Apple has changed its mind on the decision not to pay streaming music royalties to artists and labels during the three-month trial period of Apple Music.
Yesterday, Taylor Swift penned an open letter to the company arguing that, “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
SAN FRANCISCO — While other people were crapping their pants or scratching their heads during the Apple Music unveiling, Philipp Sonnleitner was having an “aha!” moment.
It happened right after Apple took the wraps off of Connect, the social element of Apple Music designed to let artists share intimate moments with fans, from backstage video and unreleased tracks to private performances from couches anywhere in the world.
“You saw the Apple Connect?” Sonnleitner, CEO and founder of Mikme, asked during the getgeeked tech showcase here during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. “We have the tools!”
Taylor Swift may have announced she was shaking off Apple Music last week, but today she published an open letter to Apple explaining in more detail why her hit “1989” album won’t be joining the other 30 million songs available on Apple’s streaming music service when it launches.
“I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service,” Swift writes. “I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”
Shop our top picks of the week at Cult of Mac Deals, including a lifetime of mobile backup, an activity and sleep tracker, and more.
Looking for an app or two to while away the weekend? Then you’ve come to the right place, my friend!
From reading apps to Terminator navigation tools to gorgeous RPGs, we’ve got everything you need to know about the latest must-have apps.
Check out our top picks below:
We’re getting down to the wire on the chance to save big on the KeySmart 2.0 organizer, the Innori battery pack, the Sound Kick Bluetooth speaker, and more.
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.
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:
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.”
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.
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.
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.
The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FSWI) has announced today that for the first time since 2009 exports of traditional timepieces are down, and it looks like Apple Watch is to blame.
Apple has launched a replacement program for certain iMac models with 3TB hard drives. If you bought a 27-inch iMac with a 3TB hard drive between December 2012 and September 2013, you might be eligible for a free replacement hard drive.
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.
Pinterest is looking for fresh blood to inject some more life into it’s mobile experience this year, so the company announced that it has nabbed Scott Goodson, a former Apple and Facebook engineer, to come in and improve the app’s performance across various platforms.
Google 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.
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.
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.
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:
“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.