Cult of Mac

Can’t wait until the official release of iOS 11 to try out all the new features Apple revealed at WWDC 2017?

Good news: The first iOS 11 public beta is now available.

Apple’s foray into autonomous cars could eventually put rental car companies out of business, but for now, Apple Car rumors are doing wonders for Hertz which just saw its stock price skyrocket thanks to some new rumors.

When the iPhone launched in 2007, the tech world went into conniptions about the device’s price tag. At a time when carriers offered most cellphones for free, the iPhone’s $500 starting price seemed downright crazy.

Well, guess how much an original iPhone costs now?

It might be the most successful smartphone on the planet, but the iPhone didn’t become what it is today without some failures along the way.

Even before the device made its much-anticipated debut in 2007, Apple overcame big missteps and mistakes. It tried putting iTunes on other phones. It believed we didn’t need native apps. It entered into embarrassing partnerships with big bands.

As Cult of Mac looks back over the iPhone’s history to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary, in collaboration with Wired UK, 10 big failures stick out like a sore thumb.

Predicting the future is tough, even for the experts. That’s the only lesson we can learn from looking back at these horribly misguided iPhone predictions that greeted the device at its launch 10 years ago.

Before most people had even wrapped their fingers around Apple’s first-gen smartphone, tech pundits, analysts and competing CEOs were already writing off the iPhone as a disaster similar to Apple’s previous excursions into video game consoles and the like.

Here are just a few of the laughable reactions that greeted the iPhone in 2007.

Revised beta builds of iOS 11 beta 2 and tvOS 11 beta 2 have been seeded to developers by Apple this morning, just five days after the previous versions of the betas were made available.

Along with the new updated betas for iOS 11 and tvOS 11, Apple also dropped a new Apple Watch beta in the form of watchOS 3.2.3 beta 4.

The lobby of the Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple Park campus looks nearly ready to host Apple events. Crews are working around the clock to finish the new Apple headquarters and the entire site is finally starting to come together now that landscaping is almost done.

A new drone video reveals there’s still some work to go on the theater and the main spaceship building, but road striping and landscaping are well underway. The video includes an incredible shot of the theater lit up at night with Apple Park in the background.

Check it out:

The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.

The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.

This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.

Apple’s first iPhone SE units manufactured in India are now on sale in the country.

“Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in India,” reads the tagline on the back. Despite being made locally, the devices cost exactly the same as those shipped from China.

If you work in an office, you probably work with Microsoft Office. Their productivity software suite has become a staple of work environments around the world. Learning Word or PowerPoint is useful for any professional. But few are as useful to master as Excel, which is one of the most widely used professional applications.

Not convinced about how augmented reality has the opportunity to improve our apps? Then check out a couple of neat demos of Apple’s ARKit, the AR toolkit Apple showed off at WWDC to allow “fast and stable motion tracking” for augmented reality apps.

Between them, they depict how you’ll soon be able to use your iPhone as a tape measure by pointing your device at an object or scene, tapping two points on it, and then accurately measuring the distance between them.

Check them out below.

Samsung is hoping to attract iPhone owners to its new Galaxy S8 lineup with a revamped Smart Switch website.

The company highlights just how easy it can be to swap iOS for Android and take all of your data with you in just a few steps.

If you hadn’t heard by now, this week marks the tenth anniversary of a little device called the iPhone going on sale. To celebrate, the Wall Street Journal has created a new mini-documentary, entitled Behind the Glass, detailing the making of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Courtesy of interviews with former Apple execs Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall and Greg Christie, here are the top factoids we learned from it.

The iPhone packed a lot into its first astonishing decade. Not only has the device itself evolved significantly since its promising-but-by-no-means-perfect beginnings, but it’s transformed Apple’s business — and many of our very lives — in the process.

All this week, Cult of Mac’s “iPhone Turns 10” series will look at the innovative device’s massive impact on worldwide culture. The iPhone, which launched on June 29, 2007, truly changed the world.

What iPhone milestones have passed since Steve Jobs introduced this stunning hybrid device, which combined a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device? Check out our handy guide to 10 years of iPhone history.

Now is the perfect time to enter into the wonderful world of smart speakers. Amazon has slashed $50 off its impressive Echo for one day only, making it more affordable than it has ever been since it launched in November 2014.

Today’s entrepreneurial environment is always changing, and there’s just no way forward without a solid business plan. Whatever your idea, it has to be framed with an eye to what investors really expect.

SEGA unleashed some of its classic games for free on iOS this week, bringing a plethora of games from the Genesis era to the iPhone and iPad as part of its SEGA Forever series.

That’s just one of the picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup. We’ve also got a great Slack alternative, a nifty WhatsApp upgrade, and a puzzle game that’s sure to appeal to anyone who loves Tetris. Check out our choices below.

On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.

Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.

But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.

Summer’s finally here! Along with the warm weather has come bunch of hot new deals in the Cult of Mac Store. This round, we’ve got a bundle of top shelf Mac apps that you can name your price for. There’s also a universal mount and grip for any mobile camera, and an iPhone case that can survive almost any fall. We’ve even got a powerful backup battery that you’ll never lose thanks to a built-in Bluetooth tracker.

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format), Apple’s new photo format to replace JPEGs. Discover the many advantages HEIF has over JPEG.

Discover all the great ways to watch streaming soccer this summer on Apple TV with our handy list. Learn how to easily save lots of iMessage pictures and movies all at once toCult of Macthe iPhone Photos app.

And, save 20 percent off Dubai-based Ullu’s luxury Apple Watch bands only for the month of June! Check out lots of new arrivals in our Watch Store!

Click iTunes for a free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine. Here are this week’s top stories.

This week on The CultCast: More of the powerful new iOS 11 features you’ve never heard of! Plus: The talented app that will harnesses the power of Apple’s new augmented reality features; Scott Forstall is back, and he’s sharing the bizarre story of how the original iPhone really came to be; and everything you need to know about HEIF, the JPEG-killing format Apple is adopting.

Our thanks to Blue Apron for supporting this episode. Blue Apron makes it easy to cook delicious meals at home. Get your first three meals free at BlueApron.com/CultCast.

An iPhone 8 “dummy unit” made from leaked parts give us an early glimpse at what Apple’s next big upgrade might look like.

Its form is similar to that of recent handsets like the iPhone 7, but with a larger edge-to-edge display that will help it compete with rivals like the Galaxy S8.

Google is going to stop scanning your Gmail messages for ad personlization, it has confirmed today.

You will still see ads when you use Gmail on your phone or in a web browser, but they will no longer be based on information Google has pulled from your emails.

Everyone’s using WhatsApp these days, which makes it an ideal platform for quickly sharing files with friends and colleagues. And it just got even better at doing that, because you can now use WhatsApp to share any file type.

Tesla is considering launching its own streaming music service, and it’s already in talks with players in the music industry about doing so.

According to a new report, Tesla has held conversations with all the major music labels about launching its service — which would come bundled with its cars, as opposed to being a standalone service like Apple Music.