Cult of Mac

In an effort to outlaw discrimination against LGBT people under federal law, members of congress introduced the historic Equality Act of 2015 today, and they’ve got the biggest company in tech on their side.

By ensuring people can no longer be discriminated against due to sexual orientation or gender identity, the sweeping legislation would extend these rights to LGBT people in the 31 states that don’t offer those protections to LGBT citizens. The new bill already has 150 co-sponsors, plus Apple’s official endorsement.

Despite launching a few months ago, the new MacBook hasn’t gotten a tremendous amount of love from accessory makers so far. Above the Fray, a company based in Thailand, noticed a glaring omission for a 12-inch MacBook cable manager so the team took it upon themselves to create one.

Amid continuing rumors that it might be building an electric car, Apple revealed that is has boosted its research-and-development spending by $1.5 billion this year.

While Apple is dumping more money into R&D, it’s been able to trim costs in other areas. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the fiscal quarter that ended June 27, Apple lowered its capital-spending projections for the year by 8 percent, which could amount to $1 billion in savings.

The E1 camera is so small, there is barely any room on the body for its two-character name.

This is only a slight exaggeration for the slight camera with large ambitions and an impressive list of specs that could make it legitimate competition for GoPro, the reigning king of the Point of View camera market.

Startup camera company Z says its E1 is the world’s smallest Micro Four Thirds 4K video camera with interchangeable lenses.

Looks like Samsung and Apple pretty much own the smartphone market, though there are some scrappy contenders starting to make headway.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), handset makers shipped a total of 337.2 million smartphones worldwide in the last quarter of 2015 (Q2). This is up 11.6 percent from last year, an amazing bit of growth considering how many smartphones are already on the loose.

From Photoshop to Flash, Adobe’s software products are a key part of the digital media ecosystem. Mastering a set of tools as wide ranging as theirs takes a lot of time, which is exactly what the Lifetime Subscription to Adobe Training Videos offers. For $89, you’ll get literally as much time as you need to absorb thousands of lessons on the countless facets of Adobe and web design.

Apple has launched its “Back to School” promotion for 2015, and this year’s is… kinda “meh” to be honest.

Instead of the gift cards Apple offered in 2014 and 2013, this year students who buy a new Mac will be eligible to receive a pair of Beats Solo2 On-Ear Headphones or Beats Solo2 Wireless On-Ear Headphones for their trouble.

John Spinello stuck a safety pin in a light socket. He was 3 and never forgot how the shock “flipped me over backwards.”

As an adult, he turned that moment of mischievous curiosity into a board game that shaped the lives of millions of kids around the world.

Any “dopey doctor” who has played Operation knows the loud buzzing sound when you’ve botched your attempt at removing the patient’s funny bone. It first went off 50 years ago this year. Kids today play the game, adults still hear the buzzer from their childhood and some actually credit it with their pursuit of a career in medicine.

Apple could opt to include a Touch ID fingerprint sensor in its new Apple TV remote, according to a patent application published today.

Unlike the iPhone and iPad, however, this sensor wouldn’t be used for unlocking your device, but rather quickly making it aware of who is watching at any given time — thereby letting Apple’s long-awaited TV configure volume, screen brightness, and suggested channels on a person-by-person basis. Smart, eh?

It was inevitable that the success of Apple Music was going to have some people screaming about anti-competitive practices, and that’s exactly what happened. Yesterday, senator (and former SNL alumni) Al Franken threw his hat into the ring by writing a letter requesting that the Justice Department take the matter seriously.

The overwhelming majority of mobile podcast listening is done on an iPhone, most of it on Apple’s own Podcasts app, which is why it’s no wonder Apple would be interested in figuring out a way to monetize the service if it can.

In a patent application published today, Apple describes how in the future it could interrupt podcasts with targeted personalized advertisements, by way of Apple’s iAd platform.

Apple’s plans for HomeKit to become the de facto platform for the connected home is taking longer than expected to happen because of the company’s obsession with security, according to a recent report.

Daniel Craig’s fourth outing as famous super spy James Bond looks to take a darker, more roguish turn than ever, with Bond looking to “disappear” from the British spy agency that gives him the “00” license to kill rating.

The new trailer has all sorts of dramatic moments interspersed with the action, gadgetry, cars, women, overly-confident villains and explosions fans want to see.

Check it out below and be ready to see your first glimpse at the big bad behind the scenes of anti-spy organization, SPECTRE, which seems to be aimed squarely at Bond, James Bond’s broad shoulders.

Remember when Google announced, probably from within a heavily fortified and Skynet-proof bunker, that its artificial neural networks were “dreaming”? And then we saw the above picture of a squirrel ravaged by a computer’s best and most terrifying guesses at what things look like, and we all peed a little?

Well, the company has released that code to the public, and now some Scarecrow-esque villain has provided us with Dreamscope, a way to turn your beloved pictures into extensions of a neurotic computer’s twisted psyche.

When it comes to smartwatch mind share, Apple Watch is killing the competition.

That’s just one of several key takeaways from an interesting new study that digs into the public’s perception of smartwatches in general and Apple’s wearable in particular.

“I’m leaving” is a message I probably send way too often, but not as often as “I’m here.” It’s just become routine whenever I’m making plans or picking someone up. It’s not necessarily a burden, but it’d be a nice luxury to be able to quickly send friends these repeat messages automatically to save a little bit of time. You’re smart so I bet you know where I’m going with this.

Yes, Written is a new app for iPhone that lets you write out five of your most commonly used phrases and save them for easy access in Notification Center. Then when you pull down the Today view from the top, you see the Written widget with your five messages. Tap one to send it along to your favorite contacts. It works with the Messages app and even WhatsApp.

Video game streaming juggernaut Twitch.tv is stepping up its HTML5 game today with a move to get rid of buggy and overly-patched Flash in Twitch’s website.

The move today is only for the player part of the equation, but a full HTML5 solution should be forthcoming.

“Today’s redesign moves half of the video player – specifically the controls – from Flash to HTML5 and Javascript,” Twitch writes on its blog page. “The video itself is still in Flash underneath the controls. However, this is an important step to releasing the much-anticipated full HTML5 player.”

We aren’t going to find out what the next iPhone looks like until Apple shows us (probably in September), but that isn’t stopping designers from dreaming up some concepts.

Here’s a pretty bold one that imagines the next Apple smartphone as a mix between a Samsung Galaxy Edge and a Club Cracker. You can check it out in the video below.

The carrier that’s built up quite an army of discontent from its customers over the years probably didn’t win over anyone with its latest announcement. AT&T is raising its upgrade fees for postpaid customers and tacking on a weird, unnecessary activation fee for new AT&T Next customers.

Apple is giving the public another taste of the future today by seeding the second public betas of iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan to testers this morning, just a day after releasing iOS 9 beta 4 and EL Capitan beta 4 to developers.

The Microsoft Garage has churned out a new iOS productivity app aimed at streamlining the email experience so users can get in, get in contact, and get on with their work lives as quickly as possible.

The new iOS-only app, Send, aims to make email threads more like short IM messages by stripping out the hassle of finding your contacts, writing subject lines, and keeping tabs on your inbox.

iOS 9 is still in beta, but you can get ahead of the curve and under the hood of Apple’s powerful new mobile OS before its official launch. In a Cult of Mac Deals exclusive, the iOS 9 Swift Coding Course is just $59, a full 80% off the normal price.

Apple should buy Tesla from Elon Musk — or so thinks Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, speaking in a recent interview with Bloomberg Radio.

“The big thing they could buy that I would be impressed with is Tesla,” Munster said, referring to how Apple could spend its $203 billion in cash. “To me, when you think about that absurd amount of cash, you have to go after opportunities, and I think automotive fits within that camp.”

Yesterday, we reported that Snapchat was starting to lock out jailbreakers.

Today, the popular video messaging service is locking out users who are on an out-of-date version of the app. It’s a move aimed at jailbreakers that’s going to catch some people who are slow to update in the crossfire.

If you game on a Mac, or an iOS device, you’ve probably never played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. But that’s something that has now, quite miraculously, changed: After more than a decade, KOTOR 2 is finally available for Mac, and the game is (quite literally) better than it has ever been.