Cult of Mac

Robots are cool, but there are some things visionary engineers in the robotics field should not mess with – like eight tiny reindeer.

Boston Dynamics put their famous robotic dogs through another test – harnessing three Spot bots to a sleigh, pulling a waving Santa-like figure (not the real Santa, but a real person dressed as Mrs. Claus). The Google-owned company posted a video on YouTube of the prancing robo dogs, apparently showing the world once again that even the job of Rudolph can be replaced by a robot.

China’s Foreign Ministry said today that U.S. tech companies have nothing to fear from the country’s new anti-terrorism law, which could require companies to create “back doors” in products, or to hand over encryption information to the Chinese government.

In this age of cyber theft, keeping your passwords on a pad of paper or (even worse) an online document just won’t cut it, no matter how indecipherable you might think they are. Sticky Password offers a new solution for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android users. And right now you can get a lifetime subscription for just $24.99.

Forget The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles are coming to Apple Music, Google Play, and a variety of other online streaming music services — and just in time for Christmas, too.

Starting Christmas Eve, the Fab Four will be available for your listening pleasure on Apple Music, Spotify, Slacker, Tidal, Microsoft’s Groove, Rhapsody, Deezer, Google Play, and Amazon Prime.

Apple fans are some of the most dedicated in all of tech (some might even call them a cult), but a few enterprising and/or desperate people really outdid themselves this year.

Not that we can really blame them. Cupertino brought the heat this year with the Apple Watch, a cool new Apple TV, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and the massive iPad Pro. We can forgive the superfans for really going all out to get their hands on the latest iGear. But some of their efforts might have been a bit too enthusiastic.

Here are some times when people’s love of Apple outweighed logic this year.

Apple is changing the way members of its board of directors are nominated, according to a new SEC filing that reveals Apple plans to offer ‘proxy access’ that will give shareholders greater power to oust directors and dictate strategy.

Apple has claimed final victory in a lawsuit arguing that the company was purposely intercepting and failing to deliver texts sent from iPhones to Android owners.

The case was related to Apple’s iMessage service, which posed a challenge to Apple-to-Android switchers up until 2014, when Apple finally issued a fix for the problem.

Pete Souza, the Chief Official White House Photographer, just posted a huge album of all of the many wonderful shots he has taken with his iPhone over the last year.

As an Apple fan, there’s a great gift you can bestow upon your friends and family this holiday season. The amazing part is, it’s free.

I’m not talking about the free tech support you’ll inevitably dole out to befuddled relatives (Cult of Mac’s how-to section can help with that, BTW). I’m talking about evangelizing for two of Apple’s least-loved products — and this gracious act will also goose the greater good.

There have been plenty of rumors about Apple creating bezel-less iPhones over the years, and as many concept videos turning those rumors into sci-fi CGI.

This concept’s different, though, in that it’s actually plausible. Meet the iPhone 7 Edge, a concept that takes the concept of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and applies it to the next iPhone.

Having added voice calling at no extra cost earlier this year, WhatsApp is now reportedly looking to introduce FaceTime-style video calls, according to a new report.

The leaked iOS screenshot shows a full-screen video call, along with a smaller inlaid video preview with the camera view of the call recipient, just like Skype or Apple’s own video calling service.

Now you can watch (and explore) 360-degree videos on the new Apple TV, thanks to virtual reality network Littlstar’s free app.

The network’s new tvOS app delivers content from the likes of Showtime, Disney and PBS. It works with Apple TV’s Siri Remote, granting users the ability to control the angle used in the immersive 360-degree videos via the remote’s nifty trackpad.

Christmas came early for schoolfriends of a Chinese businessman when he distributed 39 brand new iPhone 6s handsets during an elementary school reunion (!) over the past weekend.

The rose gold iPhones were engraved with the words, “To commemorate the Beilun Sanshan Primary School Class of 1998.” The generous giver of the gifts, a businessman with the surname Zhang, reportedly handed out the iPhones during a dinner in Ningbo, a city in China’s Zhejiang province.

So you’re watching a TV show or movie on your iPad and you hear the ding that means you just got a new email. You could double press on the Home button to bring up the multitasking bar and swipe over to your Mail app, but why?

One of the cool gosh-wow things of iOS 9 on a newer iPad is the picture-in-picture multitasking feature, which means you can switch over to any app while you continue watching that video.

Here’s how.

Remembering passwords is one of the biggest pains of modern tech living. Hundreds of geniuses at dozens of companies have been searching for an easier solution, but Google may be ready to unleash a new solution that uses your smartphone to replace passwords all together.

If you’re anything like us, procrastination is one of the biggest hallmarks of the holidays. We’re here to help with our gift guide liveblog, which will be updated from now until Santa starts dropping through chimneys.

Whether you’re looking for something for a friend, spouse, significant other or just your dog, we’ve got a little something for everyone. Snap up these great gift ideas now — so you can get back to procrastinating.

The biggest wireless carrier in the world may have just revealed when the iPhone 6c 7c will finally launch.

Rumors of the iPhone 7c have been heating up the rumormill for months now, and with the device’s big unveiling supposedly just around the corner, it appears that China Mobile has accidentally confirmed to the world that the new low-cost iPhone will arrive by April 2016.

This post is brought to you by iMyfone Technology Co., maker of iMyfone Umate.

Sure our iPhones look sharp, but the sleek exterior hides an inner life that resembles the floor of a bachelor pad. Broken bits of uncompressed photos, unused files, app caches, cookies, backup logs and whatnot clog up the works (there’s probably a few empty pizza boxes in there, too).

Best List: Reference X20i In-Ear Headphones by Klipsch

Have you ever wondered whether a pair of $550 earbuds is worth the price? I have, but never really had the scratch to put it to the test.

Klipsch, however, sent me a pair of their high-end earbuds, the Reference X20i In-Ear Headphones, to test. When I opened the wooden box and slid the headphones out of their leather pouch, then slipped their oval-shaped eartips into my sound holes, I went to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens soundtrack. The orchestral music seemed like a great way to see if these really expensive headphones match their price tag.

ResearchKit is already helping medical researchers make groundbreaking discoveries in areas like Parkinsons disease, autism, and cardiovascular disease. Now the open source software is being put to use to study hepatitis C, a virus we know little about, even though over 3 million Americas suffer from it.

Those beautiful GoPro photos of your goofy travels on bike or skis may contain an unmapped part of the world.

In its quest to surpass Google in visual mapping, the app Mapillary earlier this month added GPS support to GoPro users who have the iOS version of the app.

Google is reportedly teaming up with Ford for a self-driving car project that will combine Ford’s vehicles with Google’s technology.

According to sources supposedly familiar with the plans, the deal will be announced at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January.

Our mobile devices have to be cleaned out regularly, a time-consuming and often frustrating task. Unfortunately Apple doesn’t really provide the best tools for doing the job, often leaving bits and pieces of apps and files behind, or ignoring the storage methods of various third-party apps. That’s why this bundle is a must for anybody looking to streamline their mobile experience. Included are a pair of apps that will clean out any iOS device’s drives, and keep what’s left organized and easily accessible. You can get both for just $19.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

We were too busy taking our own pictures in 2015 to notice that something about photography had changed.

This was the year the photo moved. It shed its flat, two-dimensional constraints and showed a life once left to the imagination.

The movement could be slight, as in Apple’s Live Photos, a new feature on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus camera that records a snippet of video before and after the frozen moment to add an extra dimension.

We love the science and nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel. Producers hire some of the world’s best filmmakers, sends them to remote and beautiful places on Earth where, in some cases, they risk their lives to get us the kind of footage that sates our curiosity.

The work – from shots of erupting volcanos and charging hippos to the sun sinking below the curvy horizon of a dessert – is stunning. And a lot of it ends up cut and filed away, never to be seen.

The subscription-based stock video company VideoBlocks announced Tuesday it has struck a deal with Discovery Communications to make available more than 30,000 clips, some of which are high definition and 4K.