U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has granted Preliminary approval to Apple’s proposed $450 million settlement for claims that it colluded with the five major U.S. publishers to increase e-book prices.
The settlement fee is still pending the appeal of Judge Cote’s 2013 ruling, but if it stands, Apple will pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to lawyers. However, Judge Cote says she was deeply troubled by a provision that could see Apple pay as little as $70 million.
Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup for details on how one popular group of protesters are picketing Steve Jobs and Apple itself. Plus, get info on a new Snapchat clone from Instagram, news on unlocking your iPhone and even how one KickStarter is turning MacBooks into huge touch-enabled tablets.
Of course, don’t forget to subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube and catch all our latest videos.
A new smartphone unlocking bill has made its way through the Senate and House of Representatives, and now it’s getting the seal approval from President Obama.
Today The White House announced that Obama will sign the “Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act” into law, which gives the right to unlock your phone after your contract is up and take it to another carrier.
One of the App Store’s most beloved to-do apps, Wunderlist, has received a major redesign and a ton of new features.
Wunderlist 3 boats a more polished design on desktop and mobile, new icon, 30 new backgrounds, real-time sync, smart lists, and new gestures. There’s an emphasis on collaboration for the app’s pro users, including unlimited task assigning, file uploads, and subtasks.
Who needs a tiny screen behind the seat in front of you when everyone has a smartphone or tablet?
Beginning today, Delta is rolling out free in-flight movies and TV shows for flyers through its Fly Delta app. The service is being called Delta Studio, and it follows the trend of other airlines like United delivering free content to flyers’ personal devices.
Apple’s $3 billion acquisition of Beats was finalized this morning, and it’s up to Apple to determine what will happen to the hundreds of remaining Beats employees it hasn’t laid off.
Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine have already said that they’re joining Apple, and now it’s being reported that the head of Beats Music, Ian Rogers, will oversee iTunes Radio as well.
A new set of images of the the iPhone 6 home button flex cable have been leaked to Nowherelse.fr that show some of the changes coming to Apple’s new smartphones.
You could nearly build your own iPhone 6 with all the leaked components we’ve seen the last few weeks, but based on these alleged home button cables, the design of the new iPhone 6 won’t just be different from the iPhone 5s, but the the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 6s will also be very different from each other.
Apple today officially welcomed Beats Music and Beats Electronics to its family, along with Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, following its $3 billion takeover back in May.
“Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do,” reads an announcement on Apple.com, while those buying products from the Beats website will now be routed through the Apple Store.
We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.
This week the rumor mill has been busy spitting out new details on practically every Apple product. From delays with the Apple TV revamp, to clues a new Mac Minis and 27-inch iMacs waiting for launch. Of course there are also some new iWatch rumors and a possible launch date for the iPhone 6, but you’ll have to slide up to crystal ball to see which of these rumors has what it takes to go all the way, and which ones about to fade away like ghosts.
San Diego Comic-Con 2014 may be over, but with all of the announcements out of the way, now we get to reap the rewards. Among the event’s iOS-related announcements was Marvel’s proclamation that its great Marvel Pinball app is getting a new table, to celebrate the company’s new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. To mark the occasion, the app is going free for the first time ever.
In some ways, this pick has already been made for us. As the previous page demonstrated, for a show that’s apparently about nothing, people sure do want to see Seinfeld make an appearance on Netflix. Although it did dip in quality after co-creator Larry David left, at its apex no other comedy can come close to matching the triumph of Seinfeld. Hopefully Jerry is right, and this will find its way to Netflix ASAP. With classic moments in virtually every episode, this show is the stuff binge-watching was invented for.
There are some pretty great Wikipedia apps out there already (my favorite is Das Referenz, an iPad app which turns Wikipedia pages into what looks like 17th century book entries), but Wikipedia has just made a gambit to be best of the bunch with a major redesign of its own iOS app.
Version 4.0 of Wikipedia Mobile sports a total overhaul of the app’s design, with a complete native rewrite that makes searching for information a faster and more enjoyable experience.
The original Typo keyboard for the iPhone racked up quite a few column inches (or whatever the blogosphere equivalent might be) after it was revealed that none other than Ryan Seacrest had invested $1 million in it, shortly followed by BlackBerry filing a lawsuit against it, claiming that it was stealing the company’s trademark keyboard.
Well, the Typo is back — and apparently better than ever — thanks to the new Typo 2 keyboard, which is currently available for pre-order. Costing $99, the iPhone case essentially adds the functionality of a BlackBerry keyboard to your existing iPhone, although hopefully without looking so much like a BlackBerry that it provokes further legal action.
Apple did sticker and decal makers a massive favour with its recent “Stickers” ad for MacBook Air, showing the myriad ways users choose to customize their ultra-thin Apple notebooks.
That is backed up by figures, unearthed by website Macstories, which discovered that sticker-makers did, in fact, receive a huge influx of new visitors following the ad — with sales in some cases quadrupling since Apple’s ad aired earlier this month. Geeky Decals, for instance, says that it was selling around 8-10 stickers per day prior to the ad, but is now selling between 40 and 50 per day.
The iPhone is quickly taking the place of the everyday point and shoot camera with their digital zooms and overall lack of features. There’s less and less reason to pick one up when you’ve already got the almighty iPhone – which camera improves with each updated model.
We wanted to see whether it’s possible to replace your DSLR with your iPhone, and with some tips, tricks and useful add-ons, the results are pretty surprising.
I went out on to the city streets armed with my iPhone 5s, battling against a professional photographer Sam Mills and his pricey DSLR, to see how close the iPhone could get to the quality of his professional images. Checkout the video below to learn the basic tips needed to get pro photos. Plus! We’ve got a great giveaway for you and more just below the jump!
Instagram soft-launched Bolt this week, its new app to take on Snapchat. The app is only available in Singapore, New Zealand, and South Africa right now while Instagram squashes bugs and gets it ready for everyone else in the world.
That doesn’t mean you can’t see what Bolt is like now. Cult of Mac reader @ravirajim sent us a bunch of screenshots of Bolt in action, which you can view above. We’ll let you know when Bolt ships to the App Store in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Apple’s sales in Japan have been skyrocketing quarter after quarter, but then the company reported “dampened” growth during its most recent earnings call.
Japan has been one of Apple’s fastest-growing countries, so what happened? A big increase in Japan’s federal taxes is not only effecting Apple, but competitors like Amazon.
Transitioning to the college lifestyle can be awkward at first. Being away from home, having a heavy workload and still wanting to hangout with friends can be a lot to manage all at once.
Luckily, your Mac can help relieve a little of that stress throughout the school year. In today’s video, take a look at these five hot Mac tips that can make your new year of college easier: be prepared for thieves, find the best way to take notes and more.
Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.
Apple has put a massive amount of money and talent into the construction of its own content delivery network (CDN) for the last few years and its finally starting to pay off.
The new CDN has already gone live in the U.S. and parts of Europe, according to a report from Dan Rayburn, that has used trace-routes to discover Apple is now delivering some of its own content like OS X downloads, directly to consumers, but the company is barely starting to tap into its CDN’s true potential.
Lovely Planet is a twee little game for your Mac (or Linux/Windows box) that distills the essentials of the first-person shooter genre down to the basics: shoot, jump, run.
You’ll do this, over and over, across five distinct worlds and hundreds of levels armed with nothing more than your adorable little bow and arrow and a sense of adventure.
Be warned, though — you’re going to die repeatedly, especially at first, because while the visuals and soundtrack are kawaii as heck, the levels are designed as diabolical tests of your gaming sanity. But please, don’t throw your Macbook across the room when you have to re-start a level for the hundredth time. Maybe take a break.
According to findings by researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell, USB security may be profoundly broken, with no way around it.
Nohl and Lell have highlighted a flaw in USB devices which potentially offer hackers the ability to sidestep all currently known security measures used by a computer. Called the BadUSB exploit, the vulnerability allows hackers to meddle with the firmware which controls the functions of various USB plug-ins, such as mice, keyboards and thumb drives.
Where there’s a popular idea, you can be sure the clones will follow. Earlier this year the popular app in question was Flappy Bird, and here in July it’s simplified message app Yo, which has to date received $1.5m in funding.
A few weeks back we wrote about Yo spoof Hodor, but it seems that there’s another more pressing clone out there, called Yolo, which Yo founder Or Arbel describes as “a complete fake copy of our Yo app.”
In response to Yolo, Arbel has filed a complaint with Apple, asking it to remove Yolo from the App Store since it allegedly infringes on Arbel’s copyright and trademark.
Apple is set to open a new Apple Store in Toledo, OH’s Franklin Park Mall sometime during the fourth quarter of 2014. This will be Ohio’s eighth Apple Store, with its seventh opening last month in Dayton.
The company has already posted 15 job openings via its website, while it recently advertised a full-time retail general manager post via the website CareerBuilder.com.
When you hit the road, you take your iPhone charger. If you’re hitting the road for a long time, you might also take a portable battery along with it.
So redundant. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for you to roll up your charger and your portable battery pack into a single device? Now, thanks to Nomad, there is, and it’s so ingenious, I can’t believe that Apple hasn’t done this themselves.
Song recognition service Shazam has launched a cool new Mac app. Called, originally, Shazam for Mac, the always-on app lives in your Mac’s menu bar, and offers some neat features.
Constantly listening for songs to identify, Shazam for Mac springs to life whenever it finds a song you want to know about, creating a playlist as it goes along, and alerting users via a standard Notification Center popup. Once a song has been ID’d, the app gives you the option of one-click access to lyrics, music videos, or the option to buy the track on iTunes.