Apple’s Russian version of Siri launched earlier this month, and while the presence of the virtual assistant in Russia is certainly welcome, its early bigoted views were not.
According to one YouTube user, Siri not only refused to answer questions about gay bars but went a step further, providing downright homophobic responses. In the video, Siri supposedly claims to be embarrassed by the topic, suggesting that gay marriage is a bit of a downer.
If you’re lucky enough to get an invite to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this June, make sure you don’t turn up at Moscone West with your selfie stick.
Apple’s information page for the event confirms that selfie sticks and similar apparatus will not be allowed inside the venue or within the Yerba Buena Gardens, so if you really must take pictures of your own face, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.
Rumors of a redesign coming to the iOS Music app have been floating around the rumor mill ever since Apple acquired Beats last year, and today we got our first preview of the future of music.
iOS 8.4 gives developers a look at the redesigned Music app that’s aimed at making it easier, faster, and more fun to listen to music than ever before. Apple has left out the long-rumored streaming-music component of the app, but the redesign is full of other noteworthy features.
Here’s a quick GIF tour of all the new changes:
I’ve been playing Vainglory quite a bit lately, and the one thing that really distracts me and actually impacts my gameplay (when on my iPad 3) is notifications. They can make the game stutter, which wreaks havok on my ability to gank an enemy Joule from the bushes with my Krul.
Seriously, it’s annoying.
I turned on Do Not Disturb last week to try and get rid of these badges that annoy, but it never worked: I still got notifications from Facebook, Messages and other appss. I did some digging to find out why.
Being a workaholic means I’m always taking my MacBook with me wherever I travel, but carrying around a $2,000 machine is a constant risk. In today’s s video I show you everything you need to know to keep your MacBook safe while you’re on the move.
CHICAGO — I grabbed the black suit jacket I was married in because I wasn’t sure how to dress for a private appointment to try on a $10,000 gold watch.
My look is challenging to class up. The clean-shaven head, long goatee and ample belly blend in better at a biker bar. But I felt halfway respectable-looking when I walked into the Apple Store in Chicago’s upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood for a Saturday morning hands-on showing of the Apple Watch Edition.
Not many Apple Stores are scheduling appointments for the 18-karat gold Edition, but the ones that do provide extra-special attention. I had a friendly guide, two floor supervisors who came by to shake my hand and thank me for my patience, and a couple of hawk-eyed security guards.
Want to try on the super-fancy $10,000 Apple Watch Edition? You might have to do a bit of driving, because in a whopping 75 percent of the United States, it’s totally impossible to demo the solid gold Apple smartwatch.
Only 12 states (and the District of Columbia) have Apple Stores taking appointments to check out the Apple Watch Edition. That leaves 38 states that are apparently not fancy or fashionable enough to offer demos of the schmanciest Apple Watch of all. To see if you live in one of them, check out Cult of Mac’s handy map below, but be prepared to weep.
SAN FRANCISCO — Like a lot of people, I took the midnight plunge and bought an Apple Watch before I’d even tried it on.
But today, I got to see the device I bought last night. I went down to the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco and tried on a range of watches.
I wish I’d done this before, because I might have ordered differently.
With reports that it can break elements of Touch ID, there are plenty of reasons to consider not upgrading to iOS 8.3, the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS.
But here’s a very good reason to: according to security researchers, the update fixes a vulnerability which has the potential to render your iPhone almost useless.
CHICAGO — It didn’t matter that Mel Torgusen had already ordered her Apple Watch at 2 a.m.
She still had to be at the Apple Store on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile at 10 sharp — just to touch one.
“Ever since the announcement, I’ve been counting down the days,” said Torgusen, standing at one of a dozen stations the store had set up for prospective buyers to try the watch. “I’m an Apple person and I didn’t need to try it on to know I’d want one.”
A steady stream of the curious and devoted filed into the store Friday for the big Apple Watch preview. There were about 20 people who had signed up for the early appointments lined up outside the store when the doors opened. Others who did not schedule appointments for a personal tour went past a showcase of watches, then quickly registered for private showings.
Now that the Apple Watch is officially available for pre-orders, Apple has opened up its new Concierge service, allowing you to schedule appointments with Apple Specialists for official Watch fittings.
Provided you can find an available slot, that is!
Did you get to your computer too late to get one of the earliest shipping Apple Watches? No problem: Confirmed preorders are already showing up on eBay.
At a premium, of course.
Shipping dates on the Apple Watch may have already slipped back as far as August in some cases, but there’s one surefire way to get your hands on Apple’s hotly-anticipated wearable: be a big name celebrity.
As users around the world counted down the seconds until they could preorder an Apple Watch, both Katy Perry and Drake posted pictures to their Instagram accounts, showing themselves posing with their brand new Edition devices.
Is it too late for me to start a career in pop music?
The new MacBook goes on sale this week, and while the first reviews have raved about its incredible design, unbelievable thinness and jaw-dropping display, it’s probably not for you.
While early critiques might have alleviated concerns that the new MacBook’s CPU is about as powerful as a 2011 netbook, there are a few other issues you should know about before you rush to the Apple Store to snap up a shiny gold MacBook.
These are the new MacBook’s 10 biggest flaws:
Apple Watch has been hogging so much of the tech spotlight lately that you could be forgiven for forgetting that Apple is also about to release a revolutionary new computer.
The first reviews of the new MacBook landed on the web to remind us that the first gold MacBook will be available to order tomorrow, too. According to the experts, it’s the most beautiful computer ever created. But should you buy it?
Here’s the good and the bad of the new MacBook.
Apple is clearly expecting the Apple Watch to be a big hit, because it’s already limiting orders to just its online store.
In an effort to help meet expected demand, Apple has announced that you won’t be able to go into your local store and walk out with a Watch for the foreseeable future.
The Apple Watch launch might be Cupertino’s most innovative — and complicated — product rollout ever. Usually you just pick between a colors and tech specs, but for Apple’s “most personal device yet,” things aren’t so straightforward.
Even the actual purchasing process is different: Lining up at the store a couple days early isn’t going to help you this time, but this guide to buying an Apple Watch definitely will. It’s loaded with tips for beating the odds and wrapping an Apple Watch around your wrist on launch day.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to preorder and buy an Apple Watch.
(Editor’s note: This post has been updated and stickied to the top of Cult of Mac’s homepage. You’ll find fresh Apple news by scrolling down the page.)
The first wave of Apple Watch reviews landed this morning with the consensus that Apple has created the best smartwatch ever. Now whether you actually need a smartwatch is still being heavily debated, but the early Apple Watch reviews have highlighted some pretty compelling cases.
Reviews from tech news sites have praised Apple Watch for its innovative UI and incredible design. After slogging through the first reviews though, the most interesting insights I found about Apple Watch came from non-tech sites. What will it be like for normal, non-tech nerds to use Apple’s timepiece?
Here’s everything new I learned about Apple Watch from reading all the reviews:
Apple released the third major update to iOS 8 today with the public launch of 8.3, which brings a host of new features to iPhones and iPads.
The iOS 8.3 update is available as an over-the-air update or via iTunes. Some of the new features include racially diverse emoji, two-factor authentication for Google, new Siri languages, and tons of bug fixes.
Here’s a run down of the biggest features you’ll find:
Apple has released OS X 10.10.3 to the public. The update includes the all-new Photos app, which has been in beta for the last several weeks.
Hundreds of new emojis have also been added, along with improvements to Spotlight, Safari, Wi-Fi connectivity and more.
The first reactions to the Apple Watch are hot off the presses and, to be honest, they’re pretty much what I was expecting.
There are some nice revelations (battery life isn’t as bad as we feared), some areas to improve on (activating the screen carries a lag, although Apple promises it can fix it though software updates), praise for how easy it is to manage notifications, and a general sense of reviewers trying desperately to figure out what the hell a smartwatch should try and do.
And concluding that — despite being unclear about quite what that is — Apple has done it pretty well.
Check out the highlights of the early hands-on impressions from Re/Code, the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue, and the other people lucky enough to get an early review unit:
The Resident Evil franchise has suffered a bit of an identity crisis in recent years, straying from its survival-horror roots toward something considerably more action-based. The latest entry, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, tries to have it both ways by splitting its four-chapter tale between two storylines. One features two frantic survivors struggling for resources, and the other has you playing as a heavily armed man of action.
It seems like mixing these two extremes would end up diluting them both, but somehow developer Capcom managed to take the best of both play styles and create something distinctive, harrowing and still damned scary.
Most apps are way too nice to us. “Don’t worry that you missed your 10,000 steps today,” they say. “There’s always tomorrow.”
CARROT apps are different. Whether you’re using a CARROT calorie counter or a CARROT weather forecaster, all the apps in the growing line have one thing in common: an hilariously sadistic AI character that serves as your in-app guide, dishing out harsh punishments if you miss your targets.
“So many of the apps out there are just cloyingly sweet, CARROT creator Brian Mueller tells Cult of Mac. “They’re always telling you that you’re doing a good job, no matter what you’re doing. I wondered what would happen if you did the opposite and created a sarcastic, irreverent personality who would yell at you if you don’t get stuff done. And, to my surprise, people really, really responded to it.”
Just three days before Apple’s smartwatch will be on display in stores around the world, new pictures have revealed what Apple Watch packaging will look like.
Images of the Apple Watch box, which doubles as a charging stand, were posted on Instagram today. With the first review units already out in the wild, we’re learning new details about the Apple Watch nearly every day, like how Apple Watch bands will be packaged.
Here’s a glimpse of the Apple Watch band boxes:
Level-5, the game developer behind adored Nintendo 3DS gaming franchises Professor Layton and Fantasy Life, is making the rough transition to mobile devices.
At a press conference in Japan, Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino said Layton 7, the next installment in the Professor Layton series, and Fantasy Life 2, sequel to the much-loved Fantasy Life sim game, would be coming to iOS and Android smartphones.
Unfortunately, both games show signs of becoming shallow mobile experiences, the biggest reason companies like Nintendo have cited as a reason not to bring handheld titles into the mobile arena.
My, how times have changed.