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iPhone shipments will get worse before they get better

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iPhone 6 Plus_7
Apple will have to wait until next year for iPhone growth to return.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple is confident the iPhone will bounce back from its current slump in demand, but new forecasts suggest shipments will get worse before they get better. Researchers don’t expect growth to return until 2017 when Apple introduces bigger upgrades.

Coach leaks Apple Watch bands before official unveiling

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Watch out Apple Watch, Google is coming for you.
Coach is busting out some fancy Apple Watch bands.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Move over Hermes. There’s a new high-end fashion brand that is ready to capitalize on the Apple Watch and its leather bands will be launching soon.

Coach has secretly listed its first Apple Watch bands on its website. An official unveiling of the luxury leather bands is still in the works, but based on the early listings it appears that the bands will come at a relatively cheap price point.

Apple will host its WWDC 2016 keynote on June 13

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macbook-pro-wwdc-2016
Apple's WWDC keynote is confirmed!
Photo: Apple

Apple has begun inviting members of the press to its WWDC 2016 keynote on June 13.

The event kicks off at 10 a.m. PT in the Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco, and it should deliver our first sneak peeks at iOS 10 and Apple’s next major upgrades for watchOS, tvOS, and OS X.

How silly songs about the iPhone sparked a music career

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When the Moog strikes, Parry Gripp writes funny songs about anything.
When the Moog strikes, Parry Gripp writes funny songs about anything.
Photo: Dana E. Ross

Cult of Mac 2.0 bugParry Gripp was the lead vocalist of a promising pop punk band that had a record deal and stardom just around the corner.

Success never came and just as Parry Gripp was set to give up, a new career in music rose from the ashes — by accident — thanks to the iPhone and Apple.

The technology company was not only fodder for Gripp’s brand of absurd novelty music he was creating but, through iTunes, Apple provided a way for him to publish his music and start to make a living.

Win It Wednesday: 5 years of the complete Adobe Creative Cloud [Deals]

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Enter now to win five years of free access to Adobe's Creative Cloud.
Enter now to win five years of free access to Adobe's Creative Cloud.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Content creators of all types and stripes use Adobe products, whether they know it or not. From Photoshop, Premiere and Indesign to Flash and Acrobat, Adobe underpins everything from photography and video to web design and digital documents. All of the above is wrapped up in Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and now’s your chance to get access to the whole shebang for a full five years, at no cost.

Enter to win five years of access to this invaluable suite of tools — a $2,999 value! — at Cult of Mac Deals.

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus to come in 256GB storage options

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Screen Shot 2016-06-01 at 15.49.39
There could be a lot more storage inside your next iPhone.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s next-generation iPhones could be its biggest yet — at least as far as storage is concerned.

According to one research firm, both the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus will come in whopping 256GB options, while the latter will also pack more RAM.

WeChat is the messaging app that’s more like a mobile OS

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WeChat
China's WeChat is a messaging app tha offers just about everything, from text messaging to instant payments. It's a monster, with mote than 1 billion registered users.
Photo: Virginia Werner/Cult of Mac

Made_in_china_bugMainland 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 — Now that I use WeChat, I don’t need much else when it comes to social media apps. In fact, WeChat has almost entirely replaced text messaging in China. I am able to link up with other WeChat users through their username without providing a telephone number, so it is a great platform for communicating with new acquaintances or people I am working with.

I have hundreds of WeChat contacts, but only a handful of telephone numbers in my iPhone. The app also recently introduced group video messaging and has an extensive WeChat Wallet service (similar to Zhifubao) available to Chinese bank account holders.

Facebook Messenger may soon add end-to-end encryption

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Facebook messaging apps
Messenger is finally getting encryption.
Photo: Facebook

Facebook plans to tighten security on its popular Messenger platform this summer, but it won’t be turned on for all users by default.

Messenger will add a new end-to-end encryption feature that prevents hackers and the government from being able to read your text messages. Facebook won’t be able to read your messages either though, and that will seriously hurt its ability to make bots great if you decide to opt-in to better security.

Harvard and MIT teamed up for this open-source online education platform

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Education is easy with EDX's learning platform.
Education is easy with EDX's learning platform.
Photo: EDX

This post is brought to you by EdX.

It’s often said that the internet makes it possible for anyone to get educated on any subject. But just as in offline modes of education, the many models of online teaching and learning are far from perfect, with plenty of room for improvement and innovation.

A joint effort between Harvard and MIT — dubbed EdX — is aiming to provide not only a place for learning new skills, but a platform for innovating new ways of teaching and learning over the web. It’s a nonprofit online education platform partnered with nearly 100 of the world’s leading universities and institutions — Harvard, MIT, Microsoft, Caltech, Columbia, you get the picture — to provide students anywhere in the world access to more than 1,000 certified courses. As an open-source platform, it also offers educators an opportunity to design and implement their own modes of teaching.

Beastly all-in-one proves the iMac could be great for gaming

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gallery-5
The Aura is spectacular inside and out.
Photo: Digital Storm

Apple doesn’t have gamers in mind when choosing components for its latest Macs, but PC maker Digital Storm has proven that it’s possible to build a beastly gaming rig into the iMac’s gorgeous all-in-one form factor.

Check out the company’s stunning new Aura PC, which puts NVIDIA’s latest GTX 1080 graphics card behind a 34-inch curved display.

Apple Campus 2 nears closer to completion in latest drone video

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Apple moves in early next year.
Apple moves in early next year.
Photo: Jerry Gonzo

Construction on Apple’s new campus isn’t expected to be completed until the end of the year, but the spaceship is starting to come into shape in the latest flyover video that shows some buildings have already been completed.

Tim Cook’s beautiful pile of dirt keeps growing in Matthew Roberts’ latest drone footage of the new campus that takes a look at the massive 11,000 vehicle car garage that is nearly finished, as well as a new plaza that’s being constructed near the underground theater entrance.

Watch the action below:

Eddy Cue is Golden State’s biggest cheerleader

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Eddy Cue had the best seats in the house to watch the Warrior's comeback.
Eddy Cue had the best seats in the house to watch the Warrior's comeback.
Photo: SF Chronicle/Twitter

The Golden State Warriors completed one of the biggest comebacks in NBA playoff history last night when they beat the Oklahoma City Thunder, and perhaps no one in the arena was as amped as Apple VP Eddy Cue.

You see, Eddy Cue loves basketball. He’s such a big hoops fan that he’s made a habit of getting spotted with some of the game’s biggest stars in the biggest moments. So it should be no surprise that when the Warriors’ local paper announced the team’s win this morning Cue was right on the front page with Steph Curry.

Check it out:

In China, the Alipay app is as good as cash

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Everyone accepts Zhifubao, China's answer to Paypal, even street vendors.
Everyone accepts Zhifubao, China's answer to Paypal, even street vendors.
Photo: Virginia Werner/Cult of Mac

Made_in_china_bugMainland China is Apple’s second biggest market, and will one day be its first. Apple 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 — The common question when conducting any kind of financial transaction in China is: “Cash or Zhifubao?” I have used Alipay in a wide variety of settings — paying for products online or meals at restaurants, sending rent money to my landlord, or squaring up with a taxi driver. It was easy to set up, after I spent all of 15 minutes creating a Chinese bank account at my local branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

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Last chance: Organize your writing process with Scrivener 2 [Deals]

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Keep your writing process in check with this fast-escaping deal on Scrivener 2.
Keep your writing process in check with this fast-escaping deal on Scrivener 2.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

You, dear reader, only have a few days left to get in on the award-winning Mac app that can reinvent your writing process. Spend enough time putting words to screen and you’ll discover how easily distracting the computer can be, between keeping track of notes and research, draft versions, interviews, and all those tabs of half-read articles..