. When The Room Two upped the ante with gorgeous 3-D environments a year later, Nebil set himself a devilish task: To create an unbeatable game that was also undeniably beautiful.

“I decided to make my game the hardest of all of them,” the 25-year-old developer said, with perhaps an evil laugh. “It’s like all 100 floors in a single room.”

While some games in this genre are about as fun and fulfilling as one of those “spot the hidden object” puzzles from a Highlights magazine, others prove truly challenging.

Some might say this type of game is purely for masochists, but others get lost in the obtuse challenge of finding hidden objects and solving maddening puzzles, all while trapped within a virtual room.

Aaron Sorkin’s attempt to make Steve Jobs light up the big screen has been filled with disaster thanks to a rash of casting dropouts and production hold ups, but all the problems the movie’s facing can’t be blamed on Sorkin’s script.

Emails from Sony released by hackers this week reveal that pretty much anyone who’s read Sorkin’s Steve Jobs movie script has loved it. Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson told Sony execs that he had a tear in his eye when finishing, and that the script is “totally awesome.”

Sorkin told Sony that shooting the film would be a breeze because the only locations they’d need are “two auditoriums, a restaurant and a garage.” Another email from Oscar-winning director David Fincher, who was originally signed on to direct Sorkin’s movie, gushes with positivity on the film that’s really more like a play.

Here’s what Fincher told Sony after reading the script in February:

The first trailer for Star Wars episode VII has us tingling with anticipation for the The Force Awakens’ release next year. We still don’t really know what’s going on in movie that take places 30 years after the last Death Star blew, but JJ Abrams has finally given us some names to put with the new faces.

Some of the character names for the new Star Wars heroes and villains were revealed today by Entertainment Weekly with the release of eight throwback Topps trading cards that were popular when the original Star Wars came out in 1977. The name of the new Sith lord is being kept a secret, but at least we don’t have to call that cute rolling robot a “ball droid” anymore.

Here are the new characters Abrams revealed:

You can wait until the 2030s when NASA hopes to land astronauts on Mars. Or, if you have four minutes to spare right now, you can see what it is like to stand on the edge of the red planet’s Victoria Crater or catch a Martian sunset.

Erik Wernquist will even throw in a side of rings — Saturn’s that is — for watching his awe-inducing short film, Wanderers, which is embedded below.

“I am always inspired by reading about astronomy, and planetary astronomy in particular,” Wernquist told Cult of Mac. “And when I read about, or see pictures from places, I often fantasize about what it would … feel like to actually be there.”

A new app called Workflow aims to close the divide between the power of OS X and the convenience of iOS. By offering curated and custom workflows, the app can automate just about anything you’d want to do on the iPhone or iPad — along with actions you probably haven’t thought of before, like calling an Uber car to take you to your next meeting with one tap.

It’s an ambitious undertaking for any developer, but what makes Workflow even better is that it was created by two brilliant teenagers with great aspirations for making mobile devices as powerful as they can be.

The wallet-free future Apple promised with the iPhone 6 might finally be upon us in 2015, but only if you live in Iowa.

The state’s Department of Transportation says it will be the first state to ever allow citizens to use an official state app that will serve as a drivers license and ID. Iowa’s mobile app will reportedly contain all the same information found on the plastic license in your wallet, plus they’re adding a scannable bar code that links to DOT databases so all your info is up-to-date.

Some of the biggest companies that power America’s Internet, including Apple’s new enterprise partner IBM, have come out in opposition of President Obama’s proposal to reclassify broadband as a “Title II” service.

In an open letter written to the FCC, Congress, and Senate leaders, over 60 of the biggest companies that build the technology that make the Internet possible have advised that such a “dramatic reversal” in policy would significantly hurt their businesses. The list of companies include Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Cisco, Corning and tons of others who aren’t going to let the FCC’s big decision next year go down without a fight.

Here’s the full roster of anti-Title II companies:

President Obama’s not the only world leader to be a big iPad fan. According to a new report, Apple’s tablet also has a devotee in the world’s most famous royal toddler and future King of England, Prince George.

The revelation was made by the U.K.’s Prince William during his trip to the United States, while meeting with tech company littleBits, which is responsible for manufacturing electronic modules and magnets for kids.

“He told me that his son George has been playing iPad games and loves them, and that this was a good way to teach him the inner workings of electronics,” CEO Ayah Bdeir told reporters.

When it comes to video games that will make you think, few are as cerebral as “dystopian document thriller” Papers, Please, a Mac game released in 2013. It casts the player as a passport inspector for a fictional Soviet bloc state who must keep track of increasingly arcane rules to let people in or out of the country … even when a mistake can cost him his life.

We declared Papers, Please one of the best freakin’ Mac games of 2013, but if you didn’t play it then, good news: It’s coming to the iPad this week.