Cult of Mac

The Asus ZenWatch 2 smartwatch certainly has something familiar about it, right?

The latest Android Wear device to be shown off at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Asus’ new timepiece sticks by and large to the form factor of its first generation device, aside from the notable addition of a suspiciously-familiar Apple-style digital crown.

Check out a video below:

The Typo Keyboard is dead. Long live… well, other iPhone 6 cases, we guess.

In a rare win for BlackBerry, the company today announced that it has come to an agreement with Typo, the Ryan Seacrest-funded company behind the BlackBerry-style iPhone keyboard. The agreement means that Typo will cease selling its keyboards for any device under 7.9-inches in size.

Being an Apple manufacturer is a pretty lucrative market if you can get in on it, which is why it’s no surprise to hear that Apple’s existing partners are constantly fending off challenges from upstarts promising to do whatever they can do — only cheaper and better.

According to a new report, Japanese manufacturers are currently making a concerted effort to secure more orders from Apple, which currently deals mainly with companies based in Taiwan and China.

If the Japan-based companies do manage to muscle-in on the Apple supply chain, it could result in iPhone manufacturing becoming even more of an international affair than it already is, while also having a potentially massive impact on existing Chinese iPhone makers.

Details about Nintendo’s next-gen NX console won’t officially be shared by the company until 2016, but according to a new report coming out of Japan one thing we might be able to expect is for the NX hardware to run a version of Android.

The decision is said to be rooted in Nintendo’s desire to give developers increased flexibility in making content that can also be used on smartphones and tablets.

Apple’s plans for its relaunched Beats Music streaming music service, rumored to be revealed at next week’s WWDC, took another step forward this weekend.

A new report suggests that Apple is currently in talks with Drake, Pharrell Williams and David Guetta for them to come on board as guest DJs for iTunes Radio. As three of the biggest names in music, having these artists on its roster would give Apple a massive selling point in its upcoming streaming music war with rivals like Spotify.

Have you ever thrown away something you regretted later on? If so, you have something in common with the San Francisco Bay Area woman who recently junked a vintage Apple-1 computer — one of just 200 surviving machines created by Steve Jobs and the Woz way back in 1976.

Fortunately the ultra-rare desktop was recognized by a member of the recycling firm she left it at. They sold it to a private collector for $200,000, and now want to track down the unwitting donor to give her the 50 percent they say the company owes.

Another week, another collection of amazing deals at huge discounts.

Pay what you want for the business design bundle worth over $1,500, ditch headphone wire tangles and save 51% on the Active Wrap wireless headphones, and pick up other great deals. Keep reading to check out our best deals of the week, brought to you by Cult of Mac Deals.

This week: Jony Ive’s big promotion has him handing over the keys to Apple’s legendary industral design lab, so we have to wonder… is this step one in an Ive succession plan? Plus: the surprising suitability of Ive’s replacement, Richard Howarth; Apple VP Jeff Williams lets some curious Apple car comments slip; why Apple Watch will get a lot faster come fall; Leander reveals his fetish for the weird whispering women of Youtube; and stay tuned till the end for a very romantic Get To Know Ur Cultist!

Our thanks to CultCloth for supporting this episode. If you’re obsessive about keeping your iPhone, iPad, Mac, DSLR, glasses, and other gadgets in sparkling clean condition, you’ll love ‘em. Use code “CultCast” at checkout to score a free 8×8 CleanCloth.

Father’s Day is fast approaching, and we’re pretty sure every father out there has enough #1 Dad mugs. That’s why we’ve put together a collection of awesome gifts he’ll love, from bar sets and a remote he can control from his phone to top-of-the-line headphones and portable battery packs. Read on for a great gift idea for Dad (you can thank us later) and check out more great gadgets at Cult of Mac Deals.

After a brush with cancer prompted me to take my health more seriously, I began using run trackers to start my journey from dad bod to six pack.

At first, running was the only exercise I did. It helped me lose my love handles, but I ended up looking too skinny. I decided it was time to put on some muscle. While Apple Watch and other wearables are great for running, they’re not much help when it comes to bulking up. As I soon discovered, some of the best fitness gadgets don’t fit on your wrist.

Why is Jony Ive’s big promotion so great for Apple? Find out what Leander thinks in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine. In addition, meet the men filling the design guru’s shoes, see how Apple Watch apps will get a speed boost, learn how to beat the Unicode of Death and a ton more iPhone and Apple Watch tips, and see just how Google is challenging Apple on its own turf.

All this, and much more, in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.

One of the best things to come out of Google’s I/O keynote on Thursday was Google Photos, a brand new service for storing, sharing, and organizing your images and videos.

It’s totally free — no matter how many items you upload — but is it better than the competition?

In this week’s Friday Night Fight with Cult of Android versus Cult of Mac, we pit it against Apple’s iCloud Photo Library service to find out which is the best pick for your pics.

Apple has become the most valuable company in the world thanks to the incredible success of the iPhone. Over half a billion iPhones have been sold since the original was released in 2007, but do you ever wonder what the smartphone would look like had Apple made it back in 1984?

Pierre Cerveau reimagined Apple’s flagship product in his neat “Macintosh Phone Concept” that takes inspiration from one of Apple’s other killer products — the Macintosh 512k.

Take a closer look:

You know something’s up at Cult of Mac headquarters when you see Leander sitting with his fingers steepled, exuding an air of complete calm.

It’s like a zen garden around here ever since I told him about ASMR videos, the strangely addictive YouTube phenomenon that turns quiet sounds into something like an aural orgasm.

Now he can’t get enough of the weirdly creepy clips — and I feel a little like a guy who inadvertently turned his friend on to crack.

I went outside for the first time today. Working at home is an easy way to get a bad case of couchlock, so I like to try and get out for little 15 minute breaks when I can.

Today was a bit different. I downloaded and installed a game some buddies of mine are raving about on Facebook: Ingress.

I launched the app, followed the instructions, and was hooked. What started as a 15 minute walk to try out a new mobile game became a 45-minute obsession as I roamed my neighborhood, looking for portals to hack, collecting XMP particles to power my technological takeover, and finding a little feature of my ‘hood I’d never known about before.

Want to get obsessed about a new game? Want to maybe get in a little better shape? Be sure to download Ingress and see what everyone’s talking about.

Okay, so it’s not really Apple news, but — honestly — who could complain about a robot cheetah on a Friday afternoon?

Given Google’s disappointing lack of killer robots at its oddly boring I/O keynote yesterday, MIT has fortunately stepped up to the plate by unleashing a new video of its metallic quadruped autonomously leaping hurdles like some kind of horse Terminator.

Check out the video below. Then start running.

Nerds and geeks alike are satirized and celebrated in CBS’s hit television show The Big Bang Theory, which has aired since 2007.

The very same intelligent kids that the show lionizes will now have a chance to study science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects at UCLA, thanks to a new endowmnent from show co-creator Chuck Lorre and some of the cast and crew of the show.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Maybe one of the recipients will become the next Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates.

I had been looking forward to the Google I/O keynote for weeks before it kicked off Thursday. I was rubbing my hands together like a little kid on Christmas morning when Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president, took to the stage to reveal what the company had up its sleeve.

But when the event ended two and a half hours later, I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Santa had visited — but instead of bringing what was on my list, he’d left me with a bunch of cheap gifts I knew I’d be bored with by the time the turkey was cooked.

Yesterday’s Android Pay reveal at Google I/O was a slight disappointment in that, it’s pretty much just like Apple Pay. Google added pretty much zero innovation to Apple’s idea that debuted last year, but what the company didn’t show us, is that it has a way better payments system up its sleeve.

It’s called Hands Free. It’s a complete separate app from Android Pay. And as an Apple fan, I hate to say it, but it looks like it could be way better than Apple Pay.

Check it out:

Facebook and GIFs seem like they’ve both been fixtures of the Internet forever, but it has taken until 2015 for the two to finally hookup.

Starting today, Facebook users can annoy friends with the most amazing GIFs the web has to offer. Unfortunately, you can’t upload your favorite GIFs directly to Facebook but you can embed them from other websites.

Here’s how to do it:

Thinking about a new career in IT management and security, but not sure where to start? We’ve made it easy. This bundle from iCollege packages together four essential certification courses that train you exactly on what you need to know. Get it for $59 at Cult of Mac Deals today—at 94% off, a deal this good doesn’t come around often.

7 of the 15 artists with an ownership stake in Jay Z’s troubled Tidal streaming music service may have their music pulled from it as a result of Jay Z failing to reach a music licencing agreement with Sony, which owns many of the streaming rights to the musicians in question.

Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Jack White, Calvin Harris, J Cole, Usher have all released albums under one of Sony’s labels, while even Jay’s own wife Beyonce could see her music vanish from her husband’s attempt at a challenger to digital music giants like Spotify and Apple.

One man’s astonishing collection of Apple gear is for sale on eBay right now, making an instant Mac museum just a click away for the right bidder. The auction starts at $100,000, with a Buy It Now price of $300,000 — a drop in the bucket for a certain CEO who’s on his way to the billionaire’s club.

“I would love for Tim Cook to buy it all,” said seller Steve “Mac” Abbott in an email to Cult of Mac running down his list of ideal buyers. “First it means he would want to display it, unlike Steve [Jobs], and that Apple would sponsor its own history…. Next would be a well-heeled Apple guy, and after that whoever can convince me that it can be seen. Then, ‘Show me the money.'”

Chances are you’ve heard about the iOS bug that lets users send a string of text to another iPhone owner that causes their Messages app to crash and their iPhone to reboot.

Although Apple has yet to fix the Messages bug with a software update, it has published an official support document containing a temporary workaround for solving the problem.