Cult of Mac

Chances are you can vaguely remember the last Apple ad you saw, but do you remember it in the same way you remember the company’s “1984” commercial for the original Macintosh, or its wonderful “Think Different” campaign? It’s been a while since we saw anything quite as iconic.

Apple still creates great commercials we can’t help but talk about, but many fans would say those ads aren’t as good as they once were. Has Apple lost its marketing magic, or is it just too difficult to create truly iconic ads in the digital age?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over these questions and more!

Best List: Fujifilm X100T camera

My professional DSLRs are starting to look good in retirement. Just ask my neck, back and right shoulder, which are still angry after years of toting the heavy cameras and lenses around.

In their place to sate my photographic wanderings is the Fujifilm X100T, a diminutive, mirrorless, rangefinder-style camera that records gorgeous files. Its exterior is also easy on the eyes — it tends to stop passersby, who ask questions like, “Is that a Leica?”

While working for Apple alongside good friend Jony Ive on special projects, like the Apple Watch, industrial designer Marc Newson found time to devote his celebrated sensibilities to two very simple objects.

Behold his take on the toaster and the teapot. Simple and clearly fitting for kitchens right now and 100 years from now.

iOS 9 is here and the development frenzy has begun. It’s not too late to get in on the action though, and right now may be the best time to start with this bundle of top notch lessons that can be your for whatever you want to pay. The almost 100 hours of instruction covers iOS 9, Swift, Xcode, WatchOS 2, tvOS, and more, and all proceeds go to Project HOPE, delivering medicine, supplies, experts and medical training in response to disasters and wellness needs around the world.

Google is in talks with chipset manufacturers with a view to designing its own processors and other components for future Android devices, according to a new report.

The company is said to be interested in following Apple’s footsteps in an effort to make Android “more competitive” at the high end of the market, and to “solve other major problems.”

You know that Apple TV is a great set-top box that allows you to play games, watch TV shows and movies, and even listen to Apple Music streams.

What you may not have known is that you can connect Bluetooth speakers so that you don’t bother your roommates or family when you’re watching, enhance dialogue, and even change the audio language on supported media.

Here’s how to do all that, from the comfort of your couch with the new Siri Remote.

There are only 5 more Fridays left until Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuts in theaters. Director JJ Abrams swore he wouldn’t give fans any more trailers, but a new international trailer for the film was released this morning, and oh boy is it filled with a bunch of new scenes.

This might be the most revealing trailer we’ve seen yet, with new footage of BB-88, Chewbacca, Leia, Finn, Rey, and of course, Kylo Ren wielding his broadsword lightsaber.

Check out all the new goodness in the trailer below:

Everything we’ve heard so far about Apple’s long-awaited iPad Pro suggests that it’s coming November 11th, but according to a source familiar with Apple’s plans, would-be customers can actually expect the plus-sized tablet to officially launch on Friday 13th.

Jason Voorhees would be proud!

Apple TV’s killer feature is the App Store. And with an App Store comes games.

I don’t care what near-sighted gaming sites are saying. Sure, Apple’s new box doesn’t have a whole lot of gaming content yet, but it has some great offerings if you poke around a bit. I’m finding games for the new Apple TV that never grabbed my attention when they were on my iPhone or iPad, but seeing them up on the big screen pulled me right in.

Which are the best games for the Apple TV to check out right now, though? Here are our five favorites, in no particular order. Note that the links below will take you to the iTunes App Store. If you purchase them with the same iTunes ID you have set up on your Apple TV, they’ll appear in the “Purchased” tab of the little black puck’s App Store. Alternately, you can search for the game name directly from your TV.

iOS 9.1 brought a whole lot of new emojis, but some users are complaining that it had another unintended consequence too — breaking their Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Posts on Apple’s Support Communities website claim that the recent update either slows down their Touch ID, or in some cases means it even fails to recognize fingerprints altogether.

Prior to founding a tiny little company called Apple, Steves Jobs and Wozniak were “phone phreakers” — selling illegal blue boxes to help people make free long-distance phone calls.

While both quickly turned their back on their law-breaking ways, Jobs noted that, “If we hadn’t made those little blue boxes, there might never have been an Apple computer.”

The entire saga is now the subject of a short documentary, featuring new interviews with Woz, alongside notable phone phreaks Charlie Pine, Tony Lauck, and John “Cap’n Crunch” Draper. Check it out below.

The Apple Watch is continuing its international rollout by going on sale in India — shortly before the country’s Diwali festival, and just one month after the Indian debut of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

Apple’s first wearable device — which has so far shipped close to 7 million units around the world — starts at Rs 30,900 ($469) for the 38mm Apple Watch Sport, and goes up to Rs 14.2 lakh ($21,500) for the top-priced Apple Watch Edition.

Like all well-designed products from the Apple mothership, the new Apple TV’s remote, also known as the Siri remote, looks simple but contains a surprising amount of depth.

Sure, you might know that one press on the Menu button will take you back one screen, but what about all the other secret moves (like how to restart your Apple TV with the buttons)?

Luckily, we’re here to help you discover all the secrets of the Siri remote. Today, let’s look at the buttons and their hidden features.

It’s time to dust off that virtual reality headset that you’ve hardly used since the day it arrived, because the biggest video platform on the planet now supports VR video. Google CEO Sundar Pichai today announced that YouTube has begun offering its first VR video, which can be enjoyed with Google Cardboard.

Facebook is dipping its toes into the music biz this week with a brand new feature that makes it easier than ever to share your favorite tunes with all your social network friends.

The new Music Stories feature rolls out to iPhone users today and allows you to share 30-second song samples from Apple Music and Spotify by simply copy and pasting a link into your status update.

Here’s a preview of how it works:

You have your reasons for not owning a smartwatch, one of which is you happen to like the timepiece presently on your wrist. What if you could make your primitive wristwatch a little smart?

Chronos is like slapping a brain on the back of your favorite timepiece. It is an ulna-thin disc with 36 hours of battery life that brings curated notifications and health tracking to a watch of any age.

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have barely been out for a month, but Apple engineers are hard at work finishing the iPhone 7, and they’re already placing orders for new chips.

Apple has placed LCD driver orders with Synaptics for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, indicating that the touch and display driver (TDDI) single-chip solutions its been developing in-house aren’t quite ready for prime time.

Now that we can basically all the music in the world anywhere we go, it’s up to us to make sure we’re hearing it at its best. Headphones are great, but when it’s time to share the noise you’ll want to pick up a UE BOOM Bluetooth Speaker. The critically acclaimed speaker will get any room moving with rich, balanced sound, and right now you can get one for just $149.99.

Apple Music has gone country in the streaming service’s latest ad that debuted last night during ABC’s broadcast of the Country Music Awards. The new ad gives viewers a backstage peek at Kenny Chesney’s ‘No Shoes Nation’ tour as the country singer uses Apple Music to create playlists, and discover new tunes

Along with waxing philosophical about the ‘human element’ Apple Music offers, the one-minute ad also features the Apple Watch that’s worn by Chesney to track his workouts as he slams medicine balls into the ground while aspiring to become a bull rider.

Watch the new ad below:

We were all supposed to have personal jetpacks by now. But keeping them in the air for any length of time has made them impractical, so to get our futuristic fix we have to settle for Buzz Lightyear or James Bond from the 1965 movie Thunderball.

But check out jetpack pilots Yves Rossy and Vince Reffet, of the Jetman Dubai team, who recently conducted a fantastic formation flight over the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai with an Emirates A380 commercial jet.

Xiaomi’s efforts to follow Apple into adopting pressure-sensitive smartphone displays has hit a roadblock, with the Chinese company struggling to source suitable components at a reasonable price. This almost certainly means that Xiaomi fans will have to wait longer for its first handset with 3D Touch.

Giant drugstore chain Walgreens today announced that Balance Rewards loyalty scheme members can now earn and redeem loyalty points via Apple Pay through Apple Pay — without having to separately scan a Balance Rewards card or barcode.

Before he made The Martian, Ridley Scott directed the most iconic Apple ad in history with the classic 1984 Macintosh commercial.

So what better way to set yourself apart from Apple as a rival smartphone maker than to… completely rip off ideas Apple was circulating thirty-odd years ago? Yeah, we don’t get it either.

Check out HTC’s new One A9 ad below to make your own mind up.

Thanks to innovations like Apple Pay, Touch ID has become increasingly useful as of late. But Apple’s got another idea it’s been toying with also — in the form of a “panic mode,” which can be entered by unlocking your iPhone with a certain finger.

I wish I could have a failure like the Apple Watch!

Despite naysayers claiming the Apple Watch hasn’t taken off as Apple hoped, a new set of figures suggests that Apple has shipped close to 7 million Apple Watches since its launch — a figure which outstrips all other vendors’ combined smartwatch shipments in the past five financial quarters.