Cult of Mac

You could say 2015 was a product-ive year for Apple. The company entered the wearable market with the Apple Watch, released a hugely updated version of the Apple TV streaming box, unveiled the massive iPad Pro (and considerably less massive iPad Mini 4), took on tune-streaming with the Apple Music service, and made its annual update to the iPhone with the 6s and 6s Plus.

We also saw updates to the operating systems that run all those things, as well as a new desktop OS in El Capitan, but it wasn’t all great news. Apple encountered lawsuits, shakeups and investigations by countries and entire federations thereof.

So whether we ultimately decide Cupertino had a good or bad year, at least it was pretty interesting. Relive the ups and downs with this Apple year in review 2015, Cult of Mac-style.

Best List: Wireless iPhone Charging System by Stacked

If there’s one thing I can never have enough of, it’s power for my iPhone. Even on normal, about-town sort of days, I’m always looking for ways to keep the battery topped off, in case I need it for something power-intensive later on. I carry around external chargers like some people carry around ChapStick and tissue, and I’ve always got a spare cable to share. All of that stuff can add up to a ball of wires and plugs, making for a nasty mess in my backpack.

I’ve long wanted an easier, wire-free charging existence, and that’s where the Stacked iPhone charging case comes in. It’s a clever system that’s a truly wireless solution to keeping my iPhone at the top end of the charged-up spectrum.

While the Apple Watch is still waiting for its “killer app,” plenty of great apps already exist for the new wearable. They ease us through common tasks, add value to awesome iPhone apps, or delight us with subtle functions that we didn’t necessarily know we needed (but now practically can’t live without).

These apps might not be homicidal, but they make us want to strap on an Apple Watch each and every day. These are our favorite Apple Watch apps of 2015.

Enter the new year with a head full of new ideas and your wallet full of cash. These bundles on essential web and mobile development courses are brimming with invaluable knowledge that give your professional life an upgrade. They can be yours for whatever you’re willing to pay for them, and a portion of whatever you spend goes to support the good work of Save the Children.

Remember Bendgate, the massively overblown period following the iPhone 6’s release, in which people acted like Apple’s handset was about as sturdy as a slice of processed cheese?

Well, destructive YouTuber TechRax is back with a new “stress test” designed to see how the studier iPhone 6s fares against 3,500 pounds of pressure. Answer: nNt very well at all.

If, to paraphrase Fight Club, you want to see out 2015 by watching the destruction of something beautiful, check out the video below.

2015 was a bold year for Apple. The company jumped into new product categories, polished its existing hardware and software lines, and wowed us repeatedly.

Apple also made most of us throw up in our mouths a little bit now and then, due to some questionable (and some undeniably bad) choices.

These are Apple’s biggest wins and most epic fails of the past year, as remembered — fondly and otherwise — by Cult of Mac staffers.

Quarterbacks and running backs will often reward their offensive linemen with gifts, but veteran NFL Baltimore Ravens punter Sam Koch recently gave out a particularly welcome high-tech pressie to his teammates — when he handed out Apple Watches.

It’s no secret that Japan is a big fan of Steve Jobs, which goes some way to explaining why Apple’s late co-founder is being used as a (pretty tenuous) connection to help reinvigorate interest in the country’s Buddhist Zen tourism trade.

How? Because, as it turns out, the 13th century Eiheiji temple Japanese local authorities hope to drum up interest in happens to be the same place which trained Kobun Chino Otogawa, a.k.a. Jobs’ spiritual advisor and wedding officiator.

We warned you it was tenuous!

This time of year yields more Apple doom predictions than New Year’s resolutions, so it’s no surprise that Apple analysts have been naming 2016 as the year iPhone sales finally fall off a cliff.

But according to Brean Capital, not only is Apple stock still worth buying, with a $170 price target, but investors should look through the “supply chain ‘noise'” and see the potential for iPhone sales to hit around 250 million units next year — or 7 percent to 10 percent growth from Apple’s already stellar 2016.

The arrival of OLED displays for future iPhones is looking more of a sure thing than ever, with a new report stating that Apple is on the verge of finalizing an agreement with Samsung Display and LG Display to build its future screens.

According to sources, Samsung will produce around 90,000 OLED substrates per month for Apple, while LG will produce 60,000.

Total number of smartphone displays that should generate? The report doesn’t make it explicitly clear, but it is likely to be in the region of 400 million displays per year.

Apple could be forced to add more non-white executives and directors, due to a proposal put forward by an investor who thinks the current makeup of Apple execs is “a little bit too vanilla.”

The possible pro-diversity push was reportedly prompted after the son of investor Antonio Avian Maldonado II, who owns just 645 Apple shares, asked why nearly everyone on Apple’s board of directors was white.

Twitter user and developer Peter Steinberger shouted out to the Twitterverse when his App Store app kept showing an app that needed an update, but would never actually update, even with an iPhone restart.

He got a reply from Zachary Drayer, a mobile developer himself, on how to get the App Store to force refresh.

It’s totally nonintuitive, but utterly cool, and you can do it on your Apple Watch and iTunes app as well. Here’s what to do if you’re in the same situation.

If you want to buy the iPhone 6s on a two-year contract with AT&T you better hurry.

Internal documents from AT&T leaked online this morning revealing the carrier plans to finally kill the two-year contracts it’s offered long before it become the first carrier to sell the iPhone.

Twitter finally resurrected its Mac app with just about everything its users have been asking for over the past several… well, for a really long time. The update at long last looks much like the Twitter you’re familiar with on your smartphone or desktop browser. It’s complete with highly requested features like GIF support and group direct messages with up to 50 people, plus a dark theme for power users and more.

“Don’t call it a comeback!” Twitter wrote in the update description. “Twitter for Mac is getting the update you’ve been asking for.”

In Apple’s Messages app, you can easily add emojis with a quick click on the little happy face icon in the iMessage text field. If you use a chat app like Slack, you can do the same.

But what if you want to add an emoji to an email, a letter, or any other text field? Turns out there’s an often-overlooked menu item (with a corresponding keyboard shortcut) that lets you do just that.

Check it out.

The new Apple TV may soon get some competition from Microsoft, which according to a new rumor is considering making slimmer, cheaper version of the Xbox One console in an effort to beat Apple in the living room.

Best List: Zand Aluminum iPad Stand by iQunix

Living in an Apple ecosystem, my world revolves around brushed aluminum and white cables. My iPhone 6 Plus is silver on the back, my iPads are black and space gray, and my MacBook Pro is — you guessed it — a lovely brushed aluminum.

The new iQunix Zand Aluminum iPad stand looks like something Apple would design to set your iPad next to that MacBook Pro for a perfectly matched finish.

When you’re counting down the seconds to New Year’s tomorrow night, make sure you’ve got an Apple Watch nearby.

“As a piece of hardware, [Apple Watch is] far more accurate as a timekeeping device than the iPhone,” Apple VP of Technology Kevin Lynch revealed in a new interview. “With New Year’s coming, those who have the Apple Watch will be the most accurate watch in the room. There will be no question about when New Year’s Eve actually is now.”

Witnessing the ingenuity of app developers both small and large is a real highlight of my job writing about the Apple ecosystem. In that regard, 2015 didn’t disappoint: Some tremendous new apps got unleashed this year on both iOS and OS X.

Here are Cult of Mac’s picks for the absolute best apps of the year for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The new year is here, but if you want your career to look any different you’re going to have to learn some new skills. We’ve collected some of the best deals on the lessons you need to keep that resolution to step up your professional game. Whether you’re looking to work with data, managing projects, master Microsoft Office or learn to develop games, we’ve got you covered.

We aren’t going to pretend we’re perfect, but that doesn’t mean we have no appreciation for the mistakes of others. They make us feel better about our own glaring flaws, and they also make for some good fodder for “weirdest of 2015” news roundups.

This year, we saw some really impressive corporate blunders as well as some head-slapping moments from Apple fans.

Aside from a few big developers, no-one much likes in-app purchases, which have long been used to ruin mobile gaming on iOS.

However, the parents of 7-year-old Faisall Shugaa probably like them less than most — after their son racked up almost $6,000 in IAP bills, including $2,200 spent in just one hour.

We’ve heard enough at this point to be pretty sure that a 4-inch iPhone 6c is coming, but how will it stack up against the last 4-inch iPhone, the iPhone 5s? Pretty well, according to a new report: You can expect better battery life, better performance and better security!

Smart upgraders know that when a major new version of iOS drops, older devices might want to think twice about updating. That advice isn’t much comfort to people on the iPhone 4s, though, who pulled the trigger on iOS 9, and saw their devices slow down as a result. Now, a class-action lawsuit is targeting Apple on behalf of iPhone 4s owners, arguing that Cupertino essentially crippled their phones with the update.

The iPhone may have fundamentally changed Google’s plans for its Android smartphone platform, but according to Google’s design chief, the iOS homescreen layout — consisting of grids of apps icons — is disappointingly stagnant.

“[The iPhone] crystallised a lot of other things that were kind of stayed even by that point, like the rows of icons, which don’t scale very well,” Matias Duarte, Google’s vice president of design, told Wired. “This idea of a tiny grid that you manually curate starts to feel very heavy and burdensome.”