Or is its best yet to come? Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
You can’t think about Apple without thinking about great design. The two go hand-in-hand, thanks to the company’s incredible ability to churn out hit products that make billions of dollars one after the other, year after year.
But Apple’s design team isn’t perfect. There have been some missteps over the years, and it seems like they’ve become more common under Tim Cook. Its design has also become predictable; even before we get a new product, we have a good idea what it will look like.
Are we worrying about nothing, or is it time Apple invited some fresh blood into Jony Ive’s lair? Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we fight it out over this and more!
Apple CEO Tim Cook will introduce the band Imagine Dragons Satuday at the LOVELOUD Festival in Utah. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t come out publicly until 2014, but he’s quickly become one of the most powerful leaders of the LGBT community.
Out Magazine ranked Tim Cook as the most influential LGBT person of 2016 in its 10th annual power list that charts everything from a person’s impact on the economy, political clout, and how they change our world view.
Stencilsmith combines strategy, farming, mining and battle in a minimalist package. Photo: Nicolas Sepi, Jr.
If role-playing games take too long, and you don’t think Threes is violent enough, Stencilsmith might be your jam.
It’s an endless puzzle title that has you sliding tiles around to harvest ore, craft weapons, and fight monsters, and it manages to do all of those things with beautifully simple and elegant style. And while everything looks pretty basic and charming, you’ll find after a while that you have way more to keep track of than you thought, and that’s when its ridiculous difficulty will start to gnaw at you like one of those wolves that always shows up on the board when you aren’t quite ready.
But it’s all great fun, and you should definitely check it out.
Learn to hack for the good guys with this comprehensive course in security and penetration testing. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
This was a good week for deals, as the list below will attest to. From a camera that takes 3-dimensional pictures to an app for keeping your writing process in line, comprehensive courses in cyber security and more. Take a look, there’s probably something here you’ll be glad you found:
Environmental concerns have been a big theme during Tim Cook's reign at Apple. Photo: Apple
One week before Earth Day, Apple has changed its iconic one color logo to a green-leafed one at select Apple Stores — echoing Apple’s goal under Tim Cook of leaving the world a better place.
Retail staff will also be rocking special green shirts for the week — celebrating the fact that select brick-and-mortar retail stores belonging to Apple now run on renewable energy.
Apple has hit up the makers of the ultra-tiny hinges used for the Microsoft Surface Pro to come and work on its next-gen MacBooks, which will launch in the second half of 2016.
Snapseed lets you tune up your photos with ease. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Snapseed is a free image editing app from Google that has some fantastic editing tools to make any photo even better.
The killer feature here is the set of Tune Image tools that let you take a good photo and turn it into a great photo, right on your iPad, with very little effort.
Here’s a quick intro to these fantastic tools and how to make them tune your photos to best effect.
How many years do you use your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac before shutting it down for the last time and sending it to the big Apple Store in the sky?
While Apple products are typically far more solid and long-lasting than those made by rivals, the company offers a clue in a newly released document concerning Apple and its commitment to the environment.
This reception area will greet you when you arrive at the new Apple Campus. Photo: Foster + Partners
More architectural renderings have surfaced showing off a few new details of Apple’s eagerly-anticipated “spaceship” campus — including ancillary buildings such as a reception center, food stations for employees, and more.
It looks like Apple's recycling program is paying off. Photo: Warner Bros.
If this whole computer and smartwatch thing doesn’t work out, Apple could have a prosperous future in iPhone recycling.
The company released its annual environmental report today, which covers 2015. While the whole thing is pretty interesting, we really started paying attention at the part where the company shared how much material its recycling initiative had recovered from collected iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and anything else people sent in.
Apple says it recovered over 61 million pounds of stuff, and at today’s prices, it’s worth well over $50 million.
Apple needs to help consumers find quality apps, and developers to sell them. Photo: Parampreet Chanana/Pixabay
Apple seems to be looking to improve the way people find apps in the App Store. According to unnamed sources, paid search is one way Apple might both improve discoverability as well as make some money off the feature, like Google does on its own Google Play store.
Paid search would let developers pay Apple to more prominently display their apps in the App Store.
Best of luck, ma'am. Photo: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan
A Michigan woman is suing Apple and Nike for a combined $5 billion over claims that the two companies stole her concept for a device called a “Detachable Beeper Disc Digital Gym Shoe with Sensor.” She states that she filed a patent for her invention 20 years ago, well before the companies came up with their own, similar products — namely, the Apple Watch and the Nike+ smart running system.
While she’s seeking $3 billion from Nike, she’s only looking for $2 billion from Apple, so Cupertino’s getting off relatively light on this one.
Typing on your iPhone with one hand is about to get a whole lot easier thanks to good samaritans at Microsoft that have invented a custom keyboard for iOS.
Microsoft revealed today that its latest iOS app, Word Flow, just entered the beta testing phase. The new keyboard (which is different than the Hub keyboard introduced last week) brings some of Windows 10’s best typing to iOS users like the ability to swipe out words, and intelligent word prediction to go with its dead simple one-handed mode.
The various auto designers and experts interviewed by Motor Trend speculate that Apple will try to redefine the car “experience.” They talk about stuff like acoustics, and look and feel, rather than specs like miles per gallon or engine torque.
They predict that Apple will bring a better “user experience” to the car of the future, not just a better physical product.
This reminded me of interviewing Apple’s designers for my Jony Ive book. They explained that the design group takes exactly this approach when thinking about new Apple products. Instead of starting with chip speeds or screen resolutions, they begin by asking each other how the new product should make the user feel.
And thinking about this made me realize why Jony Ive has a chauffeur. It’s not because he’s a one percenter. It’s about Project Titan, Apple’s future car.
What would you do with $1,000 dollars for iTunes? Photo: Cult of Mac Deals Apple
You can think of iTunes like the biggest content candy store in the world, a mother lode of albums, apps, games, movies and TV shows, and on and on. If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to go into iTunes with a huge bag to fill as you please, today could be your lucky day. Right now you can enter to win a $1,000 iTunes gift card, no strings attached.
Find more of what you like in new Instagram video section. Photo: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac
Instagram gets personal in hopes of helping you find interesting shared videos much more easily with a new feature in the Explore area of its popular photo sharing service.
Called “Videos You Might Like,” the new personalized channel can be found in the Explore grid within the mobile app. Now you can spend less time slogging through the junk and get right to the good stuff.
Raheem Sterling of Manchester City. Photo: JoshJDSS/FlickR
Apple is planning to make a big advertising push during the 2016 UEFA European Championship football tournament, and Raheem Sterling could be the star of the company’s ads.
Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling is reportedly close to signing a deal with Apple to become its first ever global sports ambassador from England, but the entire deal hinges on whether the 21-year-old phenom actually makes the team.
Space Box is a decent platformer, but its hook doesn't quite work. Photo: Tom Graczyk
Let me say this up front: Space Box is a fantastic game. It’s challenging, fun, and has some really great mechanics and art. And if you have a set of virtual-reality goggles to plunk your iPhone into, you can even play it hands-free in 3-D using head-tracking controls.
And that’s where it runs into some trouble, but you shouldn’t let it ruin the game for you.
Wouldn't a new iMac look great on your desk? Photo: Luke Chesser/Unsplash
While the anticipated MacBook Pro revamp is grabbing all the headlines, we’ve got an iMac deal that should be getting your attention.
Get the details on this hot buy, plus the lowest prices we’ve ever seen on a premium MacBook and a handy iPad accessory, in this week’s roundup of the best Apple deals.
As Apple continues to be embroiled in ongoing encryption drama, the company has hired a former NFL lobbyist and former aide to Vice President Joe Biden to head up its new Washington office.
Study the essentials of marketing in the digital age with this bundle of 7 courses. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
These days, being an entrepreneur means being a master of the digital marketplace. Savvy use of social media, search engine optimization, and developing effective work habits make the difference between thriving or floundering. This bundle of seven courses covers those and a host of other essential topics to doing business in the digital age, and right now you can get access for just $19.
iTunes Allowance let parents set a monthly spending limit for their iTunes-loving kids. Photo: Jason Cipriani/Apple
Apple has announced that it is dropping its iTunes Allowance feature, which allowed users to limit the amount of money that could be spent by their kids (or themselves!) on iTunes games, apps, movies and music.