Cult of Mac

Another week flying by here at Cult of Mac headquarters, and we’ve got a ton of great stories to share with you in the latest issue of Cult of Mac Magazine.

Taylor Swift made waves with her calling out the Cupertino company’s plans to not pay artists for music streamed during upcoming Apple Music free trial period, and we’ve got all the details within. Plus, we take a look at Amazon’s new home hub, the Echo, spend some time trawling the patent office for new Apple gear coming our way, and take a quick tour of the latest iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan betas for developers.

All that and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. Be sure to download and subscribe to check it all out on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

One of the main complaints Apple Watch naysayers have is that the advertised 18-hour battery life of the wearable is kind of crappy. An expensive, upcoming accessory aims to address that issue, but we’re not sure that the look appeals to us much.

The new band is called the Reserve Strap, and while it definitely sounds useful, its price and appearance leave our pointers well clear of the pre-order button.

Apple is gearing up to introduce its smarthome platform HomeKit alongside the launch of iOS 9 this fall. It will let users control smart devices like lights, door locks, and thermostats from their phones. You’ll also be able to issue voice commands to digital assistant Siri, and the company has updated the list of things you can say to get things done around your house.

But when we looked at the list of commands, we noticed that Apple is making some strange assumptions about how people might be using the new automation features. Here are some of the examples Apple gives and why they have us scratching our heads.

Apple fans with their ear to the rumor mill have known for months that Apple is probably going to add Force Touch to the next iPhone. Now, we’ve got confirmation from one of the most respected sources in journalism that it’s almost definitely happening.

The highest court in the land has spoken. Gay marriage is now legal and much of Facebook is celebrating Friday’s historic day with messages, memes and pictures.

Facebook will help you celebrate pride by letting you add a rainbow filter to your profile picture.

The steps are simple. I volunteered my profile picture above to demonstrate how easy it is to show your colors.

The Apple Watch is the best watch I’ve ever owned. It’s also the first watch I’ve owned in over a decade but amazing features like the heart rate monitor, responding to texts from my wrist, and being able to see what time it is without pulling out my iPhone have totally won me over.

Not everyone is keen on the future of smartwatches though, and if you need any further proof, just look at the Kickstarter page for The Mason Watch. It’s dumb, ugly, and lacks all the features you could want for in a modern watch, but the project is absolutely killing it on Kickstarter, and passed its funding goal in the first week.

Check out how huge this thing looks on your wrist:

As Apple fans in seven countries line up today to grab their new Apple Watches as the new wearable becomes available, we’re looking ahead to see which other nations will be sporting the smartwatches by the end of the year.

We don’t have dates for all of them just yet, but Apple has confirmed that they’re on the way.

To succeed in tech, you must be a master of innovation. No two companies understand this better than Apple and Google, which have become kings of the industry thanks to a string of incredible ideas that have shaped the technology we rely on today.

But which company is continuing to innovate in 2015? Is it Apple, with its fitness-focused Apple Watch, Apple Pay, and a new streaming service that hopes to save the music industry? Or is it Google, with Google Glass, self-driving cars, and secret robots?

Join us as we take it to a debate in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.

It’s no surprise that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 5s are significantly faster than the iPhone 5c. Yet, even with iOS 9’s Low Power Mode turned on, the newer phones still manage to make long strides over that plastic (yet colorful) contraption.

Geekbench released an update to its app today, adding support for iOS 9. Even though iOS 9 is still in beta, the new tools have already revealed some surprising facts about the iPhone 6. Upon running benchmarks on an iPhone 5c and iPhone 6 in low power mode, the tools show that the iPhone 6 is still more powerful that the 5c.

I want to spare you some of the pain that recently greeted me after a night out with friends. I returned to my car to find the rear window smashed out and my backpack gone. It contained my brand new MacBook and iPad.

The worry, of course, was whether my backpack was in the hands of tech-savvy crooks, so I prepared for the worst.

What I learned over a long weekend about my own approach to security is the subject of this week’s Kahney’s Korner.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.

The country is talking about the Supreme Court’s historic ruling that gives all citizens the right to marry the person they love, regardless of sexual orientation, and the tech community is stoked. Everyone from Apple CEO Tim Cook to T-Mobile to Uber are coming out in favor of the ruling and love.

Take a look at the celebration party everyone’s having on Twitter:

If you’re thinking about taking a trip to Walt Disney’s wonderfully whimsical theme parks this year, make sure to leave your selfie stick at home.

Disney announced this morning that it’s placing a ban on all selfie sticks starting next week, due to safety concerns.

You waited for the Apple Watch for what felt like forever…so casually tossing it on your nightstand at the end of the day? Not an option. Keep yours charging safely and stylishly with this wood charging stand, now $19.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Hot of the heels of Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” ad campaign winning top prize at the Outdoor Lions competition at Cannes, the company has unveiled two new videos showing off the kind of beautiful footage it’s possible to capture on an iPhone.

Check them out below.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 has beaten out the iPhone 6 and other flagship rivals in a “real-world” performance test. The device came first in six out of nine challenges, which tested for things like Wi-Fi speed, camera load time, gaming performance, and video editing.

The second-generation FLIR One thermal camera is now available for iOS devices. Unlike the first-gen FLIR one which came as an iPhone 5/5s case, this standalone accessory attaches to your iPhone or iPad via a Lightning connector — and offers you 4x better resolution in the process.

People working on the Apple Watch supply chain are said to be expecting a “possible surge in orders” for the second half of 2015, as Apple’s debut wearable device continues to gain momentum in the marketplace.

According to a new report, this growth is linked to the fact that Apple Watch yield rates have significantly improved since manufacturing began, meaning that Apple is finally able to get hold of units of the device in the kind of quantities it would hope for.

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

There was a divorce, financial setback and hurt when the father she finally met had little interest in building a relationship. Cielo de la Paz needed just one small sign to remind her happier days lie ahead.

 She would get her sign — a billboard no less — and when she saw it for the first time, it gave her a much-needed feeling of triumph.

The 39-year-old single mother had a photo selected by Apple for its “Shot on iPhone 6” campaign that has now been seen in outdoor ads in 24 countries. The picture was made after a rain storm. It is of de la Paz’s reflected self in a puddle with fallen leaves floating to form a frame around her silhouette. She is holding a red umbrella.

The annual race car festival at Goodwood is underway this year, with 100,000 attendees all clamoring to see the hot rods and race cars speed their way to the top of the uphill course.

Avowed gear-head Jony Ive travels to the South of England each year to see the festtival; chances are he’s there now ogling the sweet lines of a fancy race car or taking in some ideas for the rumored Apple car.

Check out some of the cool rides from this year’s festival below.

Amazon’s Echo — an odd voice-activated domestic hub — just went on sale to the general public. If you’ve got $200 to burn, I recommend it. It’s oddly great — and it gives you a glimpse of the future.

If Apple’s Siri-controlled HomeKit comes close, controlling your home by voice is going to be a lot of fun.

One is a cult-like organization which bilks its (often celebrity) followers out of huge amounts of money, while intimidating people who dare to speak out against its dangers. The other is Scientology.

Or at least that’s the parallel drawn by Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney, who claimed to see similarities between Apple and the L. Ron Hubbard-founded religion during a recent screening of his Steve Jobs documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.

Apple has been working on the Apple Watch’s heart-rate monitor ever since the wearable launched in April. First, it was taking your pulse every 10 minutes. Then, it was doing it every 10 minutes unless you were moving around because the company said that a resting heart rate is a better health indicator than a “doing whatever” heart rate.

And that’s correct, but a newly released patent hints at some future improvements for the function that could also spare you some wrist pain and warn you about stress.

Your Apple Watch band contains some cutting-edge fabrication technology that could extend into other fashion accessories, according to a patent filing released today.

The patent describes an ingenious method for molding “woven fibers” into any desired shape and securing them without stitching.

Apple’s new 27-inch Retina 5k iMacs are the most beautiful desktop machine over eyes have ever beheld, and now it appears that Apple is preparing to make a smaller (and probably more affordable) version that could launch this fall.

Heroes Reborn reboots the 2006 NBC cult-hit Heroes with a whole new cast of characters, and some familiar faces, too.

While the original series ended up being awful after the fantastic first season, both due to the 2007/2008 writers’ strike and series creator Tim Kring’s distraction over the latter couple of seasons.

The big draw of that first season was ordinary people discovering their extraordinary powers, set in a comic-book inspired world just brimming with possibility. You really cared for these characters as they stumbled and fell trying to become heroes in the face of a world — and a super-villain, Sylar, masterfully played by not-yet-a-superstar Zachary Quinto.

Here’s hoping the new reboot will have original creator Kring working at the top of his form again; the new trailer (below) has me pretty excited that it’s true.