Apple just released iOS 9.2 to the public today after months of beta testing by developers and public testers.
iOS 9.2 is the second major update since iOS 9 was released to in Septmeber and brings with it a host of new bug fixes, as well as significant tweaks to the Safari View Controller that allows Safari to run natively within third-party apps.
There’s unquestionable power in an object that does one thing and does it well. Consider the lowly travel mug — it’s a common commodity among the world’s coffee-swilling commuters, and yet the standard design lets us down repeatedly.
How does it fail us? It doesn’t keep our coffee hot for long. And, worse, it’s got a tendency to drip, spill and even spurt lukewarm java onto our clothes and car interiors. Many of my shirts bear depressing coffee stains, the marks of a road warrior using an inferior travel mug.
Ever noticed how filled with digital flotsam and jetsam your Mac gets? It’s even worse with external hard drives, which tend to fill up with OS X service files (with glorious names like .DS_Store or .TemporaryItems), Windows service files from when you connect to other PCs, resource forks and un-emptied files in the Trash.
CleanMyDrive is a fantastic utility to remove this kind of from your external hard drives, and now developer MacPaw has refined it even more to bring you CleanMyDrive 2, with new tools to help you keep all your connected drives clean and safe.
Whether you’re on a long flight or stuck somewhere during this holiday without a wall outlet, there are many occasions when extra juice can make the difference between getting your work done or not. These occasions are just what the ChugPlug Portable MacBook Power Pack was made for. It’s a slim powerstrip that acts like a portable wall outlet, allowing you to give your MacBook up to 4 hours of extra runtime, an invaluable backup that can be yours for $29.99.
Apple today unveiled a surprise new $99 iPhone “Smart Battery Case,” available in white and charcoal gray — designed to not only protect your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6, but also to give it considerably longer battery life.
While Apple does not give specific battery capacity details, it notes that the battery case offers increased talk time up to 25 hours, Internet use up to 18 hours on LTE, and video playback up to 20 hours.
The downside? Well, it’s not exactly a “looker.”
Siri is loaded with fun Easter eggs. However, its latest addition — created in collaboration with the Cerebral Palsy Foundation — isn’t flippant or sarcastic like some of the AI assistant’s other one-liners; it’s just good advice.
Ask Siri how to start a conversation with someone with a disability, and she’ll answer, “It’s easy. Just say, ‘Hi.’”
3D Touch isn’t just for iPhone users anymore!
The same 3D Touch gestures that Instagram integrated into its iOS app following the release of iPhone 6s are now available inside its Android app — and you don’t need a pressure sensitive display to use them.
Here’s an amazing factoid: Netflix almost went head-to-head with the Apple TV in 2007, until they realized they were about to pick a fight they would surely lose.
U.K. councillors in Croydon have been named and shamed for using an iPad during a council meeting to keep track of the score in a soccer game.
And — wouldn’t you know it — as with every other time something like this happens, senior Labour councillors John Wentworth and Pat Ryan claim that they were just “momentarily” taking a break from the important meeting they were in.
A recent weird patent filing suggested Apple might be making a color 3-D printer. Now, the best Apple concept designer in the business, Martin Hajek, has come along and imagined the device in a set of beautiful renderings.
Apple is spending “at least $13 million” expanding its Elk Grove, Sacramento county campus, says a new report — in a move which could translate into thousands of new jobs being created.
Apple is reportedly converting a 134,000-square-foot warehouse into a new logistics operation. It has also added 1,450 additional parking spaces, medical and dental facilities, a massage room, exercise room, and even a yoga studio.
Sony’s PlayStation app for mobile has always been something of a disaster, with a poor user interface and painfully slow performance. That’s still true today — but now you don’t have to use it when all you want to do is message friends on the PlayStation Network.
In an effort to be a better messaging service, PlayStation Messages has gone solo. With the new PlayStation Messages app for Android and iOS, you can keep in touch with the rest of your clan without having to use the main PlayStation app at all.
It’s no secret that Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs has been a massive flop in theaters, but an interesting comparison with the notorious Ashton Kutcher-starring biopic Jobs shows something surprising: Kutcher’s movie may ultimately emerge the box office winner.
It’s hard to think of too many Apple-related bombs bigger than Apple Maps, the disastrous mapping service introduced in 2012, which resulted in widespread ridicule, at least one major executive leaving the company, and Tim Cook himself recommending that customers use rival services.
But just a few years later a new report suggests that Apple Maps is used “three times as often” as Google Maps on iOS devices, with “more than five billion map-related requests each week.”
How’s that for a turnaround?
It’s about time, really. We already can order pizzas, send images of our rashes to medical doctors, and get groceries delivered via the magic of our iPhones. Now, with a new app called EazeMD, you can get your legal medical marijuana this way, too.
Eaze MD promises California smartphone users the ability to connect with a doctor for a prescription for medical marijuana, and then follow that up with a delivery within 20 minutes or less.
How’s that for the new app economy?
A two-pack of custom Lego figures has made late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs into Elvis Presley.
Not appearance-wise, we mean. That would be super weird. But the new set, which comes courtesy of custom-Lego company FamousBrick, pays tribute to Jobs by showcasing both young and old versions of the tech legend.
The iPad Pro has become a huge favorite of illustrators and artists all over the place, and as these talented individuals get their Apple Pencils, they’re starting to see the joy of drawing directly on Apple’s massive and powerful tablet.
Thing is, the Apple Pencil doesn’t have an eraser on the end of it, unlike competitor artistic styluses (including 53’s own Pencil stylus, which features a big, soft eraser on the end opposite the drawing part).
Luckily, if you’re using an app like Savage Interactive’s Procreate, you can tweak things to make your finger do the magic eraser job.
I just made three custom, royalty-free soundtracks using nothing more than a website and my Mac. I’ll be able to use these in any video project I like. This is some super-simple music making; if you make videos that need music, you’ll want to check this out.
Jukedeck Make is an amazing online tool for making basic soundtracks using artificial intelligence. A team of experts in machine learning, music composition and audio production came together around this system, initially conceived of and built by a couple of classmates from Cambridge University.
The ever-expanding holiday season is upon us once again, and Cult of Mac wants to help make your obligatory family dinners the least awkward they can be.
We know that a certain amount of discomfort is unavoidable. Kids might have tantrums, Grinches might get a bit too much “holiday spirit,” or some cousin with a beef might have been waiting for everyone to be in the same room before they announce how they really feel about Grandma.
Family drama aside, we have a few tips for conversation tech topics to avoid during dinner to keep everyone as happy and un-yelled-at as possible. It was a big year for tech, but some topics are best left in Internet forums and the comments of your favorite Apple blog.
Teaching your kids how to code is pretty much as important as teaching them to write, according to Apple’s senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, in an interview promoting the company’s Hour of Code project.
Apple is turning all of its retail locations into coding centers for kids this week. The classes will offer hands-on instructions into the basics of coding that Federighi says will hopefully set of a spark with the young learners.
The fact that professional-level photos and videos can be made with the camera on the iPhone is old news. However, the amazement never gets old with professionals when they forgo conventional equipment to use iPhones on a shoot.
The cinematographers who capture breathtaking action sports for Freeride Entertainment were in awe of the results with the iPhone after filming some of the most daring skiers, wakeboarders and motocross athletes for a promotion for HITCASE.
The developers of the Poison Maps app figured out a new way to implement 3D Touch that goes above and beyond what we’re used to seeing. They use two patent-pending gestures called “context zooming” and “context panning.” The first lets you quickly see the surrounding area of a particular location you’re zoomed in on without leaving that location, while the latter lets you move around in the surroundings and effortlessly focus in on somewhere new.
These gestures work using long presses. Since 3D Touch can sense varying amounts of force, Poison Apps cleverly uses the technology to adjust the zoom based on how hard you press.
Apple Pay is showing up in more places these days, but if you live in a town like mine, it can be hard to know exactly where those places are.
Want to know whether that hip restaurant down the street or your local pharmacy supports Apple Pay before you get there? Here’s a super easy trick using either your iPhone or your Mac.
The holiday shopping season is usually a huge boon for PC manufacturers, but according to the latest estimates from the International Data Corporation, shoppers have decided to skip the PC upgrade as a gift this Christmas.
Google Calendar is bringing your appointments and to-do list together with a new update that adds support for reminders. Calendar will display your tasks and to-dos alongside meetings and events so they’re harder to forget, and sync them across Inbox, Gmail, Google Keep, and Google Now.