If you can’t beat ’em, buy em.
That’s been Facebook’s strategy lately when it comes to third-party challengers and this afternoon the company announced its making its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up popular messaging app WhatsApp for a cool $12 billion in stock.
Facebook is also tossing in $4 billion in cash as well as $3 billion in restricted stock units bringing the total price tag to an incredible $19 billion.
Apple has been a long time supporter of Project RED by selling special edition products that help the charity, but now you can help fight AIDS just by swiping credit cards on your iPhone.
Project RED announced today that it teamed up with Square to launch the new SQUA(RED) Reader. The red credit card reader costs $10, 97.25% of which goes straight to the Global Fund to fight AIDS.
For all but the absolute purists, our iPhones have taken over as the camera of choice. We’ve dedicated an upcoming issue of our weekly mag to taking even better photographs with our iPhones.
Here’s where you come in: Send us your best pics on the theme of “Silver.” Yeah, that can be anything from a close-up on your Space Gray iPad (kind of recursive, but why not?) to glittering ice on the sidewalk. Make sure you take the picture with an iPhone – any model will do.
Update: We’re actually offering a whole ton of stuff for winners of our contest, with Olloclip willing to send along the following prizes for our first, second and third place winners:
You’ll also get to see the top photo and the runner ups showcased in an upcoming Cult of Mac Magazine Newsstand issue.
To enter, just take the most creative iPhone photo that matches the topic “Silver” that you can think of — and you can also submit pics you’ve snapped that fit the theme. Then upload your photo to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag – #CoMSilver.
The contest ends on Thursday, February 20 at 8 a.m. PT, but there’s no limit to how many times you can enter, so get snapping, you amazing creative types.
Image: Derek Gavey
Tales from the Borderlands developers Telltale Games and Gearbox Software will reveal the first details about their forthcoming game during a panel at the SXSW Gaming Expo, Telltale revealed today.
The award-winning studios will describe how they first came to work together on the eagerly-anticipated project, how the game might unfold, and (hopefully) plenty of other juicy details.
The death of Flappy Bird has brought out more ridiculous knock-offs than should be permissible by the standards of the Geneva Convention. It’s gotten so bad Apple and Google decided to ban them, but the one Flappy Bird knock-off we’d love to play isn’t on the App Store either, it’s in a box.
Fawn Qiu decided to make an IRL version of Flappy Bird using nothing more than a box, an Arduino sensor, two servo motors, a reed switch, magnets and of course, some Flappy Bird artwork.
Players control the bird with the reed switch on the left and if you fail to make it past a set of pipes the box closes.
Check out the video of the project below:
The Rumor: Samsung is hard at work trying to copy Apple's Sapphire glass display on the unannounced iPhone 6.
The Verdict: This is an early nominee for least surprising rumor of the year ETNews cites industry sources with inside knowledge on Samsung's meetings with manufactures, but we could've called it as soon we saw the Gold S5 with a fingerprint scanner. Or their Smart Case. Or their Chromebox. Or... you get the point.
Sapphire glass was in the news again today, thanks to a jump in the share price of GT Advanced Technologies Inc. — the company which will reportedly manufacture the iPhone 6’s sapphire display.
With contrasting reports about sapphire’s advantages over Gorilla Glass, along with counter-reports from Gorilla Glass maker Corning, we figured the time was right to break down some of the questions about Apple’s latest wonder-material.
Apple’s first iTunes Festival for the U.S. will take place at next month’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. It will be held in Moody Theater, home of Austin City Limits, and will feature a whole host of chart-topping artists — including Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Pitbull, Keith Urban, ZEDD, and more.
According to numbers from analyst firm IDC, Apple is now the fifth-largest cellphone maker in China, with 7% of the overall market share.
Apple jumped an entire 1 percent in the last quarter of 2013, based on the success of the iPhone 5s and 5c. This doesn’t take into account the impact of Apple’s deal with China Mobile, which began selling handsets to customers this January.
The International Game Developers Association has issued a statement opposing King’s recent Candy Crush Saga trademark filing — in which the game developer claimed ownership of the words “candy” and “saga” across all gaming platforms.
Calling the move “predatory,” the group plans to use its Business and Legal Special Interest Group to investigate the filing, which was recently approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The Rumor: Samsung is hard at work trying to copy Apple's Sapphire glass display on the unannounced iPhone 6.
The Verdict: This is an early nominee for least surprising rumor of the year ETNews cites industry sources with inside knowledge on Samsung's meetings with manufactures, but we could've called it as soon we saw the Gold S5 with a fingerprint scanner. Or their Smart Case. Or their Chromebox. Or... you get the point.
GT Advanced Technologies Inc. shares received a nice boost on Tuesday, on the back of reports that Apple will use the company’s sapphire glass for its next generation iPhone cover.
GT shares posted a new 52-week high of $12.72, while analysts at Canaccord Genuity also raised their price targets on the company from $13 to $15.
Apple maintains its position as the world’s most valuable brand for the third year in a row, according to this year’s Brand Finance Global 500 study.
After Apple, the other positions in the Top 10 were filled out by Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, General Electric, AT&T, Amazon, Walmart, and IBM.
“What sets [Apple] apart is its ability to monetize [its] brand,” Brand Finance CEO David Haigh said in a statement. “For example, though tablets were in use before the iPad, it was the application of the Apple brand to the concept that captured the public imagination and allowed it to take off as a commercial reality.”
When Google Translate received its post iOS 7 update last September it was missing one important feature: the iOS 7 keyboard.
That has been amended in the free translation app’s latest update, which builds on the streamlined and modern look and feel of the previous update, but also adds an iOS 7-optimized keyboard and status bar.
BiteSMS, the best jailbreak tweak for SMS addicts, has just been updated to version 8.0, coming out of beta officially and gaining iOS 7 and iPhone 5s support.
A lot of the artistic assets of Flappy Bird were ripped pretty much wholesale from Super Mario Bros.. So what happens when you beat Flappy Bird? Do you face Bowser? As this parody video show, it’s not the King of the Koopas you have to fear: it’s gaming’s favorite stereotypical Italian plumber, who certainly won’t let you flap your way past pipe 999.
Do you love playing Minecraft on your iPhone or iPad? So do we, but you’ve got to admit, there’s some compromises in playing Minecraft: Pocket Edition compared to the Mac, not least of which the size of the worlds. On the Mac, Minecraft worlds are infinite, but on iOS, they are extremely limited. But according to a new blog post, that’s about to change soon.
Apple won’t come right out and say so, but the iPhone 5c is a (comparative) dud. But why? Legendarly Apple ad man Ken Segall has his theories, and it all comes down to the fact that with the iPhone 5c, Apple violated Steve Jobs’ prime directive: Apple doesn’t do cheap.
Do you think Blackberry is dead? So does T-Mobile, which is why they tried to get Blackberry customers on the network to switch over to Apple’s smartphone. But apparently, Blackberry has some life in it yet… or enough, at least, to get pissed off about T-Mobile counting the Canadian smartphone maker out.
Love Clear, the slick iPhone to-do app? So do we. But if you’ve never tried Clear before — or if you bought Clear+ and want the minus version without paying for it — you’ll soon be able to download it, free of charge.
Remember GBA4iOS? It was a Gameboy Advance emulator for iOS that took advantage of an App Store enterprise deployment loophole to let you play GBA games on your iPhone or iPad, no jailbreak required. Unfortunately, Apple closed the loophole… until now.
Olloclip’s 3-In–1 Macro lens is extremely limited, but that’s by design: It’s a set of close-up lenses for the iPhone 5/S and fifth-gen iPod Touch (using the included adapter) which let you magnify the tiny world around us and put these wonders where God intended: on Instagram.
Want to help yourself and others in need at the same time? Then this latest offer from Cult of Mac Deals is for you.
Our team has partnered with 8 influential instructors to bring you the first-ever Name Your Own Price Learn To Code Bundle. You pay what you want for Programming Java for Beginnings and PSD to HTML5/CSS3, and if you pay more than the average price then you’ll receive all the courses in the bundle.
Realmac Software is throwing in the towel on Clear+ and making its original Clear release the priority. A new update that’s rolling out today brings iPad support to the app at no extra cost, while support for Reminders is coming soon.
In 2001, Apple changed the way music was distributed with the arrival of iTunes, its online digital media store. Since that time, the digital age has evolved rapidly into an era where cassette mix tapes and compact discs are no more. As we enter an era in which the internet serves our every need, alongside digital distribution and the iTunes Store are an increasing number of on-demand music streaming services have become today’s most popular and possibly cost-effective means of accessing the equivalent of walking into your local music store and buying everything.
Unlike Pandora and iTunes Radio (which we’ll cover shortly in another column), on-demand streaming radio allows you to listen to any music in the service library as often as you like.
The competition between the unlimited all-you-can-stream music services is fiercer than ever before, and with the launch of Beats Music this past month, it has become even more difficult to pinpoint the most suitable music subscription for our needs.
However, after hours of research, a comparison of the seven on-demand services on offer (including Beats Music, Spotify, Rdio, Xbox Music, Rhapsody, Sony Music Unlimited, and Google Play Music–see our table below), and some hands-on testing, we’ve managed to narrow down the overwhelming choice to a select few that offer the best overall features and usability. So let’s crack on with the results, shall we?
Apple has launched the second story on its new Your Verse microsite.
The campaign — which focuses on showing the iPad in unexpected real world situations — this time chronicles the work of mountaineers Adrian Ballinger and Emily Harrington, who take the iPad with them on their extraordinary climbs.
Ballinger and Harrington use the iPad — along with the Gaia GPS topography app — to plan and navigate their ascent, while also using the device’s access to social networking tools to post photos and progress updates during various junctures of the journey.
A new Apple patent, published Tuesday, reveals how future Apple earbuds and headphones might incorporate health-monitoring features.
The patent shows how a monitoring system could be cleverly built into Apple earphones, and used to track activity such as speed and distance traveled during exercise. The device would also be able to sense other biometric data relating to metrics body temperature, perspiration rate, and heart rate.