iOS 9 beta is out with new features and UI tweaks.
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.
Send is part email, part instant messenger. Photo: Microsoft
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.
Elon Musk could find himself even richer, if Gene Munster has his way. Photo: Zobacz Zasady/Wikipedia CC
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Today, the popular video messaging service is locking out users who are on an out-of-date version of the app.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.
One of the best RPGs just came to Mac. Photo: Obsidian Entertainment
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.
We’ve already got one “must see” tech-themed movie coming up this year with the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic, but Hollywood’s not done when it come to giving technology the big screen treatment.
In a deal reported to be worth close to seven-figures, Sony Pictures Animation has reportedly beaten out two other major studios to win the rights to a movie based on none other than emojis.
Android’s Lollipop and iOS 8 were announced at virtually the exact same time, but iOS 8 is obliterating it in terms of user adoption.
According to figures released by both Apple and Google, iOS 8 has 85 percent adoption among eligible iPhone and iPad users, while Lollipop is struggling its way to a mere 12.4 percent.
In what will surely be met with a sigh of relief from developers, Apple has stopped people running beta versions of iOS from writing reviews of apps in the App Store.
Many of these reviews tend to be negative because developers have yet to optimize their apps to run the latest prerelease software version. As a result, apps run on a beta version of iOS are far more likely to crash, or feature bugs.
Were you interested in Znaps, MagSafe adapter for Lightning connectors that we posted yesterday? You might want to hold off on ordering them. There’s a big possibility that patent issues could derail them from being delivered as promised.
It's nuts how far the original iPhone was ahead of the competition. Photo: CNET
It seems like just yesterday in many ways that Apple released the first iPhone, but it was actually the better part of a decade ago. Even so, it took the better part of that “better part of a decade” for the competition to catch up, as this great video, showing the evolution of smartphones, shows.
You know who had it much, much worse, though? One-time rival Microsoft, which reported its highest-ever net loss for the quarter after writing off billions for the failure of its Nokia handset division, and witnessing plummeting demand for PCs.
Photographers assigned to Taylor Swift concerts will be greeted by a friendlier photo contract. Photo: GabboT/Flickr CC
The Bad Blood between singer Taylor Swift and concert photographers is history – unless she writes a song about it.
Swift’s legal team has agreed to revise the photography contact for her 1989 World Tour after a widely reported backlash from photographers and boycotts of some of her shows.
They were reacting to Swift’s open letter to Apple complaining about its initial decision to not pay artists during the trial period of Apple Music. Apple backed down. Photographers, however, called her a hypocrite because of an overreaching photo agreement that gave her unlimited free use of any photos taken at her show, plus the right by members of her team to forcibly remove images from their cameras.
We didn’t get Apple Watch numbers, but Tim Cook and Luca Maestri delivered plenty of good news about Apple’s current financials and future prospects during Tuesday’s earnings call. Amid all the canned statements and bewildering biz speak, they dropped some tantalizing tidbits.
Cook and Maestri teased us with plenty of bullishness — and a little debunking — about impressive Apple Watch sales and consumer responses to the new device. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Apple hit record numbers again this quarter, with massive sales of both iPhone 6 and Macs across the globe.
Here are the highlights from today’s third-quarter 2015 Apple earnings call.
Wall Street isn't too happy with Apple this quarter despite strong revenue. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Apple’s stock is taking a hit after today’s Q3 2015 earnings call. At the time of writing, AAPL is down 6.72 percent in after-hours trading to 121.97. Yikes.
iOS 9 beta 4 is out with some new features and UI tweaks.
iOS 9 beta 4 is out for developers two weeks after beta 3’s release as expected. It’s time for the usual roundup of new goodies in the latest beta and beta 4 doesn’t shy away from the tradition. It’s not nearly as big of a release as last time with Apple Music and Apple News both making their debut, but beta 4 still brings some nice improvements and tweaked features. Let’s get right into it.
Apple didn’t officially announce any Apple Watch sales numbers during today’s earnings call, but according to Tim Cook, the company has already beat its own internal expectations.
While the official number of units sold remains a secret, the Apple exec said the number of Apple Watches sold in the first nine weeks was greater than the number of iPhones or iPads the company sold in the same period after they launched.
Apple doesn't charge Apple Music 30 percent of its subscriber fees. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple’s new streaming music service is coming under fire from the Federal Trade Commission for possible anti-competitive practices.
The recently launched Apple Music costs $9.99 per subscription (or $14.99 for an up-to-six-person family plan), with the first three months free. Competing services like Spotify or Rdio are subject to Apple’s 30 percent take from any app sold on the App Store, which makes the FTC uncomfortable, as Apple Music is not subject to the same rules.
Apple beat its own guidance but missed Wall Street's fevered expectations. Photo: Apple
Apple’s earnings fell just shy of Wall Street’s expectations for third-quarter revenue despite continued strong sales of the iPhone 6, which helped the company bring in $49.6 billion in gross revenue and $10.7 billion in profit.
Perhaps even worse for AAPL, the company’s fourth-quarter revenue forecast fell short of analysts’ best guesstimates.
Split screen multitasking in El Capitan. Photo: Apple
Along with the release of new betas for iOS 9 and watchOS 2, Apple has seeded a fourth beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan to developers today. The release comes nearly two weeks since the last beta was made available to developers are well as public testers.
Apple has released a new set of betas for the mobile operating systems it announced at WWDC 2015 in June. iOS 9 beta 4 and watchOS 2.0 beta 4 are now available to registered developers, nearly two weeks after Apple seeded the previous betas.
Square's new Dashboard app lets business owners track and compare real-time sales. Photo: Square
Square continues to add to its lineup of small business tools, especially for owners and managers who want an overall better grip on their businesses. It’s introducing a new Dashboard app that does just that: it lets owners track sales in real-time right from an iPhone. Still, the only requirement is a free Square account.
What will today's Apple earnings call reveal? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is set to report its financial results from Q3 2015 to investors this afternoon and, as usual, Cult of Mac will be here to liveblog all the action, from the numbers down to the analysts’ questions.
Apple Watch sales have been looming large in the minds of investors and analysts now that the device has been available for a full quarter. We don’t expect CEO Tim Cook or CFO Luca Maestri to announce the Watch sales as their own category, but there’s sure to be plenty of speculation as to whether the new wearable has met sales expectations.
Today’s earning’s call is set to kick off at 2 p.m. Pacific, but we’ll be kicking off the liveblogging party early with a breakdown of all the numbers. Bookmark this page and join us for the Apple earnings bonanza.
Keep your iPhone safer with this MagSafe-like adapter. Photo: Znaps
When Apple created the MagSafe power connector for its highly desirable line of MacBooks back in 2006, the world changed. Gone were the days of tripping over your power adapter cord and pulling your entire MacBook down onto a cold, uncaring floor.
These days, your iPhone and iPad have a similar problem, with a Lightning cable that connects so securely to the power port that if you happen to walk by and trip on the cable, you’re gonna fling that oh-so-precious device right to the ground, dashing its poor little silicon brains out.
This Kickstarter project, ZNAPS, aims to fix this design nightmare with a magnetic Lightning cable adapter that will transform the way you charge your Apple mobile devices, all for an excitingly low price of $9.
Guessing Apple Watch sales figures is basically analyst roulette right now. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
We’ll get our best — though still inconclusive — estimate of how the Apple Watch is doing later today, when Apple has its quarterly earnings call. Ahead of that, though, analysts are continuing to churn out their own figures regarding how Apple’s debut wearable device is faring thus far.
The latest people to play analyst roulette are research firm Canalys, who peg Apple Watch shipments at a very respectable 4.2 million units, meaning that Apple “easily overtook Fitbit, Xiaomi and all the smart watch vendors, despite the Apple Watch’s significantly higher pricing.”