Hacking your Apple TV may no longer land you in the cooler. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Great news for people who are looking forward to jailbreaking that Apple TV that’s on its way to you this week: The Library of Congress has amended the law to render after-market firmware modification completely legal in the United States.
Small questions like legality haven’t stopped people from opening up their gadgets before, but they’ll be happy to know that it’s totally above-board now.
The iPhone 6s is selling like hotcakes. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The iPhone 6s is a huge hit, China is still doing great, and Android users absolutely love switching to iPhone.
Those are just some of the details Tim Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri revealed during this afternoon’s earnings call with investors that revealed Apple managed to top Wall Street’s expectations thanks to the iPhone 6s.
Here are the top takeaways from Apple’s latest record-setting quarter:
Apple raked in the cash last quarter. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple’s earnings barely beat Wall Street’s expectations for fourth-quarter revenue thanks to strong sales of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which helped the company bring in $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion
The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus set a new launch weekend record of 13 million units sold, helping Apple finish the quarter with 48.5 million units sold. 2015 was Apple’s most successful financial year ever, leading Tim Cook to call it a “testament to the tremendous execution by our teams.”
Tim would rather you not ask about taxes. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is ready to report its financial results for Q4 2015 to this afternoon and, as usual, investors are expecting it to be another record-breaker.
Cult of Mac will be here to liveblog all the action, from the numbers down to the analysts’ questions. iPhone 6s sales will loom large on the minds of investors who have been leery that demand might be waning. Revenues are expected to top $51 billion, but with China’s economy slumping, we wouldn’t be shocked if Wall Street isn’t thrilled with the numbers.
Tim Cook or CFO Luca Maestri will kick off at 2 p.m. Pacific, but we’ll be jumping on the liveblogging party early with a breakdown of all the numbers. Bookmark this page and join us for Apple’s monstrous earnings call.
An unknown number of smartphones died in the making of this ad. Photo: MotorolaAn unknown number of smartphones died in the making of this ad. Photo: Motorola
Maybe you know this sickening feeling: Your smartphone slips from your hand and starts its descent toward the ground. If you’re standing in an asphalt parking lot or walking down a city sidewalk — and you don’t have your phone protected in a life-preserving case — you know what happens next.
Time seems to stand still as the phone falls toward earth. Then … Impact. Shattering glass. And a horrifying glimpse at the damage done.
Every day, I delete files. Usually, they’re images or screenshots I download or use for my work here at Cult of Mac. These kinds of files pile up across a full day, and I just want to get rid of them to de-clutter my workspace.
Even if I use the Command-Delete keyboard shortcut to get them to the Trash, I still need to empty the Trash (with Shift-Command-Delete), making this a two-step process.
OS X El Capitan brings a feature that lets me skip one of these steps. Here’s how to delete your files immediately using your El Capitan-enabled Mac.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will introduce the band Imagine Dragons Satuday at the LOVELOUD Festival in Utah. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is scheduled to reveal its earnings for the final fiscal quarter of 2015 on Tuesday, October 27, and investors are expecting monstrous results.
Sales of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus should boost revenues to new heights after Apple announced that it sold a record 13 million units of the new devices during launch weekend alone. Exactly how many iPhones Apple sold won’t be revealed until the bell closes, but Tim Cook seemed pretty optimistic in a recent interview.
Cook told The Wall Street Journal that Apple Watch shipped even more watches last quarter than in the first quarter. It’s unlikely Apple will give us the actual Apple Watch sales figures during the earnings call, but there should be a lot of juicy Apple bits.
Here’s everything to expect from Apple’s Q4 2015 earnings:
Apple TV's wallpapers look even better on Mac. Photo: John Coates
One of the coolest features of the new Apple TV is its absolutely stunning new screensavers, which fly you through some of the most gorgeous locations in the world.
Apple hasn’t announced any plans to bring the screensavers over to the Mac yet, but they’re such a perfect fit that developer John Coates created a new Swift app that lets anyone get the beautiful backdrops on their desktop.
The year of Apple Pay might be starting to plateau after adoption of the mobile payments service exploded through out 2015, according to data from Phoenix Marketing.
Apple Pay is still picking up users one year after launch, but the firm’s data shows that growth has slowed over the last few months. It appears that Millennials aren’t as crazy yet about wallet-free payments as expected. Gen X users have grown the most though with nearly 23% having already signed up for the service in the first year.
These earbuds are so rugged, you'll love them a long time. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Best List: AudioOHM RNF earbuds by GOgroove
My kids are constantly breaking their earbuds. Whether a pair of Apple’s pack-in EarPods or a $40 pair of neon green ‘buds from Best Buy, anything they use ends up with frayed and broken wires.
These ruggedized earbuds from GOgroove, however, withstood both teens — and I’m still able to use them. Plus? They sound really great for the price.
Customers in China aren't lining up for the iPhone like they once were. Photo: Apple
China’s rising middle class has been good for Apple and the iPhone. CEO Tim Cook said iPhone sales in the world’s largest smartphone market has risen 112 percent over the last year.
Cook reported the China earnings during Apple’s third-quarter conference call as the company gets to set to release an earnings report Tuesday afternoon for the last quarter that many analysts are predicting will be underwhelming.
The ExoMount Touch keeps your phone within easy reach with a simple, one-touch mechanism. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Twenty dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, but that doesn’t have to be true if you know where to look. Cult of Mac’s frugal sleuths have found some great deals that you can add to your life with a spare bill floating around in your wallet, from hands-free mounts to game design training and more. Check them out below.
Apple brings carrier billing for app purchases to Germany. Photo: Cult of Mac
You may soon be able to make purchases in the iTunes store without a credit or debit card.
Apple has been working with a phone carrier in Germany on an agreement that would let people pay for items as part of their phone bills. Users’ phone numbers, rather than credit cards or bank account numbers, will be used to make purchases that will show up on the next bill.
Some iPhone 6s Plus animations look surprisingly jerky. Photo: Apple
The iPhone 6s Plus has a frame rate problem, and the only solution is more cowbell right here!
Although it’s not necessarily something your average user is going to get too concerned about, a number of people have noticed that the iOS transition animations on the phablet-sized iPhone 6s Plus look considerably slower and more jerky than those on the smaller iPhone 6s.
Apple's 50,000-square-foot retail space will be the first in U.A.E. Photo: Gulf Business
In advance of the opening of Apple’s massive 50,000-square-foot retail space at the Mall of the Emirates this Thursday, Gulf Business has gotten a sneak preview of the company’s debut United Arab Emirates store — showing a leafy open-plan oasis carrying the new Jony Ive-designed Apple Store interior.
I may not be the target audience for the Sena Apple Watch stand. Possibly because I have a lamp shaped like Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber. Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac
It’s hard to resist the allure of a fancy Apple Watch stand, especially if you want to take advantage of watchOS 2’s awesome Nightstand Mode. Sena’s Travel Case and Stand is one such premium accessory, and how useful it’ll be to you depends on what kind of relationship you have with your smartwatch.
It looks great, and it’s definitely high-quality. And while it does solve a couple major issues I’ve been having with my Apple Watch, it offers solutions for some other ones I can’t imagine ever confronting.
Live Photos will let you relive great moments. Photo: Apple
After debuting three new iPhone 6s ads over the weekend, showing off the handset’s new wireless “Hey Siri” feature and various camera improvements, Apple has dropped one more ad — depicting the iPhone 6s’ Live Photos tool.
Called “Half Court,” the 15-second spot shows Golden State Warriors NBA player Stephen Curry making an impressive half-court shot, which can then be re-lived thanks to Live Photos.
The iPad Pro may be hard to find early on. Photo: Apple
Apple hopes the iPad Pro will reinvigorate slumping tablet sales, but the company’s not showing much faith in the device, if initial orders are to be believed.
According to supply chain sources, Apple is taking a “rather conservative attitude” toward iPad Pro, ordering just 2.5 million for the rest of 2015 — and possibly even less for the first quarter of 2016 if holiday sales prove weaker than expected.
"Mr. Bond, I've been expecting you." Photo: USPTO/Apple
With its pro-privacy stance, Apple’s pretty good at treading the line between usefulness and creepiness, which other tech companies can struggle with.
A newly-published patent, however, may challenge that assertion — describing a method for monitoring another person’s location, via their iPhone, with constant user notifications sent to alert you of any changes in their progress along a route.
Presumably so you can hop in a chair, grab a white cat for your lap, and sit facing the door to greet their arrival with the line, “Mr. Bond, I’ve been expecting you.”
Send any web page as a PDF to iBooks in iOS 9. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
I’m a big fan of getting instructions off the internet: recipes, directions on car maintenance, or video game walkthroughs, for example. The problem is that you need to be online to view them.
Now in iOS 9, however, there’s a way to save web pages to a handy, offline-friendly PDF file. The next time you’re flying on an airplane and trying to get through Broken Age with a walkthrough, you’ll be in luck.
Here’s how to convert any webpage in iOS 9’s mobile Safari to a PDF and then read it in (or send it from) iBooks.
Android Pay just one-upped Apple Pay with its Coca-Cola loyalty reward partnership. Photo: Coca-Cola
Android Pay, the newest kid on the block in mobile phone payments, has found a way to get people using their smartphones to pay for goods and services: loyalty reward systems.
Like similar retail, grocery and airline programs, Android Pay will soon include points for specific purchases to encourage us all to use our smartphones more and more to pay for the stuff we already buy.
Coke is the first program up, according to Google exec Sridhar Ramaswamy, with points to earn each time you use Android Pay to buy a Coke through any one of some 20,000 NFC-enabled Coca-Cola vending machines. You’ll get points that will let you get free Coke, Coca-Cola gets to know where and when people are buying its products and Google gets people to use Android Pay. It’s win-win-win.
A recent study that measured the brain activity of people using the Apple Watch suggests that even the most skeptical of users came to like the wearable after some hands-on time with it.
The findings come from “neuromarketing” group eMerite, which connected electroencephalograms to 20 people and studied their reactions as they tried out different functions of Apple’s smartwatch.
Microsoft's Fifth Ave store is open for business. Photo: Microsoft
Microsoft officially opened its flagship store on NYC’s historic Fifth Avenue today just blocks away from Apple’s iconic glass cube, and it’s taken a few pages from the iPhone-maker’s playbook in the process.
The doors to Microsoft’s new store opened just in time for the release of the new Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, but Microsoft says it’s totally cool if Apple fans bring in their devices too.
“If you bring your iPhone in here, I’d love to show you how to use Office on it,” said Kelly Soligon, senior director of retail stores marketing at Microsoft. There are signs of Apple’s influence throughout the store through, from the giant glass facade to the glass staircase.