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How to get your Apple Watch to leave you alone

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Activate do not disturb and silence your Apple Watch right from your wrist.
Activate Do Not Disturb and silence your Apple Watch right from your wrist.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

If you’ve spent any time with an Apple Watch, you might have noticed that it notifies you quite a bit. There’s the ubiquitous Stand Up commands, notifications from Messages, Calendar and the like, and then all the third-party apps that send you taps all day long.

If you chose to have your Apple Watch mirror your iPhone’s Do Not Disturb schedule, at least it will stop bugging you during those hours, but what if you just need to stop the notifications right now on your Apple Watch?

Here’s how to do just that.

Screaming ‘fire!’ in a crowded Russian space capsule is useless

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ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, left, and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov work through artificial fire aboard a Soyuz simulator.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, left, and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov work through artificial fire aboard a Soyuz simulator.

A first-class flight in a Soyuz space capsule is rocky, reliable and rather snug. An astronaut sits in a semi-fetal position, works the controls with a stick and feels a pretty heavy G load, especially on reentry.

So imagine if a fire breaks out on the Soyuz spacecraft. There’s no extinguisher, no exit and no help to call.

ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen narrated a video showing he and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov going through a simulated fire on a capsule to train for an upcoming flight to the International Space Station.

An Iron Man suit for your MacBook power supply

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MeezyCube will protect your MacBook’s power supply.
MeezyCube will protect your MacBook’s power supply.
Photo: Bulwark Products

This post is brought to you by Bulwark Products, maker of MeezyCube.

Buying any Apple product — whether a phone, tablet or laptop — is an investment in quality. We pay a premium for the sake of a device that’s designed and built to last, perform and look good while doing so.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about the power supply that comes with any MacBook. Somehow, Cupertino’s hardware wizards haven’t been able to move us beyond an unwieldy, tentacled plastic brick whose white plastic quickly gets scuffed up and filthy.

Doom teaser is too damn short

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The demons are coming.
The demons are coming.
Photo: Bethesda/YouTube

I’m not much of a video gamer, but Doom holds a special place in my heart. It’s the first game I can remember playing on a Mac, and while the next game in the sequel has been in the works forever (see: 2008), we finally got our first look at the gristly game today.

Publisher Bethesda will show off more of Doom at E3 next month, but for now the company released a super short teaser that has everything you could wish for: shotguns, and demons with monster guns.
Check it out below:

Barack Obama writes his first tweet from an iPhone

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Barry sending his first tweet from an iPhone.
President Obama sending his first tweet.
Photo: White House

  President Barack Obama is finally ready to enter the age of social media. After sitting behind the Resolute desk for six years, the president finally opened his own Twitter account today, but rather than using his hacker-proof BlackBerry to send his first message, POTUS turned to an Apple product.

Here’s his first tweet, sent from an iPhone:

Carl Icahn thinks Apple is about to launch an UltraHD TV

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Carl Icahn is coo-coo for AAPL.
Carl Icahn is coo-coo for AAPL. Photo: Forbes
Photo: Forbes

In an open letter to Tim Cook, billionaire investor Carl Icahn says Apple’s stock is still incredibly undervalued, and that now is the time for a much larger stock buyback.

Icahn’s firm believes that Apple shares are really worth $240 today, despite trading around $130.26 this morning, an increase over his previous estimate of $216. According to his letter, Icahn believes Apple is poised to dominate two new markets – television and the automobile.

Angry fan’s Super Bowl ring design needles Patriots over Deflategate

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Think the New England Patriots deserve this for a Super Bowl ring? A Kickstarter campaign aims to make this a symbol of Deflategate.
Think the New England Patriots deserve this for a Super Bowl ring? A Kickstarter campaign aims to make this a symbol of Deflategate.
Photo: Jacob Ayers/Kickstarter

A Super Bowl ring is the most coveted of football’s rewards, a talisman with the sparkle to match the magic of a championship season.

An Indianapolis Colts fan wants to give the New England Patriots the ring he thinks they deserve. Sitting on top of his 3-D-printed blue ring is a ball-inflation needle, the kind the NFL now believes was used in the infamous Deflategate game where the Patriots “cheated” their way to the Super Bowl.

Tim Cook takes a swipe at rival smartphones during commencement speech

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Tim Cook commencement
Tim Cook's commencement address demonstrated again how deeply he understands Apple culture.
Photo: George Washington University

Tim Cook welcomed students into the working world this weekend by giving the commencement address at George Washington University’s graduation ceremony.

Cook — who received an honorary doctorate as part of the ceremony — spoke about Apple’s status as a force for good in the world: something which has been a theme during his tenure as the company’s CEO. More importantly, he got in a great dig at the expense of Apple’s iPhone competitors.

Check out the video below.

Apple snaps up company with expertise in GPS and self-driving cars

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TomTom will continue to power Apple Maps.
New acquisition could be a major part of Apple's future roadmap. No pun intended.
Photo: Apple

Apple has confirmed its acquisition of Coherent Navigation, a GPS company with expertise in mapping and self-driving vehicles.

Founded in 2008, Coherent Navigation is one of the leading companies behind what is known as High Integrity GPS or — appropriately enough for Apple — iGPS. Unlike regular GPS, which is accurate only within meters, iGPS’ high level of accuracy means it can provide geographic positioning data within centimeters.

World’s biggest Apple Store will open in Dubai this summer

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A location fit for an Apple Store? We think so.
A location fit for an Apple Store? We think so.
Photo: Longhornsandcamels

If you live in Dubai and happen to be an Apple fan, you’re in luck — because the world’s largest brick-and-mortar Apple Store is set to open its doors close to you in just a few months.

Apple’s first ever store in the Middle East is set to be located at the Mall of the Emirates, where work is currently underway on the 50,000-square-foot retail outlet. Expect its grand unveiling in August this year.

Snake Rewind and other awesome apps you might have missed this week

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Awesome-Apps-of-the-Week

The App Store is a busy place, and it’s easy to miss an awesome new release, an update that makes an old app worthy of re-downloading, or a hidden gem you didn’t even know you even wanted.

That’s why we’ve done the work for you and collected the most awesome new apps from the past week.


Awesome Apps

Baseball, guitars, food and fishing: 8 Instagrams to follow right now

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Tech commuter, probably.
Tech commuter, probably.
Photo: Joe Pugliese

Regardless of what interests you have in your life, there is probably an Instagram feed for whatever your proclivities might be. Into rockabilly or baseball or even stamp collecting? You can undoubtedly find a couple of interesting photo feeds.

Since searching Instagram can be a frustrating and time-consuming endeavor, we have started to do it for you. This week we bring you feeds for baseball fans, vagabonds, parents and a couple of others.

Why the iPhone 6s may be the best ‘s’ yet, this week on The CultCast

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cultcast-phone-Bend

This week: Why the iPhone 6s could be the best “s” update yet; Nintendo promises five top-notch titles coming to iOS; the paltry earnings of top Mac App Store apps; and just when we thought we’ve seen it all … a new iPhone accessory helps you deal with your major gas issues.

Our thanks to Automatic for supporting this episode. Plug Automatic into your car’s data port, and their beautiful app will show you where you parked, how to save fuel with tips based on your actual driving, and even diagnose and turn off your car’s check engine light.

cultcast-179-post-player-image-thin

Full show notes ahead!

What does ‘fitness’ mean and why does it matter?

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Apple Watch Activity
What exactly are fitness trackers tracking?
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Many people say they want to get fit, but what does this actually mean? Fit for what?

The websites of leading fitness trackers, like Apple Watch, Fitbit, Microsoft Band and Jawbone Up don’t shed much light on this question. They talk a lot about the things that their devices measure, and even suggest changes in how we go about our day, but they rarely explain why this matters or what the actual benefits are.

Image is everything as restaurants plate their food for Instagram fame

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Food photography
Restaurants try to take advantage of the free marketing Instagrammers provide when they share food photos.
Photo: Brigham Young University

Some restaurants take pride in offering perfect food and wine pairings. Others think more in terms of food and phone pairings.

Yes, you can blame Instagram if your restaurant is a little brighter and the presentation of the food is a bit fussier. Restauranteurs are trying to cash in on our obsession with photographing our meals by giving Instagram users better lighting and compositional conditions to make more appetizing shots.

China goes wild during Tim Cook’s week-long Apple Store tour

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Tim Cook and Apple might be moving into San Francisco.
Tim Cook and Apple might be moving into San Francisco.
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook just finished a week-long tour of China, complete with stops at new Apple Stores across the country, as well as a visit to the elementary school at Communication University of China, and a meeting with China’s Vice Premier.

Cook created a Weibo account earlier this week to announce Apple’s new green initiatives in China, but the Apple CEO didn’t stop there. Rather than posting to Twitter, Cook stayed active on the Chinese microblogging all week, posting his interactions with customers and colleagues. In just five days, Tim has amassed over half a million Weibo followers (he’s got 1.3 million on Twitter) by keeping Chinese fans updated with seven posts during the trip.

Take a look at Tim’s awesome Weibo travelogue: