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How Beats maximizes cheap hardware for luxurious profits

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Beats by Dre teardown
This is what the inside of a set of Beats by Dre Solo HDs looks like.
Photo: Bolt. Used by permission.

A teardown of a set of Beats headphones, which sell for hundreds of dollars at retail, revealed that the hardware contains less than $18 in components. And that sounds like the ‘phones are an insane ripoff, but that’s not even the most interesting thing we learned from the examination.

We’re used to hearing about how our expensive gadgets “only cost” whatever amount, but of course you’re not just paying for the parts when you pick something up. That price includes labor and manufacturing, as well as the research that went into designing it and future iterations, post-purchase support, and a bunch of other invisible costs like the non-specific luxury and status values of the product.

Cheap materials aside, Beats contain a bunch of very cool design decisions that also help keep the real costs down for their makers.

Asking Apple Watch for the time will get you some well-earned sass

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Siri's humor circuits are as lively as ever. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
"Hey Siri, what time is it?" "F*** you; that's what time it is."
Photo:

Siri is a pretty handy virtual assistant on your Apple Watch. It can tell you the temperature, convert measurements, send text messages, and do several other things without you having to take your iPhone out of your pocket.

The one thing you should never have to do, however, is ask it what time it is because you’re wearing a watch, and that’s the minimum of information it should provide you without you having to ask. Seriously, just bring up your wrist. The time is right there.

But if you’re thick as a brick and ask Apple Watch Siri what time it is, it’ll come back with one of over a dozen silly responses. Check out our results below:

10 rules for classy apps – a developer manifesto

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Apps that do no evil
Apps that do no evil
Photo: Graham Bower / Cult of Mac

If you ever dig into the privacy policies of app developers, be prepared for a shock. This is where they confess their sins: invading your privacy, selling your data, and pestering you with popups and unwanted ads.

As the App Store becomes increasingly crowded and competitive, many developers struggle to make a profit. Some turn their attention to alternative sources of revenue, and the quality of their apps suffer as a result.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are the 10 rules for developers to keep things “classy.”

Catching up: All we know about iPhone 6s, more Apple Watch details, and amped up iOS photography

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Catching up on all things Apple? Check out this week's Cult of Mac Magazine.
Catching up on all things Apple? Check out this week's Cult of Mac Magazine.
Photo: Stephen Smith

Every week, we pull together all the great stuff from the past week of Cult of Mac’s coverage of Apple, culture and technology news into a slick Newsstand magazine.

This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, then, has all the details we can share about the upcoming iPhone 6s (with more to come in the months to follow, for sure), a few more Apple Watch details, a review of an amazing iPhone camera add on, a profile of the best Apple analyst around, and a look at the oddest little waterproof Bluetooth speaker you ever did see.

All of this and much, much more. Check it out.

Kahney’s Korner: Something’s missing from new MacBook – magnetic attraction

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Leander Kahney likes Apple's use of magnets. So what happened with the new MacBook?
Leander Kahney likes Apple's use of magnets. So what happened with the new MacBook?
Photo: Cult of Mac

Leander is having a bit of a moment. One of his favorite features of Apple product design is missing on his shiny new MacBook.

Jony Ive, what have you done with the magnet?

You can commiserate with our Editor and Publisher over the loss of the magnet that secured the cable to the charging port in the latest Kahney’s Korner video.

Surprise! Rich people still aren’t buying Android phones

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Are you rich? Do you live in one of the world’s richest countries? If you answered “yes” to both of these questions, guess what: you probably don’t have an Android phone.

A new report reveals that Android market share worldwide is almost directly correlated to how rich each market is. The richer the market, the lower the market share for Android. iOS market share is also related to wealth, except it’s polar opposite. So if you’re rich or in a rich country, odds are you own an iPhone instead.

Apple denies pulling non-Apple Music artists from iTunes

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Iovine
Jimmy Iovine talks up Apple Music at WWDC 2015.
Photo: Apple

An Apple spokesperson claims that the company will not remove artists who decline to sign up for Apple Music from the iTunes Store.

This is the latest development in the tense negotiations leading up to the streaming service’s launch on June 30, with indie musicians and labels claiming that Apple is trying to bully and coerce them into putting their music on the new platform.

Android M vs. iOS 9: A battle of the giants

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Fight! Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Fight! Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Friday-Night-Fights-bug-2Google I/O and WWDC have been and gone, and Google and Apple have laid out the plans for their next major platform updates — Android M and iOS 9.

Now that we’ve had a chance to let those announcements sink in, it’s time for Cult of Android and Cult of Mac to battle over which is best in another Friday Night Fight. Let us help you decide which one will reign supreme when they roll out to the public this fall.

Apple pulls last non-Retina iPad from stores

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Apple stops selling its last non-Retina iOS device.
Apple stops selling its last non-Retina iOS device.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

The last iPad with a non-Retina display was sent to the grave today, almost three years after its debut.

Apple quietly pulled the iPad mini from its online store, leaving just the iPad mini 2 and 3 behind to go with the iPad Air 2. In doing this, Apple made a significant milestone stone: the Apple Store no longer sells non-Retina iOS devices.

Kids in one New York school spend 75% of the day on iPads

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Ipad
iPads have taken over this New York school.
Photo: Gail Robinson

A New York elementary school has taken the bold move of upgrading 75 percent of its third and fourth curriculum to iPad, meaning that students spend three-quarters of each day using their Apple tablets.

Jackson Avenue School is currently in its fifth year of a district initiative providing all students in grades 3-9 with iPads for digital learning.

10 Great Improvements to Your Mac For $20 [Deals]

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com-mac essentials bundle

Sorry to break it to you, but your Mac isn’t living up to its potential. The good news? We’ve rounded up 10 amazing Mac apps in a Summer Mac Essentials Bundle that can streamline efficiency & run faster, transforming how you email, take photos, stream content, transfer files, and more. Bought separately, they’re valued at $234, but we’ve bundled them up for $19.99 total. Grab the bundle today and start doing this with your Mac:

Newt Gingrich has a few thoughts on the Apple Watch

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You know what we need on a Friday? A celebrity Apple Watch review.

“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:

A beautiful, elegant app to check your iPhone’s battery on your Apple Watch

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Save yourself energy while checking your iPhone's power.
This is the simplest, most elegant app for checking your iPhone's battery on your Apple Watch.
Photo: Thientam Beck

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.

Colorblind? This iPhone app tells you what color you’re looking at

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Red Stripes tells color blind users what color they're looking at.
Red Stripes tells color blind users what color they're looking at.
Photo: Cult of Mac

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 receives Helen Keller Award for its pioneering VoiceOver feature

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Apple's focus on accessibility isn't going unrecognized.
Apple's focus on accessibility isn't going unrecognized.
Photo: Apple

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 signed a secret 4K video deal with Sony in 2013

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Apple's
4K is the way of the future for movie fans.
Photo:

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.

App Store facelift brings out the beauty in Watch apps

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Apple Watch App Store previews
Left: Old 'n' busted. Right: New hotness.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

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.”

Apple wants to add a lot more context to iMessage

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Federal judge shoots down down group iMessage lawsuit.
Someday, it could be possible for this entire conversation to happen with no human thumbs involved.
Photo: Apple

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 turned Apple Watch into a fashionable pocket watch

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The Apple Watch is starting to make its mark on rivals.
The Apple (pocket)Watch
Photo: TheChicGeek/Instagram

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: