Cult of Mac

“Did you hear what Newt Gingrich said about the Apple Watch?” sounds like the opening line to a Stephen Colbert joke. In fact, it’s a genuine question, since the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and “keen observer of technology” just published his first review for Mashable — offering his thoughts on Apple’s debut wearable device.

Testing out an Apple Watch Sport, Gingrich recounts a day spent on airplanes and in McDonald’s restaurants (yes, really!), before giving his final verdict on Cupertino’s first crack at a smartwatch.

Check out the highlights below:

We all know that the Apple Watch doesn’t exactly have great battery life. At best, it’ll get you through the day. But, of course, one of the big sells of the Apple Watch is that it’ll save your iPhone battery life, because you don’t have to pull it out as much.

Of course, then you end up in a Catch-22. Your Apple Watch depends on your iPhone to work properly, but without pulling out your iPhone, you can’t tell how much battery you have left, therefore risking both your Apple Watch and your iPhone crapping out on you in the middle of the day. If only the Apple Watch could tell you your iPhone’s battery level.

It can’t, but luckily, there’s an app for that. And it might be the loveliest one yet.

Color blindness is an extremely prevalent disability, especially amongst men: according to official statistics, 1 in 12 men are color blind (although women fare better, at a rate of only 1 in 200). These rates of color blindness are part of the reason why Google places such importance in their Material Design guidelines on designing with color blindness in mind. For example, by not relying on color alone to relay critical information within an app.

But no matter how well programmed an app is, it’s not going to help someone who is color blind see colors… or is it? Red Stripe is a new app by developer Michel Fortin that aims to do just that.

Apple has been rewarded for its work in making technology accessible to blind users with a Helen Keller Achievement Award, given at an New York event yesterday evening.

Organized by the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), Apple was specifically praised for VoiceOver, the iOS feature which reads out descriptions of everything happening on a device’s display.

Apple may not have any immediate plans to support 4K content in its next-generation Apple TV, but if true, the decision wasn’t one the company came to lightly without weighing up all the options.

In fact, according to a document leaked to WikiLeaks as part of last year’s Sony Pictures hack, Apple has been testing and licensing select 4K content from Sony since at least 2013.

When your copying of Apple designs has led to you becoming the world’s most valuable startup, you can afford to loan out a bit of money.

According to a new report, controversial Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is set to take an unusual approach to the mobile payments business by lending users cash — which they can apply for via an app on their handsets.

Apple Music will boast over 30 million songs when it launches at the end of June, but Taylor Swift has decided to leave a blank space where her 1989 album would’ve been.

Apple’s rolled out some much-needed changes to how Apple Watch preview screens look in the App Store.

Have you looked at those shots lately? They look weird. And depending on which version of iOS you’re currently running, that could mean “horrible” or “way better than before, holy crap.”

A new Apple patent could add a startling amount of functionality to your iMessages.

The tech would let you schedule pre-written texts and even send new ones automatically based on context the app draws from elsewhere on your iPhone.

Tom Ford unveiled his Spring 2016 collection this week in London, and while the fashion designer’s newest fanciful dinner jackets drew in a flock of celebrity, the Apple Watch made a surprise appearance in the ready-to-wear collection.

Rather than designing a fashionable Apple Watch band, the forward-thinking designer bridged Apple’s timekeeping accessory to the past by turning it into a pocket watch attached to a chain.

Here’s another look at it:

Samsung is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to cut more money off the $930 million Apple won in a patent lawsuit. The company is arguing that the appeals court’s earlier ruling is still unfair, even after successfully convincing the panel to chop off $382 million already.

Downloading apps to your smartphone could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a software streaming service reportedly being developed by Google.

A new report claims the search giant wants to make apps available on-demand without the need to install them locally first — and Google has already acquired the company that could make it happen.

Traditional watch manufacturers are struggling to find a solution to take on Apple Watch, but Original Grain has taken the ‘if you can’t beat em, join em’ cliche a bit too literal with its newest watch collection.

The company launched a new Kickstarter today for its new traditional watch, The Barrel, that comes with a very non-traditional feature called The Duo Connection clasp that lets you wear you Apple Watch on the same wrist.

The Apple Watch has only just landed in Apple Stores, and already a bevy of Apple Watch 2 rumors are basically rendering it outdated.

According to a new report, not only is a second-generation Apple Watch coming next year, but it will boast an added FaceTime camera, greater levels of iPhone independence, and extra high-end $1000+ models.

We rely on our iPhone for so many facets of our life, but as a camera it has become a disruptive force in the photography world. The “Shot with an iPhone 6” advertising campaign is likely making traditional camera companies shutter – pun intended – as sales of consumer cameras continue to fall.

It’s a go-to tool for professional photographers, who have done everything from publish books with iPhone photography to shoot commercials for corporate clients. But there are limitations and sometimes it would be nice to supplement a smartphone’s camera with the punch of a DSLR camera.

DxO, the makers of sophisticated imaging software, may have the ONE camera to do this. The ONE is a palm-sized camera that plugs into your iPhone with functions and optics that have the potential to deliver greater image quality.

Tapping away at your smartphone screen while you’re driving? Not cool. Rummaging through your bag to find it? An equally terrible idea. If you commute by car or bike, the Satechi Bluetooth Home Button for $23 is an absolute must-have.

If you weren’t in the crowd at Re/code’s recent Code Conference, you can now check out the video of Apple Operations guru Jeff Williams’ interview with Walt Mossberg from the comfort of your home.

In a wide-reaching half-hour conversation, Williams touches on everything from Apple’s plans to disrupt the car industry, to Foxconn suicides, to Williams’ own wish for a Star Trek-style tricorder in future iPhones.

Check out the video below.

Cable boxes couldn’t be hooked up fast enough in August of 1981. People said I want my MTV.
 
Music videos blew our minds as we watched for hours on end a steady rotation of our favorite rock and pop stars who not only sang their music, but became characters in an elaborate, often hyper-sexualized narrative with a backdrop of visual effects and exotic locations.

But a version of what became the music video craze nearly seduced Americans in the 1960s with the Scopitone, a jukebox topped with a large screen that played short Technicolor films of singers performing on a crazy set that often included bikini-clad dancers.

For years, King.com’s Candy Crush Saga has been one of the App Store’s top earners. The addictive match-3 game was considered the crowning success of the freemium app genre, and although the growth of Candy Crush Saga has been slowing over time, it still dominated the App Store’s ranking charts.

But there’s a new king in town. A post-apocalyptic king. Fallout Shelter, Bethesda’s adorable nuclear bunker sim, has dethroned Candy Crush Saga as the App Store freemium game to beat.

Would you rather have weekends away in Paris and Dubai or Bangkok and Koala Lumpur? According to U.K.-based hotel search tool Trivago, your answer may have a lot to do with whether you’re an iPhone or Android user.

Looking through its searches, as made from both iOS and Android devices, Trivago concludes that iPhone users opt for popular, pricier destinations averaging £113 ($180) per night, while Android users are more likely to seek out cheaper, offbeat destinations with an average price of just £92 ($146).

You know mobile devices have hit a certain critical mass when universities start adding walking lanes designed to stop texters from accidentally colliding with non-texters.

That’s exactly what happened to a staircase at Utah Valley University’s Student Life and Wellness Centre, with one staircase being home to dividing lines splitting students into “walking,” “running” and “texting” lanes.

Many babies these days have to wear an eyepatch to correct vision problems. That’s why the two-year old girl above, Layla Grubb, is wearing the best eyepatch ever: an ’80’s style Apple logo, pasted over her left eye. Talk about a Pirate of Silicon Valley!

Most creative and designer types travel around with two things perpetually tucked under their arms: their portfolios, and their MacBooks. Vienna-based fashion designer Eva Zar decided to consolidate the two: her portfolio is a MacBook, at least in appearance.

Sean Parker — the rogue Silicon Valley investor behind Napster, and a formative part of Facebook’s early development — has a new iOS app out. It’s called Brigade, and it’s got good election timing: it’s an app devoted to sharing and polling people on their political opinions.

Ever imagined what it would be like if Sony, not Apple, had delivered the first truly modern smartphone? If the Walkman had never gone out of style, just evolved with the times?

Well, it’d probably look something like this.