Cult of Mac

You can add all the high-tech features you want, but ultimately one of the best ways to make people buy gadgets is to ensure that the devices are the same ones already used by their friends.

That’s the concept behind a newly-published patent application, titled, “Collaborative Location-Based Search Results.” It describes a way in which multiple iPhone users in different locations can search for shared information — say, finding a restaurant or movie theater that’s equally convenient for every member of a group of friends to reach.

Never mind that espionage is a dangerous line of work. The secret agent game promises plenty of intrigue and lots of fun spy gadgets.

 If I knew exactly what today’s tools of the trade are, someone would probably have to kill me. Politics and enemies change but spies’ needs are essentially timeless: Disguises and false papers maintains a cover, tracking and listening devices record movements and conversations, and small, secret cameras copy documents and photograph dubious characters.

A hidden weapon can get a spy out of a jam. A concealed cyanide pill — so the intensely devoted might say — beats interrogation.

We love our spy stories. It is why the James Bond film franchise endures, James Patterson sells books and there are spy museums from Prague to Washington, D.C. (where there are two). Here’s a less-than-clandestine peek into the shadowy spy gadgets that filled the world of espionage over the years.

According to a new research note issued by UBS’s Evidence Lab, the latest quarterly sales for the iPhone are set to be even more impressive than most people are anticipating.

And given that nobody is sleeping on the iPhone’s success as it is, that means some astonishingly big numbers.

Your shiny new Apple Watch? It’s a lot more vulnerable to being stolen than you might know.

The Apple Watch is expected to do big things in China — with even the high-end Apple Watch Edition selling out within its first hour of preorders in the country — but one place the company’s debut wearable device won’t take off is the Chinese army.

That’s according to a recently released memo in which Chinese military leaders argue that wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers are sure to compromise soldiers’ security.

Rumors have suggested that Apple might return to the 4-inch iPhone form factor with the next-generation of iPhones, but what would a new 4-inch iPhone even look like?

If this video is anything to go by, it will be crazy thin … even thinner than the iPad Air, from which it would also borrow its moniker.

If you’re an owner of a new Leica M Monochrom camera — a beautiful digital camera specializing in beautiful black-and-white photographs, which Leica released on May 7th — you may want to avoid hooking it up to your Mac right now.

According to a new advisory, a nasty bug affects the Leica M Monochrom which can cause it to destroy your entire Apple Photos library. Whoa!

In a scary situation which took place on Wednesday, employees at a Californian Apple Store had to be evacuated and rushed to hospital when they became dizzy and nauseous after handling a package which was delivered to the store.

And, no, it wasn’t a Samsung handset!

If you’d like to see the Apple Watch in a cool new way, we have something to show you.

Apple created the below Apple Watch assembly drawing as part of its Made for Apple Watch program, which supports designers who are interested in creating third-party bands for the new wearable. It includes guidelines, notes and measurements of every part of the Watch, but mostly it’s just beautiful to behold.

HomeKit just gained a powerful new partner: Communication firm Broadcom announced yesterday that its WICED (“Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices”) software now offers full support with Apple’s connected-accessory framework.

WICED is the first software development kit to meet HomeKit’s standards for Wi-fi and Bluetooth Smart, which gives it a head start over other companies looking to get in on Apple’s platform.

Patient iOS developers haven’t had long to wait for their time with Apple’s new App Analytics tool; the beta is now open to everyone with an iTunes Connect Admin, Finance, or Sales account.

You know nothin’, Jon Snow. Especially how much more full of shifting alliances and intrigue The Wars of the Roses was than your epic television series is able to show. Game of Thrones superfans may already know that 15th-century England inspired much of the structure of George R. R. Martin’s overarching book series, but having it all laid out — lovely animations and visuals to support the historical information — is our first exposure to that fact.

The short animated video, written by Alex Gendler and animated by Brett Underhill, even illustrates how Game of Thrones matches directly to historical facts with some fun Pop-Up Video-style flourishes. You’ll love it.

Samsung may be the official sponsor of the NBA, but the Apple Watch is stealing the show.

It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane. It’s not a man. It’s Supergirl.

Seeing Kara Zor-El finally embrace her amazing Kryptonian powers in this trailer for the upcoming CBS television series Supergirl is an eye-welling moment of pure awesomeness for men and women alike who appreciate the Super myths from DC Comics.

Watching her bumble her way through cheesy, flirty moments as the gopher for media conglomerate owner Cat Grant (played by Calista Flockhart) and giggling through her scenes with beefcake James Olson, however, is a cheesiness that rivals some of the worst of Smallville, so color us warily excited. Check out the trailer and make up your own mind.

Michael Fassbender is a lot of things: actor, producer, Magneto … but one thing he isn’t is on the cutting edge of technology.

The man playing Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic from director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) confessed in a recent interview that he is a little behind the times, phone-wise.

When you hit your Apple Watch’s side button, just under the Digital Crown, you get a list of the contacts you‘ve marked as Favorites in order to send your heartbeat or taps to them via Digital Touch, or folks you want to text with using your new Apple wrist gadget.

There are seven different presets for color coding those contacts, too, which default to red, blue, green, yellow, orange, white and purple.

Did you know that you could customize the colors of each of these seven slots? Here’s how.

In a strongly worded blog post Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission derided legislative attempts to prevent consumers from buying cars directly from manufacturers. While this certainly applies to Tesla Motors’ plans to cut out the middleman on auto sales, the government position would cover any company that wishes to sell cars directly to consumers — like, say, Apple.

Can you imagine a day when we can roll into an Apple retail store, flash an Apple Watch and purchase an iCar with Apple Pay?

Drawing an entire new movie by hand is a long, hard, tedious process, but the animators at Disney have a hidden trick up their sleeves: they recycle footage from older animated films into new ones.

In a new video showing how Disney’s team of animators remixed old animations for newer films, the team at Movie Munchies have mashed up some of Disney’s most classic movies. Did you know Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast have the exact same dance scenes? Or that animators drew over scenes from Snow White  to create footage for Robin Hood, all with the same characters and movements.

Watch the video below to have your childhood ruined:

Apple and electric car battery maker A123 Systems have nearly reached a settlement, after A123 filed a federal lawsuit accusing Apple of poaching its top engineers and scientists to build its own battery division.

Court filings from A123 this week revealed the company asked a federal judge to grant it more time to finalize the settlement now that the two sides have “reached an agreement, signed a term sheet, and are in the process of drafting a final settlement agreement.”

Foxconn has become one of the world’s biggest tech suppliers thanks to its close relationship with Apple assembling iPhones and iPads, but the Chinese company is looking to hedge its bets by investing in the competing Cyanogen operating system.

The clock is ticking, and this is your last chance to win a brand new Apple Watch courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

An old saying states that those who can, do; those who can’t, teach — and to this we should maybe add that those teachers who can’t afford the latest Apple products on their salary, steal.

That’s according to a new report stating that a former Caldwell School District teacher in Idaho has pleaded guilty to grand theft charges, after buying (and then failing to hand over) a plethora of Apple gadgets — including two iPod touches, three iPad 2s, a 27-inch iMac, and three iPad minis.

That’s an A for effort, but a D- for execution.

The iPhone is probably the best, most portable gaming device around. Even so, sometimes nostalgia kicks in and you miss your old Gameboy.

The Arduboy is a new, credit card-size console that is just as portable as an iPhone, if not more so. And it can play all the old 8-bit games your iPhone can’t.

BitTorrent’s not just a way to torrent anymore.

Released a couple years ago, BitTorrent Sync proved itself to be a great way to keep your files synced between machines without trusting a service like Dropbox with your data.

And now? BitTorrent Bleep, a serverless chat app, is here to show you you can do without Snapchat or iMessage.

It’s easy to think that Steve Jobs’ biggest contribution to movies was his work at Pixar. In fact, according to no less an authority than Walt Disney and Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter, Jobs’ biggest lasting influence on cinema could turn out to be none other than the invention of the iPhone.

Speaking at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, Lasseter said he can easily see a day when the big award-winning movies we watch are produced by filmmakers using only their iPhones and GoPro cameras.