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News - page 977

Google’s mesh router might fix your Wi-Fi problems

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eero
Google Wifi will be a lot like Eero.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Your home’s Wi-Fi could soon be powered by Google, according to a new report that claims the search engine giant plans to get into the router business next month.

Instead of competing head-on with Apple’s AirPort Express, the new Google router will supposedly bring a slew of smart features to the home, allowing users to pair two or more routers together to fix your home’s shoddy Wi-Fi coverage.

Wearable tech? This jacket lets you wear all your tech

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This guy happens to have a MacBook on his person.
This guy happens to have a MacBook on his person.
Photo: SCOTTeVEST

The hoodie that allowed you to thread your earbuds through a special sleeve near the collar seemed as cool as that first-generation iPod. It was a true technical jacket.

Clothing company SCOTTeVEST makes that hoodie seem as vintage as your great-, great-, great- granddaddy’s buckskin jacket. It’s latest quilted jacket features 29 pockets for all gadgets, including a MacBook, yet keeps the silhouette bulge-free.

Apple fixes iPhone audio issues with iOS update

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Hold off on iOS 10 for now.
iOS 10.0.2 is here to fix your audio issues.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iPhone 7 users can finally enjoy uninterrupted audio through the Lightning port, now that Apple has released an iOS 10 update full of bug fixes.

iOS 10.0.2 was made available to all iPhone and iPad owners today, fixing issues with audio, photos and app extensions.

Parody video shows new use for Samsung’s Note 7 as mobile meat griller

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galaxy note 7
Cooking meat? That's something the iPhone can't do.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Poor old Samsung: not only did was it forced into rushing out its Galaxy Note 7 by Apple’s iPhone release schedule, or to undergo the humiliation of doing a mass recall of one of its better-reviewed handsets, but now people are poking fun at it, too!

A new parody video from Taiwan shows how the once critically acclaimed Note 7 can be repurposed as a mobile device for cooking meat — provided you’ve got the necessary aluminum foil smartphone case, that is.

Check out the video below.

Apple plans Siri-based Amazon Echo rival with facial recognition

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amazon-echo-keeps-you-up-on-the-times-while-spitting-mad-rhymes-image-cultofandroidcomwp-contentuploads201411Screen-Shot-2014-11-06-at-173652-png
The Amazon Echo has been a surprising hit.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple plans to take on the Amazon Echo with a standalone Siri device, according to a new report.

The project is said to have begun two years ago, but has only now entered the prototype testing phase. Much like the Amazon Echo, this device would be able to look up information and control smart home appliances using voice recognition — but possibly include facial recognition tech, too.

Chic new ad showcases Apple Watch Series 2 Hermès

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Looking for a wearable to track your quirky art school dance routine? This one's for you.
Photo: Apple

The new Apple Watch Series 2 Hermès comes out today and, in addition to bringing us possibly the longest Apple product name in years, we’ve also got a stylish new ad.

In keeping with Apple’s other recent ads, this is more of an arty mood piece than a hard sell, but it gives a few tantalizing glimpses of Apple’s new fashion-conscious watches.

Check out the ad below.

iPhone 7 owners report poor sound quality during phone calls

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iPhone-7
How's the call quality on your iPhone 7?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Yes, lots of people still use their smartphone to make calls, and some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus owners are having a bad experience doing just that. Many report poor sound quality on both devices during calls, and it’s not yet clear if software or hardware is to blame.

Apple adds another AI startup to its machine learning team

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Apple adds 5 new vice presidents to its executive lineup
Apple just bought another AI startup.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

Apple has bought another machine learning startup as part of its effort to boost its AI prowesses for features like intelligent search and Siri.

The company that was acquired this time is India/US-based Tuplejump. The startup’s old website has already been taken down, but it appears that it specialized in big-data technologies for businesses.

Fair criticism of iPhone 7 camera might not matter to photographers

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What makes a better sunrise, the iPhone 6s Plus or the iPhone 7s Plus? The photographer sees the difference.
What makes a better sunrise, the iPhone 6s Plus or the iPhone 7s Plus? The photographer sees the difference.
Photo: Cielo de la Paz

I was raised by careful shoppers in a home where Consumer Reports magazine was like a second Bible. Cars, a new washer and dryer, and a vacuum cleaner to handle the then-new orange shag carpeting were not purchased without first consulting this venerable institution of objective product testing.

So I hit the pause button on my excitement for the iPhone 7 camera when I read a Consumer Reports review that claimed the iPhone 7 represents “no major leap in camera performance” from the 6s.

Buy Steve Jobs’ first Apple stock certificate for just $195,000

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applestock
It's not quite the equivalent of getting Jobs' 1980 fortune, but it's not too far off.
Photo: Moments in Time

If you’re a fan of rare Apple memorabilia, how about this for a collector’s piece: the first ever AAPL stock certificate given to Steve Jobs after Apple went public in 1980.

Yours for the house-remortgaging price of $195,000, this genuine slice of tech history reportedly hung on Jobs’ office wall at Apple until he left/was booted out of the company in 1985.

Apple could troll Samsung by putting a store in its backyard

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Samsung
This could very well be a future arial shot of the Seoul street layout.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple has been opening plenty of Apple stores in China, but it could go even further into East Asia with a brand new retail store — based directly across the street from Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

We guess Tim Cook’s been taking trolling notes again!

Apple could transform historic Washington DC building into new store

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2008-0601-dc-citymuseumcarnegielibrary
It's not a giant glass cube, but it's not too shabby!
Photo: Bobak Ha'Eri/Wikipedia CC

Residents of Washington D.C. could be about to get a stunning new Apple flagship store, located at the historic 113-year-old Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square.

Negotiations between Apple and the the Events D.C. organization have reportedly been going on since the start of the year, and seem to be working in Apple’s favor.

Week’s best Apple deals: Save hundreds on refurb iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches

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If you want to save cash, go refurb!
If you want to save cash, go refurb!
Photos: Apple

One of the big reasons we love Apple is because the company’s devices hold up so well over time, meaning that used items are often almost as good as new.

You can save hundreds this week buying used and open-box Apple devices, including a refurb Mac mini directly from Cupertino itself. This and more are in this week’s best Apple deals.

If Macs don’t need cleaning, why does macOS Sierra come with cleaning tools?

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macOS Sierra offers new tools to clean your Mac.
macOS Sierra offers new tools to clean your Mac.
Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay

This is a guest post by Vera Tkachenko, a software team lead at MacPaw.

For the first time, the Mac operating system comes with cleaning tools. The new Optimized Storage feature in macOS Sierra might not sound like much at first, but its very presence in the new Mac operating system undermines the long-held notion that OS X is self-cleaning and remains fast and glitch-free on its own.

Why did Apple add this functionality? Let’s check under the hood of the new macOS cleaning tools to find out what they do, why they do it — and how they might have done it better.

Apple drops new betas for iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS

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Hold off on iOS 10 for now.
The first iOS 10.1 beta is already here.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple just released macOS Sierra to the public yesterday, but work on a fresh new update is already underway after Apple seeded macOS Sierra 10.12.1 to developers this morning.

Along with the new macOS Sierra beta, Apple has also released the first beta builds of iOS 10.1, tvOS 10.1 and watchOS 3.1, bringing a slew of bug fixes to every single platform as well as Portrait Mode for the iPhone 7 Plus dual-lens camera.

Telltale’s eagerly anticipated Batman game finally hits iOS

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wallpaper-2
Check out the gorgeous, rotoscoped-style artwork.
Photo: Telltale

Promising to take you inside the “fractured psyche” of Bruce Wayne, a gorgeously animated new Batman iOS game plunges players into a branching narrative that features plenty of DC Comics’ favorite Bat-characters.

The first episode of Batman: The Telltale Series — from Telltale Games, maker of great iOS titles like Tales from the Borderlands and The Walking Dead — lands today, and it looks like another story-driven winner. Check out the trailer below.

iPhone 7 has already been jailbroken

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iPhone 7 jailbreak Cydia
A sight Apple won't be pleased to see.
Photo: Luca Tedesco

The iPhone 7 has been on sale for less than a week and hackers have already been able to jailbreak it. Photos posted on Twitter show Cydia, the home of jailbreak apps and tweaks, installed on a device running iOS 10.0.1.