Cult of Mac

If you like how your Mac keyboard feels to the touch, you may like the way some of the keys look and feel as wearable art.

Pennsylvania artist Stacey Peterson salvages the keys and even the power button to make necklaces, cufflinks, and other wearable keyboard pieces that she sells to eager Apple fans on her Etsy site. In most cases, the key or power button engages in that satisfying click.

While Apple continues to produce desirable electronic devices, other support industries have emerged to provide cases, sleeves, and peripheral hardware accessories. Like the T-shirt or toymakers who celebrate Apple culture, Peterson is part of a cottage industry that engages the Apple fan’s emotional motherboard, the circuits that spark that loyalty, nostalgia and a sense of coolness.

An iPhone sales slump couldn’t stop Apple from climbing up to third in the 2016 Fortune 500 list. The Cupertino company raked in $233.7 billion last year, helping it overtake both Chevron and Berkshire Hathaway.

In just over a week Apple will reveal its big software updates for all its products at WWDC, but for now it’s still working on bug fixes on the current platforms before moving on.

Apple seeded four new beta updates to developers today, bringing a big batch of under the hood improvements to iOS, OS X El Capitan, watchOS and tvOS.

Speech-to-text technology — for speaking into your device to compose a text message, send an email, etc. — isn’t very old, but still shows signs of a hearing problem. When you want to translate your spoken words into written text without having to manually change every ‘ours’ into ‘hours’, you won’t find more accurate software than Dragon. The 5th and latest version of their dictation software is as accurate and easy to use as you’ll ever find, and right now you can get it for $99.99.

Apple has updated its homepage to celebrate the life of Muhammad Ali, who passed away on June 3, aged 74. The boxing legend and civil rights activist was once featured in Apple’s iconic “Think Different” ads.

Apple’s plans to open own-brand Apple Stores in India may finally be gaining momentum, with a new report claiming that the Indian government is likely to give the company a two or three year exemption to local sourcing laws in order to establish its retail outlets in the country.

It’s not just handset design that Chinese tech companies seem keen to “borrow” from Apple. According to a fascinating new report, a growing number of Chinese companies are copying Apple’s “balance-sheet strategy” by issuing debt as a way to increase their return on equity and hand money back to shareholders.

When people look back on Steve Jobs’ most audacious moves during his 1997-2011 stint as CEO, launching the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and iPad are most frequently singled out as rightfully big achievements — as is his decision to open Apple-branded retail outlets and the iTunes Stores.

Back on June 6, 2005, Jobs made another major announcement, however, when he revealed that Macs were switching their CPUs over from PowerPC processors to Intel ones.

Here’s why it mattered.

In a week where Cult of Mac brought you exclusive next-gen MacBook pics and controversial ex-iPad creator Tony Fadell parted ways with Nest, we got some great new apps arriving in the App Store.

Which apps were dominating our iOS devices over the past seven days? Check out our picks below. Trust us, it’s the perfect way to spend your Sunday!

You’ve gotta love the tools and toys you never knew you needed, and this week’s latest deals include a few. An app for tracking your car and preventing theft, a pair of extra long Lightning Cables, lessons in iOS coding and comprehensive instruction in one of the leading illustrator apps. The first step in wanting something is knowing it exists, so read on to get first dibs on these great deals:

This week brought warmer weather and a whole bunch of great new deals. From iFixit’s invaluable electronics repair kit, to a lifetime of virtual private network access, a digital note-taking set and a massive storage upgrade that hides in the SD slot. Take a look and take something cool home with you:

This week on The CultCast: MacBook Pro spy photos reveal some juicy new features, but some old favorites go bye-bye. Plus: Apple may finally update its ancient Thunderbolt display; why moving iPhone to a three-year update cycle would suck; and stay tuned for more weird and wacky super-fan stories from The Cult of Mac.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to build a website that looks beautiful on any device that visits at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10 percent off.

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine we have a great lineup for you. Read about Parry Gripp, whose career in music was given a boost thanks to Apple and the iPhone.

Check out the precise design features and attention to detail at the newest Apple store in San Francisco, where all architectural elements align. Plus, view leaked photos of the new OLED touchpad that is very, very likely to appear on this year’s MacBook Pro.

These and many more great stories in Cult of Mac Magazine, free for you right now.

Here are this week’s top stories.

Godammit. I really loved Muhammad Ali. My all-time greatest hero. A great athlete, funny as shit, and a giant of a man because he gave a shit about something other than himself. He stood up for what he believed in, and he shone a light on all kinds of injustice. Rest in peace Ali.

Nest co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell revealed today that he’s taking flight and leaving the company he created.

The godfather of the iPod hit a grand slam with the launch of his smart-thermostat company that was bought by Google, but it appears he’s ready to call it quits just six years into Nest’s run.

Mainland China is Apple’s second biggest market, and will one day be its first. The company is making a big push on the mainland, opening new stores and investing in home-grown companies. Why the interest? Because China is the new Japan — it’s where the future is happening. All this week we take a look at the cutting-edge apps that define mobile life on the mainland.

SHANGHAI CITY, China — In China, 478 million people — more than the entire population of the United States — listen to music online, according to government statistics. I am one of those people, and in China I have joined the reported 80 million active users of QQ Music to stream music on my iPhone.

With WWDC 2016 set to kick off in just 10 days, Apple has released a new update to its annual WWDC app that makes it easy to keep track of all the new software and announcements, even if you’re not attending the conference.

Developers will now be able to virtually attend sessions thanks to the new live streaming tools that come with the new tvOS version of the WWDC app, as well as multitasking picture-in-picture option for the iPad version.

Former Apple marketing guru Ken Segall helped launched Apple’s string of i-devices, but now he says that the company has lost its way from simplicity lately and there’s no clearer sign than the confusing naming scheme of the iPhone.

In a recent op-ed claiming Apple’s days of simplicity may have died with his buddy Steve Jobs, Segall takes Apple’s product names to tasks for being far too complex for customers to keep track, saying Tim Cook has created products that he finds bewildering.

Google’s DeepMind team has been working with scientists to create a way in which humans can kill artificial intelligence agents before they can turn on us.

It’s a concern many have as the AI systems being developed by tech giants become more intelligent and more capable — but Google has us covered.

Apple’s business model is based on the future, but sometimes a fan pines for the machine they had as a kid.

Self-taught hardware hacker and 3D printer artist Charles Mangin happily tries to satisfy those vintage tech longings by recreating pieces of Apple’s past in miniature. He even brings the screens to life — sort of.

Just days after it arrived on the App Store, NBA star Steph Curry’s emoji app, StephMoji, has already shot to the top of the paid apps list.

Because which indie devs need your money more than a $12 million per year basketball player?

Getting online is getting in position to be hacked, snooped or blocked. Hotspot Shield dramatically reduces the risk of all of the above, encrypting your data through high speed connections with a secure and private network even via public Wi-Fi. If you’re uneasy about identity theft, frustrated by geo restrictions, or having your activity tracked, sign up with Hotspot Shield Elite VPN for life for $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Facebook is giving up on its attempt to be your go-to news outlet. Just seven months after it made its initial debut, the standalone Notify app, which provided push notifications for breaking news, is no more.

The 4-inch iPhone SE may not be the go-to choice of users wanting to get their hands on Apple’s premium handsets, but they’ve proven immensely popular in developing markets where they’ve been causing a major headache for Chinese makers of low-cost phones.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise to hear that Xiaomi — a company not exactly not for its reluctance to rip off Apple’s ideas — is rumored to be developing a smaller-sized smartphone aimed at taking back some of the ground it’s lost to the iPhone SE.

You may identify as an Apple fan in life, but is that really the way you’d like to be best-remembered in death?

If so, a company called Autograph, founded by Serbian artist Pavel Kayuk, may be able to help you. It has created a tombstone in the shape of an iPhone, referred to (of course) as the iTombstone — forever marking you out as coolest character in the graveyard. Or something like that.