This week brought with it a great crop of deals on gears and gadgets, and there are some brand new ones you might have missed. We’ve got a sleek nightstand for your Apple Watch, an app that will keep your writing error free, a versatile tripod for your cell phone, and a high res dashcam with a massive 8GB drive. That’s a lot to sort through, get digging:
We find great deals on the regular, but this week we’ve found some especially awesome gear and gadgets on sale. We’ve got a virtual reality headset that’ll blow your mind without breaking your bank, lessons in developing for the upcoming, game-changing iOS 10, a pair of extra-long, MFi-certified Lightning cables, and a tool that will transform the way you use PDFs. Take a look:
This week, on The CultCast: the controversy around iOS 10’s new gun emoji; we compare Instagram’s new stories feature to Snapchat’s; Gwyneth Paltrow brings her coding skills to ‘Planet of the Apps’; we attended a 5-day Apple II festival, we’ll tell you the cool parts; and stick around for the best ways to find specific Pokémon in ‘Pokémon GO’.
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% off.
Apple’s latest acquisition could play a big role in the iPhone maker’s future artificial intelligence products.
Turi, a Seattle-based startup specializing in machine learning and AI, was reportedly acquired by Apple for around $200 million. The startup creates software that gives developers the ability to add AI capabilities that scale automatically, which could certainly be an attractive addition to Apple’s platforms.
iMessage is the only major messaging service that’s exclusive to one platform. According to Tim Cook, that’s because iMessage helps sell Apple devices — but does anyone actually buy an iPhone for iMessage alone?
Would it really hurt Apple if its popular messaging service went cross-platform? Lots of iPhone and iPad owners also use Android devices, and bringing the service to Google’s platform would provide them with a more seamless messaging experience.
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we throw virtual hands over whether Apple should bring iMessage to Android.
There’s nothing worse than having a dead iPhone battery in the middle of nowhere, but for science mastermind Thomas Kim, that’s never a problem.
In one of the latest in his series projects where he turns everyday garbage into scientific creations, Kim tapped into the power of beautiful little waterfall by turning a bunch of plastic bottles into a water wheel to generate enough hydroelectric power to recharge his iPhone.
Watch the real-life MacGyver in action:
Apple’s head of security and engineering architecture, Ivan Kritic, revealed yesterday that the iPhone maker is finally creating a bug bounty program that will offer rewards of up to $200,000 to security researchers who find vulnerabilities on the company’s various software platforms.
The news came during a keynote at the annual Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas where Kritic also gave attendees a behind-the-scenes look at iOS 10 security as part of Apple’s effort to become more open about its architecture in hopes of improving it.
Apple Music has had a nice clean refresh in macOS Sierra — making it far easier to search for and discover the best Apple’s streaming music service has to offer.
Here’s what tune-lovers need to know when running the new operating system, which is currently in public beta and will be released this fall.
New EarPods equipped with a Lightning connector have appeared on video again ahead of the iPhone 7’s launch this fall. Their design is slightly different to that of previous leaks we’ve seen, leading us to believe these ones could be real.
Designer Joel Beebe has spent a good portion of his working life tied up in power cords so you don’t have to.
His latest solution is a MacBook accessory called the Hula Wrap, a leather sheath that helps organize your computer’s power cable.
Apple has reportedly been building a custom low-power Bluetooth chip specially for wireless earbuds. The chip could make its debut this fall inside the iPhone 7, which is expected to be Apple’s first smartphone without a headphone jack.
When you hear the term ‘virtual private network’, or VPN, your eyes might glaze over as you suddenly hit your limit for nerdiness tolerance. Despite all the great reasons to use a VPN — anonymous and more secure browsing, avoiding geo-restrictions, so on — it can seem like something reserved for those with a deep technical understanding of computers. Windscribe is an example of a VPN made to be simple — operating as both a simple browser extension and desktop app, it’s easy to set up and use, and right now you can get it for just $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Apple’s new spaceship campus is expected to be completed near the end of the year and as a result Tim Cook’s beautiful pile of dirt is finally shrinking now that landscaping is getting underway.
A new drone video of the Apple campus reveals the progress Apple has made on everything from the underground parking tunnels, the ginormous corporate gym, the pond and garden in the heart of campus and so much more. Droner Matthew Roberts covers all the new goodies in his latest aerial video that does a magnificent job of putting the huge scale of Apple’s campus into perspective.
Check it out:
Ripping off Apple’s iconic designs is one thing, but Samsung just took its copying to a whole new level of stupid by trying to patent the Apple Watch.
Its new filing for a “Wearable Device” uses not one but many sketches of Apple’s popular smartwatch, complete with digital crown and all the same straps.
Apple has a new strategy for how it will take over your television, only instead of selling you TV streaming service that replaces cable, the company is reportedly working on a interface that will help users find what content is available on every iOS and tvOS app.
Tv programmers and video companies have allegedly been approached by Apple about creating a digital TV guide for iPhone and Apple TV that will let users find video content from HBO, Netflix, ESPN and more without having to actually open the apps.
Apple is bringing big changes to the Apple Store app for iOS today with a huge update that adds product recommendations to the store for the first time.
The Apple Store app redesign features a simplified UI that focuses on making it easier for users to see their reservations, check if a product is in stock at a nearby store, find out when an order is ready and much more.
iOS 9 is getting one final update before iOS 10 makes its big debut this fall. Apple just rolled out iOS 9.3.4, which is an “important security update” that’s recommended for all iPhone and iPad users with compatible devices.
Legendary Braun designer Dieter Rams has joined forces with 110 other distinguished industrial design professionals to support Apple in its long standing fight with Samsung for copying the design of the iPhone.
The group of designers have filed a amicus briefing with the US Supreme Court arguing that Apple deserves the millions of dollars it was originally awarded in court because of the company’s innovative look that let to 1 billion units sold.
One of the neatest new additions to macOS Sierra is the increased focus on photos. Using the in-built Photos app, it’s now easier than ever to relive your most cherished memories with nifty features like the ability to display all your photos on a world map — presenting a different way to access your pics.
Here’s how to do it using the new operating system, which is currently in public beta and will be released this fall.
Apple has posted a new “Shot on iPhone” ad that’s sure to tug at your heart strings. Titled “The Human Family,” the one-minute clip reminds us that despite all our differences, we’re really all the same.
Apple has signed Hollywood superstar Gwyneth Paltrow to join its unscripted series ‘Planet of the Apps’.
Paltrow will be joined by will.i.am and serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk on the show where all three will serve as mentors and advisors to app developers in the series that will reportedly act as a launch pad to exceptional developers.
I’ve carried many styles and price points on my rounded shoulder over the course of a photography career, and have a closet full of camera bags to prove it. I always found a reason to retire each bag, whether it’s an expensive name brand, cheap knock-off or proven hand-me-down.
Lately, I’ve been toting gear in a Tenba Cooper bag. I’ve done so for a few months now, long enough where my eyes should begin to look at other styles and brands. I’ve never been happier with a bag.
The name of the game this week is broad sitewide sales. Check out everything from iPads to cables at Groupon, or grab some refurbished hardware at eBay. These and more are in this week’s best Apple deals.
It’s difficult to tell whether any of the iPhone 7 “leaks” we’ve seen so far are the real thing, or just convincing third-party mockups. But there’s no doubt about the one seen in the video below, which is a working handset that runs Apple’s internal testing software.
If you do work on a computer, you have to reckon with PDFs, the go-to format for documents of all kinds. As ubiquitous as PDFs are, they’re also universally tough to edit or convert unless you’ve got an app like PDFpen to unlock it. This is software that makes it easy to merge, markup, convert using OCR, and more, and right now, you can get PDFpen 8 for $37 at Cult of Mac Deals.