Cult of Mac

The Aaron Sorkin-penned film Steve Jobs has been chosen as the centerpiece movie of the 53rd annual New York Film Festival and will be screened at the the event on Saturday, October 3rd.

Starring Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, and Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, the film is based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography. The movie won’t be released publicly until this fall, but NY Film Festival director Kent Jones’ review heaps praise on the film, calling it “dramatically concentrated, yet beautifully expansive; it’s extremely sharp; it’s wildly entertaining.”

Director Danny Boyle had the following to say about the honor:

After exclusively debuting Drake’s Meek Mill diss track “Charged Up” last night on Beats 1, Apple Music scored another excellent exclusive today, only this time from Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

Watch it below:

Apple executives are joining top brass from 12 other major U.S. corporations at the White House today to announce a $140 billion pledge in new investments to decrease their carbon footprints.

The 13 companies which also includes Microsoft and Google, are joining the Obama Administration’s push to lead the effort against climate change ahead of the the United Nations climate-change summit in Paris later this year by launching the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.

Autonomous weapons that have the power to track and kill targets with Terminator-like efficiency aren’t just a Hollywood fantasy anymore.

Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and hundreds of AI and robotics researchers say the technology to build autonomous weapons that select and engage targets without human intervention is feasible within years, not decades. And we need to ban it now.

Get ready to say au revoir to that unwanted Google+ account you randomly get a friend requests on once a year.

Google announced today that in the coming months the company will allow you to create a YouTube Channel, or Gmail account, without creating a Google+ account. And for those of us who were forced onto Google+, there will be an option to finally remove your public profile.

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Apple Music’s edge over streaming services like Spotify, Rdio and Pandora means that Apple gets to take a 30 percent cut of rivals’ App Store subscriptions — thereby forcing them to jack up their prices or lose money.

It’s the subject of a current FTC antitrust investigation, but according to Rutgers University law professor Michael Carrier, while it may be harsh, it’s probably not illegal.

Ready to build your own private robot army? Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computer for coding and creating almost anything you can imagine, from home media centers to musical instruments, mechanical devices to gaming systems, and everything in between. This lesson bundle slices Raspberry Pi into five areas, from the very basics of coding and connecting computers to hardware all the way up to building a robot (really), and right now it’s just $39 at Cult of Mac Deals.

The iPad mini 3 was a virtual afterthought last year, but in 2015 it’s going to get a serious upgrade, according to a new report.

Instead of the glorified iPad mini 2 we got with last year’s launch, the iPad mini 4 is said to be a miniature version of the iPad Air 2. That means 8-megapixel rear iSight camera, anti-reflective coating on a fully laminated display, and 6.1mm thickness.

Oh, and contrary to previous rumors, we might get a new iPad Air this year, too.

Drake showed himself to be smarter than many musicians (or at least to have better advisers) when he ducked out on the opportunity to be part of Jay Z’s Tidal debacle and instead went full-bore with representing Apple Music.

From posing with his Apple Watch Edition and rocking a sweet vintage Apple jacket at the Worldwide Developers Conference, to having his own show on Beats 1, Drake’s about as Cupertino as it gets these days. And according to the new track he dropped over the weekend, he’s more than happy about it — even if he’s still “got love” for the folks at Tidal.

Welcome to the new Cult of Mac! You probably noticed that we’ve freshened the place up a bit.

We have a new, minimalist design that we trust is easy to read and a pleasure to visit. We have new fonts, cleaner navigation, improved photo treatments and stories that are color-coded by category (news, reviews, how-tos and so on).

We also have a new, modern code base, which we hope will be a solid platform for lots more exciting things to come.

Apple business may be soaring in China, but not all of it is the legit kind!

According to a new report, police in Beijing have busted a factory which produced in excess of 41,000 fake iPhones, with a market value of around $19 million.

Apple debuted the Apple Watch at its own stores and special upmarket pop-up boutiques, but now that the device has been on sale for a while, we’re starting to see it trickle-down to other retailers, too.

One of these outlets is Best Buy, which has confirmed it will be selling the Apple Watch at more than 100 stores in the U.S. from August. That number is set to expand to more than 300 outlets by the holiday season.

Time to seize the power without getting overcharged. These amazing deals cover all the tools you’ll need to keep your devices juiced wherever you go, from external batteries to USB charging hubs, lightning cables and more.

The Activity app on your Apple Watch suggests new “Move goals” each week, based on how many calories you burned the previous week. To test how this works in practice, I accepted every new goal my Watch suggested during the past 10 weeks.

The Move goals became progressively more challenging as the test went on. They nearly doubled, from 950 to 1,840 calories, and I could no longer keep up. I realized that Apple is following the Peter Principle, and that’s why I was always destined to fail.

This week in Cult of Mac Magazine, it’s time for Leander to bust out that famed “vision thing” he’s so great at with his informed take on the top five best Apple products of all time. Ever.

Then we’ve got a cat fight between two of the hot digital intelligences out now: Siri and Google Now, a ton of tantalizing details about Apple’s latest record-breaking earnings call, a peek at a leaked iPhone 6s front panel that seems strangely familiar, and a look at how invisible advertisement may be slowing your iPhone way down.

All that and more in Cult of Mac Magazine, freely available right now in the App Store.

This is a heads up that Cult of Mac has a major site redesign coming Monday. We’re flipping the switch this weekend. If anything goes wrong, you’ll know why!

Here’s what we’ve got planned.

Apple’s been stealing top talent from automakers over the past few months to help it work on the company’s electric car project, but according to a new rumor, Apple wanted to steal the entire body of another luxury automaker’s car to get its project on the road.

Everybody likes to get a good chuckle out of Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. But we really have to call its brand neutrality into question.

Despite all of the doom and gloom we’ve been hearing since the Apple Watch launched in April, including the company’s own reluctance to let us know how well the device is selling, it looks like our favorite digital helper has decided that it’s a winner.

Asking Siri “What is your favorite watch?” or “What do you think of the Apple Watch?” will get you some enthusiastic endorsements of Apple’s latest gizmo. And this is our surprised face.

Apple Watch comes with a limited number of functional, classy watch faces for you to use, but it totally lacks wacky, personalized watch faces for you to gloat over. If you’re searching for cool Apple Watch faces that stand out, there are plenty of options to explore.

Now a new collection of images shows how cool it would be if we had the ability to customize our Apple Watch faces the way we want. Note, though, that many of these would be impractical for telling time. As my co-worker Evan Killham said when he saw these ideas, “Where does the clock part go?”

Home security system manufacturer Uniden just released a swanky new system that can store 120 days’ worth of data and, if you want one, you’ll have to go directly through the manufacturer or Apple.

The Uniden Wireless DVR HDD comes with two cameras and a 1TB drive for storing your home movies like so many unwatched episodes of Psych. And it could lead to some bad news for smart-thermostat maker Nest’s own security offering.

The first trailer for Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine, the controversial documentary by Sir Alex Gibney, debuted online today, giving us our first extended glimpse at a film that supposedly pulls no punches when it comes to the late Apple CEO’s life and legacy.

You can watch the first trailer for the film, which Gibney described as an “impressionistic” depiction of Jobs, below.

What are the artifacts that define America’s greatest moments? Two are the original Declaration of Independence and the Star-Spangled Banner that inspired the Francis Scott Key song.

If you see those in the top three, the third might be the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he stepped onto the moon’s surface.

While the suit was constructed to make it to the moon and back, it was not built to last forever. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is raising money for a major restoration project to get the Armstrong suit ready for public display on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 2019.

Every mobile platform now ships with its very own virtual assistant, and while they all offer a similar set of basic features, Google Now and Siri are way ahead of their rivals. Google Now knows what you want and when you want it, but Siri has sass and personality, and is about to get a whole lot better with the help of Proactive.

If you were to pit the two against each other in a virtual ring, which one would come out wearing the belt? Join us as we find out in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!

The zombies are here and they’re standing around waiting to be blown to bits. See, these are “Stupid Zombies” and the object of this third installment in the franchise is the same as the first two: use a knowledge of physics to bounce bullets around each level and kill as many zombies as you can with each shot.

Stupid Zombies 3 offers over 100 different levels to blast your way through using a shotgun, flare gun, or grenade launcher (it’s bouncy!) to rid the world of these intellectually challenged individuals who experience undeadness.

Check out the trailer below to see what I mean.

You couldn’t blame the folks behind non-Apple streaming music services being worried when Apple Music was announced — but according to Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews, there was nothing to worry about.

Pandora’s Q2 revenue came in better than expected at $285.6 million, largely thanks to solid growth on the advertising side, which increased 30 percent year-over-year.