The new Misfit Shine 2 delivers better fitness tracking. Photo: Misfit
Misfit Shine 2 delivers better fitness tracking. Photo: Misfit
Misfit is back with a major update to its award-winning Shine fitness and sleep tracker. The new Shine 2 is faster and more accurate than its predecessor, with an added 3-axis magnetometer and updated hardware that promises improved responsiveness and snappier syncing.
The M2M Channel is part of Apple TV's ambitious launch plan next week. Photo: WME/IMG
Apple TV has locked up some fancy, exclusive content ahead of the launch of its new set-top hardware next week.
M2M, which is a really chic way of saying “Made to Measure,” will air content devoted to the fashion world and its icons. It comes courtesy of a partnership between Apple and sports/fashion titan WME/IMG, and you’ll only be able to see it through Apple.
Here’s what you can expect your Apple TV to be wearing when the channel launches Tuesday.
Makers of Swiss watches may not be adding Apple to their friend circles anytime soon. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The third-quarter figures are in for the Swiss watch industry, and it’s not good news. Exports slid 8.5 percent over the past three months, continuing a trend that has some worried that newer tech like the Apple Watch might be affecting demand for traditional timepieces.
Analysts are citing falling sales in Asia as the reason for the downturn.
Now that marijuana is legal in many spots around the U.S., pot apps abound. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Where can you buy weed legally? What kind of marijuana is best for you? What are the laws concerning pot use in your neck of the woods? Potent new marijuana apps make it easy to answer all your sticky weed questions.
We’ve harvested the best marijuana apps so you don’t have to pick through the seeds and stems yourself.
Apple plans to make a big splash in the fashion world next year by sponsoring the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big Costume Institute exhibit. Few details about the project are known, but Apple design guru Jony Ive teased what visitors might be able to expect in a new interview about the intersection of technology and fashion.
We won’t get a peak of the iPhone 7 until late next year, but when we do its biggest feature may be that it comes without it’s most iconic pieces of hardware: the home button.
Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster is infamous in the Apple community for his incessant predictions that Apple is making a television set. Now the analyst is dipping into some iPhone 7 speculation, claiming that by ditching the home button, the iPhone 7 will come in a smaller form-factor but pack the same screen size.
Siri will remind you of tasks you need to complete based on your location. Photo: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac
Maybe there aren’t a ton of new features in iOS 9, but you may find yourself getting tighter with Siri.
Siri is out to earn the title of “Best Assistant” with a series of new tricks aimed at making your life easier.
You no longer have to set a time for Siri to remind you to do tasks. You will automatically get reminders once you arrive or leave a location. No time to read an email or an interesting article? Ask her to remind you later and she will do so.
Siri can call up any photo you like based on a location or timestamp. She can also give you sports scores without directing you to a website, can convert measurements and, if you have a shiny new iPhone 6s, there is no need to press the home button to summon her. Just say, “Hey Siri.”
To see how Siri worked for me, check out the video below.
Apple TV 4 brings iOS apps to the big screen. Photo: Apple
The fourth generation Apple TV is set to start shipping next week and Apple just added three new channels to the device’s lineup to boost its offerings.
New channels were added to Apple TV this morning for CBS All Access, Made to Measure, and finally NBC, which is the last of the major networks to joining the Apple TV lineup.
Spotify was the top-grossing App in the iPhone App Store. Photo: Spotify
Tim Cook may like the “runway” for Apple Music’s take off, but Spotify is currently soaring.
Apple’s competitor in the music streaming business found itself in the No. 1 position on the iPhone App Store’s Top Grossing charts for the first time in the United States. This is on the same day that the Apple CEO Cook told the audience at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference that Apple Music has 6.5 million paying customers.
It won’t happen until 2020 at the earliest. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
After five months of beta testing its fast-loading ‘instant’ articles, Facebook is rolling out the feature to all iPhone users starting today.
Instant articles load 10 times faster than normal shared links and rank higher in News Feed. Facebook has enlisted a number of top publishers to create content for the new article format with The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and The Atlantic among the first supporters.
The ALUMINUM Slider case for the iPhone 6 by Gresso has a secret drawer for a credit card. Photo: Gresso
Those iPhone cases that hold cash and credit cards are fine as long as you want to look like you’re carrying your mother’s wallet.
Luxury accessories design company Gresso has a solution to return your overriding need to be practical back to cool. It has designed a stylish aircraft aluminum iPhone 6 case that has a hidden slide-out drawer for your cards. Jony Ive might approve.
Backblaze offers safe, fast backup across their massive server infrastructure at unbeatable prices. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Backblaze launched in 2007, accruing hard drives and building out a backup capacity of what amounts to some 150 petabytes of data on its servers. They’ve since become one of the most trusted providers of backup, with prices that beat out even Amazon’s impressively prices S3 service. How much cheaper? Right now you can get a year of unlimited backup on Backblaze for $24.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
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.