Cult of Mac

Unlike the sapphire crystal used in the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition, the low-end Apple Watch Sport uses a scratch-resistant fortified ion-X glass display to protect your next must-have Apple device from the wear-and-tear of its daily grind. But how does it hold up?

Thanks to Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy we apparently have our answer. Using ion-X glass covers provided by Apple leaker extraordinaire Sonny Dickson, Hilsenteger runs the glass covers through a gauntlet of keys, knives, steel wool, and different types of sandpaper.

You can check out his video below.

If you’re looking for a picture to illustrate the difference between water-resistant (like the Apple Watch) and waterproof (like no Apple product yet), this one will do perfectly!

The traumatizing photo was posted on Twitter by jilted lover @foolishnessfly2, who decided to get revenge against an ex who had cheated on her by dumping his entire Apple collection in a bathtub full of water.

Needless to say, this is one breakup he’s going to remember. Hope he’s got AppleCare+!

WhatsApp is no longer just an instant messaging service. In a new update now rolling out to users on iOS, the company is introducing new voice calling capabilities that allow you to phone family and friends anywhere and at no extra cost.

The update also brings an iOS 8 share extension and other new features and improvements.

Australian indie developer Belle Gibson — known for her iOS app The Whole Pantry — has publicly admitted that she made up a story about suffering from terminal brain cancer to boost profits.

“No. None of it’s true,” she told The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine when asked if she had ever had cancer. “I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality. I have lived it and I’m not really there yet.”

The 26-year-old entrepreneur based her business around telling others how she had overcome cancer through “healthy living” and without the use of conventional medicine. Apple was seemingly so taken with the story that it flew her to Cupertino to work on delivering one of the first wave of Apple Watch apps — although this has since been pulled.

You’re finally making the move, getting rid of your old Android phone in favor of a shiny new iPhone. The only problem is transferring all your valuable contacts and photographs from one device to the other.

Well, in today’s video I’m going to show you how to do just that — and luckily it’s a lot quicker and easier than you may think.

In a video sent out to Apple retail employees, Apple’s senior vice president of retail Angela Ahrendts clarified that the Apple Watch will be arriving for many customers this Friday, but that online ordering was still the only way the Apple Watch can be purchased right now.

Ahrendts talks directly to retail employees, reminding them that the Apple Watch isn’t the only great new product aut right now, but that it is an entirely new type of product and way of selling things for Apple.

“This is not just a new product for us, this is an entirely new category,” she says in the video, “and it is the first time we’ve ever previewed a product two weeks before the availability.”

Even with the horrible audio echoes and Ahrendts’ vocal-pause-laden and seemingly unrehearsed speech, the video is a fascinating look at the messaging all Apple retail staff will be hearing this week as they prepare for the hordes of new customers looking to buy an Apple Watch or new Macbook.

There are two different channels for audio on your iOS device: there are ringers and alert sounds and there are media sounds, like from the Music app or various games on your iPhone.

The hardware volume buttons on the side of your iPhone are set to control both by default, but you can separate it out, making the hardware buttons only turn down the media sounds instead of both media and ringer sound.

Here’s our recipe on how to make sure you never miss a call because someone “accidentally” turned your volume all the way down.

If you’re an iOS developer itching to get your hands on an Apple Watch, it might be your lucky day.

Apple is giving registered developers a chance to get an Apple Watch delivered by next week, which is much better than the June shipping estimate for everyone else.

Disney’s has been showing us glimpses of its Brad Bird-helmed live action film for some time now, with the slow burn first trailer last October focusing on the young woman who gets a mysterious pin that transports her to an unseen, futuristic world, complete with jetpacks and glittering skylines.

That and present-day George Clooney, who convincingly portrays the curmudgeon next door with secrets of his own.

This new trailer, however, ratchets up the sci-fi action, giving us several more shots of the eponymous future city, even more jetpacks, and a team of future SWAT cops with ray guns coming after our heroine and Clooney as they climb into a bathtub and launch themselves into an uncertain, well, future.

Maybe Tomorrowland won’t be the sappy kid flick we all thought it would turn out to be, after all.

Chevrolet has a concept car that looks like something Bat Man would drive. Except he wouldn’t drive it the scene of the crime. The car would drive him.

The FNR concept is a self-driving car that may never see the light of day. But for that day to come, developers must dream, and Chevy has put forth a beautifully imagined vehicle that could nudge the future in a certain direction.

The nudging began this week at the Shangai Motor Show, where General Motors showed off its idea of an autonomous electric vehicle. The FNR likely drew more oohs and awes than the new Malibu that also debuted at the show.

If anyone can find the Loch Ness Monster, it’s Google; nothing can escape its sophisticated Street View cameras.

When the search giant visited the Scottish loch to celebrate the 81st anniversary of the legend of Loch Ness with the help of divers and local experts, then, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it managed to capture something mysterious in the water.

Today Adobe released Lightroom 6, cementing the photo editor as the best alternative to Apple’s now-extinct Aperture.

For Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers, the new app is called Lightroom CC. While perhaps the biggest enhancement is related to speed and performance, there are also a few new features users should find helpful.

Enjoy continued usage out of your electronic devices when you can fix them with the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit Bundle, 40% off at Cult of Mac Deals.

The first batch of Apple Watch preorders are starting to ship for delivery, and Apple has been awarded some key patents for its band designs.

A significant security flaw affecting OS X Yosemite hasn’t been fixed as previously thought, according to a former NSA staffer.

The flaw, known as Rootpipe, is said to have existed since 2011, and could allow an attacker to gain full control of another user’s Mac without requiring authentication.

Many smartphone photographers use Hipstamatic as a way to articulate their personal vision. But the quest for beautiful photos need not be so solitary.

The iPhone app that lets you apply a vintage aesthetic from any era of photography now has a social component called DSPO.

In what may be one of the most useful Apple Watch apps yet, Microsoft has added the ability for Apple Watch owners to control presentations using their brand new wearable devices.

The update to the existing PowerPoint for iPhone app allows users to switch between slides or check, with the quickest of glances, just how much time has elapsed during a talk, or the total number of slides you have left to show.

I envy the first person in each office who gets to show this off in a board meeting!

Metallica lead guitarist and songwriter Kirk Hammett has lost his super-valuable iPhone. No, it’s not one of those gold-plated ones favored by celebrities like Justin Bieber — it’s the iPhone on which he’d stored 250 riffs for the band’s next album.

In terms of money lost, this has to make you feel better about that time you dropped your iPhone in the bath, right?

Apple is reportedly keeping its options open when it comes to selecting manufacturing partners for the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch by broadening the number of companies it contracts work out to.

In other words, those supply-and-demand issues that have hit Apple in recent years shortly after new product releases could soon be a thing of the past.

The latest celebrity to flaunt an Apple Watch is none other than Queen B herself. Today Beyonce posted photos of herself at Coachella wearing the 18-karat Apple Watch Edition and a custom band you can’t buy.

One of iTunes’ most beloved artists has a solid gold link bracelet for the Watch that Apple doesn’t sell officially. And it probably costs more than the Edition itself.

A serious security flaw affecting approximately 1,500 iOS apps makes them vulnerable to hackers looking to swipe passwords, bank account info and other sensitive data, according to a new report.

The bug, which security analytics firm SourceDNA identified last month, has been fixed in an update to the open-source code that contained the vulnerability. However, some app makers have not yet updated to the newer version.

Luckily, you can search to see if your favorite apps are vulnerable.

Apple Watches are a step closer to hitting our wrists.

Some who preordered watches earlier this month took to Twitter Monday to excitedly report that their order statuses changed from “Processing Items” to “Preparing for Shipment.”

Depending on how quickly you got online in the early hours of April 10, you could be in the first wave of Apple Watches scheduled to arrive on doorsteps in the United States between Friday and May 8.

Like an autopsy performed on a cadaver that’s yet to be born, slick new renderings dissect the Apple Watch and show off its shiny guts.

Since few normal people have an actual Apple Watch in hand, concept artist Martin Hajek created the images using information gleaned from Apple’s website and industrial porn videos about the making of the smartwatch.

It can be tricky to get the best shot when taking a selfie or group shot with your iPhone. If you want a better angle than the length of your arm can provide (or your ridiculous selfie stick will telescope to), you might consider setting your iPhone on a ledge or tripod and using the built-in timer mode to get yourself and everyone else into position before the shutter goes off.

It’s not super-tricky, but you do need to know where to look. Here’s our recipe to enable timer mode on your iPhone.

Soon you’ll be able to control the cute new robotic star of Star Wars: The Force Awakens with your iPhone.

The toy version of BB-8, the droid with an R2-D2-style head perched precariously atop a rolling round body, will pop up in Disney stores later this year. While pricing isn’t yet known for the Star Wars toy, it will be made by Sphero, whose roly-poly robotic toy caught the eye of Disney chief Robert Iger.