The Apple Watch may have out-earned Rolex to the tune of $1.5 billion last year, but according to Fitbit CEO’s James Park, Apple’s pursuing the wrong direction with its wearable devices.
“We look at it from a consumer point of view,” Park said, noting that the Apple Watch, “is a computing platform [instead, and] that’s really the wrong way to approach this category from the very beginning.”
Future iPhones are going to be so amazing, you probably haven’t even thought of the features Apple is going to add, Tim Cook claimed in a recent interview.
The Apple CEO appeared Monday on Mad Money in an effort to abate the company’s bleeding stock price following last week’s less-than-stellar earnings call. Cook reassured investors that the rumors of Apple’s demise have been greatly exaggerated once again.
While lackluster iPhone sales last quarter have scared off mega-investors and analysts alike, Cook promised some incredible innovation is in the pipeline. In addition to touting upcoming iPhone features, Cook’s wide-ranging conversation with Mad Money host Jim Cramer touched on everything from the Apple Watch being (inaccurately) dubbed a flop to Apple’s growing interest in India and much more.
Here are the highlights:
Silicon Valley campaign donations have poured way more money into the presidential bids of Democrats than Republicans, surprising nobody, ever.
This shocking revelation comes from a report from CrowdPAC, a non-partisan, political crowdfunding organization that has discovered that the companies most likely to donate to campaigns are Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. And while the findings don’t include fine-grain data like individual amounts or the actual numbers of employees, they do make one overwhelming conclusion:
Techies don’t like Donald Trump.
Apple’s meager Q2 2016 earnings report is continuing to wreak havoc on the company’s stock price, leading to the longest streak of losses since 1998.
You know how it is: you spend way too much time on Twitter or Slack when you should be working. Ideally, you’d just not launch them, but that’s not super feasible if you also use these apps for work.
The answer, then, is an app that will hide or quit apps for you after a certain amount of idle time. Called Quitter, it sits nicely in your Mac’s menu bar and makes sure you don’t fall down the Twitter hole.
An Apple-sponsored exhibition featuring dozens of weirdly wonderful gowns — some produced using 3-D printers, lasers and other exotic techniques — should challenge people’s assumptions that handmade items are inherently better, according to Jony Ive.
Apple’s chief design officer talked up the power of machine-powered manufacturing when he took center stage at this morning’s press preview for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Manus x Machina exhibition. The show, which opens today in New York City, explores the relationship between fashion and technology with a gallery of more than 150 unique couture gowns from designers such as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Dior, Miuccia Prada and Yves Saint Laurent.
Using Apple Pay to buy stuff feels like magic every time. Apple’s official ads don’t really portray how awestruck people are when I bust out my iPhone or Apple Watch to buy a Red Bull, but a bank in Australia has captured the moment perfectly.
ANZ’s funny Apple Pay ad is super and simple and just shows a regular guy buying a carton of milk from an Australian version of Seth Rogen. Not much happens, but the wave of utter amazement and disbelief that hits everyone in the store when the guy taps the counter with his iPhone is something you’ve got to see.
Check it out:
SurfacePad for iPhone and iPad solves a problem I have with most folio-style cases.
These tend to cover up too much of the gorgeous Apple design without giving much in return. There’s always a trade-off between form and function. If you’re going to hide the gleaming Apple devices behind a case, at least make it look as classy and useful as Apple does.
The SurfacePad for folio cases from Twelve South are delightfully minimal, covering the front and rear of your iPad or iPhone in luxurious leather without sacrificing a refined look.
Heading down to Rio for the s*** show that will be the 2016 Summer Olympics?
Apple Maps is making it easier for visitors to dodge riots and the zika virus during the trip with the addition of new transit directions for Brazil’s second most populated city.
A 10-year-old kid in Maine finds an iMac G5 on Craigslist and arranges to trade a minibike and a snowblower for it.
The computer was supposed to be for games and homework. It instead proved to be the first piece in what is becoming one of the most significant private collections of Apple devices in the United States.
Leaked images from Apple’s supply chain in Asia have allegedly revealed the upcoming iPhone 7’s battery, and it looks like it will be slightly bigger than the one found in the iPhone 6s.
Photos of the batteries where published this morning on the Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo showing that the iPhone 7 will be upgraded to a 7.04Wh battery — a bump up from the iPhone 6s’ 6.61Wh battery — that will hopefully bring a few more hours a usage time to the new device.
The tech market is all about iteration — build it, replace it, fail faster. Companies of all sizes launch and land constant streams of projects, like the sped up lights of airliners coming into LAX, each one needing someone skilled in seeing it through. That skill is called project management, and it’s one of the most in-demand capabilities anyone can bring to a gig. It’s a skill that you can learn, and this PMP Project Management Prep Bundle is a great place to start, offering comprehensive instruction and a leading project management certification. Right now you can get it for $65 at Cult of Mac Deals.
The iPhone 6 may have earned a rep as the bendiest device Apple’s ever made, but it turns out the iPhone also doubles as a decent bullet shield.
A Turkish soldier discovered that fact the hard way while battling the terrorist organization PKK. In the middle of a fire fight, a young soldier was hit by a bullet, but thanks to the iPhone tucked in his pants pocket he walked away with his life.
Take a look at the damage:
Mother’s Day is less than a week away and to celebrate, Apple has published a new video ad that spotlights mothers across the globe.
The new ad was shot entirely on iPhone, only instead of hiring a high-profile filmmaker to shoot the touching commercial, Apple compiled a collection of photos and short videos of moms shot by amateur photographers and iPhone users.
Watch it below:
Looking to get up to speed on the week’s hottest apps? We’ve got your back!
Since my colleague Evan Killham has already covered the latest hot iOS games, I’m focusing on non-gaming apps this week: whether that’s an all-new custom keyboard, relaunched Q&A platform, or an update to an existing live-streaming favorite. Check out our picks below.
Spring is here (finally) and that means we’re clearing out our Cult of Mac Store. Below you’ll find some of our favorite gear and other goodies going for at least half off of their normal price, from an ultra thin battery case to a private VPN service to a massive bundle of top notch apps that you can name your price for.
Take a gander:
Apple’s executive team is optimistic about the company’s future, despite a bleak earnings call. And why wouldn’t they be? Apple’s slump brought in more money than most other tech companies out there.
Read all about the positive spin in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, along with a trick to making your iOS folders look round with no jailbreak required, a frank appraisal of the Apple Watch one year in, 8 killer Instagram tips, the world’s biggest Apple Museum and much, much more.
Here are the top stories for this week.
April has arrived, which means that the cold and snowy weather is ostensibly behind us. In my case, I’ve traded it in for cold and rainy weather. But it’s still an improvement, so I’ll take it.
And if you’re looking for a way to celebrate the slightly improved temperatures, what better way than taking some cool, new iOS games for a spin outside? Just go to a park, sit in the sun, and jam your nose into your iPhone or iPad and ignore all of the beauty and wonder that surrounds you. Because we live in the future now, and that’s what we do.
Plus, these games are really good. Check them out.
Another week, another round of super useful apps priced to move. And this is a diverse bunch: HDR photography, finance management, streaming video capture and more. We wouldn’t share them with you if they weren’t useful, and they’re all available for at least half off:
Apple released a redesigned support site for desktop and mobile Friday afternoon, using its official Twitter account to call it out.
Now you’ll spend lest time trying to figure out the support site itself, Apple hopes, and get to the help you need faster, whether you’re using your iPhone, iPad or your Mac.
We’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of things with Apple’s debut wearable, but one hacker wasn’t satisfied merely to summon the ghosts of ancient first-party mobile and desktop operating systems. No, hacker Nick Lee set himself the goal of putting the venerable Windows 95 on Apple Watch.
Lee set out on the project out of nostalgia for the computer he grew up with in the ’90s (oh, kids), and he succeeded by patching some files in the native WatchKit development framework to sneak in his own app. In this case, that app was the 20-year-old disk image. And it works, provided you have a bit of time to wait for the new system to boot up.
Seriously, it takes a while. See it in action in the video below.
Hermes isn’t the only high-end fashion company that wants to capitalize on Apple Watch’s popularity.
Coach reportedly plans to unveil a complete line of Apple Watch bands that will be available for fashionistas to purchase sometime this summer, and they’ll be much cheaper than those disgusting Hermes bands.
Here’s what they’ll look like:
Apple’s Q2 2016 earnings have been disasterous for the company’s share price, as AAPL stock suffered its worst week in three years.
Wall Street has suddenly soured on Apple, including Carl Icahn, who revealed earlier this week that he dumped all of his shares. With investors offloading shares, the company watched its market capitalization shrink by $65 billion in a mere three days, which is about the equivalent of Cambondia’s net wealth.
Apple just reported its worst quarter in 13 years.
Right now, that’s just a small blemish on an otherwise darn near perfect record. But the concern is that it could signal the start of a much greater decline, ushering in an era in which Cupertino is no longer the overwhelmingly dominant force in all things shiny and aluminum.
Should Tim Cook and Co. really be worried about declining demand, and should fans be worried about Apple’s future? Or will our favorite gadget maker be back with a bang?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we throw hands (not literally) over these topics and more!
I don’t try to get my screens all fingerprinted and gross — they just get that way all on their own. It’s inevitable, really; we touch most of the screens we use throughout the day, and our hands are way dirtier than we think. I own more microfiber cloths than I do Lightning cables, but apparently my hands are grubbier than a normal human’s, so I need some more help. And apparently, that extra step is Whoosh Screen Shine.
It’s a screen-cleaning system that adds a bit of spray into the mix and claims it can repel fingerprints. I tried out the Duo+ version, which includes both desk- and travel-sized bottles, and it’s made my endless smudge hunt much more bearable.