There’s MIPS in that there Forefront. Smith Optics’ Forefront mountain bike helmet has been around for a bit and has gotten excellent reviews from both the media and the man on the trail.
Now Smith has added the latest buzzword in safety — MIPS, or Multi-Directional Impact Protection System — to the award-winning lid.
SAN FRANCISCO — A slick new feature coming to Ultimate Ears’ Bluetooth speakers will let you stream your friends’ music from the palm of your hand.
Called Block Party, it lets up to three friends connect to the same UE speaker. Then the self-appointed DJ can pick and choose from each person’s tunes, pulled from streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. The DJ can skip songs and jump from playlist to playlist, and it’s all shockingly smooth and simple.
The way we consume news is changing at a rapid pace, and both Apple and Twitter are trying to cater to readers’ need for speed and convenience.
iOS 9’s new Apple News app and the recently launched Twitter Moments both exist because millennials aren’t reading the newspaper every morning or watching news broadcasts in the evening. We get our news primarily from the Internet, often without having to click on articles or read hundreds of words for context.
Online media’s big push toward keeping news relevant and immediate caters to our ever-shrinking attention spans. For better or worse, we’ve gravitated toward bite-size information and entertaining listicles.
Twitter figured that out long ago. Apple still hasn’t.
The iPhone 6s’ new Live Photos feature created a new media format, but there’s one major problem with the new moving pictures: You have to own an iPhone 6s to see them.
Most of your friends probably haven’t upgraded yet, which means those cool Live Photos you’ve snapped are only viewable by you. However, there is a way to transform your favorite Live Photo into a shareable GIF or video file, allowing everyone to see the movement in your picture, no matter what device they’re on.
Here’s how to do it:
El Capitan has a ton of neat new features, but no OS ever arrives completely error-free. This year’s OS X update is no different — leading some impatient online types to go so far as to label it “El Crapitan.”
Some of these problems have been solved. Others haven’t. But we’ve compiled a list of some of the most widespread complaints. Check out the hall of shame below.
Kyle Wiens thinks the iPad should be banned. It’s a “highly immoral” product, he says, because it can’t be opened and repaired when the battery dies. It’s a throwaway device, and he wants governments to prohibit it.
“It’s not designed to be long-lasting,” said Wiens, who is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit. “It’s like selling a car that has to be replaced when the tires wear out.”
Wiens is the Bernie Sanders of the electronics industry. He doesn’t just want reform — he wants revolution!
Here’s why.
Let’s face it: The green plastic band I have for my Apple Watch Sport is useful and comfortable, but it’s not classy. I wear it to the gym with no reservations, but a night out on the town? Maybe if I were an adolescent.
When I strap Nomad’s new Italian leather replacement band to my wrist, however, I finally feel like a grownup. This is one beautiful Apple Watch strap.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The pros and cons of Apple’s new 4K and 5K iMacs, plus, the new Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2 — we’ve got our grubby hands on Apple’s new peripherals and we’re ready to share what we love (and what we don’t).
And stay tuned for CultCast 2nd Hour with guest Blake J. Harris, author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, to be regaled with the story of the 90s video game war that pitted newcomer, Sega of America, against Nintendo, maker of Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and the unstoppable force that was the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Around the world, Apple Watch is helping people make life-changing improvements to their health and fitness.
I recently asked Cult of Mac readers to share their experiences getting in shape with Apple Watch, and the response has been amazing. Here are some of the inspiring stories I received — and some great insights into how you can use an Apple Watch to smash your fitness goals.
Apple delivered the 4K iMac many fans have been waiting for this week, but it’s not quite the all-in-one powerhouse some were expecting. Look past its beautiful design and you’ll find a lot of drawbacks you probably wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) expect to get with a $1,500 computer.
The upside is, this gives another great topic for a slanging match.
So join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we go head to head over one question: Is the 4K iMac a total ripoff?
Apple’s magical new Mouse, TrackPad and keyboard have been given the official teardown treatment from the guys at iFixit today, revealing the minuscule components inside the rechargeable new peripherals.
The teardown on the keyboard reveals the tiny new battery Apple squeezed in that has some design similarities to the iPhone’s battery. iFixit also took a closer look at the new Taptic Engine in the pricey Magic TrackPad 2, and filleted the Magic Mouse 2.
Check out what’s inside each device:
Perhaps as we continue to evolve, our thumbs will grow longer so future generations will be able to reach the back menu arrow at the top of the iPhone. But we can’t wait hundreds of years for that.
We either need to lift an extra finger, god forbid, or purchase a glass screen protector that essentially gives our struggling thumb invisible back and forward buttons.
You’ll never be without an Internet connection in U.K. towns and cities in the future, thanks to Wi-Fi-emitting sidewalks.
Chesham in Buckinghamshire has become the first town to deliver Wi-Fi at speeds of up to 166 Mbps, seven times the average broadband speed in the U.K., through “Smart Pavements” courtesy of broadband provider Virgin Media.
All three of Apple’s productivity apps just came out of beta on iCloud.com, and Apple’s also updated all of them for both iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. There’s a host of improvements and fixes both large and small for each app on each platform.
All the full specifications are over at Apple’s productivity suite landing page, but here are ten of the best improvements for this long-running, venerable suite of word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet apps from our favorite Cupertino-based company.
It’s with great sadness that I heard about the passing of Gary Allen this morning. I met Gary several times over the years and called and corresponded with him many times. He ran IFOAppleStore.com, by far the best website about Apple’s incredible chain of retail stores, a topic that proved a rich hunting ground, given its size, influence and global reach. Gary had an encyclopedic knowledge of Apple’s stores and his site — now sadly offline — was an incredible resource.
Gary was also known for traveling all over the word to attend store openings, often camping out the night before. He visited London, Paris, Tokyo, Istanbul, Beijing and many, many other cities. Some saw this as eccentric, but the point was not the store opening itself, but the chance to socialize with a bunch of like-minded people. To get some idea of his devotion to his hobby, check out his Twitter and Flickr feeds, still online and full of pictures from his travels.
I wrote a profile of Gary a few years ago that is now also offline, so I’m resurrecting it below.
iPhone users who have been suffering from worse battery life since upgrading to iOS 9 may want to try deleting Facebook’s iOS app.
The social network confirmed reports that surfaced earlier this week claiming the iOS app uses a heavy amount of resources in the background to run processes. The big problem with the battery drain is that it occurs even if iPhone owners have background app refresh disabled. It’s actually worse with the setting turned off. because Facebook is sneakily creating channels to continue refreshing its app in the background, even when users tell it not to.
I have a gadget-friendly family. We’ve all got an iPhone, a few of us have iPads, and I’ve got an Apple Watch. All of these devices require charging, and all of them need a place to hang out when they’re not being used.
The AllDock is a gorgeous wooden universal charging station that lets me store and charge all the family devices in one location with ease, making it simple to grab any device and use it at a moment’s notice.
Apple Watch has a thing for style. Your wrist is the perfect spot for a subtle yet effective statement en la moda.
Apple-centric accessories brand ullu answers the call for tangible luxury with a line of fine-leather bands for Apple Watch. On some bands, the word fine understates what is actually exotic.
Peruse ullu’s collection of colorful, exotic bands in our Watch Store.
iOS 9’s new Wi-Fi Assist feature might have you accidentally burning through your data plan, so to clear up any confunsion about the new iPhone feature that switches you over to LTE speeds when a Wi-Fi network is weak, Apple has released a new support document detailing exactly how and when Wi-Fi Assist should work.
Facebook’s algorithmic nostalgia is all well and good — until it starts pulling up the worst memories you’ve shared. Not everyone wants to be reminded of these awful memories.
Introduced this past March, “On This Day” is a Facebook feature that lets you re-share important digital memories from one year ago. Now you can keep specific people and/or dates from appearing in your feed, thanks to a pair of filters introduced on the social network.
Here’s how to make sure your worst memories aren’t surfaced by Facebook.
The Zagg Pocket Keyboard is for anyone desperate to carry the bare minimum. Well, the bare minimum would be to skip the keyboard altogether, but if you are looking for the convenience of an external keyboard without the hassle of carrying one, look no further.
Quick – how often do you check your iPhone when you’re around other people? When you’re out dining? At home on the couch, maybe watching TV? At the bar? At parties?
If you’re anything like the rest of us, the answer is somewhere between “often” and “far too often.”
Photographer Eric Pickersgill noticed this phenomenon while sitting at a cafe one morning and decided to make some art about it. He calls the project Removed.
When I lose track of my mouse cursor, I’ve always just wiggled it a bit to find it on the screen. It’s a natural gesture, and Apple’s capitalized on it with its new “shake to find” feature in El Capitan.
If you’re constantly shaking your mouse or swiping quickly on your mousepad, maybe while gaming or editing, the new feature might bug you.
Here’s how to turn it off (and turn it back on again if you want to).
Apple’s new Magic Mouse 2 has some new tricks up its sleeve, but according to a behind-the-scenes look into Apple’s Input Design Lab, perfecting the new eco-friendly mouse with a gliding sound that was just right wasn’t as easy as a click.
The top-secret laboratory where Apple designs its Macintosh accessories opened its doors before today’s product launches, revealing all the insane details Cupertino’s hardware wizards obsessed over in the new iMac, Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad 2 and Magic Keyboard.
Everything from the chemicals used in the smaller iMac’s new 4K displays to the size of the keys on the new keyboard got mercilessly scrutinized.
So a good Halloween costume idea is not coming to you. Steve and Marianne Wintercroft can get you started with an alluring mask.
The British design couple has made a company out of designing masks that the buyers build themselves. For a few bucks, you can download a template of a polygon constructed animal head that you print, cut and assemble.