Google is incredibly accurate at understanding voice searches, which makes it super useful on mobile when you might want to find information without using your hands. But did you know that the company records every single voice search you make?
What’s more, you can listen back to each and every one.
Who needs 3 feet of rugged Lightning cable? Anyone who spends any time at all on the road, that’s who.
Damn, I love Bluetooth.
Crap, I hate Bluetooth.
Bluetooth is the Jekyll and Hyde of technology. One minute it is your best friend and confidante; the next it is the most evil of evils. Actually, it is the other way around. As you are trying to find the device, and pair the device, and make sure the device stays paired, Bluetooth is some super-annoying technology. Then, once your devices have made nice, the relationship is repaired.
Somehow it’s already half-way through the weekend, but there’s still time to check out the hottest apps to have arrived in the App Store as of late!
This week, we’ve selected a broad range of topics — from emergency alerts everyone should have installed on their iOS devices, to a fun photo app, and some truly immersive puzzle games. Check out our picks below.
This week: we celebrate CultCast 200! And just in time for the party—it’s the iPhone 6s scandal we all knew would someday come… #CHIPGATE. We’ll tell why the internet is nerd-raging over this newest iPhone scandal, and why it might just be diminishing your iPhone 6s’ battery life. Plus: the new Jobs movie is generating Oscar buzz. Seriously! And since he’s seen it—twice—Alex E Heath is here to give us his review. And stay tuned till the end for our favorite memories of CultCast’s past. It’s CultCast 200!
Our thanks to Harry’s for supporting this episode. Harry’s super-sharp, German-made razors ship free right to your door and for way less than the drugstore razors. And be sure to use code CultCast at checkout save $5 off your first order.
Some Apple Watch users are apparently confused over what types of exercise the wearable’s Workout app can track. Many people are using it to log weightlifting or stretching sessions, even though Apple only claims the app is suitable for “dedicated cardio workouts.”
Fortunately, a new breed of fitness apps is emerging that uses the accelerometer access enabled by the recently released watchOS 2 to track strength and flexibility workouts more effectively.
The new Steve Jobs movie gets just about everything wrong, says the PR veteran who worked with the Apple CEO during the first Macintosh’s launch. From the situations to the dialogue, almost nothing’s accurate.
“How many things are not true in the movie?” laughed Silicon Valley PR vet Andrea “Andy” Cunningham during a phone interview with Cult of Mac. “Several hundred!”
But Cunningham said she loves the new Steve Jobs biopic anyway, because it captures the truth — a truthier truth.
Whether you like it or not, 2-in-1 tablets that turn into laptops are a thing. Microsoft’s Surface was one of the first to kick off this trend, and with the Surface Pro 4 that was announced this week, it is making the 2-in-1 an even more compelling device.
For the same price as an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, you can get a Surface Pro 4 with powerful notebook internals that runs desktop-class software when you need it. So, why wouldn’t you?
What makes the iPad Pro a better option? And did Apple miss a trick by not making the iPad Pro the ultimate 2-in-1 for iOS and OS X users?
Join us as we battle it out over these questions and more in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!
It happened again yesterday: My beautiful, coveted iPhone 6 Plus found itself airborne, tumbling through time and space. I think it knew where it was headed — I certainly did. I could hear the horrifying noise even before it happened. The inevitable bone-chilling sound of my iOS 9 goodness coming in Force Touch contact with the tile.
I do this often enough to know my cat is running short on lives. This time I lucked out again, but I know the shatter is inevitable. So I’ve turned to the grandfather of iPhone protection: Otter Box and its almost-bombproof Defender series.
If you’re confused about the so-called ‘Chipgate’ controversy swirling around the Internet today, we’re here to help.
It just wouldn’t be an iPhone launch without something going awry, and the latest outcry concerns the relative performances of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus’ A9 processors, especially their effects on the phones’ battery lives. And if that all sounds a bit technical and boring, it is. But it’s not too hard to understand.
The Chipgate controversy upsetting iPhone 6s owners over the past 48 hours is completely overblown, Apple said this afternoon, claiming battery life on iPhone 6s units varies only slightly.
iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus owners have discovered that devices with a TSMC A9 chip get considerably better battery performance than ones sporting an A9 made by Samsung, based on GeekBench 3 scores and some real-world testing. However, Apple says that “manufactured lab tests” that continuously run a heavy workload don’t represent the iPhone 6s’ true capabilities.
Here’s Apple’s full statement on Chipgate:
Seriously, people, we have families to feed. Kittens to adopt. We need your ad impressions.
The new iOS content blockers, as well as traditional ad-blocking browser plugins, threaten the wallets of every ad-supported website, including Cult of Mac. Luckily, it’s easy to whitelist us (and any other sites you want to support). It’s incredibly easy to restore order to the online universe, whether you’re using an iPhone or a Mac.
AT&T finally activated Wi-Fi calling on its network, allowing iPhone users to seamlessly switch to their local wireless network to place calls when their LTE signal is weak.
Apple added WiFi Calling in iOS 8, but you probably haven’t had a chance to use it yet because the only carrier in the U.S. to support it has been T-Mobile. Now that the nation’s second-largest carrier is getting on board, more iPhone users than ever can take advantage of the feature to place calls anywhere in the United States, free of charge.
Here’s how to turn it on:
OS X El Capitan has arrived, and it’s a free for most Mac users, making the decision to upgrade super-simple. Once you have it installed, there are some awesome new features you have to try out. See them all in action in our video tour below.
Not all iPhones 6s units are created equal, and yours just might have a weaker processor thanks to Samsung. Chipgate rocked the Internet with the revelation that Apple used two different suppliers for the A9 chips in its latest iPhones and one processor looks like a serious under-performer.
Even though Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s 14-nanometer A9 chips are bigger than Samsung’s 12-nanometer A9 chips, if you have an iPhone 6s with a TSMC chip, you might get an extra two hours of battery life on your device.
There’s no way to tell if you’re getting stuck with a Samsung A9 processor when you purchase your iPhone 6s in stores or online, but you can find out whether you got saddled with a crappier processor with some help from a couple of apps.
Here’s how to find the maker of the A9 processor in your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus:
As iPhone 6s owners freak out over whether their new smartphones might be saddled with a performance-deficient chip, an app that makes it easy to identify the type of chip inside the new smartphones mysteriously vanishes from the App Store.
It’s enough to get “Chipgate” conspiracy theorists churning, but the reality is a little less dark than all that.
I just leveled up while I was driving to pick my kid up from school. I set up a digital battle using my iPhone while sitting in my driveway, hit “Go,” and then just put my iPhone down on my dashboard while I drove to get him.
I’ve been calling these types of games “auto-battlers” for their central feature: letting you skip tedious, grinding gameplay that tends to be a feature of traditional role-playing games. I don’t have time to micromanage my iPhone; chances are neither do most people, which explains the rise of casual gaming over the past five years or so.
Here are three fun mobile games that let you experience more depth than a typical Flappy Bird clone, but still don’t require too much input to enjoy.
Wireless iPhone charging is a feature Apple fans have dreamed of for years, and it could finally be on the way — with an interesting twist that takes advantage of Apple’s unique technology.
These tiny guitar effects pedals from GMF Music will fit on any pedalboard or stage setup thanks to their unique, top-loading design. Sure, they’re small, but boy do they pack a powerful punch.
All four Bullseye pedals feature a fully shielded steel case (to minimize that hum you’ll hear at most live shows) crammed with some serious circuitry that makes it super-easy to dial in the perfect guitar sound.
Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive said in an interview that he has a “primal fear” over the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, and particularly the possibility that the movie could portray his former boss and friend in a negative light. He did say he hasn’t seen the film, but remains skeptical.
“I’ve talked at length with friends of Steve and of me who have seen the film,” Ive said, before later adding that there are “sons, daughters, widows and very close friends who are completely bemused and completely upset.”
Those on the lookout for a new streaming box this fall will have a tough decision to make when the fourth-generation models of both Apple TV and Roku hit the market. And while they both have some solid features, which one you end up buying depends a lot on what you already own.
Here’s how the two streamers measure up.
Google wants to make your mobile browsing experience better than ever with its new Accelerated Pages Project. The company hopes to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web so that pages, videos, animations, and graphics load “instantaneously.”
It’s true: Power strips are the least-sexy of gadgets to talk about. This Satechi Aluminum Power Strip with USB, however, is as gorgeous as it gets in this admittedly prosaic product category.
Let’s be honest: there are a handful of sites that you visit a lot, open in tabs in Safari.
If you want to keep these tabs ready to go in every Safari window you open, even after you’ve quit Safari and re-launched it, you can use El Capitan’s new tab pinning feature to keep pages “open, up to date, and easily accessible.”
The sites you pin will stay active in the background, pinned to the left side of your tab bar. Here’s how to create (and get rid of) pinned tabs in Safari.
Microsoft’s not taking the threat of the iPad Pro lying down. During today’s keynote event, the company called its brand new 12.3-inch Surface Pro 4 “the most productive device on the planet.”
“We have competitors. You may have noticed,” said Microsoft hardware guru Panos Panay as he introduced the tablet. “They’re chasing it, it’s pretty cool.”
The Surface Pro 4 doesn’t look bad, either.