News - page 1302

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The coiled hose left a mark on the grass, a fading of color where the sun could not shine.

From this moment on his front lawn, Binh Danh realized he could create a photographic process using sunlight, leaves and grass. He had no idea his method would develop into an organic process of self-discovery.

On leaves from his family’s garden, Danh brings fresh examination to an old war, printing haunted faces and horrific scenes from the Vietnam conflict with light and chlorophyll.

That caption along with the above photo could be what foils the robbery of an old iPhone. Why? Because the thief posted it to the victim’s Facebook account.

With the next-gen USB 3.1 standard now heading into production, the USB connectors of the future will be a lot more like Lightning. Featuring small, reversible connectors, the new USB Type-C cable will be particularly well suited to syncing and charging smartphones and tablets… again, just like Lightning.

But new images said to come from within Foxconn show that Apple isn’t done innovating with Lightning just yet, and that we won’t have to wait until USB Type-C to become ubiquitous to have fully-reversible USB Lightning cables. The shots are purportedly of a fully-reversible USB connector for Apple’s next Lightning cable. In other words, instead of having to plug the Lightning cable into your computer in one specific orientation, you could do it either way.

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s every entrepreneur’s worst nightmare: The app you’ve spent hours developing gets shut down before it even really launches.

It’s been a rocky road for four young French entrepreneurs who hoped to make their mark with a parking app called Sweetch. Their idea was to alert prospective parkers that spots on the street were freeing up, exchanging a nominal fee between drivers that could be donated to local charities. But instead of paving the road to fame by clearing the city’s congested streets, they ended up pulling their app from the Apple store under threat of litigation from San Francisco’s City Attorney.

“We helped five or 10 people a day, we brought value to them, but the city didn’t even try to understand that,” co-founder Hamza Ouazzani Chahdi says, speaking to Cult of Mac in the sunny, immaculate and modern apartment the guys call both home and office in the city’s Mission District. “We were lumped in with the other apps that definitely had a predatory model and it was toxic for us.”

He says that despite a meeting with San Francisco officials, the entrepreneurs weren’t really give a chance: “It was just, ‘Here’s your deadline.’”

Bring on the ice, ice baby!

Tim Cook has gladly accepted Phil Schiller’s challenge to douse himself with a bucket of ice in order to get out of a $100 donation to ALS charities. Only instead of doing ice bucket challenge from the comfort of a beach chair, Cook made a party of it while Apple employees got turnt up with at the beer bash celebration for Diversity week.

Take a look:

In the smartphone race there are only two players: iOS and Android. That fact is clear in IDC’s new report for worldwide smartphone shipments for the second quarter.

Combined, iOS and Android account for a whopping 96.4% of global smartphone sales. IDC notes that there’s “little space for competitors,” which is a mild way of saying that every other platform has little to no hope.

Beats wowed soccer fans with its epic World Cup ad earlier this summer, but Apple’s new acquisition is now flexing its creative marketing muscles in an all-new way: documentaries.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Spike Lee’s legendary Do the Right Thing, Beats created a 22-minute short that follows the director and other actors from the film as they revisit the famous Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn that was featured in the movie.

Along with chatting up residents about changes the iconic neighborhood has seen since the film was released, Beats Music also threw a block party to celebrate the 1989 film, with guest appearances by Dave Chappelle, Wesley Snipes, Mos Def and Erykah Badu, along with a performance of “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy.

Check out the full documentary below:

The official iPhone 6 unveiling is less than four weeks away, but according a Wall Street Journal report, Apple is still debating whether it should limit its new Sapphire crystal displays to only the high-end models.

Production of Sapphire screens at Apple’s factory in Mesa is nearly up and running, and will produce twice as much sapphire as the current global output, but the company is still struggling to get enough material for the fall launch of the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 6s this fall and might only add it to the most expensive models.

The technology behind the computer mouse has leaped to unimaginable heights in the decades following the first prototype in the early 1960s. And Apple’s latest variant of its Magic Mouse has quickly become one of the most powerful iterations of the revolutionary input device.

Its touch-sensitive body lets users manipulate their computers with more than mere clicks, thanks to an array of simple gestures and smart actions that make the Mac more productive than ever.

In today’s video, we’ll take a look at tips that will help you unleash the true potential of your Magic Mouse. You’ll learn how to access Mission Control, quickly switch between apps and do much more with these speedy tips.

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

Tom Hanks has already scored two Oscars during his illustrious acting career, but now the acclaimed actor is turning his attention to developing apps, because if Kim Kardashian can, why can’t the dude who played Hollywood’s most lovable moron do it too?

Hanks announced this morning that he’s launching a free writing app for iPad called Hanx Writer, that recreates the retro experience of typing on a manual typewriter combined with the modern luxury of a delete key.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — 12-year-old Josh couldn’t wait to get to the museum. For once, the visit wouldn’t be about “boring” old artwork or educational science, but something he really loves — Minecraft.

“This is great,” he said while tapping and mousing his way through a multiplayer Minecraft landscape that was part of an activity at The Anchorage Museum. “My friend told me about this and it’s way better than staying at home doing this in my bedroom.”

Apple is livid that a Thai government official spilled the beans on its pending launch of two new iPhone models and requested a meeting with officials at the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) to talk about a little thing called doubling down on secrecy.

Reports from Thailand indicate Apple’s top exec from South Asia met with NBTC secretary Takorn Tantasith to discuss his uncharacteristic disclosure of the two iPhone 6 models, but also told him Apple might not even name their next smartphone “iPhone 6.”

Adding to the pile of leaked iPhone 6 parts ahead of next month’s great unveiling, a new photo from China has given us our first look at a fully assembled iPhone 6 logic board and some of the new components Apple will add to the smartphone this year.

Although the environmental group she heads up is “pleased” about the improvements Apple announced to protect workers from toxic chemicals, activist Elizabeth O’Connell still won’t buy the Cupertino company’s products.

Even if it means making those phone calls to rally support against Apple on an iPhone with a cracked screen.

“I am very happy that Apple has taken these steps and that the company is listening to its customers,” the campaign director for Green America told Cult of Mac via email. “That said, I’m going to hold on to my cracked 5c for now. I’d like for Apple to deepen its commitment to worker health and safety throughout its supply chain before I consider purchasing any new Apple products.”

One sad limitation of Instagram is you can’t post photos to the service from your Mac, only your iPhone. It’s by design, of course — Instagram wants to be a more spontaneous photo hosting service than the likes of Flickr — but it can make things annoying when you want to give a more polished shot the Instagram treatment.

Things are about to get a little easier. You still can’t post photos directly from your Mac, but you can make it easier to get them on your iPhone or iPad. Younity, a service that gives you access to your computer’s files through a personal cloud with no syncing necessary, has just added support for publishing Instagram files directly from the service.

Nic Tullis has a summer project that doesn’t involve surfing or working at a frozen-yogurt shop.

The 18-year-old is at the tail end of a Kickstarter campaign to to raise $2,500 that will keep him out photographing with his iPhone 4s. His “Homeless But Not Hopeless” project aims to bring awareness about the homeless population of St. Louis, Missouri, which spiked 12 percent after the economic tsunami hit.

Tullis takes photos of homeless people that show how they live along with normal shots that show off St. Louis. The funding for the project would rent a gallery space to auction off prints as a fundraiser; proceeds would go to two local organizations that help people get back on their feet.

Do you hate the fact that Facebook is forcing you to install the Facebook Messenger app if you want to send or access messages on your iPhone or iPad?

We do too. But luckily, it turns out that right now, there’s an easy way to get around the restrictions and access your Facebook Messages through the vanilla Facebook app again. But better move on it: Facebook’s not likely to let this loophole stay open for long.

In the past, the chemicals benzene and n-hexane, which are chemicals that make your iPhone screen so shiny, have been said to cause health problems for factory workers breathing in the fume.

But Apple has just announced that as of the iPhone 6, these complaints will be a thing of the past, as they are banning the use of the chemicals across their entire assembly line.

If you’ve been on the Internet at all over the last few days, you’ve probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge. The idea is simple. Someone challenges you online to dump a bucket of ice water all over your head. If you choose not to do so within 24 hours, you are asked to donate $100 to a charity to fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Speaking as an observer, I can say conclusively that the Ice Bucket Challenge is best when accepted by buxom 19-year-olds in string bikinis. But watching Apple’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing dumping a bucket of ice water on his head? Definitely a close second.

Sony is hoping to boost digital record sales with a new iPhone app that offers a discounted album every 24 hours. Prices are slashed by as much as 70 percent in the Album of the Day app, and all purchases are made through iTunes.

Samsung is taking its wall hugger shaming marketing campaign to the airport this week, with new ads plastered over electrical outlets that draw in battery-drained iPhone users with the promise to quench their thirst for a little more power.

Touting the Ultra Power Saving Mode on the Galaxy S5, CNET reports that the ads will pop up at JFK International as well as O’Hare and Midway in Chicago, and they’ve included a subtle jab at Apple’s latest ad campaign.

Tim Cook has led Apple into the front of the LGBT-rights movement with company appearances at Gay Pride parades and Wall Street Journal op-eds demanding equal rights for gay workers, but according to one Apple Store customer in Portland, some of Cook’s employee don’t share his enthusiasm for inclusion.

Adam Catanzarite, who self-identifies as queer, has taken to social media after an Apple specialist printed off his receipt for a set of EarPods with a not-so-subtle homophobic slur tossed in the spot reserved for his email addresses.

Take a look:

Mailbox, the beloved email app owned by Dropbox, received a pretty big update today in the App Store. As the Mac beta of Mailbox continues to roll out slowly, the app is maturing on iOS.

19 languages are now supported by Mailbox instead of just English, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese French, German, Russian, and more. Printing, Passbook support, starring, trash emptying, and more have also been added.