You probably don’t waste much thought on where to plug-in your iPhone, but not using a real Apple charger has its disadvantages. Not only are they higher quality, and safer, but they also charge faster than a 5W Chinese knockoff.
Millions of cheap Apple copycats make it difficult to tell whether a charger is the genuine article and have been blamed on everything from iPad explosions to spontaneous electrocutions, but thanks to a teardown comparison from Ken Shirriff there’s one little flaw to look for that gives the dangerous fakers away.
When Disney bought Marvel Studios, they gained a huge backlog of intellectual properties and stories to mine. The Avengers and the various supporting live-action superhero flicks like Ironman and Thor were just the beginning, as we can see from this new trailer (below) for upcoming animated adventure, Big Hero 6, based on the comic of the same name.
“Big Hero 6 [is] an action comedy adventure about brilliant robotics prodigy Hiro Hamada,” says the Disney press release, “who finds himself in the grips of a criminal plot that threatens to destroy the fast-paced, high-tech city of San Fransokyo. With the help of his closest companion – a robot named Baymax – Hiro joins forces with a reluctant team of first-time crime fighters on a mission to save their city.”
Anyone who has ever tried jumping from iOS to Android, while keeping the same cell number, will know about the horror of trying to get hold of their messages.
The so-called “iMessage purgatory” means that unless you first deactivate your iMessages before ditching your iPhone, Apple’s servers will think that you’re using its proprietary messaging platform. The upshot? Say goodbye to your messages.
While the problem has been gaining more awareness recently as a result of class-action lawsuits filed against Apple, it’s just gotten worse, courtesy of a recent server glitch. The glitched rendered moot one of Apple’s key methods for sorting out the issue.
With some truly great titles out there, and apps like Comixology making them easier to read then ever, there’s never been a better time to be a comic fan.
But with so many choices, what exactly should you be reading? Particularly for comic newbies it can be a little daunting searching through mounds of comics, whether that’s in your local brick-and-mortar, or on the virtual comic rack. Luckily, reading comics is part of my job, so I was all too happy to scour the four-color archives for the cream of the current crop.
There are superheroes, flesh-eating zombies, and, err, time-stopping intercourse — all of them read just as well on paper or your iPad screen. Personally, I’m a stickler for physical books, although digital ones are looking better all the time, and they’re continuing to explode in popularity.
But ultimately how you choose to consume your comics is a personal choice. Just so long as you read ’em.
What if you had access to any song you wanted while you were DJing? “It’s like giving a chef infinite resources for ingredients,” explains Algoriddim co-founder and CEO Karim Morsy. Algoriddim’s popular djay app is getting a major update today that gives users the ability to mix and match millions of tracks on the iPhone and iPad.
Thanks to a partnership with Spotify, djay users can now play any of the streaming’s service’s 20 million songs. Some fancy audio matching technology also makes it incredibly easy to match and discover new tracks.
Video might have killed the radio star, but streaming hasn't killed the record store. Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Stroll into your local record store and you won’t find the dusty-floored wasteland of empty bins you might imagine. Chances are you’ll see something that’s more vibrant, relevant and vital than before.
Like the nerdy know-it-alls at specialty wine stores and comic book shops, today’s typical employee at an indie record store is still a tastemaking wizard — just turned up to 11. Staff picks bear the unerring zeal of the true believer, and staffers are more focused on uncovering stuff that you’ll never find on a Walmart CD shelf.
“Since there’s been a turn to Spotify, Bandcamp and iTunes, we sell way more vinyl,” said Jim Haynes, assistant manager at San Francisco’s Aquarius Records. “We’re at about 75 percent vinyl to 20 percent CD and a smattering of cassettes. People are turning to an even more seemingly obsolete medium.”
Predictions of the end of physical media are as played-out as those reports about the death of rock ‘n’ roll, with everyone and their mother proclaiming that Spotify and other streaming services have killed the local record store. That fear-mongering sounds smart and might even contain a kernel of truth, but the reality is much different.
Phrases like “it’s a comic book brought to life” are usually hyperbole, but that’s not the case for SXPD, a new iOS game which blends gorgeous black and white comic art with compelling gameplay.
Described by developer Little Chicken as “essentially the world’s first true game-comic book hybrid,” SXPD is a racing game interspersed with kinetic Comixology-like comic book interludes — upping the story-driven quota far beyond what we’re used to seeing in video games. In all there’s a 42-page digital comic book included, which is broken down into 6 chapters for you to play through.
Apple's VP of Environmental Initiatives recently laid out the company's plans for its next eco-friendly moves.
Hearing an Apple executive talk about their work in a relaxed setting is pretty unusual stuff, but that’s what happened earlier this week when Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environmental Initiatives, spoke as part of Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference.
The 16-minute conversation, with Fortune Senior Editor (and former Apple author) Adam Lashinsky, touches on various topics related to Apple’s desire to go green — including some potentially revolutionary plans for its 400+ chain of retail stores.
If you’re an iPad-owning fan of turn-based tactical games, you’ll be happy to know that popular Nintendo DS game Panzer Tactics DS has received an iPad remake.
Called Panzer Tactics HD, the game puts players in 1939 Europe and allows them to engage in three mission-extensive campaigns — creating tactics as part of the German Wehrmacht, the Soviet Red Army and the Western Allies.
We’ve heard casting announcements in the form of Batfleck and Jesse “Lex Luthor” Eisenberg (to name a few), had our first sniff of the Batsuit and the Batmobile — and now we finally have a name for the forthcoming Batman-starring Man of Steel sequel.
While construction of its new campus is underway, Apple is having trouble accommodating its workforce in the Cupertino, California area.
Apple is now leasing a 290,000-square-foot office complex in Sunnyvale, an area north of Cupertino and just east of Mountain View. Up to 1,450 employees could be moved into the space, reports the San Jose Mercury News. Since it will be years before its massive “Campus 2” is ready to be occupied, Apple continues to struggle not having enough space for its corporate workforce.
An anonymous hacker who has exploited an iCloud security flaw that lets anyone unlock a lost or stolen iPhone says Apple contacted him about the matter today, but he deleted the email.
“They have asked me to contact [them] as quickly as possible, but why now?” the hacker, who goes by AquaXetine, said in an email to Cult of Mac. “I’ve already warned Apple couple months ago.” Cult of Mac confirmed that the email did in fact come from Apple.
The hack, which is the first of its kind, bypasses the iCloud security system for locked iOS devices called Activation Lock. By using the free DoulCi site, which appeared to be offline most of the day but is now back up, a locked iOS device can be tricked into thinking it’s talking to Apple’s iCloud servers when connected to a computer.
Last month, sales of the Nest Protect smoke alarm were suddenly halted after the Google-owned company discovered a malfunction with one of the product’s key features. By design, a simple wave of the hand under the device was able to manually turn off an accidental alarm.
Nest discovered that the feature could be triggered by accident, which could result in some seriously dangerous scenarios. Now Nest is recalling all 444,000 of its smart smoke alarms with plans to have the device back on the market in a few weeks.
Your Facebook app is about get a lot smarter at knowing what you’re listening to and watching on TV.
In an upcoming update in the App Store, Facebook will add the ability to automatically tag music and TV shows within a status update. The Shazam-like feature will have to be manually enabled by the user, and links to songs and shows will be attached to statuses in the News Feed. Facebook hopes the feature encourages people to share more, while it’s sure to cause some users to worry about sharing too much.
Other than its top notch TV series, HBO also has some great documentaries. Even though Katrina hit nearly a decade-ago, Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke is one of HBO's best, showcasing how New Orleans residents' lives were completely upended by the death, disease and devastation that followed the storm's wake.
It’s time to cancel your cable subscription. The best TV shows, movies, and documentaries have landed on Amazon Prime thanks to a deal with HBO that unleashes the networks’ exceptional collection of content to the Internet for the first time ever.
Starting today Amazon Prime users can catch up on entire seasons of HBO’s top shows by streaming them to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad at absolutely no extra cost. It’s an unprecedented treasure trove of greatness that required an HBO GO subscription to access until today when it was finally set free for the first time ever.
HBO has been reluctant to embrace a paid-streaming model that would cut its ties to lucrative cable subscriptions, but the move is a sign that a top-down approach could be on the way as HBO adds its GO app to Amazon Fire TV and other services.
The entire HBO lineup isn’t available quite yet, but the company says shows like Veep and The Newsroom will be added once they pass their third seasons, making them available for the low-cost of a $79 annual Amazon Prime subscription.
Here are five shows you should start binging on today.
In this quick video (below) announcing the new Star Wars: Force for Change program, JJ Abrams provides the first look at a Star Wars alien who walks from behind left and off stage right while the famous director talks about the initiative.
Abrams should need no introduction here, but in case you missed it: he’s directing the next Star Wars Movie. As a huge Star Wars fan himself, he’s honored to be a part of the new set of films, saying it feels a bit surreal to be there on the set in Abu Dabi.
You can enter to win a trip for two to London to actually be in the new movie, airfare and hotel included, with a donation to the program, which benefits UNICEF, one of the world’s most visible charities.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs to hire more hackers — and that means changing the rules about how much pot you can smoke on the job.
“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cybercriminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” FBI Director James B. Comey told the Wall Street Journal.
Apple is having some fun with the mystery surrounding its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, updating the WWDC app to include whimsical session titles designed to give devs a chuckle even as they’re guessing what’s next.
Just about the only solid piece of information from the app update is that Tim Cook and company will kick off the annual event with a special keynote June 2 at 10 a.m. Pacific in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Apple is expected to reveal details of iOS 8 and the next version of OS X during the address.
Brendan Nee, an engineer at Automatic Labs, designed an app to get people out of their cars, even though he doesn't have one to get into. Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
SAN FRANCISCO — Brendan Nee is a walking contradiction. He’s car guru who doesn’t own one, a 21st-century geek with an 18th-century mustache who has come up with a novel bit of nagware that could help Americans get off their spreading behinds.
An engineer working on “smart car assistant” Automatic, he spends many of his weekends at hackathons and has a coder’s physique to show for it. In January, he won the Clinton Foundation Code4Health Codeathon by developing a working prototype of an app called Walkoff in just a weekend. A few months later, Nee and team rolled out a more polished version that mashes up the data Automatic pulls from cars with info gathered by a Jawbone Up fitness tracker, showing a user how much time they’re spending behind the wheel versus walking.
“Clearly, without an actual car, I’m not the ideal tester,” admits Nee. The closest he comes to owning a set of wheels is a retired public bus dubbed the PlayaPillar that he only rolls out for Burning Man.
It’s a slippery slope when it comes to fan trailers (seriously, type the word “trailer” next to any possible future sequel on YouTube and see how many hits come up!) but this is pretty awesome.
If you were a fan of the recent Godzilla reboot, along with last summer’s superb Pacific Rim — which featured giant mechs battling monsters from below — then you’ll likely love Paczilla: a fun mash-up by YouTube user MOVIECLIPS Trailers. The well-edited trailer gives an idea of what it would look like if Gipsy Danger and the other Jaegers came to the rescue when the monsters of the Godzilla universe began stomping on cities.
Mac sales have been growing impressively for the past few years, but according to a new press release they’ve run into a Lenovo-shaped obstacle in their climb.
That’s according to new figures released by (surprise, surprise) Lenovo, which claims that it has overtaken Apple in personal computer sales in the U.S. market for the first time ever. If these figures are accurate, it means that Lenovo has kicked Apple aside to take third place in the U.S., taking its position behind PC giants Dell and HP.
Curtis' Bug Out Bag is just one of the grab-and-go emergency kits documented in Allison Stewart's Bug Out Bag photo series.
Everybody packs differently for the apocalypse.
Photographer Allison Stewart reveals the fears and foresight of survivalists in her photographs of bug-out bags, the emergency preparedness kits put together by individuals ready to flee an impending disaster. In her photo series Bug Out Bags, the contents of the grab-and-go bags get splayed out against a stark white background, showing the wide variety of items deemed necessary by the preppers.
Stewart, raised on the Gulf Coast under the annual threat of hurricanes, comes by her fascination with the subject naturally.
“When I lived in New Orleans, I was stuck in my house for four days without electricity or fresh water,” Stewart told Cult of Mac in an e-mail. “The water in my street was waist-deep and lapping at my front door. I was very thankful for my water supply, my transistor radio, and of course the wine supply.”
No two packs in her Bug Out Bags photo series are alike, a fact Stewart attributes to the individual nature of fear. One is loaded with forestry tools; another includes a gas mask; a third is stocked with canned food. While basements from Tornado Alley to the Ring of Fire hold stockpiles of emergency supplies, she found bug-out bags truly explore the unique psyches of their owners.
Notifyr is a great new iPhone app which lets you route iOS notifications over to your Mac.
Optimized for Bluetooth low energy (LE)-compatible iPhones and Macs, it allows you to receive notifications regarding phone calls, text messages, and iOS apps (such as WhatsApp messages, or Instagram follows) in the right-hand corner of your Mac’s display.
Given the extra security you find at airports these days, we’re grateful for anything that makes the experience of checking in and boarding your flight that bit quicker and easier.
With that in mind, Southwest Airlines has just posted an update for its official iOS app, adding several notable improvements, including faster access to tools like the Checkin and Mobile Boarding Pass options, right from your home screen. There’s also info about your upcoming trip card on your homepage, which means that you can view information related to Flight Status, Boarding Position, and Gate Information more easily than ever.
Better yet, the app update coincides with support for mobile boarding passes being added at 28 airports around the United States — rather than just Austin, where the technology was previously trialed.
Controversial cannabis-growing game Weed Firm has been booted out of the App Store.
Essentially Farmville for stoners, the app put you in the role of a marijuana dealer, as you try to grow your business (literally) and stay one step ahead of “thugs and cops.” Somehow making it past Apple’s usually stringent guidelines for adult content, the app had made it to the top of the App Store’s Top Free iPhone games prior to its expulsion.
