You can now use Apple Pay as you travel Milan on the metro system.
Contactless payment terminals have been installed throughout underground subways, allowing you to pay for tickets using your iPhone or Apple Watch. You can also use compatible MasterCard and Visa credit and debit cards.
Apple's got some new hardware cookin' for us. Photo: Apple
This week on The CultCast: Apple plans new, improved AirPods, HomePod and over-ear headphones; Apple finally acknowledges its new MacBook keyboards suck, and they’re going to make it right; a top Apple analyst drops a bunch of details on Apple’s 2018 product pipeline; and how Apple is trying to solve a fascinating issue their autonomous car.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace website. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first hosting plan or domain.
After seven years, it's almost here! Photo: Mike Mobile
The first Battleheart game, a superb pick-up-and-play RPG perfectly suited for iOS, launched way back in 2011. Now a fully fledged sequel, Battleheart 2 is finally set to debut on iOS in the next couple of weeks — and you can pre-order it right now.
Check out the trailer for the game below, and prepare to get excited!
This battle isn't going away any time soon. Photo: Qualcomm
Apple’s heated battle with Qualcomm is continuing and, as part of it, the company wants a legally sanctioned block to be placed on import iPhones featuring Intel chips.
However, a group of Apple consumers is striking back, arguing that any kind of an import ban would, “freeze out Intel’s nascent challenge to Qualcomm’s illegal monopoly” and “injure competition in a market already suffering from Qualcomm’s anticompetitive behavior.”
At a groundbreaking ceremony for the Wisconsin Foxconn plant, President Trump applauded Apple's contribution to the U.S. Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC
A groundbreaking ceremony today for a huge Foxconn plant was attended by President Trump. Foxconn is best known for assembling the iPhone, but this plant in the Midwest will produce LCD screens.
Although Apple isn’t directly involved with the production facility, the president still used his speech this morning to applaud the iPhone maker.
Instagram Stories are getting more musical. Photo: Instagram
Great music can turn crappy videos into a killer video and starting today, Instagram wants to make it way easier for you to up your music game on Instagram Stories.
Adding a soundtrack to Instagram Stories just got as easy as adding a sticker, GIF, or location. The app is rolling out an update today that gives users in 6 countries the ability to choose from thousands of licensed songs to put attach to your videos or photos.
Apple is developing a device and some type of wearable that could help the deaf and blind Photo: Apple/USPTO
Apple is developing technology that would combine a cylindrical device and possibly smart clothing to provide blind and deaf people tactile or auditory signals to navigate their environments.
According to a patent application filed by Apple today, the device would map the environment with sensor data and provide feedback. For the blind, the device could sync with an iPhone to provide spoken feedback to the blind. For the deaf, vibrating signals could be delivered to a wearable, such as a shirt or the Apple Watch.
Synth One is an incredible synth app for iOS. Photo: AudioKit Pro
Synth One just launched. It’s a new synth app for the iPad, but it’s also a big deal. Why? Because it is free, open-source, and built by volunteer musicians and programmers. Stay with me here. Synth One isn’t out typical hideous open-source bloatfest of an app. It’s beautifully designed, sounds great, is easy to use, and is above all fun.
This GE window AC unit is HomeKit compatible, making it far more intelligent than typical ones. Photo: GE
The first window air conditioning unit with HomeKit launched this spring, and now GE has followed up with several more that can cool larger areas.
When people think of home automation, they generally think of whole-house systems. But that’s overkill in cooler climes. These single-room window AC units can be controlled by an iPhone app from anywhere.
The AD Case isn't pretty, but it'll save your iPhone. Photo: Landesschau Baden-Württemberg
Dropping your $1000 iPhone X can be a costly and traumatic experience, but a clever student in Germany may have found the perfect solution: built-in airbags.
Philip Frenzel, a student from Aalen University in Germany, invented a new form of smartphone protection called the AD Case. Instead of using actual airbags though, AD Case packs built-in sensors that detect when a phone is dropping and then deploys eight springs that actively dampen the fall.
AT&T is making customers pay for its Time Warner merger. Photo: Luismt94/Wikipedia CC
AT&T customers might start noticing that their monthly bills just got a little bit more expensive.
In a move to raise some more cash after spending $85.4 billion to buy Time Warner, AT&T has increased the price of its customer service fees. The increase itself is pretty small, but when applied to AT&T’s entire customer base, it could help the telecommunications carrier bring in an extra $800 million in revenue this year.
The superb Death Road to Canada is about to get even better. A madcap mix of randomly-generated zombie survival RPG, action game, and text-based interactive fiction game, this bonkers title is one of my favorite iOS games out there.
One of the things that makes it so good? The fact that its developers have released a constant stream of updates since its launch in March 2017. Far from simple bug fixes, these updates have given player a slew of new content to put them through their paces. Here’s what the latest “Gizzard” update adds to the formula:
Micro-suction-backed leather makes fashionable webcam covers. Photo: Arthur Lhermitte
A Paris fashion designer, known for quirky clothing and accessories that catch eyes, uses scrap material to keep prying eyes from using webcams to spy.
Arthur Lhermitte makes webcam covers from leather offcut from his patterns. The tiny dots of leather stick to laptop webcams and smartphone cameras with a micro-suction tape that leaves no residue on the lens.
Some believe Facebook is already using our smartphones to hear our private conversations. That’s not true, but the social network is certainly considering it.
Facebook has applied for a new patent that describes a method of tapping into our microphones to listen to our reactions to TV ads. It’s just as invasive as it sounds.
AirPods will ‘just work’ with a 10-year-old iPhone Photo: Apple
Apple has confirmed that it plans to block iTunes and App Store payment information changes on old versions of iOS, OS X, and Apple TV Software.
As of June 30, those with really old devices could have trouble making purchases when their existing payment information expires. Apple says the change is to “ensure your financial data is protected when you make purchases.”
Treat yourself to TGI Fridays and pay less with Apple Pay. Photo: TGI Fridays
Celebrate July Fourth with a juicy burger from TGI Fridays and get 20 percent off your order with Apple Pay.
Simply place your order through the TGI Fridays app for iOS, enter the promo code, and use Apple Pay to complete your purchase. The offer is valid until July 8.
BBC's archive is a glimpse into the personal computer revolution as it took off. Photo: BBC
Are you a computer history nerd? Want to hear 32-year-old Steve Jobs ruminating after the future of computing, or Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak talk phone phreaking and the birth of the Apple II?
If so, you’ll almost certainly be happy to hear about an amazing new archive of classic computer industry footage which just emerged online. Created in the 1980s by the U.K.’s BBC public broadcasting company, the footage comes from something called The Computer Literacy Project, aimed at inspiring a generation of people to code.
Yes, you'll need a Samsung to play Fortnite for Android. Photo: Epic Games
You might soon be able to team up with friends on PlayStation 4 when playing Fortnite on rival consoles.
Sony has finally said that it is exploring the possibilities of a cross-play “solution” that it hopes will make everyone happy. Microsoft and Nintendo are already allowing gamers to play together, regardless of the device they’re using.
Apple is no longer just leaning on Samsung for OLED screens. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple is reportedly set to add another OLED display producer for the iPhone, helping Apple reduce its reliance on current OLED manufacturer Samsung.
For extra displays, Apple will turn to South Korean company LG Display, which will initially supply between 2-4 million screens. While this is a small number by Apple’s standards, it will work to ramp up its capacity to produce more in the future.
An Apple Prime service would be a money-printing machine. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple still hasn’t revealed exactly how it plans to make its original video content available to customers.
However, a new report suggests that Apple may take a page out of Amazon’s playbook by launching a single Amazon Prime-style subscription package, compiling Apple Music, a magazine subscription service, and its original TV shows into one.
Extremely heavy downloads of apps like Fox Sports Go show that World Cup iPhone watching is a thing. Photo: Fox
Living in America, it’s sometimes easy to forget the FIFA World Cup is going on now in Russia. Soccer isn’t one of the Big Four U.S. sports. Heck, most Americans don’t even call it by the right name.
But the fact that new downloads of the Fox Sports Go app grew 950 percent during the first week of the World Cup shows there are vast numbers of people living in this country watching the matches on their phones or tablets.
iPad and iPhone tariffs aren't happening. Yet. There are still no extra fees for shipping Apple's devices from China, but that could change.. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
The Trump administration is headed for a trade war with China, and there’s danger that Apple will get caught in the middle.
That said, the tariffs on Chinese imports going into effect in July won’t affect the iPhone or iPad. However, these devices could easily be part of a later round, which President Trump promises will be 10x bigger.
Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have been ordered by a court to pay over $25 million to their former business partner Steven Lamar.
The legal battle between the two parties has been going on since 2014 when Iovine and Dre first sued Lamar for falsely advertising that he was a co-founder of Beats. Now a jury has ruled in favor of Lamar’s claim that he should receive more royalties from the company’s headphone sales.
Your 10.5-inch iPad Pro can now look more like an analog sketchbook. Photo: Longo Case
Artists share a bond with their sketchbooks and the company Longo Case thought the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, tools of the modern artists, needed a little help connecting.
The company launched a case that had the spiral wire binding of an analog sketch paper pad. It has a leather, understated back and front cover for protection, taut elastic loops to secure the pencil and a back with pop-out panels to create a kind of tabletop easel.
There was enough of a love connection with the sketch case for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro that Longo Case has one in the works for the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro.
Samsung and Apple reached a settlement. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The legal war between Apple and Samsung is finally over.
After waging war against each other in the courtroom for over seven years, the two sides have finally agreed to a settlement that will end all remaining claims and counterclaims.