Mobile menu toggle

News - page 1293

Rime’s emotional new trailer will cure your wanderlust

By

rime

Beautiful piano music, a young protagonist, gorgeous visuals and landscapes fill the new trailer for upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive, Rime, from TequilaWorks and Sony Computer Entertainment.

The young boy, reminiscent of other young wandering protagonists like Link (Legend of Zelda), Wander (Shadow of the Colossus), and Oliver (Ni No Kuni), finds a keyhole in a distant tower, and races across the landscape to get there.

Why is he running? What will he find when he finally attains the tower? Is this even the right tower? The just-posted trailer (linked below) has no answers, but makes us want to find out.

Lightning envy: Next-gen USB enters production with reversible design

By

A concept of what a Lightning-to-USB Type-C cable would look like.
A concept of what a Lightning-to-USB Type-C cable would look like.

We’ve known for awhile that the next version of USB will copy Apple’s Lightning connector with a reversible design. Now the next-gen connector is ready for production, which means you’ll start seeing it in new desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and accessories.

Today the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced that work on the new design, called USB Type-C, is done and ready to be implemented.

How to turn your Mac’s trackpad into the ultimate timesaver

By

post-290809-image-67bac554106b2e9e842ee4a3c2ae8b7b-jpg

Mac are incredibly complex machines, but thanks to Jony Ive and the rest of the creators, they’re also incredibly simple to use. Mose Mac users know to use keyboard shortcuts to make daily tasks even quicker, but not many know how to turn your Mac’s trackpad into one of the best time-saving tools you’ll ever use.

In today’s video, we’ll take a look at a little known feature called Hot Corners. We’ll teach you how to set them up and how to use them. How to Put your display to sleep, clear your desktop and do even more useful actions, now with just a few quick flicks.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Apple diversity report reveals company is 55 percent white

By

diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Apple has released its first ever report on the diversity of its workforce today, revealing what we’ve all known for year: it’s mostly a bunch of white dudes.

Diversity is still a work in progress at Apple, but the company says its report does show some progress as currently 70% of its global workforce are men.

The brains behind Siri create an even smarter AI

By

Siri couldn't be more excited about the Apple Watch. Photo: Apple
Siri couldn't be more excited about the Apple Watch. Photo: Apple

In some ways Siri today is a little bit like the Macintosh circa 1984: everyone realizes the potential, but the technology is not yet as good as it could be.

With that in mind, several of the creators of Siri have set up a new startup outside of Apple called Viv Labs, aimed at creating a next gen virtual assistant capable of understanding sentences far more complex than the kind that you would normally feed to Siri.

Experience the proto-internet running on an Apple IIgs in your web browser

By

Screen Shot 2014-08-12 at 8.19.27 AM

Back when the Apple IIgs was released in 1986, the Internet as we know it didn’t really exist. Instead, we had electronic bulletin boards, or BBSes: simple ASCII portals for email, games, file downloads, chatting, and — yes — even porn, that we all dialed into over phone lines.

Weren’t around to experience this for yourself? Don’t worry about it. You can now experience all the analog splendor of an old-school BBS for yourself, thanks to Level 29. And even better, it all runs in a web browser.

Picture this: Apple granted historic patent for original iPhone camera

By

A moment of triumph for Apple and its customers. Certainly not for BlackBerry, though.
A moment of triumph for Apple and its customers. Certainly not for BlackBerry, though.

We’re all so used to using our iPhones as our primary cameras these days that it’s difficult to remember what it was like in the dark days before the device came along.

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new series of Apple-related patents, including an historic 2008 filing for an Apple camera. While the patent covers both a standalone camera (something Apple hasn’t done since the QuickTake camera launched in 1994) and a camera integrated into a PDA, it is likely that this is the patent which covers the original iPhone.

Bye bye, iCrime! California moves to make iOS-style ‘kill switches’ required by law

By

iOS-7-Activation-Lock-Gets-Thumbs-Up-from-US-Government-370426-2

Introduced in iOS 7, Activation Lock is a feature that prevents users who recover a lost or stolen iPhone from activating the device without signing in with the Apple ID used to erase the device remotely.

By all accounts, Activation Lock has made a difference in stopping smartphone theft, especially in New York. But in California, law may very well mandate smartphone features like Activation Lock shortly.

California Apple Store building sells for record-smashing $100 million

By

Want to make money in real estate? Buy an Apple Store.
Want to make money in real estate? Buy an Apple Store.

How valuable is it to have an Apple Store in your property portfolio? Pretty valuable indeed, as it (unsurprisingly) turns out.

That’s the point proven by the Third Street Promenade Apple Store in Southern California, which has just sold to new real estate buyers for a record-breaking $100 million: making it the per-square-foot record holder for commercial real estate in the entire West Los Angeles area.

Apple partners with major healthcare providers to make HealthKit even better

By

New IBM cloud has the potential to take Health data to the next level. Photo: Apple
New IBM cloud has the potential to take Health data to the next level. Photo: Apple

According to new reports, Apple has been meeting with major health providers to discuss its new HealthKit service, set to debut with iOS 8.

Apple has supposedly meet with healthcare officials at Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins, alongside Allscripts, which is a competitor to major electronic health records provider Epic Systems.

The talks concern how Apple wants to make the health data it plans to help collect (including blood pressure, pulse rate, weight, etc.) available to both consumers and health providers.

Apple hopes that physicians will be able to use this data (provided permission is granted) to monitor patients in between hospital visits, in order to make better decisions concerning diagnostics and treatment.

Beautiful renders of new iPhone 6 packaging make us drool

By

14697469919_b17e757985_o

Martin Hajek usually puts his considerable 3-D rendering skills to the task of creating conceptual models of Apple’s upcoming hardware. But after producing his highly-accurate rendering of the iPhone 6 last week, the Dutch artist has tried his hand at something a bit different: imagining a new kind of retail packaging for Apple’s next smartphone, as well as what the iPhone 6 will look like when it’s on display at your local Apple Store.

It’s nearly impossible to spy on iPhones, according to top surveillance firm

By

iphone 5s
The iPhone 5s introduced us to Touch ID.
Photo: Apple

iOS has always been more secure than Android, and new information that’s leaked out of one of the world’s leading surveillance companies reiterates that fact.

The Gamma Group has a piece of spyware called FinSpy that can hook into just about any Android, Blackberry, and older Microsoft phone. But it can’t touch an iPhone unless the user has changed its core security through the process of jailbreaking.

Production begins on new iPad Air with anti-reflection coating

By

14673060511_bbff8835b8_o

The successor to the iPad Air will feature a new anti-reflection coating designed to make reading easier, according to a report today from Bloomberg.

Apple has reportedly begun the production process for the next-gen 9.7-inch iPad and smaller iPad mini. As expected, both are on track to debut before the holidays.

iPad sales have been declining, and without some other whiz-bang new features, it’s difficult to imagine what will make new iPads interesting this fall.

iOS 8 privacy changes bring big layoffs to retail tracking startup

By

iOS8

iOS 8 is cruising through the final stages of development ahead of its fall release, and while most users can’t wait for its arrival, one NY-based startup already had to cut a third of its staff, after privacy changes in iOS 8 have threatened to already make its retail tracking technology obsolete.

Nomi, a startup that creates solutions for retail stores to track shoppers and their spending habits, has laid off 20 of its 60 or so employees, thanks in part to some small changes in iOS 8 that make make it impossible to identify repeat visits from shoppers with an iPhone.

Get buns of steel with these super fitness apps

By

post-290690-image-86b440f851d4ca1999364c0bd201b602-jpg

Our iPhones are known to help make our everyday activities easier and when it comes to fitness, it’s no different. Getting up and exercising is difficult, but downloading applications to help you along your fitness journey definitely isn’t.

In today’s video take a look at our top three apps that will transform your iPhone into the ultimate fitness trainer. Keep track of your movement, prevent dehydration and do so much more, just by using these super-fitness apps.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Italy’s Prime Minister wants to learn from Jony Ive

By

jony_desk
Italian premier Matteo Renzi's desk. Photo: La Stampa.

Summer reading tends to lean towards the frothy or the ambitious. It looks like Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is definitely in the ambitious camp.

His summer reads, as shown on his desk, include a work by an economist about innovation, a tome on the power of the labor force, and, oh yeah, Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.

Intel Broadwell processors could slim MacBook Air to just 9mm thick

By

Grab a great deal on a refurbished MacBook Pro Ivy i5 Dual 13
Grab a great deal on a refurbished MacBook Pro Ivy i5 Dual 13" Laptop.
Photo: Cult of Mac

The Apple rumor mill has been abuzz for months with whispers that the company plans to release an even thinner MacBook Air with a Retina display, and Intel’s new line of Broadwell processors could be the vital component that makes that makes wafer-thin MacBooks a reality.

Intel’s Broadwell chips have been delayed b early manufacturing problems, but today Intel revealed new details on its new 14-nanometer processors that combine the high-performance of the Haswell Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, with low power improvements that may allow Jony Ive to slim the next MacBook Air down to just 9mm thick.