Guitar Hero Live ditches the cartoony look of previous games in the series. Photo: Activision Blizzard
You’ll need to have rock-star money to afford new iOS rhythm game Guitar Hero Live.
That’s because, in a break from previous titles in the hard-rocking series, this one features a $49.99 in-app purchase for the full version, which includes well over 40 tracks.
Yep, to paraphrase This Is Spinal Tap, this price goes to 11!
This whole ad was shot with an iPhone 6. Photo: New Balance
You know smartphone cameras are getting pretty darn good when they start regularly popping up as the filming implement of choice for ad-makers.
The latest company to jump on the iPhone for shooting is New Balance Numeric, the popular sneaker brand’s skate shoe division. It’s released a six-minute skate video/advert shot completely on an iPhone 6 that features pro skaters including PJ Ladd, Arto Saari, Jordan Taylor, Levi Brown, Tom Karangelov and Jack Curtin.
Samsung is making a last ditch effort to avoid paying Apple. Photo: Jim Merithew / Cult of Mac
They may not have done so well in India, but on Samsung’s home turf, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are doing gangbusters business. In South Korea, in fact, iPhone 6s preorders sold out within minutes of becoming available.
Protect your gray matter with Smith Optics' Forefront bike helmet (now with MIPS), and maybe toss in some cool shades, too. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Best List: Forefront bike helmet with MIPS by Smith Optics
There’s MIPS in that there Forefront. Smith Optics’ Forefront mountain bike helmet has been around for a bit and has gotten excellent reviews from both the media and the man on the trail.
Now Smith has added the latest buzzword in safety — MIPS, or Multi-Directional Impact Protection System — to the award-winning lid.
One of these iPhones is jailbroken, the other isn't. Can you guess which one? Screenshot: Cult of Mac
One of the reasons Apple says you shouldn’t jailbreak your iPhone is because doing so will impact performance. But is that actually true, or is that just what Apple wants you to believe? This video holds the answers.
Would iTunes look better like this? Photo: Rethink iTunes
Apple gets a lot of kudos for its design chops, but there’s one product everyone thinks Cupertino can improve: iTunes. The bloated Swiss army knife app for managing everything from your music library to the apps on your iPhone has been begging for a rethink for years. Yet for whatever reason, Apple has yet to deliver a true design overhaul of iTunes.
The situation has gotten so bad, iTunes is now being assigned to college students as a design problem. Students at German college Fachochschule Potsdam were assigned the task of splitting iTunes up into 16 different apps. And the results look pretty good!
Just don't call it a security breach. Apparently. Photo: PhotoAtelier/Flickr
The Chinese mobile ad company responsible for malicious code discovered in 256 iOS apps has come forward and apologized after being named and shamed by Apple.
Like this, except hopefully without the whole Skynet thing. Photo: TriStarLike this, except hopefully without the whole Skynet thing. Photo: TriStar Pictures
Samsung has received a multi-million dollar investment from the South Korean government to develop factory robots to help win manufacturing work currently being lost to cheap human labor in China.
The UE Boom 2's new Block Party feature makes it easier than ever to share music with friends. Photo: Ultimate Ears
SAN FRANCISCO — A slick new feature coming to Ultimate Ears’ Bluetooth speakers will let you stream your friends’ music from the palm of your hand.
Called Block Party, it lets up to three friends connect to the same UE speaker. Then the self-appointed DJ can pick and choose from each person’s tunes, pulled from streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. The DJ can skip songs and jump from playlist to playlist, and it’s all shockingly smooth and simple.
Luke Skywalker is conspicuously absent from the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens poster. Photo: Lucas Films
The newest trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens was finally unveiled tonight, and it absolutely blew us away. Twitter and the rest of the Internet is freaking out over the J.J. Abrams directed movie that will hit theaters on December 17th.
Tickets for the new Star Wars went on sale and we can’t wait to be front-and-center for all the lightsaber action when Han, Chewie, and the new crew touchdown. The movie has reached the kind of hype you only see before an Apple product launch, and we’re ready to obsesses over all the details in the new trailer.
Star Wars has given us our first look at Leia in the new trailer, plus a lot of bad guy Kylo Ren and Daisy Ridley’s character Rey, but most fans just have one question: Where the hell is Luke?
Check out these 25 GIFs from the new trailer and see if you spot any new clues:
The swanky new Apple TV is on the way. Photo: Apple
The eagerly-anticipated Apple TV refresh will be available for pre-orders next Monday, said Tim Cook during his on-stage appearance at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference.
Customers won’t have to hang about, either, as shipments are likely to be sent out by the end of that week.
Apple Music already has around one-third of Spotify's paid subscriber base. Photo: Wall Street Journal Digital Live
Apple Music has 6.5 million paying customers, according to no less an authority than Tim Cook, speaking at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference.
Given that Apple claimed it had 11 million people using its free trial back in August, that’s an impressive free-to-paid conversion rate of almost 60 percent. It’s also around one-third of the paid subscriber base of Spotify, which has 20 million subs.
The Eora 3D scanner wants to leave no dino head undigitized. Photo: Eora 3D
The 3D-printing future is here, but unfortunately it’s still cost-prohibitive for many people who want to get in on the newest making revolution. But an upcoming project just launched on Kickstarter may just have the solution to that problem.
The Eora 3D scanner connects to your smartphone to create precise and accurate models of just about anything you can put in front of it, and it will do it for way less money than you’d expect.
Apple wants to dramatically improve its 2 percent share on the smartphone market in India. Photo: Tim Cook/Twitter
The iPhone 6s hit shelves in India over the weekend – and on the shelves are where most of them stayed.
According to reports in that country, Apple saw lukewarm sales of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus during launch there. With the cost on the entry level 16 GB iPhone 6 at $925, many analysts say Indian consumers may be waiting for prices to drop before upgrading.
Even more magic than you expected, right? Cover Design: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac
Happy weekend, everyone! We’ve got another insane issue of Cult of Mac Magazine for you this week, full of details on Apple’s new iMac, Magic peripherals, the best updates in iWork’s new update, fresh how-tos, product reviews, and a sad goodbye to one of Apple’s ultimate fans.
The Advent iPhone 6 case makes the phone it holds look like cheap garbage. Photo: Gray International
Are you in the market for an iPhone 6 case that makes the money you spend on the phone itself look like pocket change? A limited-edition accessory can help you make that dream come true.
The Advent comes courtesy of Gray International, and it looks like every cent of its $1,500 price point. And that’s probably because it bears more than a passing resemblance to the billion-dollar stealth bomber.
Check out the fancy case in all of its overly dramatic glory in the promotional video below.
Tim Cook takes home $125 million for Apple’s best year since 2009 Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple CEO Tim Cook joined the CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization this week as part of Apple’s continued fight against global warning and environmental issues.
The council is basically like an Avengers-style group (or Justice League if DC is your preferred flavor) consisting of CEOs and chairmen from the top companies in China and the West, that are hellbent on saving the planet from overpopulation, deforestation, and finite energy resources.
Kate Winslet (left) plays Joanna Hoffman (right) in Steve Jobs. Photo: Apple
Kate Winslet has been earning rave reviews for her performance as Joanna Hoffman in the new Steve Jobs movie. Hoffman was one of the original members of the Macintosh (employee #5 to be exact), and was notorious at Apple as one of the few employees who boss Steve Jobs around.
In a recent interview, Hoffman revealed what it was like coming to Apple as an architect and working with Steve Jobs at the age of 25. She also dished on other doomed projects like the Lisa computer and the Apple 3, and took some questions from the audience at Maker School about Silicon Valley and startup culture.
Watch Joanna tell developers about how she met Steve and other juicy tidbits below:
Twitter Moments is the news of the future and Apple News will get left behind. Photo: Twitter
The way we consume news is changing at a rapid pace, and both Apple and Twitter are trying to cater to readers’ need for speed and convenience.
iOS 9’s new Apple News app and the recently launched Twitter Moments both exist because millennials aren’t reading the newspaper every morning or watching news broadcasts in the evening. We get our news primarily from the Internet, often without having to click on articles or read hundreds of words for context.
Online media’s big push toward keeping news relevant and immediate caters to our ever-shrinking attention spans. For better or worse, we’ve gravitated toward bite-size information and entertaining listicles.
Twitter figured that out long ago. Apple still hasn’t.
Amtrak routes are now available in Apple Maps. Screengrab: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac
The next stage of Apple Maps’ Transit roll-out is live today. The latest update includes public transportation in Boston and, more interestingly, select Amtrak train routes in the northeastern U.S.
OK, well it’s all pretty interesting. But, you know. Trains.
The face that first introduced us to Live Photo. Photo: Apple
The iPhone 6s’ new Live Photos feature created a new media format, but there’s one major problem with the new moving pictures: You have to own an iPhone 6s to see them.
Most of your friends probably haven’t upgraded yet, which means those cool Live Photos you’ve snapped are only viewable by you. However, there is a way to transform your favorite Live Photo into a shareable GIF or video file, allowing everyone to see the movement in your picture, no matter what device they’re on.
Apple responded swiftly to the discovery that over 250 apps collected data with private APIs. Photo: Jason Howie/Flickr CC
Apple banned over 250 apps from the App Store that were using software to access users’ personal information. These apps managed to get through the App Store approval process with private APIs, which are against the rules. Apple took action shortly after news broke this morning that a security firm discovered these apps.
After four unscientific soaks in water, the Loop leather band for Apple Watch showed no visible signs of damage. Photo: atomic delights
Apple doesn’t do a lot of explaining on the website about its watch bands. You get a gallery of styles with mentions of material and a price, all under the headline, “Thoughtfully Designed Bands.” Apparently, great thought goes into water exposure.
Avid Apple product deconstructor Greg Koenig recently put Apple’s quilted Venezia leather Loop band to a soak test for his blog, atomic delights. After four soaks, Koenig was impressed to find no visible damage.
Nexus 5X is insanely fast at reading your prints. Photo: SuperSaf TV
Fingerprint scanners on Android devices have been hit-or-miss (mostly miss) in recent years, but they’re getting a whole lot better. There’s no better example of that than the new Nexus 5X, which is even faster at recognizing your print than the new Touch ID sensor in iPhone 6s.
iPin's laser pointer fits right in your iPhone's headphone jack. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Whether for presentations or driving your cat up the wall, laser pointers are as fun as they are useful. Given everything else an iPhone can do, it only makes sense that it also be able to shine a focused beam of light when and where you need one. The iPin Laser Pointer fits neatly inside your iPhone’s headphone jack, turning it into a red laser pointer. Batteries aren’t an issue, since the iPin sips power straight from the phone, and a built-in switch that means you can leave it in the jack when not in use. iPin also comes with a slideshow-controlling app, which together with the laser make this a great option for anyone who gives regular presentations.