Apple has continued its winning ways when it comes to acquiring A-list movie properties by snapping up worldwide rights to the first movie made by the Russo brothers since Avengers: Endgame, a.k.a. the highest grossing movie of all time.
Called Cherry, the movie stars Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo in what are being touted as incredibly impressive acting performances. The movie is an adaptation of a bestselling 2018 novel by Nico Walker.
Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs had some advice for director Brad Bird when he was making decisions about merchandise on the 2004 movie The Incredibles: “fewer things, better things.”
Bird recalled the advice during a recent online chat with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua (who, incidentally, just had his last movie acquired by Apple). Bird also recalled speaking with Jobs about the Apple Store, around the time the company was busy opening the first ones.
Apple is giving businesses which host paid events online via the App Store reprieve on having to pay Apple a 30 percent cut.
Apple reversed the policy late last week, although it will reportedly only do so for three months as businesses reel to try and come up with new ways to make money during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Feeling like you missed out on proper summer vibes this year due to coronavirus, and it’s now too late to dream of soaking up some beach rays? Apple Music feels your pain, and has some appropriately party playlists to take you back to the 2020 summer vacation that never was. Including one by everyone’s favorite Luther star.
New playlists added to Apple Music include DJ sets from independent dance label Defected Records. One is from recent Glitterbox Virtual Festival and includes the likes of Idris Elba (yes, he DJs as well as acts), Jellybean Benitez, and Boys Noize. The other includes sets from Ibiza in 2019, featuring Roger Sanchez, Gorgon City, Sam Divine.
The TikTok story has taken another twist as a Washington judge has blocked the Trump administration’s ban on the popular short-form video app. The ban on the Chinese app would have kicked in at 11:59pm on Sunday. TikTok now has a stay of execution until at least November.
US district judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction to TikTok owners ByteDance. Nichols declined to block additional commerce department restrictions on the app “at this time.”
Customizing iPhone Home screens is all the rage right now, thanks to a cool new feature in iOS 14 (and a hacky workaround using the Shortcuts app). See what this new craze is all about, and find out how you can do it yourself, in our top stories this week.
Plus, we might know exactly when to expect next month’s big iPhone event. And don’t miss our Apple Watch Series 6 review.
You will find all that and much more (including reviews of new Apple TV+ series Tehran and Tiny World) in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Grab it and get to reading!
Apple Fitness+ will enter a crowded market when the service launches later this year. Established players like Peloton and Adidas already have a significant head start.
But Apple is in great shape to give them a run for their money. Fitness+ is a logical next step for Cupertino. The upcoming service plugs some significant gaps in Apple’s fitness offering while intelligently leveraging the power of its platform to gain an advantage.
After Apple Fitness+ sprints off the starting line, the competition might find itself struggling to keep up.
This week on The CultCast: Don’t miss our one-week reviews of Apple Watch Series 6! We’ll tell you if it’s worth upgrading. Plus: Multiple sources are now confirming a second Apple hardware event coming October 13, where a new “iPhone 12 mini” may be announced — we’ll tell you what we know. And stick around for more Apple stock talk! Erfon reveals what his big investment is worth now, following this month’s depressing AAPL stock plummet, and we’re talking real numbers.
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The new emoji set to appear in 2021 will help you express relief or confusion. Or show that your heart’s afire, or that it’s mending.
Those might seem fairly ordinary, but there is something extremely odd about the the list of upcoming emoji: It’s very short. The group responsible for coming up with new emoji picked just seven new designs to debut next year. The reason is simple: COVID-19.
An image that reportedly shows iPhone case stickers seemingly adds more evidence that Apple will call its smallest iPhone 12 model the “iPhone 12 mini.”
The pictures, posted on Twitter Thursday evening by Apple leaker DuanRui, follow a recent report from @L0vetodream suggesting that this year’s models will be called the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Contrary to reports suggesting otherwise, the European Commission has revealed that it will appeal a recent court decision that went in Apple’s favor concerning a massive $14.8 billion tax bill.
The EC made the tax demand to Apple in 2016, accusing it of benefitting from illegal state aid from Ireland. However, Apple appealed the decision and, in a July hearing, had its objections upheld. Now the EC is asking another court to overturn that verdict.
It’s a packed day for Apple TV+ as the service debuted multiple episodes of new shows. The crown jewel of the bunch is Tehran, a new spy series about a Mossad hacker-agent who tries to infiltrate Tehran to destroy Iran’s nuclear reactor.
Apple TV+ dropped the first three episodes of the acclaimed show (check out Cult of Mac‘s effusive review) Friday. New episodes will debut each subsequent week.
Apple quietly snapped up podcasting app Scout FM, which tries to make podcasting sound more like tuning into radio stations, for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.
Scout FM worked by letting users choose particular topics, then automatically customizing a radio station-like podcasting listening experience for them. It was intended as a way to cut through the findability clutter of hundreds of thousands of available podcasts.
Mac users can update their computer on Thursday with macOS Catalina 10.15.7. It’s important for anyone who’s noticed their computer not connecting to Wi-Fi like it ought to. There are no new features.
This might be the last Catalina version before the big macOS Big Sur upgrade gets introduced.
Amazon on Thursday unveiled a cloud gaming service that can play console-quality games on mobile devices and a range of other computers. Unlike rival streaming services from Google and Microsoft, Amazon Luna will be available on iPhone and iPad. It’s also coming to Mac.
Apple released a bug-fix update to iOS 14 on Thursday. iOS 14.0.1 removes a number of problems — most notably, a bug that prevented users from permanently picking a new default email app and web browser. And iPad users get iPadOS 14.0.1 with the same fixes.
There are also bug fix updates out for Final Cut Pro and some of Apple’s other media-production applications for Mac.
The new iPad 8 is only a “speed bump” version of the seventh-generation model, but it certainly offers a noticeable increase in performance. Benchmarks show this recently released tablet is about twice as fast as its predecessor.
Spotify, Match, and Fortnite developer Epic Games have joined a nonprofit that advocates for regulatory and legal action against Apple for what they claim is it unfair control of the App Store.
Their main objection is the way that Apple charges up to 30 percent for in-app payments. Apple lays out a detailed set of rules which apps must follow in order to be allowed in the App Store.
Twitter user @laobaiTD, aka Mr-white, posted images late Wednesday of what he claims is the braided Lightning cable that will come with iPhone 12.
At present, the Mac Pro is the only Apple product to come with a more-durable braided cable, which also provides a premium look. Check out the images of the alleged iPhone 12 cable below.
After seeming to defy the general COVID-19 downturn, tech stocks have taken a dip as of late. Loup Ventures’ tech analyst Gene Munster thinks there is going to be a split in future fortunes — with some soaring back up to previous highs and others, well, not.
Apple, he believes, is going to be a big winner. And from my calculations he thinks it could be just a couple of years from another major financial milestone.
Actors Cherry Jones and Jason Segel have joined the cast of upcoming Apple TV+ original movie The Sky Is Everywhere. Jones (HBO’s Succession and Apple TV+’s Defending Jacob) and Segel (the excellent Forgetting Sarah Marshall) will join relative newcomer Grace Kaufman.
The movie is an adaptation of a Jandy Nelson young-adult novel. The plot follows a high-school girl mourning the death of her sister. She becomes romantically attached to her late sister’s fiancé and another young man newly arrived in town.
Over 30% of iPhones are running iOS 14 exactly a week after the release, according to data from an analytics company. That’s a 50% faster adoption rate than iOS 13 a year ago.
Thanks to iOS 14’s new widgets, seemingly everyone is redesigning their iPhone Home screens right now. Some of these look amazing. Others evoke the eyeball-abusing tragedy of late-stage MySpace, serving as painful reminders of why most of us didn’t become professional graphic designers.
Here are some of the better iOS 14 custom Home screens we’ve seen. (Want to make your own? We’ve got a guide for you: How to give your iPhone Home screen a new look with custom icons).
Ever wanted to make your brand-new iPhone look like it’s running Windows 95? That’s the outrageously novel idea that sprang into the mind of Ashley, an 18-year-old from Indiana who wants to work as a graphic designer, after she upgraded to iOS 14 last week.
Taking advantage of iOS 14’s new Home screen widgets feature, and a clunky workaround that employs the built-in Shortcuts app, she gave her iPhone 11 a vintage Microsoft-style makeover that screams retro cool and picked up 4.4 million views and 664,000 likes on TikTok.
“As someone who wasn’t even alive in the ’90s, other operating systems, such as Windows XP, are more nostalgic to me, but I went with Windows 95 because it furthered the contrast between old and new,” Ashley, who did not want her last name revealed, told Cult of Mac.
The iPhone 12 will debut at a special event on October13, multiple sources claimed on Wednesday. The release date will reportedly come shortly thereafter.
Cupertino is widely expected to introduce its next-generation handset in October, with only the date remaining a mystery. According to several sources, there’ll be an Apple event the second Tuesday of that month to take the wraps off.