Apple is in talks to buy Swell, a startup described as “Pandora for talk radio,” according to several sources.
Swell’s service compiles different podcasts and sorts them into personalized streams, thereby acting as a sort-of podcast recommendation system. The deal would reportedly set Apple back a cool $30 million.
One of the few exceptions was Doug Menuez, an award-winning documentary photographer. For almost a decade between 1985 and 1994, Menuez shot an unprecedented number of photos of Jobs during his wilderness years outside Apple. And, as can be seen in the gallery above, he also took some astonishing inside shots of Apple during this same time frame.
In the process, Menuez became one of the foremost documentarians of an incredible period in Silicon Valley history. To celebrate the launch of his new book, Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000, Menuez spoke with Cult of Mac about his background with one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs to ever live.
We’re increasingly obsessed with the idea of personal health tracking devices like the long-awaited iWatch, but current Apple devices can also be used to revolutionize medicine within hospitals.
A new report in the U.K. states that doctors and nurses at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital are using iPads and iPod touches to streamline the hospital’s current reliance on paper notes.
It’s time for the various residents of Bon Temps to face the music. Karma’s a bitch, and in the latest episode of the final season of this hit vampire romance TV show from HBO, we’re gonna watch most of the main characters deal with the consequences of their past behavior and poor choices. Andy, Holly, Bill, Sam, Sookie: Each of these True Blood staples have to stand up and own their life choices.
This is a pretty expository episode, so we spend a lot of time watching characters explain their situations in sometimes excruciating detail. Let’s hope that our karma for watching the show will be some more action-packed and hilarious scenes in the upcoming shows left in the season, rather than a payback for following the show for so long. We still have faith, though.
Spoilers abound below, so be warned. Find out what happened on last night’s episode after the jump.
Particularly with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite set to make all your Apple devices work together better than ever, it’s important to have a neat way of keeping your iPhone, iPad and Mac in close proximity.
Looking to solve the problem of messy desktops, a new Kickstarter project aims to create the first all-in-one stand for Apple devices — featuring integrated dock and charging system for your mobile and tablet devices.
We may be on the verge of receiving a refreshed 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro line, according to a leaked pricing chart apparently from Apple’s Chongqing, China store.
The chart shows three different configurations of the MacBook. The first of these features an Intel Core i7 2.2 GHz processor and 16GB of RAM standard (the current 15-inch base model Retina MacBook Pro has 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7 and 8GB of RAM.) The second features a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM (compared to the current 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 processor.)
A third, higher-end Retina MacBook is also included — boasting Intel’s new 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of flash storage, and Intel’s Iris Pro graphics, alongside a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M.
This week: Yosemite beta is not for the faint of heart; William Shatner is the coolest grandpa ever; to take on Apple, Microsoft doubles down on design; Apple inches closer to a digital wallet; why the Apple on your iPhone 6 could glow; iBeacons are a marketer’s best friend; and then… if you could ride any animal into battle, what would it be? We’ll answer that question and more on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Quietly chuckle 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.
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Click on for the show notes.
Is Apple vs. Amazon the next “thermonuclear” tech war?
Perhaps not quite yet, but with Amazon moving into smartphones, and Apple choosing to stock the books Amazon refuses to, competition is certainly heating up. That may go some way toward explaining Apple’s acquisition of BookLamp, a startup described as the “Pandora for books,” which offers personalized book recommendations.
You know our culture's obsession with fame has reached moronic levels when Kim Kardashian has the top game on the App Store. Christopher Beha's new novel, Arts and Entertainments lands this month with a biting and incisive take-down on our love for the fame game thanks to the hilarious story of Handsome Eddie Hartley who disastrously dives into the spotlight by releasing a sex tape of his ex-girlfriend who has since become a popular TV-star.
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Party on your bike with an iPhone speaker and a bottle cage for a hip flask, or protect your camera from water and dirt with dust-repellent filters and a great roll-top backpack. Or just forget everything and take your frustrations to the beach, with the SBOD tote bag.
Yo went from being what was considered a dumb joke to an amazing success basically overnight. The app’s idea dead simple: let the user send only the word “Yo” to a friend in a push notification. Now there’s an API for the app and it’s being used to warn citizens about missile strikes in the Middle East.
As you can imagine, there are plenty of app makers trying to jump on the Yo bandwagon after all the attention it has been getting. One app that sticks out from the rest is AHOY, a new iPhone app that takes the Yo concept one step further by adding location to the mix.
Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup for details on a lawsuit filed by Apple employees. Plus, you’ll get info on the latest Apple software updates, a look at the Starbucks app’s new capabilities and Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious iWatch prank.
Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.
Verizon has announced that it will begin throttling customers still on an unlimited data plan beginning this fall. Until now, Verizon has only throttled 3G data usage, but the new policy will also apply to LTE usage in congested network areas.
Today the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that lets customers legally unlock their cell phones and switch carriers. The same bill was passed in the Senate last week, and now President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
The process of unlocking a phone to take it to another carrier in the U.S. has been a convoluted and questionably illegal one. The “Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act” is designed to make the process easier for those looking to take phones to a different service provider. But there’s an important caveat.
Beats just launched a legal assault against Chinese copy cats earlier this month, but it looks like the company just got hit with a legal bomb for copying another headphone maker itself.
Bose Corporation has filed a lawsuit against Beats for allegedly infringing on the company’s noise-canceling patents, according to CNBC’s Josh Lipton.
You know how it is — you want to share that lovely photo of your new puppy, but you really don’t want the person you hand your iPhone to swiping to those over-the-top party photos from your last lost weekend.
Overswipe, a new app from developer Haley & Hughes, aims to solve that very problem in a super intuitive way. All you do is open the app, tap on the photos you want to share, and then hand over the iPhone. Your intended viewer will only see the photos you chose, and won’t be able to swipe into anything super embarrassing.
There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Apple right now, but if you believe Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, we’re just getting started.
Based on Apple’s quarterly SEC filing, Huberty believes Apple’s revenue is set to explode over the coming quarters, since she claims Cupertino’s off-balance sheet commitments “confirm major product ramps later this year.”
The Rumor: The iPad mini 3 will be 30% thinner than its predecessor.
The Verdict: Unbelievable. Jony Ive will have to work some impressive sorcery if the tiny iPad mini is really going to drop 30% off its 0.29 inches of thickness.
UDN reports Apple might even slap the Air moniker onto the iPad mini line once it drops a few ounces, but you must be huffing more glue than Charlie Sheen if you think the iPad mini Air could ever be a real Apple product name.
A Florida man has been charged with federal wire fraud for racking up $309,000 in illegal credit card transactions, with many of them carried out at Apple Stores.
Sharron L. Parrish Jr. visited different Apple Stores — including those in Brandon, Boca Raton, Millennia and Wellington Green — and spent up to $7,400 in each one; adding up to a total of 42 purchases.
Coinciding with the forthcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot produced by Michael Bay, Apple has announced its latest free App of the Week as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rooftop Run.
It’s an endless runner combat game, in which the heroes in a half-shell fight against the sinister Foot Clan and evil associates. If you’re a Turtles fan, you’ll find plenty of familiar faces here — including the obvious (Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael) and less obvious faves (Kraang, Baxter Stockman, Casey Jones).
Apple might have its most exciting product pipeline in years underway, but exactly when we’re going to see these devices is another question.
According to new reports in the Taiwanese media, the reported 5.5-inch iPhone 6 has yet to enter production, and is being pushed back to September. The report doesn’t state whether this decision is deliberate on the part of Apple — perhaps as a way of confusing the market by launching two new iPhones simultaneously — or is being forced on the company as the result of manufacturing problems.
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote says that it is “most troubling” that Apple could potentially be made to pay just $70 million in its antitrust case related to e-book price fixing.
Cote was speaking during a teleconference on Thursday regarding the long-running case claiming that Apple conspired with five publishers to fix e-book prices.
In the original ruling made by Judge Cote in April 2012, Apple was expected to pay $674 million after the plaintiffs reached settlements with the individual publishers.
Using toys, camera tricks and a keen sense of story, the photographer delights Flickr and Instagram fans with movie stills. But the movies don’t exist.
The Scotsman grew up a discerning cineaste with a taste for the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Ghostbusters movie franchises, but his greatest inspiration — in film and toys — was Star Wars.
“I could probably track my interest in toys via Star Wars,” Larner says. “When I was a kid in the early ’80s, I was completely swept up by the original Kenner 3.75-inch range. Then, in the ’90s, the remastered movies came out along with whispers of the prequels so the Star Wars toy range was reintroduced, so that caught my interest again. However, it was when Lego had the bright idea of making Star Wars Lego sets in 1999 that I really got sucked in and I haven’t looked back since!”
SAN FRANCISCO — A parking app that reliably helps find open spots in this congested city was coded on a turn-of-the-century tugboat in Sausalito.
The Terrapin served David LaBua as a coding den for VoicePark, a free app that uses sensors to monitor parking spots. It’s the only one we’ve tested to date that guided us to viable public spots on the busy streets of San Francisco.
“Parking is probably San Francisco’s biggest stressor, and writing about it has been very therapeutic for me,” says LaBua, who holds a master of science in psychology. “I had no intention of getting into the app game, but there was a real need for it.”
Tim Cook told investors he’s happy with Apple’s trade-in program and other used iPhone sales, and it turns out so is eBay.
In the last 12 months nearly $2 billion worth of Apple devices, ranging from iPhones, iPads, and old Macs, have been sold on eBay’s store, according to data obtained by Computer World, and just like Apple’s own sales, the iPhone brought in most of a money on eBay too.