Vainglory helped show off the graphical capabilities of the iPhone 6 to the fullest.
Of all the people to appear onstage at Tuesday’s Apple keynote, U.S. game developers Super Evil Megacorp were among the most memorable — thanks partly to co-founder Tommy Krul’s decision to wear a fetching infinity scarf.
What followed were Internet memes, parody Twitter accounts — and a whole lot of buzz for Vainglory, the team’s hyper-competitive multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that was called into action to help show off the graphical prowess of the iPhone 6.
As an example of the ever-thinning gap between console and iOS games, Vainglory knocked the demo out of the park, leaving fans salivating at the prospect of next-gen gaming on Apple’s new handset.
It also left people wondering about the origins of the fantastically named Super Evil Megacorp.
Trying to load the Apple Store at 12:27 a.m. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac.
Apple’s new iPhones went up for pre-order this morning, and for those who stayed up late to get their order in, it turned out to be a very long night. The vast majority had to wait until past 12:30 a.m. before the had any joy loading the Apple Online Store, and when it finally went live, many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus options were “currently unavailable.”
A special sensor on the back uses infrared, visible-light LEDs and photodiodes to detect your heart rate. Photo: Robert Baldwin/The Next Web
The Apple Watch isn’t coming out for months, but that isn’t stopping rumors from surfacing about future hardware iterations. Apple has plans for tracking much more about your health than what its Watch can do currently.
Apple employees have been spotted wearing Apple Watch in the wild
Apple clearly wants its new watch to be more than just a cool gadget. It’s no coincidence that Tuesday’s event falls in line with New York Fashion Week, a time of the year when the world’s top designers look for new tech to accessorize their outfits.
Journalists and prominent figures in the fashion industry were invited alongside the usual tech press to the Apple Watch’s unveiling. The fashion world’s initial reactions are mostly positive, but some question the device’s appeal to women.
Apple Watch. Apple Pay. Apple TV. Apple has gone crazy for, uh apple.
Not a single new “i” product was revealed on Tuesday, which is a good thing according to the guy that invented Apple’s i-conic naming structure, but kind of annoying when repeatedly referring to Apple Watch in texts.
Apple’s own marketing materials shorten the name by using “Watch”, which is super easy to type on OS X by pressing Option + Shift + K to pull up the character, but typing it on an iPhone or iPad is literally impossible. Luckily, our friend Adam Christianson at MacObserver has a quick tip that puts the on your iPhone keyboard with simple shortcut.
Are Apple and Intel ready to break up? Photo: Apple
When it comes to mobile communication chips, Qualcomm has cemented itself as Apple’s go-to supplier.
The San Diego-based semi-conductor company dominates the mobile chips business like Apple dominates tablets, but Intel is ready to steal a large chunk of it, and according to the president of Intel Korea, Lee Hee-sung, it’s only a matter of time before Apple converts.
Apple delivers U2's Songs of Innocence to millions of iTunes users, but not everybody's buying the hype. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web
Thousands of angry iPhone users have found an album they weren’t looking for: U2’s Songs of Innocence.
Instead of making the band’s mediocre new album an opt-in freebie, Apple jammed it down the throats of a half-billion iTunes Store customers, enraging some of the company’s most loyal fans. Whether they wanted the album or not, it’s now showing up as “purchased” in individuals’ iTunes libraries on their computers and phones.
When Tim Cook trotted out the Irish rockers for a limp finale to Tuesday’s big Apple Watch announcement, he called giving away the band’s new record “the largest album release of all time” — but now it looks like one of the dumbest.
Upgrading to the iPhone every year is costly, but if you keep your iPhone in great condition, you can always sell it right before the next iPhone comes out and use that to supplement the cost of upgrading.
Knowing the best place to sell your iPhone can be the tricky part because there are dozens of places you can go to as each vendor is different and will offer you different methods and prices. Choosing the right venter can be the difference between turning an iClunker into a new upgrade, or getting burned by extra fees and low trade-in prices.
Here are the best places to get the most cash out for your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus upgrade:
There’s something incredibly compelling about a mobile game with simple mechanics and a maddeningly frustrating success rate. If you’ve played Flappy Bird or one of the several clones out there, you know exactly what that means.
Gavin Bowman, an indie developer and co-founder of Retro Dreamer, wanted to make a game that he could reasonably finish within one weekend, as part of a “game jam” called Ludum Dare, the theme of which was “connected worlds.”
“I was trying to come up with something for the game jam that I could definitely finish,” Bowman tells Cult of Mac. “So I had to keep the art and mechanic fairly simple to have it be releasably finished versus game jam finished.”
The result is a one-tap wonder of a little game that has you tapping your iPhone (or iPad) screen to send a little sphere off one planet to another that’s spinning around it, like planets and moons tend to do. When you find just the right timing for your tap, the success feels glorious, but when you miss, well, let’s say the f-bomb comes into play quite a bit.
Apple hasn’t exactly confirmed the exact time yet, but iPhone 6 and 6 Plus preorders will likely begin tomorrow morning at 12:01AM PT, exactly… the same time iPhone 5S preorders started last year, and every other year.
Tim Cook thinks the iPhone 6 will trigger an avalanche of upgrades, making it Apple’s most wildly in-demand phone yet, and while Apple is attempting to balance the crush on their website by starting preorders in the middle of the night, it will, in all likelihood, still be a madhouse when Apple starts selling iPhones later tonight.
Hence this guide. We’re going to walk you through the best ways to make absolutely sure you get your iPhone 6 or 6 Plus pre-ordered right at the stroke of midnight and in your hands next Friday when it officially launches in the minimum amount of time, so you can go right back to sleep.
[Editors note: this post has been stickied to the top of Cult of Mac, but you’ll find new Apple goodness by scrolling down]
Know which iPhone you want
Big or bigger? The choice between iPhones this year isn’t as easy as just picking a color and storage option. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have a number of differing features when it comes to the screen, battery, camera and even software. You better have your mind made up before pre-orders start.
Has Apple made the right choice to ditch the i-naming scheme for new products? The man who named the iMac thinks so. (Photo: Business Insider)
From books to phones, Apple’s named everything with the same “i” moniker since 1998. With the Apple Watch and Apple Pay, however, it looks like that convention is set to change.
Cult of Mac reached out to Ken Segall — the former Apple employee who started the tradition with the original iMac — for his surprising reaction to Apple ditching his naming convention for new product categories.
Decision time: Which iPhone 6 is right for you? We’ll walk you though the features of both new iPhones to help you make that very decision in time for the Sept. 12th pre-order. Plus, will Apple Pay be replacing our wallets? We’ll tell you our thoughts and musings. And of course, the Apple Watch—we’ll review its features and reveal our initial impressions. And finally… he did it… Tim Cook brought back the One. More. Thing. Some of us are thrilled. Some of us aren’t. Hit play for all that and more.
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.
From Star Wars's Millennium Falcon to The Dark Knight’s Tumbler, sci-fi and fantasy movies have given us plenty of iconic vehicles over the years. Perhaps none have inspired more viewer envy, however, than the hoverboard first used by Marty McFly in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II.
Enabling young Marty to zip, skateboard-like, through busy streets (but don’t think about riding it over water) owning a genuine hoverboard has been the stuff dreams are made of ever since. There have been a few attempts to bring the technology into the real world, but most of these have turned out to be either crushingly disappointing hoaxes or, frankly, a bit rubbish.
Hey, at least Nike has promised us Back to the Future-style self-lacing shoes for 2015. That’s a start, right?
Ever since the Lightning Connector was first announced two years ago, we’ve known it could do more than just sync-and-charge: it could also play music. So when Apple bought Beats earlier this year, many assumed that it would be Apple’s new in-house headphone brand who would release the first Lightning-connected cans to market.
But nope. As it turns out, the first headphones to connect via a Lightning port to an iPhone, iPod, or iPad won’t come from Beats. It’ll come from Philips, who have just introduced their Fidelio M2L headphones featuring the funtionality.
Hey, at least give Samsung credit for being quick off the mark.
Apple’s Tuesday keynote is only days old and already professional Apple spoofer Samsung has released a new series of ads skewering Cupertino’s latest developments — from its Apple Watch to its problematic live feed.
There are six ads in total, all designed to advertize the Galaxy Note 4, although barely any time is given to talking up Samsung’s own products, since the company clearly feels it’s better off trying to tear down its leading competitor.
Apple's biggest ever iPhone is set to receive its biggest ever order. Photo: Apple
According to sources in the Taiwan-based iPhone supply chain, Apple is preparing the parts and components to manufacture up to 80 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices before the end of 2014.
Barring unexpected component shortages or low yield rates (thought to have been responsible for Apple abandoning its use of sapphire for the iPhone 6-series devices), sources estimated that shipments of the iPhone 6 family will reach 10 million units by the end of September, with the remaining units shipping over the subsequent three months.
We’ve had a couple of days to let the massive announcements of Apple’s September 9 keynote sink in, but if you want to relive the event you might want to check out this new video from Jonathan Mann.
Who is Jonathan Mann, you may ask? The brilliant YouTube musician who created the celebrated Mario Opera close to a decade ago is the answer. An unabashed Apple fan, Mann was previously responsible for composing the iPhone Antenna song which Steve Jobs publicly danced to, and earlier this year composed a great WWDC ear worm which is still rattling around my brain months later.
Following Apple’s Tuesday keynote Mann is back in Apple territory with a new musical tour-de-force entitled “Apple Watch: The Musical,” which somehow manages to compress Apple’s entire Tuesday event into just 3 minutes and 13 seconds.
For his latest ditty, Mann summed up Apple’s entire iPhone 6/Apple Watch event in song form, covering everything from the rather underwhelming iPhone 6 debut to the excitement of Apple announcing its first new product category in years. There’s even a funny chorus about the bizarre Chinese voice-over in the livestream.
Apple Pay's ease of use may lead to increased impulse buying -- and that's exactly what Apple's hoping for.
More and more retailers are already using NFC terminals, but there is an additional reason why those without them might want to hurry up and get onboard: because Apple Pay could lead to more impulse purchases.
That at least seems to be the rationale of Walt Disney World, according to a new report.
A partnership with Walt Disney World was announced on Tuesday, and as per About.com theme park expert Arthur Levine, Disney is convinced it’s going to prove a great way of upping the amount customers will spend.
“It is surely hoping that by giving visitors the ability to use its cash-less system anywhere across the Disney World campus, they will increase spending, especially on impulse purchases,” Levine says.
While the rest of us were celebrating the unveiling of Apple’s much-anticipated smart watch on Tuesday, Apple’s European legal team was busy rushing to file six trademark applications for the name “Apple Watch.”
Of these applications, four featured the Apple logo in front of the word “Watch,” while the other two referred to the two words “Apple Watch.”
Apple’s legal firm filed the trademarks under a total of 11 International Classes for protection and clarification, covering areas including financial transactions, fitness and wellness sensors, and more.
Being Steve Jobs’ son or daughter would surely mean a never-ending supply of new high-tech devices to play around with, right?
Not according to a New York Times article by Nick Bilton, who claims that Jobs set out to purposely limit the amount of time his kids spent using their iPhones and other gadgets — even going so far as to stop them using Apple’s latest must have-devices altogether.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Apple’s reveal on Tuesday of their first smartwatch was that it was square.
Many of us were expecting something that was at least curved, if not round: a more traditional watch form factor that represented an evolutionary step away from the square displays Apple has embraced since the original Apple I.
Of course, as we all know, the Apple Watch is boxy, at least for now. But as these renders show, the Apple Watch design and UI would work just as well, if not more so, in a round casing, with a round display.
One of iOS 8's new wallpapers on the iPhone 6. Photo: Apple.
With its latest iOS 8 beta, Apple added a bunch of gorgeous new wallpapers. Some of them appeared on stage during the company’s special event on Tuesday, and others can be seen on the its website decorating the home screens of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.
But you don’t need to wait until iOS 8 goes public next week to get your hands on them, because they’re all available to download right here.
One of the biggest disappointments from Apple’s announcements yesterday was the lack of a sapphire screen for the iPhone 6. A seemingly-neverending string of part leaks and rumors indicated that 2014 would be the year the iPhone got a nearly indestructible sapphire display cover.
And while sapphire is used for the Apple Watch’s display, Apple made no mention of sapphire for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
With all the livestream trouble Apple had during its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch unveiling, it’s likely you missed at least part of the big reveals.
Cult of Mac is here to help with this 90-second version of the Apple keynote that will show you all the most important highlights.
There’s tons more that Tim Cook and Co. announced but it’s impossible to cram it all into a minute and a half. Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to keep up-to-date with all the latest Apple news, reviews and more.
