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Transform your home into a futuristic wonderland with these HomeKit gadgets

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HomeKit
HomeKit is all about letting your things talk to your other things.
Photo: Apple

Almost a year since Apple unveiled its home-automation platform HomeKit, the first compatible products were officially announced today — allowing you to start building that Jetsons-style smart home you’ve always dreamed about, operated via Siri using your iPhone, iPad or even Apple Watch.

Among the first wave of HomeKit offerings are smart lights, thermostats, and home sensors for tracking air quality, temperature, smoke, humidity, air pressure, energy, and water consumption in your house.

Check out the full list below.

Apple’s ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ TV ads are utterly charming

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Apple's latest iPhone 6 ads pay homage to a world of amateur vidiographers.
Photo: Apple

Apple has expanded its “Shot on iPhone” print ad campaign with a batch of videos showing off the kind of beautiful footage it’s possible to record using the latest iPhone.

Instead of calling in the pros to film spectacular sights, the ads focus on serendipitous slices of everyday life, such as a ladybug on a twig or a sparrow eating from a person’s hand. As with the “Shot on iPhone” print ads, the spots were crowdsourced from regular iPhone users.

And you know what? Considering that each one is just 15 seconds long (with five seconds being the Apple logo and the “Shot on iPhone 6” tagline), they’re actually pretty darn great!

What if Steve Jobs had introduced the Apple Watch?

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Steve Jobs would have sold the hell out of the Apple Watch.

According to Jony Ive, the Apple Watch project was first touted shortly after Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. But what would it have been like had Apple’s legendary co-founder lived to see the arrival of Apple’s debut into the smartwatch market?

To give us an idea, one dedicated Apple fan cut up and reassembled old “Stevenote” speeches to piece together an Apple Watch ad narrated by Jobs himself. Considering that it relies on old sound bytes about unrelated products, it actually works.

Check it out below. Bonus points if you can work out where each of the quotes originally came from!

Apple’s 3-D mapping tech would turn your iMac into an Xbox Kinect

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Heading
Mouse, what mouse?
Photo: USPTO/Apple

New technology dreamed up by Apple would allow users to control an interface by simply striking a pose. This would work by having Apple devices generate a depth map for identifying “a head and at least one arm of the humanoid form” from any image in which one appears.

A way to switch on our next Apple TV by waving a hand or turning your head toward the screen? Yes please!

How to speed up your MacBook Pro by adding more RAM

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It's easier than you might imagine to do a MacBook RAM upgrade.
It's easier than you might imagine to do a MacBook RAM upgrade.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Faster, more powerful MacBooks come out every year, but for most of us it’s not very practical to throw down a bunch of cash every time a new model gets released. Luckily, it’s pretty simple to perform a MacBook RAM upgrade.

In today’s video, Cult of Mac shows you how to give your MacBook a speed boost by installing new RAM.

Exercise without your Apple Watch feeling the burn

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Apple Watch sensors
The heart rate monitor really sucks up some battery.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple Watch can track your workouts, from cycling to rowing to the elliptical at your local gym. This is a battery-intensive feature, though, what with all the heartbeat monitoring, GPS connections to your iPhone, and the like.

Here’s how to conserve your Apple Watch battery life by turning off all that juice-hogging stuff while you run or walk, so you can keep your wearable’s power at optimum for a long day between charges.

Apple’s bold plan to convert casual music fans into streaming subscribers

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Apple needs no shelter, thank you.
Apple is hoping to move you from a music collector to a file-streamer.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Imagine clicking iTunes’ “Buy” button to purchase the latest record from Drake or Pharrell Williams, only to get a popup from Apple suggesting you’re behind the times.

That’s what might happen as Apple uses its massive consumer base to push streaming music on the masses, even going so far as prompting iTunes users to switch from buying songs to subscribing to a cloud service.

That sort of mid-purchase upsell is just one possible element of Cupertino’s strategy to shake up the music industry again, and the Apple streaming music plan just might be crazy enough to work.

Cruiseable cuts through the hassle of high-seas vacations

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Find a cruise that matches your style and budget without a lot of travel industry tricks.
Find a cruise that matches your style and budget without a lot of travel industry tricks.
Photo: MSC Cruises

If you’ve ever tried to book a cruise through a portal like Cruise.com or — heaven forbid — via a cruise line’s website, you know that it can be an incredibly confusing and costly experience.

The thing is, though, that it doesn’t have to be. Cruisable is a startup that hopes to take the obfuscation away and let you find affordable and/or incredibly fantastic cruise vacations with a website and app that won’t try to trick you.

“Cruises can be cheaper than other getaways,” said CTO and co-founder Giacomo Balli, “as low as a couple hundred dollars.”

Apple Watch will be able to control your Volvo in no time

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Apple Watch and Volvo are ready to roll.
Apple Watch and Volvo are ready to roll.
Photo: Volvo

Owning a car sucks mostly for one reason: I’m always losing my keys.

Like this morning on the way to the coffee shop when I somehow managed to lose my key after I already got in the car. Keys were not made for me, which is why I might need to upgrade to a Volvo someday because the company just revealed it’s ready to turn Apple Watch into the key to your car.

Older Macs are vulnerable to dangerous new bug

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mac security
A new Mac security problem has been discovered.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Older Apple computers may be susceptible to a new zero-day vulnerability discovered by a security researcher, who found the flaw can be used to install rootkit malware that’s nearly undetectable and very hard to remove.

Apple’s fitness guru hits the road for tour of Asia and Australia

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Jay Blahnik, Apple'
Jay Blahnik, Apple's Director of Fitness and Health Technologies
Photo: Apple

Apple Watch could become one of the most important devices you can shackle yourself to, so to amp up the Apple faithful into more heatlh-focused nerds, Apple has sent fitness guru Jay Blahnik on a special events tour in Australia, China and Japan.

Blahnik is touring the areas to talking to some of the biggest personal trainers about the intersection between fitness and technology. At the Apple Store in Sydney, Australian personal trainer Michelle Bridges sat down for an interview with Blahnik to talk about some of things she’s learned from filming the Australian version of The Biggest Loser.

You can watch part of their interview below:

Jon Snow and Agent Carter tag-team a romantic WWI drama

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War is hell.
War is hell.
Photo: Sony Pictures Classics

If you can’t get enough of Marvel’s Agent Peggy Carter, played to perfection by Haley Atwell, or Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow, broodingly acted by Kit Harrington, here’s a new movie that stars both of them: Testament of Youth.

It’s a deeply romantic period piece set in Britain during the first world war, based on a memoir by Vera Brittain, a young woman who overcame the serious sexism of her day to attend Oxford University, only to have her studies interrupted by the war.

Get 90% off the Summer Mac Essentials Bundle ft. Unibox, Noiseless, Hider 2 and more [Deals]

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When we discover an amazing app that helps your Mac run better, faster, and more efficiently, we can’t help but share it with you. And when we discover nine of them, you get this bundle. Enhance your Mac experience with our package of some of the best apps out there for your computer. Each one is worth between $14.95 and $49.95, but we’re selling all nine for a total of $19.99 for a limited time only. Here’s what you’ll get:

Inside Apple’s secretive iMac plant in Ireland

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Apple's Hollyhill, Cork factory is the only Apple-run manufacturing facility in the world.
Apple's Hollyhill, Cork factory is the only directly Apple-run manufacturing facility in the world.
Photo: Irish Examiner

When people talk about Apple’s Irish operations, it’s normally negatively, regarding questionable tax practices. But the company operates a 4,000-person factory in Cork, Ireland, that builds iMacs — and it’s the only Apple-owned manufacturing facility in the world.

The Irish Examiner recently got a peek inside the secretive Apple manufacturing plant in Cork. Check out some photos below.

Best List: Electric wheels, trick packs and a selfie stick even Apple could love

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Each month, Lust List rounds up the products that made us break out the hats and hooters. This time we're throwing down the jam with perfect packs, an electric mountain bike, a super-sick selfie stick and other essentials.


Steelcase Gesture office chair


This chair saved my ass. After months of sitting on a cheapo spinner made of molded plywood from IKEA, I was getting a  little sick of the numbness in my hams: Every time I got up after a long session of hacking away at the keyboard, my legs felt almost useless.


Plopping down on the Gesture chair by Steelcase (starts at $974, with options) changed all that. I feel much more comfortable after a long day of at the desk, but the Gesture goes beyond that: It's designed to accommodate a variety of sitting positions, from straight-up typing to kicked-back tapping on an iPad or smartphone. A four-position selector lets you dial in your level of lean; an easy-turn knob lets you adjust the seat depth while a simple lever allows height adjustments. 


The truly novel part is the

Each month, Lust List rounds up the products that made us break out the hats and hooters. This time we're throwing down the jam with perfect packs, an electric mountain bike, a super-sick selfie stick and other essentials.

Steelcase Gesture office chair

This chair saved my ass. After months of sitting on a cheapo spinner made of molded plywood from IKEA, I was getting a little sick of the numbness in my hams: Every time I got up after a long session of hacking away at the keyboard, my legs felt almost useless.

Plopping down on the Gesture chair by Steelcase (starts at $974, with options) changed all that. I feel much more comfortable after a long day of at the desk, but the Gesture goes beyond that: It's designed to accommodate a variety of sitting positions, from straight-up typing to kicked-back tapping on an iPad or smartphone. A four-position selector lets you dial in your level of lean; an easy-turn knob lets you adjust the seat depth while a simple lever allows height adjustments.

The truly novel part is the "limb interface" adjustments: The chair's grippy rubberized arms adjust effortlessly up, down, in and out so you can position them right where your arms want to be at any given moment. And unlike some overly complicated office chairs, tweaking this beast to your heart's (and your back's) content is very intuitive.

When it comes to looks, it's stylish enough for any modern office. The comfy gray fabric covering the seat and back reminds me of a subtle flannel suit, but Steelcase offers the Gesture in a wide variety of less-staid colors (and leather, too). — Lewis Wallace

Buy from: Amazon


Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

ASUS ZenWatch 2 steals Apple Watch’s digital crown concept

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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:

Typo’s BlackBerry-style keyboard for iPhone is dead

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Want to turn your iPhone into a BlackBerry. No? Then this case probably isn't for you.
Want to turn your iPhone into a BlackBerry. No? Then this case probably isn't for you.
Photo: Typo

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.

Move over China! Japan wants to take over iPhone manufacturing

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Foxconn employees accused of $43 million iPhone scam
Tim Cook meeting an iPhone manufacturer in China.
Photo: Apple

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.

Nintendo’s next console could run… Android?

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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.