The creators of The Simpsons love poking light-hearted fun at Apple and its devices, so when Siri made another guest appearance alongside our favorite animated family this weekend, she was never going to be on her best form. But that’s okay, because as you’ll see in the clip below, it makes for an hilarious joke.
I just moved to Germany, which means that I get a lot more weather than when I lived in Spain. There, a quick once-a-week check was plenty to know whether you should get the umbrella from the attic. In Germany, I check every time I want to leave the house.
And now there’s a great app which will will let you customize your own weather notifications, right there on your iPhone.
Imagine Dropbox. That was easy, right? Now imagine that instead of having all your files stored on some NSA-bait server somewhere on the internet, those files are instead stored on a hard drive of your own. And yet they’re still as readily accessible from all your devices via the internet.
That was, admittedly, a little trickier to imagine. But it was worth it, because our collective thinking has somehow magicked the new Transporter Sync into existence.
If, as Tim Cook predicts, “it’s going to be an iPad Christmas” then December 25 has come early to Cupertino, on the back of reports that the iPad Air saw adoption rates of five times those of the iPad 4 following its opening weekend.
Do you like to enjoy the bounties of your own body while you’re on an audio-only Skype call? Who doesn’t, right? And so you’ve probably also “accidentally” enabled the camera and inadvertently revealed your shame at some point, too. What you need, my pervy, flashing friend, is the iShutter, a $15 strip of steel with a hole in it.
If you believe the reports, Apple is currently working on a way of charging iOS devices using solar panels. If you’re not content to wait, however, and want a quick-and-easy means of charging your iPhone or iPad right now, you might want to consider investing in this Indiegogo crowd funding campaign to create a mobile wireless charging solution for Apple products.
Based on the increasingly popular Qi inductive electrical power transfer system, iQi Mobile Wireless is set to bring true, low-cost wireless charging to iOS device. This is done without the fuss of plugging and unplugging wires, since charging is achieved simply by placing your iPhone or iPad on a Koolpuck charger.
Editorially is a web-based text editor that I wish I used. It has a gorgeous interface, lots of great collaborative features, and now it even exports to Dropbox and WordPress, which would let me write pretty much anything I ever need to write in it.
Sadly, I have no need for collaboration, and I swore of writing anything but an email address in the browser years ago after losing work to crashes.
ISkin’s Gravity collection will gather up anything and everything that wanders into its orbit and trap it in its dorktastic embrace. The range consists of two cases, the best of which is the Agent 6 Sling, a utility pack that even an infantryman would find hard to make full use of.
Google’s algorithmically-driven cars may be partially designed to give commuters more time to surf the Internet (using Google, natch!), but if a new report from ABI Research is anything to go by, it’s Apple who have the real early adopter advantage in terms of connected in-vehicle infotainment systems.
ABI Research forecasts that shipments of such infotainment systems, equipped with one or more smartphone integration technologies, will grow substantially over the next five years — reaching 35.1 million units globally by 2018. Of these, ABI projects an impressive 49.8% will be running Apple’s “iOS in the Car”, the standard for allowing iOS devices to work with manufacturers’ built-in in-car systems as unveiled during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference back in June.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has written an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing in favor of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a proposed piece of U.S. legislation that protects against sexual identity and gender discrimination in the workplace. Cook occasionally gives media interviews, but him writing something like an op-ed out from under the umbrella of Apple is pretty significant.
iPads might seem the perfect device for government meetings (if only for a quick game of Angry Birds when things get boring), but not if you’re a member of the UK Cabinet.
This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine is all about the mobile art revolution.
Thanks to its brilliant touchscreen, the iPhone put a sketchpad in our hands and then the iPad gave us a little more room to doodle. Just a few years on, mobile art has graced the cover of The New Yorker and been hung on the walls of traditional museums.
This issue explores the landscape of mobile art – we profile a host of iArtists on how they bring their work into the real world, take a close look at David Hockney’s iPad works writ large at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and give you tips on how to power up your mobile toolkit with tips on styluses, apps and more.
If you want to get your iArtwork in a museum, in front of kids in a classroom or printed in a book, we’ll tell you how Matthew Watkins, Sumit Vishwakarma and David Scott Leibowitz did just that.
We also bring you the best in new apps, picks from what’s worth your while in books, music and movies in iTunes and our exclusive Apple genius column delves into skirting the store’s EasyPay option and how to escalate to a manager if you need to.
Do you draw, paint, or create fine art with your iPad? Let us know in the comments.
Get your silver bullets and holy water ready dear friends, because our new CultCast: some Dell laptops are emitting a mysteriously pungent smell; iPad Air gets benchmarked, is murderously speedy; our fave photo app brings darkness… out of the shadows; Apple says some 5S batteries are dieing… faster than they should; Tim Cook says upcoming Apple products will blow… your mind; and we chant… aloud our favorite apps so you can vote on which is best… it’s an all new Faves N Graves!
Put down that candy and join us for this 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 spookiness begin.
The iPhone just became much more cost-friendly in the second largest wireless market in the world. India’s third largest carrier, Reliance Communications, has started selling the iPhone 5c and 5s with a two-year contract. Indian customers have previously only been able to purchase the iPhone for its full, unsubsidized price off contract.
India is a key emerging market for Apple, and this move could significantly bolster iPhone sales in the country if it catches on at other Indian carriers.
We knew this day has been coming for quite sometime now, but alas, the days of an ad-free Instagram are long gone.
The first official brand-sponsored ad was published to Instagram this morning courtesy of fashion brand Michael Kors. The ad features a Michael Kors gold watch surrounded by cakes and other trinkets with the title “Pampered in Paris,” making the fashion company the first to paid advertiser on the platform
Rather than cruising the streets for candy, the guys at iFixit spent All Hallow’s Eve tearing down the new iPad Air with all the tender loving care we’ve come to appreciate from the fixit gurus.
iFixit found few surprises during their teardown, but did discover that the APL5698 A7 processor Apple packed away in the iPad Air is a slightly different from the APL0698 version of the A7 found in the iPhone 5s, though it’s not clear what customizations Apple added to the chip.
The iPad Air comes with a gigantic battery that iFixit says is the one of the most difficult they’ve tried to remove, and the other components are much easier to swap out. As with most Apple devices, iFixit found that the iPad Air is horrifically hard to repair and gave it a repairability score of 2 out of 10.
Here are some of the internal goodies iFixit found in the iPad Air:
BestRoute Free — Navigation — Free
Now that Halloween is over, the rest of the holidays are clamoring for our attention. And some of them require shopping, which can mean a lot of driving all over town. And if you want to make sure you’re taking the most efficient route possible, you might want to plug your stops into BestRoute Free, a new app that lets you quickly and easily mark waypoints (by searching or just a long tap on the screen). It’ll then tell you the best order in which to make your stops.
It would probably also come in handy if you suddenly had to deliver a bunch of pizzas or something.
The iPad Air has been on sale for nearly 12 hours now and early reports are starting to indicate that the higher end models are becoming scarce as initial supply is dwindling. It may not be quite as hard to get your hands on the iPad Air as a the gold iPhone 5s, but our pal who made the extremely useful iPhone Tracker tool is back with an update that will help you find the iPad Air you want.
The simple web app scrapes data from store.apple.com for the most up-to-date info on local pick-up options for the iPad Air. A chart of green and red squares indicate whether local Apple Stores have stock of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB units in the color of your choice, so you can know where to head to for the best shot at getting the iPad you want.
Apple Tracker has also been updated to support stock information on the iPad mini with Retina display too once it becomes available this month. Use the drop downs to select the color and carrier you want, press submit and viola. There’s even a purchase button at the bottom of each inventory listing to speed up the shopping process.
Source: Apple Tracker
Wondering what to download first on your new iPad Air? If you’re an Angry Birds fan, you’ll probably want to get the new Angry Birds Star Wars II update, which adds a bunch of new “secret” levels, new characters — including silver C3PO and Darth Sidious — and more.
Unless you got incredibly drunk last night and you don’t know what day it is, you’re probably already aware of the fact that the iPad Air launches today. And if you don’t want to venture out and wait in line to get one, you can order yours now from the Apple online store.
If you picked up a new iPhone 5s this year, you’d better take good care of its home button, because you can no longer pick up a cheap replacement on eBay and fit it yourself. The repair experts at mendmyi have discovered that Apple pairs every Touch ID sensor with an A7 chip, and if you install a home button that doesn’t match up, Touch ID simply won’t work.
Forget for a moment all the talk about Apple’s recent quarter financials disappointing Wall Street analysts — and instead focus on two “nuggets” from Apple’s recently released 88-page Form 10-K, as picked up by ISI’s Brian Marshall.
In a note to clients sent Thursday, Marshall notes that not only is Apple’s $11 billion in projected capital expenditures for fiscal 2014 a double-digit increase for a company already “the single largest CapEx spender” in his “Big 7 Hyperscale group”, but also that Apple generates “off-the-charts” revenue-per-head metric compared to the other IT and networking companies he covers — which includes Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Facebook (FB) and Yahoo (YHOO).
Apple had added its name to an open letter from the tech industry — also signed by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! — demanding “oversight and accountability” of NSA surveillance.
The letter, sent Thursday, was addressed to the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act, a legislation designed to end bulk data collection by the National Security Agency. It claims that the tech industry (including Apple) welcome debate about the best way to further national security, while also protecting individual user privacy interests.
For the first time in the country’s history, Turkey has an Apple online store. Apple’s full lineup of newest products is available except for the iPad Air and Retina mini—both should be available as the international rollout continues in the coming months.
Apple is expected to open its first retail store in Istanbul, Turkey next year. Apple executives recently flew to Turkey to discuss the country’s multi-billion dollar tablet initiative for schools.
Thanks: Sihirli
Keeping tabs on your brood this Halloween? Sure, you could use Apple’s Find My Friends. But it doesn’t have as many cool features as these two new apps, and it also can’t track Android phones — while these two apps can.