An Australian indie developer who was flown to Cupertino by Apple to work on an Apple Watch app alongside giants like Twitter and BMW has come under fire for reportedly falsifying a story about suffering from terminal cancer.
Created by healthy-living proponent Belle Gibson, iPhone food app The Whole Pantry has been pulled from the App Store, while an accompanying Apple Watch app has vanished from Apple’s list of “coming soon” apps for its upcoming wearable.
If you’ve ever walked into a flagship Apple Store unconvinced of the magic of Cupertino’s products, a wondrous curvy, glass staircase might have softened your psyche.
Apple’s retail outlets are almost as well known for award-winning architecture and eye-catching staircases as for the MacBooks, iPads and iPhones on sale. But Apple Stores aren’t the only places to make vertical trips seem like a magical journey.
Although he ultimately ran the show at Apple until the middle of 2011, Steve Jobs began thinking about succession plans as early as 2004, when he was just 49 years old, according to a new Fast Company excerpt of the upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs.
2004 was one year after Jobs had a medical scan which revealed he had a tumor in his pancreas. While it was later revealed to be a rare type of pancreatic tumor which grows slower than usual, at the time Jobs was told that he should expect to live no longer than three to six months. 2004 was, of course, years before Apple unveiled the iPhone and iPad: two of the devices for which Jobs is best remembered.
The book excerpt also reveals that, right up until the very end, Tim Cook was convinced that Steve Jobs had a longer role to play at Apple as chairman.
It’s looking like 2015 will finally be the year that Apple’s dream TV service becomes a reality.
After years of reports that the company has been trying to get its own TV subscription off the ground, June is on track to be the month it’s debuted for the world to see. The service will reportedly offer around 25 channels and cost a little more than the competition.
Got an iPhone 6 or smaller? You might be feeling a little cramped for space on your screen due to iOS 8’s new word-prediction system.
That little gray bar that sits just above your iOS keyboard is called the QuickType bar, and it’s where all the auto-correct and typing suggestions appear when you’re sending an email, typing a note or iMessaging with someone. The suggestions are based on your past conversations, which lets QuickType take your writing style into account. It even keeps track of who you’re writing to, since your word choice is typically tied to your conversation partner.
If you want to hide it because you need more space on your screen, you can do so in any of three ways. You can also bring it back if you’ve inadvertently hidden it and don’t know where it went.
Like a Terminator in a downhill marathon, the runaway sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus aren’t slowing down in a hurry.
Analysts expect Apple’s smartphone to trample all competition in its path this quarter, with massive sales of more than 50 million units.
The viral video hit “Apple Engineer Talks,” which mocks the new MacBook, is a scream. I nearly died laughing — along with millions of other people.
The clever parody was crafted by somebody who clearly has a deep knowledge of Apple, so I was surprised to discover its creator is actually an Android user.
Here’s how he did it, and why he didn’t make any money off his wildly successful Apple viral video.
If it seems weird to you that Apple abandoned Thunderbolt, its all-in-one connector created just a few years back, in favor of USB-C for the new MacBook, you’re not the only one. It is weird. But there might be a more straightforward explanation for that than you think: According to a new rumor, Apple effectively invented USB-C.
The Apple Watch isn’t available for preorder yet, but that hasn’t stopped accessory makers from proudly showcasing their wares for the upcoming device.
We still don’t know if Apple will let Apple Watch accessories connect directly into the smartwatch’s mysterious port, but there will be plenty of fancy stands and even some third-party bands.
Here are 12 Apple Watch accessories to trick out your fancy new wearable:
The Black Eyed Peas’ co-founder apl.de.ap is at the top of his game in the music industry and a total Apple fan. He’s also just beginning to speak out about his journey from a young boy with a visual impairment to his current status as a star vocal coach on The Voice of The Philippines.
“I was born with my eye condition,” apl.de.ap, aka Allan Pineda, told Cult of Mac. “Today, I feel much less handicapped by my legal blindness as technology has helped me a lot…. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely tough at times, and occasionally I still feel challenged by it.”
He lives and breathes by his MacBook Pro, thinks Siri is amazing and messes about with music apps on his phone. He shared with Cult of Mac the story of his early life, the visual problem known as nystagmus, and his reliance on and use of technology and Apple products, which he says have helped him get through “a lot of things that would otherwise leave me helpless.”
All week, it’s been reported that Apple is using a “new gold” in the gold Apple Watch Edition. According to Bloomberg, Slate, Gizmodo and many others, Apple has patented a new process to create a “metal matrix composite” by mixing gold with ceramic particles.
The composite supposedly allows Apple to save on the amount of gold it uses, while making the substance super-hard and adding other amazing properties.
But according to Atakan Peker, a materials scientist and one of the co-inventors of Liquidmetal, which Apple holds an exclusive license on, it’s extremely unlikely Apple is using any kind of “new gold” for its watches.
He knows this because Jony Ive says so.
It’s taken all week, but I finally think I have a pretty good idea why Apple is selling a crazy-expensive, super-exclusive gold watch.
Initially, the very idea that Apple would make something for the one percent seemed abhorrent. What makes Apple great is that it sells affordable luxury to the masses.
Apple’s well-designed and well-made products should really only be for the rich, but they are generally affordable to the middle classes. Apple pulls off the miraculous, selling us BMWs at Kia prices.
This is what makes the gold Apple Watch Edition stand out. At first glance, it’s obviously not a product for us. But even though you and I will probably never own one, the $10,000 timepiece is actually kinda democratic, because it’s all about selling $350 watches to the masses.
I can’t wait to read Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. The upcoming biography, by veteran reporters Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, promises to be the definitive telling of Steve Jobs’ life.
The writers scored interviews with major players including Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. The result is a book loaded with interesting anecdotes and insights about the former Apple CEO.
I haven’t yet read the whole thing (it comes out March 24), but while pre-ordering my copy on Amazon, I could initially access a significant portion of the biography through the site’s “Look Inside the Book” feature. (Amazon later blocked out far more of the book’s contents.)
From what I’ve seen, some of the stories are pretty sensational — providing new details into the close relationship between Jobs and Cook, revealing Jobs’ secret plan to buy Yahoo!, and much more.
Want a few of the highlights? Check them out below.
British singer Sarah Brightman has a five-octave vocal range and millions have paid top dollar to hear her sing. But to hit the highest note of her career, Brightman is spending her own money.
Brightman is paying a reported $52 million to become the first singer to travel in space. She will board a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 1 for a 10-day trip aboard the International Space Station. It is the most expensive space tourist trip on record, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.
Photos of Brightman’s training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow, can be found on her website and in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, which gave a detailed account of her training.
You can keep your new ultra-thin MacBook and your high-priced Apple Watch; for me, the most exciting thing at Monday’s “Spring Forward” Apple keynote was the announcement of ResearchKit, a new open-source iOS framework that essentially turns your sensor-filled iPhone into a crowdsourcing medical diagnostic device.
The idea is that researchers will be able to tap into Apple’s enormous base of iPhone users to gather medical data. Users simply sign up to participate in huge global studies about diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, letting researchers build up giant data sets in a fraction of the amount of time it would normally take. Think Kickstarter for medicine!
And according to Bloomberg, initial reports are really, really positive.
We all know that professional industry analysts often say the darndest things, but the Apple Watch has unleashed some truly muddleheaded commentary, especially from people who get paid to know better.
There are the customary and entirely predictable predictions that the Watch will fail — just as the pundits predicted the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad would bomb. This kind of commentary is so knee-jerk and silly, it’s best to just ignore. But then there’s a higher tier of analysis that says the Watch’s success depends on apps (duh, yeah) or the device’s potential for upgrades (completely wrong).
I’m interested in smarter takes on Apple’s strategy, pricing and marketing. Surprisingly, some of the most insightful commentary I’ve seen is on reddit — known generally as a salty hangout for spotty teens and weirdos. Here are some key points outlined by reddit users.
The shiny new watch on Tim Cook’s wrist wasn’t the item that tipped Apple’s hand as it bets on the future of computing.
The really big development was what wasn’t in the room: multiple ports on the new ultrathin MacBook.
The future lies in a single port for powering the device and seemingly not much else. It’s called USB-C. And the “C,” for now, stands for confusion.
The tech world is completely aghast at the price of the gold Apple Watch Edition, which starts at $10,000 but is more likely to set buyers back $17,000 (plus tax!).
The pricing is baking everyone’s noodles. We can’t wrap our heads around a super-expensive watch that will soon be obsolete and is functionally identical to a $350 model. This is not how tech works.
But that’s the point. I wrote how the high-end Apple Watch winds me up — I argued that its very existence is antithetical to Apple’s democratic values. But after further research, it’s obvious that Apple knows exactly what it’s doing, and it’s very smart — even if I still don’t like the gold watch’s enormous price tag.
The Apple Watch Edition is a classic Veblen product. The outrageous price is the whole point. And the higher it gets, the more of them Apple will sell. It might even be priced too low.
Actress Anna Kendrick can probably afford a $10,000 gold watch, but that didn’t stop her from taking a bite out of Apple after it flexed its wrist-computing power Monday.
Known for her brutal Twitter truths, Kendrick offered a sour evaluation of the high-end Apple Watch, which is made of 18-karat gold and comes with a matching luxury price tag.
“We should be thanking Apple for launching the $10,000 ‘apple watch’ as the new gold standard in douchebag detection,” wrote Kendrick.
The new MacBook is one of the most impressive pieces of technology Apple has unleashed in five years. It boasts a Retina display, USB-C, butterfly-hinged keyboard, Force Touch trackpad and terraced batteries. All crammed inside a body that’s smaller than the MacBook Air, made possible by a new fanless processor.
Despite being an unapologetically gorgeous piece of hardware, the new MacBook’s biggest weapon — the fanless processor — is also its greatest weakness.
Apple has placed the new MacBook in a category most people shouldn’t even consider buying, and that’s OK. The new MacBook isn’t for you and me, it’s for the future.
The Apple Watch is a watch in as much as the iPhone is a phone: It bears a resemblance to its titular device, but does so much more as well. That said, Apple’s focus on inviting fashion and watch journalists to yesterday’s “Spring Forward” keynote shows that Cupertino does view its new wearable device as an alternative to analog watches.
Now that we finally have a price tag for all the Apple Watch models, we can compare a few classic alternatives you could strap on your wrist instead. You won’t get the apps, or the ability to beam your heartbeat to a loved one, but if it’s a stylish status symbol you’re after, these are the timepieces the Apple Watch needs to beat.
Check out our picks to see if Jony Ive’s proclamation that Swiss watchmakers are “f*cked” is really true.
When Steve jobs co-founded Apple, his vision was to democratize technology.
At the time, computers were for governments and rich corporations. Jobs wanted everyone to have their own computer — a crazy idea back in the ’70s. The slogan for the original Macintosh was “the computer for the rest of us.”
For the next 30 years, Jobs worked hard to realize that mission. Although Apple has never made the cheapest computers, in general, the trend has been cheaper and more accessible, from the Mac to the iPhone. For most people, Apple’s products are largely affordable.
This is why the gold Apple Watch Edition — which starts at $10,000 — bugs me. It’s not a watch for the rest of us. It’s a watch for everyone but us. It’s a watch for the one percent.
Apple blew us away today with its HBO Now partnership, sexy new MacBook, and ResearchKit. But the star of the show was Apple Watch, which has the potential to be either a game changer or massive flop.
For those who don’t remember, this was the second time Apple execs have taken the stage to talk Apple Watch. We got an initial preview of the Watch back in September, and today’s event was more for filling in the knowledge gaps.
While we already knew the Watch’s main selling points and the kinds of apps it would run, there was still some crucial information that needed answering. Luckily Apple did address the most important questions, but it also left certain aspects of the Watch in ambiguity.
What will make or break the Apple Watch for most people isn’t a fancy band or the feel of the Digital Crown. It will be the apps they can use.
And after today’s Spring Forward event, it looks like a lot of apps will be ready for Watch on day one.
There won’t be an App Store on the Watch itself, but you’ll be able to install apps directly from a special section of the App Store on a paired iPhone. Here are what the hottest third-party Watch apps will look like, including ones Apple isn’t showing off on its site:
Aside from the gorgeous new 12-inch MacBook Air, the part of today’s Apple keynote that excited me the most was the announcement of what Apple is calling ResearchKit, a new open-source iOS software framework designed to crowdsource volunteers for medical research studies.
Using the tool, researchers can tap into Apple’s massive iPhone user base to recruit people for medical data-gathering. Users sign up with a digital signature, and can then instantly begin recording data.