A somewhat sketchy video showing a supposed iPhone 7 prototype has surfaced online, sparking speculation that Apple will ditch the bezel and physical Home button for next year’s iPhone handset.
2015 has been a big year for brilliant albums, with everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Adele blasting out savory songs that changed the landscape of music. We saw Jamie XX arise as an incredible solo act, Ben Gibbard got his emo-groove back, and Drake dominated the rap world with brutal rap battles and meme-tastic music videos.
It was tough to narrow down the amazing albums of 2015 to just 10, but here are our favorite albums of the year.
T’was the night(s) before Christmas and all through the App Store, not a creature was moving except… wait, was that? I thought I was alone in here!
Welcome to the world of Dark Fear, a retro-styled pixel horror game that’s creepy and creative enough to keep you tingling throughout the holiday season.
There’s a reason it’s so damn scary: Dark Fear was created by Arif Majothi, a 38-year-old game developer who got his start working on horror movies. He combined his mastery of the horror genre with his love of classic ’80s and ’90s Sierra games like Phantasmagoria (it even starts with an MS-DOS-style floppy disk prompt).
The resulting title pays homage to the past, while being spooky enough to scare the bejesus out of you in the closing days of 2015. What more could you ask for?
Apple has publicly criticized the U.K.’s draft Investigatory Powers Bill, a.k.a. the “snooper’s charter,” for fear that forcing companies to create backdoors in encryption services like iMessage could “hurt law-abiding citizens.”
Looking forward to Christmas? So am I — unless humanity ignominiously implodes en route to December 25.
What would lead me to raise that possibility? Oh, just the fact that not only did Kim Kardashian’s newly-launched emoji app immediately shoot to the top of the App Store charts, but its popularity even caused sweeping technical difficulties across Apple’s giant app repository.
We brought this on ourselves, didn’t we?
Apple may be hoping that the iPad Pro can help turn around its flagging tablet sales, but according to a new report sales are off to a somewhat disappointing start — with just 49,000 units selling in the first month in Apple’s much-emphasized China region.
Sometimes you just want to plug your iPhone into your Mac without having to deal with all that iTunes stuff, like synchronizing or backing up.
Or, maybe a friend of yours needs to sip off your Macbook’s power and you don’t want to have iTunes sync their iPhone.
Either way, you can eject the connected iPhone, thereby avoiding all the iTunes stuff but still letting the physically connected iPhone pull power from the USB port. Even better: when you’re done charging, just pull the USB cable out from your Macbook without any worry.
Here are three different ways to do just that.
Designer Eric Huismann has an an awesome idea of what the iPhone 7 might be like. It’s one that supports recent rumors. Get ready, because if he concept design ever becomes reality, your next iPhone might be missing one crucial hardware feature: the headphone jack.
Ever been in texting conversation and found yourself completely unable to express yourself because there’s just not an emoji of Kim Kardashian’s breasts?
It’s unfortunate that society has come to this point, but if you answered ‘yes’ to the question above, there’s finally an app for that. Kim Kardashian now has an official emoji app — called Kimoji (get it?) — that brings more than 250 emoji and sticker designs to help you convey the deepest thoughts of your soul.
A few months after Apple birthed Live Photos into existence with the release of the iPhone 6s, Facebook is catching on to the idea. The social network is building the feature right into its iOS app so iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners can start uploading their animated photos and viewing others. But it’s not all good news, since there are two issues with Facebook’s implementation.
Amazon, Google and Roku are all battling to win over your TV, but according to the Disney CEO Bob Iger, the new Apple TV tops them all, not only because it’s great for consumers, but also because it’s a win for content creators.
“One of the most important things that the industry needs to do is demand a better user experience,” Bob Iger told Bloomberg in an interview this morning. “The Apple TV box and the interface that it provides is the best user experience I’ve seen ever for television users.”
Watch Bob gush about Apple’s new box below:
Apple gave the world its first-ever peek inside Jony Ive’s super-secret design studio last night on 60 Minutes, but eagle-eyed Apple fans think the company may have revealed more than it intended.
During a very brief shot, taken during Apple’s weekly leadership meeting, a MacBook is seen in the background behind Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell that some speculate could be the upcoming 15-inch MacBook Pro.
See for yourself below:
Digital artists know that there’s no substitution for a graphics tablet when trying to draw on your Mac, except maybe the iPad Pro and Pencil.
Astropad co-founder Matt Ronge thinks his company’s $20 app, when combined with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, can match and even exceed the current champ of the tablet world, the Wacon Cintiq.
“iPad Pro is an amazing drawing platform but iOS is far too limited for the professional artist,” says Ronge. “So we wanted a way where we could get the best of both worlds, the power and flexibility of the Mac coupled with the touch interface of the iPad.”
The term ‘hacker’ has been hijacked by popular culture to be synonymous shady, nefarious people using their mastery of computers to wreak havoc. Obviously that’s not true, and hacking — which really boils down to the act of taking something apart to see how it works and how it might work better — operates on a spectrum like any other discipline. If you’d like to learn the arts of hacking, from the basics of hacking to specifics on how to hack Node.js apps, Windows, Wi-Fi devices, and a lot more. Name your price for this bundle of 7 courses full of invaluable knowledge — what’s more, portion of what you spend goes to support the work of Save the Children. Doesn’t get much more white hat than that.
Apple has slashed the price of the iPhone 6s in India, reportedly after lower than expected sales over Diwali.
The handsets are now at least 16 percent cheaper than when they first launched two months ago — with the the basic 16GB iPhone 6s now costing between Rs 52,000 and Rs 55,000 ($785 – $830), down from the Rs 62,000 ($935) launch price. Many retailers are additionally offering other incentives to try and get customers to buy.
It’s an age of abundance in the iOS gaming scene, with everyone from Apple to indie enthusiast blogs weighing in on what the best games are for our beloved iOS platform.
We’re here to focus on the best mobile games we have actually played and loved, rather than just the blockbusters everyone’s already heard of. If we kept a game on our iPhone for more than a few days and dug right in on a regular basis, it’s on the list.
Here are Cult of Mac staffers’ choices for the 10 best iOS games of 2015.
Apple users may get a music quality upgrade in 2016, with a new report claiming that the company has been developing hi-res audio streaming up to 96kHz/24bit.
Apple is reportedly set to start selling new accessibility-related peripherals and accessories for both Mac and iOS in its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores as well as online.
The accessories, which are reported to be going on sale in the first quarter of calendar year 2016, are designed to help users with disabilities to better engage with Apple products.
It’s nearly Christmas: the time of mince pies, good cheer, and, apparently, settling patent disputes with the potential to cost you hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
With that in mind, Apple has agreed a patent licensing deal with Swedish telecom company Ericsson, ending a dispute in which Ericsson was accused by Apple of engaging in, “abusive licensing practices.”
60 Minutes host Charlie Rose took a deep dive into all things Apple in an episode that aired Sunday.
Featuring interviews with Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Angela Ahrendts and others, the show explored everything from the iPhone’s inner workings and Apple’s manufacturing in China to Cook dancing around the question of whether Apple is building a car.
Check out our 10 takeaways below.
‘Tis the season to take advantage of soon-to-end deals, and boy have we got some good ones. These are the top five deals of the year on comprehensive lesson bundles on several facets of web development plus a few other goodies, including a couple you can buy for whatever price you want. From learning to code for iOS to securing your internet connections with a VPN, it’s well worth checking out these top five deals.
This feature is adapted from my book, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. It offers a rare look inside one of Apple’s most secretive institutions: the Industrial Design studio.
Where do Apple’s great products come from?
For the last 18 years — since Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 — most of them have come out of Apple’s Industrial Design studio, a small and secretive group of creatives headed up by celebrated British designer Sir Jony Ive.
Who doesn’t want to play piano? Learning to tickle the ivories must be right up there with writing the great American novel: Many of us have a hankering to become more musical.
The fantastic $299 ONE Light smart keyboard is the way to go if you want a piano that will show you how to play without hiring a teacher.
This week: the force is looking very strong with the new Star Wars movie; live football may be coming to the Apple TV; the tvOS app store hits a major milestone; why you shouldn’t expect 3D touch in the next iPad Air; and with 2016 on the horizon, we’ll review our favorite games, gadgets, and books of 2015. Hit play, you must!
Our thanks to FreshBooks for supporting this episode, the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. Get started with a free trial at Freshbooks.com/cultcast.
There’s not much time left to buy gifts but still plenty of amazing deals in the Cult of Mac Store to check out. If you’re looking for some new techy toys or tools that are guaranteed to please, let us make it a little easier on you. Have a look at the five best deals on gadgets and gear from 2015 on sale now: