Apple today announced a bit of a corporate reshuffle — with Jeff Williams named Chief Operating Officer, VP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji getting a boost up to Senior Vice President level, and Phil Schiller expanding his role as Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing to include running the App Store across all platforms.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen has waded in on the the question of whether or not Apple is right to refuse to help the government access smartphone data for security purposes.
“For years, government officials have pleaded to the technology industry for help,” Chen wrote in a recent blogpost. “Yet [the requests] have been met with disdain.”
Chen’s position is simple: that, “We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good.”
Mac games aren’t as numerous as iOS games, but they tend to be a bit more expensive, making impulse purchases a rare thing. How do you know which ones to spend your money on?
If you’re looking to stuff your stocking with the finest of games for our favorite platform, look no further. We play them all so you don’t have to, and we tell you which are the best ones to grab.
These are Cult of Mac’s picks for best new Mac games of 2015.
Ten employees of Apple manufacturer Pegatron have been jailed after stealing and selling 227 iPhones, 360 motherboards and 58 Apple batteries — with a total market value of $154,000.
3D Touch was the single biggest selling point of the iPhone 6s, so naturally every other smartphone vendor is tripping over themselves and each other to add their own version of Apple’s pressure-sensitive iPhone feature to their next handset.
Because of this, a new report claims that force sensing module shipments will grow by a whopping 317 percent in 2016 to reach 461 million units. As a result, almost one in four new smartphones shipped will include the technology.
Apple Music has a respectable 6.5 million subscribers right now, but respected music business analyst Mark Mulligan estimates that Apple’s streaming music service will come close to hitting 8 million subs by the end of this year — and a massive 20 million paying customers by the close of 2016.
In news which could well be good for Apple Music, but bad for rival free streaming music services, the federal Copyright Royalty Board has ruled that ad-supported internet radio companies such as Pandora must pay higher royalty rates to artists and record labels.
Starting next year, Pandora, iHeartMedia and others will pay 17 cents for every 100 plays of a song on their free tiers. This fee will increase over the following four years in line with inflation.
People who are hoping Apple will one day sever ties with Samsung as a supplier are likely to be sorely disappointed, as a new report states that Apple will be relying on OLED displays from Samsung Display when it makes the switch to OLED screens for future iPhones.
Wrapping Christmas presents takes talent. A talent I do not have.
Most of my wrappings look more like a crumpled mess of paper instead of perfect parcels fit for a king. Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong by not including a very necessary ingredient in my wrapping repertoire: math.
Mathematician Katie Steckles published a brilliant explainer video today for the gift wrapping challenged among us that details some mathematical ways to ensure every present you wrap is absolutely perfect, no matter what shape and size it comes in.
Check it out:
Just in time for the holidays is an impressive sleeve cover from Inateck that fits both the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and all 13.3-inch models of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It’s up to you which one you pick to keep close when you’re moseying around.
If you were quick to get on board with the iPad Pro, you’re probably loyal enough to Apple that you own a MacBook too. With this sleeve you don’t have to worry about swapping out cases and accessories when you have to choose just one to accompany you on your travels.
It gets better: the sleeve transforms into a stand that accommodates either the iPad or laptop. Made from synthetic felt, the sleeve manages to be multipurpose while also extremely affordable.
The NFL is looking for a new partner to host Thursday Night Football, and it appears that Apple may be gunning to make an interception from Yahoo and Google.
Traditional networks like CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC were all informed by the NFL that it is ready to accept bid for broadcasting rights to its Thursday Night Football package, but the league also notified Apple that it can bid for a non-exclusive streaming deal for Apple TV and iOS users.
Someone at Apple appears to be playing a joke on the Kardashians. Either that, or the neural net powering iOS 9’s typo suggestions has unlocked a new synonym.
All iPhones and iPads running iOS 9.2 now autocorrects the word ‘lardass’ to ‘Kardashian.’ News of the comic correction first started making waves yesterday when DJ Phoenix tweeted about the little ‘glitch’ that appears to make fun of Kardashian’s famously ample sized derrière.
I didn’t believe it at first, so I decided to check it out for myself and here’s what autocorrect suggested:
If we ignore the prequels (and, heck, who doesn’t), there hasn’t been a solid Star Wars film in 32 years.
That’s all about to change if film critics reviewing the new film in the franchise, The Force Awakens, are right. The first reviews are in and boy, are they positive. While a few reviewers point out some valid flaws in the nostalgia machine, even the “negative” reviews are fairly upbeat.
Here’s our spoiler-free roundup of some of the best reviews out there so far.
There are two things in the universe that give us incomparable joy: Apple devices and Star Wars nerdery.
The latter is strong with the video below, where Jimmy Fallon, his house band The Roots, and the major cast members from The Force Awakens sing a medley of Star Wars music in a giant Brady Bunch-style colored grid.
If your lightsaber doesn’t explode with joy when you watch, there’s obviously something wrong with you.
Check it out below.
Rdio made the date of its demise official this morning. The streaming music service as we know it will cease to exist on December 22 — just six days from today — at 5 p.m. Pacific time. Rdio sent around an email to its users to let them know the specifics of the shutdown.
“Rdio is being acquired, and the service is shutting down worldwide on December 22,” the company wrote on its Goodbye page. “We’re excited to bring great music experiences to even more listeners in the future as part of the Pandora team.”
Apple convinced us we couldn’t live without a smartphone. Now many of us have a smartphone in hand and Apple may be facing the curse side of the blessing — finding new customers for the iPhone.
Credit Suisse recently issued a report to investors that further fuels speculation that iPhone sales will dip for the first time since Apple introduced it in 2007. The upshot: Smartphone ownership is approaching 100 percent. We’re nearing “peak smartphone.”
Tired of the same old boring wallpaper on your shiny new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus?
You can now grab a cool app that will let you put one of up to 40 different animated images on your iPhone lock screen that you can animate with 3D Touch.
Here’s how to make it happen.
George Hotz made a name for himself at 17 years-old as the first person to hack the iPhone, but his next project could be headed on a collision course with Apple’s self-driving car.
Using affordable electronics that any nerd on the street can purchase, Hotz revealed that he hacked an Acura ILX to become a self-driving car. The hack uses a lidar system on the roof with cameras mounted on the front and back that plug into a computer in the glove box. To top it off, Hotz added a 21.5-inch touch screen to the dash, and replaced the gear shift with a joy stick controller.
“Modern cars are very electronic and computer,” Hotz told Bloomberg. “If you ask me, I know a bit about cars, but I’m not a car guy. I’m a computer guy. Cars are computers.”
If you’ve been waiting to check out Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs movie (and, based on the dismal box office figures, people certainly haven’t rushed out to theaters), you’ve got a couple more months before you can watch it from the comfort of your own home.
The internet is a scary place where protecting your data and privacy can be a lifelong endeavor. It’s an endeavor made a lot easier by getting a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, and right now we’ve got a bundle of hundreds of dollars worth of online security and spam protection from ProXPN, that can all be yours for whatever you’re willing to pay. A part of all proceeds go to the good work of Save the Children, so you can add the good feeling of helping the needy to your newfound sense of online security.
iPhone ranks as the no. 1 consumer tech gadget on Google’s newly-released “Year of Search” list, beating Samsung’s Galaxy S6 as the smartphone we were, apparently, all looking for this year.
Apple and IBM today announced that they have hit their partnership goal of creating more than 100 IBM MobileFirst iOS enterprise apps together. These so far cover 14 different industries and 65 individual professions — ranging from wealth advisors to flight attendants, first responders, nurses and retail buyers.
And the two companies aren’t finished yet!
Australian banks including Westpac, ANZ and Macquarie have announced that they will soon accept contactless payments made via Android Pay — although would-be Apple Pay customers are still being left out in the cold.
The reason? Banks still aren’t happy with Apple’s terms for its mobile payments solution, and showing that they are willing to accept Android Pay is a way of forcing a better deal with Apple.
Apple is allegedly using its secretive new lab facilities in Taiwan to develop microLED displays which are thinner and more energy-efficient than the displays currently used in the company’s products, a new report states.
Two years after it acquired Topsy, a San Francisco-based firm offering Twitter analytics to companies, Apple has officially shut down the service.
“We’ve searched our last tweet,” Topsy has noted on its official Twitter account. Topsy’s website redirects to an Apple support page detailing how users can use search features on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
