If you’ve ever had a hankering to try out VR with your iPhone (or other smartphone), the Merge VR Goggles are a fantastic fit. They’re made of a soft, lightweight, purple sculpted foam that will fit any face and pretty much any smartphone.
You’ll be able to comfortably wear these as long as you can stand virtual reality apps on your iPhone, thanks to the way they mold to your particular facial features and don’t weigh your head down.
As far as party invitations go, this may be the only one that asks unattractive people to stay away – unless of course they can produce a tax return at the door that shows a yearly income above $200,000.
Luxy, the dating app for only the wealthiest, will be hosting a series of singles nights around the globe next year. If you find such an invitation rude, you probably weren’t going to make it past the door anyway.
It’s been a terrific year for gaming. The next-generation consoles now offer a library of spectacular games that somehow keep getting better and better, while PC gaming just gets greater every year.
2015 brought exciting and long-awaited entries to wonderful franchises like Fallout and The Legend of Zelda, surprising indie smash hits like Rocket League, and must-play platform exclusives like Blooborne and Super Mario Maker.
Here are the best games that we couldn’t put down this year.
OpenEmu, the ultimate old-school game emulator for OS X, just got even better. A beefy update brings an improved user interface, real-time game rewinding and — best of all! — support for an additional 16 game consoles, including the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1 and PlayStation Portable.
Siri is (usually) great for answering questions, but for helping us stay on task it’s a bit of a dud. EasilyDo on the other hand will make sure you’re on time and on point with all your obligations. It’s a powerful assistant for managing contacts, calendar, email and more that’s just $19.99.
If all of the big boys’ flagship phones – the iPhone 6s Plus, the Google Nexus 6P and Microsoft’s Lumia 950 XL – raced in NASCAR, which would be the fastest phone around? This speed-test video puts that concept to the test, making all three phones “run laps” to see which is the fastest.
Tis the season for playing around with weird iOS apps with your friends and family, and boy, do we have a doozy for you. It’s called Face Swap Live, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Usually, an app update is a good thing. But sometimes, things go wrong: An update does the opposite of what you expect it to do. In that scenario, you want to roll your apps back, but unfortunately, at least on the iOS and Mac App Stores, Apple makes that seemingly impossible.
But it isn’t impossible — just a little tricky. Here’s how to roll your iOS apps back to an older version when things go wrong.
Although Fitbit may consider the Apple Watch a technical threat, Apple’s smartwatch didn’t seem to hamper Christmas sales any for the company: the market-leading activity tracker seems to have had a huge sales surge thanks to Christmas. Could Fitbit have outsold the Apple Watch this Holiday season?
Although Samsung has vowed to take its patent fight with Apple all the way to the Supreme Court after welching on a deal to pay Cupertino $548 million in damages, Apple isn’t letting up its assult on the Galaxy-maker. As a Christmas present, Apple just asked for an additional $180 million in damages.
DVDs have all but gone the way of laserdiscs and the dodo. With HD streaming video and high capacity hard drives, keeping shelves full of movies just doesn’t make much sense anymore. But that doesn’t mean you should toss them, at least not yet. The two applications in the MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack make it easy to capture and convert your DVDs and other digital videos into formats friendly to your computer and mobile devices. It’s a great way to extend the life of your favorite DVDs into the future for just $11.99.
The Apple TV’s App Store is still so new, odds are you might be having trouble figuring out which apps are the best.
The holidays are just around the corner, so for the sake of the friends and relatives who will soon be swarming your living room, you might want to populate your new set-top box with some must-haves. Take a look at Cult of Mac’s top picks for best Apple TV apps.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: We venture into very heart of Apple, inside Jony Ive’s super-secret design lab, and what we find is amazing. Plus: the best holiday iOS App Store deals and our favorite movies of 2015!
Our thanks to FreshBooks — the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster — for supporting this episode. Get started with a free trial at Freshbooks.com/cultcast.
This post is brought to you by Code Atlas, maker of Veer.
Sometimes great innovations are really just refinements of something few would have thought of trying to improve. If you think Apple’s already figured out the best way of reaching out to your contacts in iOS 9, Veer will make you reconsider. It’s a novel new iOS app and Notification Center widget that blends seamlessly into your iPhone’s normal operations, simplifying and streamlining how we use the device to reach people.
In addition to rounding up the best stories of the year, we’re also showcasing the weirdest of 2015, and we can’t do that without including the sickest burns people laid down over the past 12 months.
It’s always strange when companies and CEOs snip and snap at each other like annoyed children. We should expect them to be above that sort of behavior, but guess what? They totally aren’t.
Here are some of the most blistering insults of the year.
If you want to work in an organization of any size, becoming fluent in project management is one of the most marketable skills you can acquire, This bundle of five classes, clocking in at more than 120 hours, offers a clear path to getting PMP® certification, and the pay bump that comes with. It’s an invaluable resume booster can be yours for only $39.
If you’re feeling guilty about your festive overindulgence, you may be planning to lose some weight and get fit in the new year. Well, sorry to be a Grinch, but research suggests that only 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are successful.
The good news is that there is a better way. One that involves steadily building healthy habits over time. There are some handy iPhone apps that can help with this, but you won’t find them in the Health & Fitness section of the App Store.
If you got new devices for Christmas, don’t just put the old ones in a drawer — use Cult of Mac’s buyback program to get paid for them today!
It was a little tough to whittle our choices for the best movies of 2015 down to 11, but we did.
If you’d told us five years ago that we’d be getting new Jurassic Park, Star Wars and Mad Max movies, and that they’d all respect their predecessors while forging their own paths, we’d have ask the bartender for whatever you’d been drinking. But all of those things happened, and 2015 was better for it.
We also got some great original movies, including some charming comedies and one of the scariest monsters in recent memory. It was a pretty good time, regardless of your tastes, is what we’re getting at.
Here are our picks in no particular order.
For any mobile developer, learning Swift is a must. It’s an intuitive and fast language that’s key to iOS, OS X, tvOS, and watchOS. This bundle of four lessons — in the form of 3 apps and an E-book — will get you up to speed in practicing coding, testing scripts, and more. And the best part: the whole shebang is just $9.99.
This time of the year typically means gifts, both giving and receiving them. Surely some of you have gotten a brand new Macbook, iMac, iPhone or iPad (Pro, anyone?).
If so, you might be looking at a lovely morning playing with your shiny new toys. But where to start? What essential tweaks, software tricks and necessary little tips do you need to make sure they’re set up the right way?
Well, we’ve got your back, with roundups to help you easily set up your iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, iPad (Pro, Air 2 or mini), Apple Watch or new Apple TV the right way. Here’s the list of setup guides to get you up and running with your brand new Apple gear.
Happy holidays everyone, however you celebrate it: Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, kickin’ Kwanzaa and a tipsy New Year!
We trust you’re in the company of family and friends, stuffing your faces and giving and receiving in the best spirit of the holidays.
Things are going be quiet around here for a few days while we enjoy a short break. We have a great Mighty Mac Freebies giveaway and several more “best-of-the-year” posts coming up.
We’ll be back in the New Year with a bang from Las Vegas! We have a crew heading to CES 2016, bringing you all the best in tech.
Meanwhile, take it easy on the eggnog.
Leander Kahney
Editor & publisher
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, so we’ve decided to unleash our weekly magazine stuffed full of great Apple news, reviews, and how-tos for your yuletide pleasure.
This week, we’ve got a peek inside Apple’s super-secret Industrial Design team, the ten best iOS games from this past year, a plethora of setup guides for all your shiny Apple gear, and a look at some of the year’s most dedicated iFans.
Here’s the rundown this week.
Games is already one of the most popular categories in the Apple TV’s new App Store. Just two months after the set-top box’s release, the Games category is easily where you’ll find the most variety of apps so far.
Many are free while others are relatively expensive. But price isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality: These Apple TV games truly stand out for their innovative gameplay and sheer entertainment value. Take a look at Cult of Mac’s top picks.
The more our phones become a platform for high quality gaming, the less adequate the touch screen feels for keeping up. With the Phonejoy GamePad 2, your phone gains the precision and range of a full-fledged game controller. It’s an instant upgrade the way you interact with your phone, powered by Bluetooth and available for $59.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.