No, that car you see above is not a real Batmobile — but it is just as exciting. Built by Faraday Future, the FFZero1 is a concept smart car that’s back from the future, with a 1,000-horsepower electric engine that goes from zero to 60mph in under three seconds.
LAS VEGAS — CES 2016 is about to kick off. The world’s biggest consumer electronics show, which is held each January in Las Vegas, starts this week. At a press preview Monday night, we got a peek at some of the industry’s latest, greatest offerings.
Here’s some of the stuff we think is pretty cool. Check out a cocktail robot, a monster Wi-Fi router that promises to eliminate dead spots, and a fixed-wing drone that flies like a hawk.
Is your Apple TV glitching out in some way? While I’ve not personally seen any weirdness with the rock-solid OS that comes with the Apple TV, it’s possible that you might have.
As most of us know, rebooting our Mac or restarting our iOS devices can save us from all sorts of odd behaviors; the same could be said of Apple TV. Here’s how to restart that little black box of joy, plus an easy way to get it into low-power sleep mode.
The latest MacBook Pro has made waves, not least by adding a brand new Touch Bar feature. If you’re hankering for the latest powerhouse productivity station from Apple but don’t want to wait in line or drop the $1,800 to get one, today’s your lucky day. Right now, we’re giving away a brand new 13″ MacBook Pro at Cult of Mac Deals.
The internet is awash with knockoff bands for the Apple Watch that are almost as good as the genuine articles.
Knockoff products are traditionally cheap and nasty, but tons of these replica Apple Watch bands are so good, they rival Apple’s own products — at a fraction of the price.
We’ve taken a tour of knockoff band land, and found that there are lots of cheap, inexpensive bands on eBay and Amazon that are high in quality and are getting glowing reviews from customers.
“My black Apple Sport band has started flaking off, while the third-party knock-offs still look brand new,” said Neven Mrgan, a designer for Panic software in Portland, Oregon who bought a less-than-half-price band on Amazon.
You could say 2015 was a product-ive year for Apple. The company entered the wearable market with the Apple Watch, released a hugely updated version of the Apple TV streaming box, unveiled the massive iPad Pro (and considerably less massive iPad Mini 4), took on tune-streaming with the Apple Music service, and made its annual update to the iPhone with the 6s and 6s Plus.
We also saw updates to the operating systems that run all those things, as well as a new desktop OS in El Capitan, but it wasn’t all great news. Apple encountered lawsuits, shakeups and investigations by countries and entire federations thereof.
So whether we ultimately decide Cupertino had a good or bad year, at least it was pretty interesting. Relive the ups and downs with this Apple year in review 2015, Cult of Mac-style.
While the Apple Watch is still waiting for its “killer app,” plenty of great apps already exist for the new wearable. They ease us through common tasks, add value to awesome iPhone apps, or delight us with subtle functions that we didn’t necessarily know we needed (but now practically can’t live without).
These apps might not be homicidal, but they make us want to strap on an Apple Watch each and every day. These are our favorite Apple Watch apps of 2015.
Remember Bendgate, the massively overblown period following the iPhone 6’s release, in which people acted like Apple’s handset was about as sturdy as a slice of processed cheese?
Well, destructive YouTuber TechRax is back with a new “stress test” designed to see how the studier iPhone 6s fares against 3,500 pounds of pressure. Answer: nNt very well at all.
If, to paraphrase Fight Club, you want to see out 2015 by watching the destruction of something beautiful, check out the video below.
2015 was a bold year for Apple. The company jumped into new product categories, polished its existing hardware and software lines, and wowed us repeatedly.
Apple also made most of us throw up in our mouths a little bit now and then, due to some questionable (and some undeniably bad) choices.
These are Apple’s biggest wins and most epic fails of the past year, as remembered — fondly and otherwise — by Cult of Mac staffers.
Twitter user and developer Peter Steinberger shouted out to the Twitterverse when his App Store app kept showing an app that needed an update, but would never actually update, even with an iPhone restart.
He got a reply from Zachary Drayer, a mobile developer himself, on how to get the App Store to force refresh.
It’s totally nonintuitive, but utterly cool, and you can do it on your Apple Watch and iTunes app as well. Here’s what to do if you’re in the same situation.
Twitter finally resurrected its Mac app with just about everything its users have been asking for over the past several… well, for a really long time. The update at long last looks much like the Twitter you’re familiar with on your smartphone or desktop browser. It’s complete with highly requested features like GIF support and group direct messages with up to 50 people, plus a dark theme for power users and more.
“Don’t call it a comeback!” Twitter wrote in the update description. “Twitter for Mac is getting the update you’ve been asking for.”
In Apple’s Messages app, you can easily add emojis with a quick click on the little happy face icon in the iMessage text field. If you use a chat app like Slack, you can do the same.
But what if you want to add an emoji to an email, a letter, or any other text field? Turns out there’s an often-overlooked menu item (with a corresponding keyboard shortcut) that lets you do just that.
Check it out.
Living in an Apple ecosystem, my world revolves around brushed aluminum and white cables. My iPhone 6 Plus is silver on the back, my iPads are black and space gray, and my MacBook Pro is — you guessed it — a lovely brushed aluminum.
The new iQunix Zand Aluminum iPad stand looks like something Apple would design to set your iPad next to that MacBook Pro for a perfectly matched finish.
Witnessing the ingenuity of app developers both small and large is a real highlight of my job writing about the Apple ecosystem. In that regard, 2015 didn’t disappoint: Some tremendous new apps got unleashed this year on both iOS and OS X.
Here are Cult of Mac’s picks for the absolute best apps of the year for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
We aren’t going to pretend we’re perfect, but that doesn’t mean we have no appreciation for the mistakes of others. They make us feel better about our own glaring flaws, and they also make for some good fodder for “weirdest of 2015” news roundups.
This year, we saw some really impressive corporate blunders as well as some head-slapping moments from Apple fans.
The iPhone may have fundamentally changed Google’s plans for its Android smartphone platform, but according to Google’s design chief, the iOS homescreen layout — consisting of grids of apps icons — is disappointingly stagnant.
“[The iPhone] crystallised a lot of other things that were kind of stayed even by that point, like the rows of icons, which don’t scale very well,” Matias Duarte, Google’s vice president of design, told Wired. “This idea of a tiny grid that you manually curate starts to feel very heavy and burdensome.”
If you’ve ever tried to set a square photo as your lock screen or homes screen wallpaper, you know that iOS will zoom into the photo, resizing it to fit the entire iPhone screen.
This is fine with some images, but square ones, like the ones you save on Instagram or take with your iPhone’s square photo feature, just zoom in too far, obscuring much of the photo.
Here’s a quick and easy work around that will let you see the whole square photo when you use it as wallpaper.
Apple fans obsess over which new features will get added to the iPhone every year, but if the latest concept from designer Martin Hajek ever becomes a reality, the new iPhone will be more notable for the hardware it’s missing.
The iDot concept packs no camera, no internet connection, zero apps and minimal distractions, so you can focus on what’s really important instead of having your soul slowly sucked away by your iPhone screen.
An ancient breed of mountain sheep grew out their amazing to coats to bring us this amazing jacket.
Made of merino wool, the Icebreaker Stratus jacket is not only water-resistant, breathable and warm when wet, but it is also pretty much stink-free.
‘Tis the season to be jolly — or, if you’re a tech writer hoping to score enough clicks to help pay off the post-Christmas credit card, ’tis the season to label this the worst year for Apple since records began.
From Gizmodo’s restrained “Everything Apple Introduced This Year Kinda Sucked,” to The Verge calling this the year Apple spent in beta, to Bloomberg banging the “lemon of the year” gong for the Apple Watch, pundits aren’t exactly being kind to Cupertino as 2015 draws to a close.
But, you know what? They’re dead wrong. This was the most important year for Apple since 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone.
Trying to play a song in iTunes and getting the same error over and over can be frustrating. If your computer isn’t authorized with your Apple ID via iTunes, it won’t let you play any songs you’ve downloaded from the iTunes Store until it is. Sometimes iTunes will seem to get “stuck” prompting you again and again with the need to authorize.
If you’re having trouble playing your purchased iTunes on your Mac due to the repeated prompts to authorize your computer, there are a few things you can do.
If you’ve ever had a hankering to try out VR with your iPhone (or other smartphone), the Merge VR Goggles are a fantastic fit. They’re made of a soft, lightweight, purple sculpted foam that will fit any face and pretty much any smartphone.
You’ll be able to comfortably wear these as long as you can stand virtual reality apps on your iPhone, thanks to the way they mold to your particular facial features and don’t weigh your head down.
It’s been a terrific year for gaming. The next-generation consoles now offer a library of spectacular games that somehow keep getting better and better, while PC gaming just gets greater every year.
2015 brought exciting and long-awaited entries to wonderful franchises like Fallout and The Legend of Zelda, surprising indie smash hits like Rocket League, and must-play platform exclusives like Blooborne and Super Mario Maker.
Here are the best games that we couldn’t put down this year.
The Apple TV’s App Store is still so new, odds are you might be having trouble figuring out which apps are the best.
The holidays are just around the corner, so for the sake of the friends and relatives who will soon be swarming your living room, you might want to populate your new set-top box with some must-haves. Take a look at Cult of Mac’s top picks for best Apple TV apps.
If you’re feeling guilty about your festive overindulgence, you may be planning to lose some weight and get fit in the new year. Well, sorry to be a Grinch, but research suggests that only 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are successful.
The good news is that there is a better way. One that involves steadily building healthy habits over time. There are some handy iPhone apps that can help with this, but you won’t find them in the Health & Fitness section of the App Store.