The iPad mini 3 was a bit of a disappointment because Apple really didn’t make any improvements other than adding Touch ID. Big changes could be in order for 2015, though, according to a video of an alleged 4th generation iPad mini rear shell that shows Apple’s smallest tablet is about to get an iPad Air redesign.
Watch the full hands-on video below.
Want a free month of HBO Now on your Apple TV, iPad or iPhone? If you sign up for the standalone service now, you can watch the premier of Game of Thrones on April 15 absolutely free.
I’m a long-time cord cutter and I’m super-excited that I can now purchase HBO directly from the television network, via iTunes, instead of having to sign up for a local cable TV package and then pay for HBO on top of that.
If you’ve got an Apple TV or an iOS device, you can get your own free month. Here’s how.
HBO finally unleashed its Netflix-killer today with the HBO Now app for iOS and Apple TV. The company is already having a hard time keeping up with demand on the streaming service, but according to a profile on HBO CEO Richard Plepler CEO, the original plan was to launch it at the end of 2016.
Today’s launch may not have happened it if weren’t for Apple executive Jimmy Iovine, who sparked the connection between HBO and Apple. After Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch made a hostile bid to takeover of Time Warner last year, Plepler says he knew he need to pivot the company. So he called up his old buddy Jimmy and asked if Apple would be interested in an HBO Now deal.
“I think that’s the shit,” Jimmy said.
Instagram has been inching towards being an all-in-one edit suite, and today the app took another small step in that direction.
Apple’s secret electric car project won’t be hitting highways for at least another five years (if ever), but that’s not stopping concept artists from dreaming up what a Project Titan vehicle might look like.
The folks at Freelancer held an Apple concept car contest this week, with the winner taking home a $1,500 prize. Top honors went to this semi-autonomous electric car concept from Aristomenis Tsirbas that oozes with Apple’s traditional minimalist design. Other features include custom LED head and tail lights, and discreet hatch doors that open laterally.
Here’s a look with the doors open:
If you’ve ever been interested in learning how to code but have balked at paying high tuition costs and investing your valuable time with a classroom schedule, then we’ve got an offer that you must take advantage of.
Now you can become a pro web developer and coder on your own schedule with the Learn to Code 2015 Course Bundle, available at Cult of Mac Deals for a limited time and at a discount that’s so huge you’d be crazy to pass it up.
HBO Now has finally landed on Apple TV, giving users access to stream HBO’s entire catalog of shows and live programming for just $14.99 per month. Apple TV owners can start using the service immediately with a free 30-day trial period.
Today’s HBO Now launch comes just in time for the Game of Thrones Season 5 premiere this Sunday. If you haven’t caught up, there might be enough hours left in the week to stream the past four seasons.
There are those who ride mountain bikes and then there is Eric Barone. He rides his mountain bike down actual mountains.
Apparently, the faster the better.
The French daredevil known as the Red Baron recently rode a specially groomed speed track down a snow-covered mountain in Vars in the French Alps, breaking his own world speed record with a ride that nearly approached 139 miles per hour.
If you want to skip out on posing for photos during the next family vacation, do what Hauke Scheer plans to do — use a 3-D-printed version of yourself as a stand-in.
The Scheer family might let him get away with it, since the fully articulated action figure of himself that he created is a pretty good likeness. The quality of his miniature plastic doppelganger — and the geeky scheme to get out of family portraits — tell you something about Scheer, 39, who earns a living making 3-D-printed figures of mechanized whales and other crazy characters from his home in Frankfurt, Germany.
“I am a total geek with a huge collection of comics, science fiction and fantasy movies and, of course, action figures,” Scheer, who runs Deep Fried Figures, told Cult of Mac. “I started sculpting my own figures during my early teenage years at a time when lots of characters I loved were not available in figure form. After a while, I realized it was even more fun to make characters of my own.”
Apple may have already used the name “Force Touch” for its touch-sensitive tech, but if you’re a sci-fi fan who’s ever dreamed of wielding The Force to control your Mac with an Obi Wan-like sweep of the hand, you could be in luck.
Apple today published a patent for a technology which describes in-air 3D gesturing which allows it to accurately establish not only where a user’s hand might be, but also what it is doing. As such, it opens up the possibility of creating detailed hand poses for triggering different actions.
Throwing up a pair of hand horns to get AC/DC blaring out on iTunes? Yes please.
Considering how great its other products are, there’s little contesting the fact that Apple’s search functions have traditionally sucked.
That remains true to this day, although improvements are slowly being made — and proof of this is the newly-uncovered acquisition of a search startup called Ottocat, which now powers the “explore” tab in the App Store.
From pop-up kiosks in up-scale luxury department stores to focusing more on the fashion press than the tech pages, it’s been fascinating to watch the unorthodox way in which Apple is choosing to spread the word about its upcoming Apple Watch: attempting to make it into this summer’s must-have item.
During Monday’s episode of The Voice, the next step of this roll-out was revealed, as Pharrell Williams — acting as a judge on the show — was spotted wearing the device, without a supervising Apple engineer or PR bod in sight.
Hey, as fashion items go, it makes a change from giant hats, at least!
The Star Wars movies will finally arrive in iTunes this week, marking the classic series (and its three disappointing prequels) going digital for the first time ever.
“We’re thrilled that fans will be able to enjoy the Star Wars saga on their digital devices wherever they go,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “These films broke new ground in technology, design, sound, and visual effects, and we’ve created some very special bonus material which delves into the saga’s rich history, including new and never-before-released conversations between legendary Star Wars artists — the masters who helped George bring his iconic universe to life.”
Check out more details about the bonus features below:
Launch day queues for the latest must-have gadget are as much a part of Apple culture as learning to live without ports and optical drives.
But Apple retail guru Angela Ahrendts wants to change all that — sending out an email to Apple Store employees proclaiming that, “The days of waiting in line … are over” for customers.
Her alternative? Shop online.
Snapchat used to have a “Best Friends” list that showed you who each of your friends snapped with the most. It was a weird, slightly stalkerish part of the app that was removed last year.
Now Snapchat has brought back a way to see top friends, but in a more fun way that relies totally on emojis (and won’t destroy your relationships). Here’s how to decode what the new Snapchat emojis mean.
On the Mac, it’s super-easy to search for a word or phrase within the currently loaded page. You simply hit Command-F on your keyboard and Safari, Chrome or any other web browser will open up a little field to type your search terms into.
But what about when you’re using mobile Safari on your iPhone or iPad? How do you find a specific word or phrase there?
It’s pretty simple, but not super-intuitive. Here’s our recipe for finding search terms on your iPhone’s version of Safari.
Update: Samsung has denied the report, claiming that all invitees were “formally invited to the Shanghai Culture Square where the event took place.”
Samsung is trying to match the iPhone 6 in every way with the launch on the Galaxy S6. That includes pre-launch hype with over 1,000 people at events clamoring for a look at the new flagship phone, but in Samsung’s case, it has to pay for fans to show up.
Over 500 fake fans were paid to attend Samsung’s launch event for the Galaxy S6 in China on Friday. The total attendance reached around 1,000, but with the meager $4.80 Samsung shelled out to anyone under who looked like a student under 30, and could sit through one hour of the keynote.
I had the kind of dad who brought his work home with him. That was exciting since he was in the business of putting men on the moon.
Each time there was a scheduled launch, my two brothers and I could always expect our dad to come home with mission patches. Robert Pierini was an engineer in the late 1960s and early ’70s with an electronics company in Milwaukee that developed the guidance system for the Apollo mission.
So when filmmaker Neil F. Smith recently posted a video to YouTube, bringing animated life to each mission emblem, I immediately felt the same rush I had as a kid when I held a patch in my hand.
We can’t wait for Game of Thrones to make its fifth season debut next Sunday filled with all the mystery, violence and betrayal that have cemented the fantasy epic as one of TV’s best shows.
We don’t recommend letting your kids tune into the newest episodes, but Sesame Street gives kids the next best option with a funny parody of the hit HBO show that pits Joffrey, Daenerys, Tyrion and Cersei in a serious Game of Chairs contest. Ned Stark does the officiating without managing to lose his head, and Grover makes a surprise power play at the end that could forever change Westeros.
Watch the full clip below.
Grand Canyon National Park is one of the most incredible wonders you could ever visit. To truly appreciated the Big Ass-ness of it, you really need to view it from the bottom. As someone who’s hiked there a few times, I can attest that getting down there is a pain.
Rafting through it on the Colorado is funner, but it’s also really wet and slightly dangerous, so the folks at Western River Expeditions captured the first-ever 360 interactive video on one of their recent trips. Now, thanks to wonders of virtual reality, you can now take a trip down the Colorado River without worrying about a mountainous wave of chocolatey water knocking you off the side of your raft.
Watching their video is like Google Street view for the Grand Canyon. You can explore it yourself below:
Ellanora Baidoo, 26, can finally change her Facebook status to “single” after a landmark decision in a Manhattan courtroom Monday that allows her to serve her evasive husband via private message on Facebook.
This is the first time anyone has been able to use the ubiquitous social networking site to serve legally binding papers.
The Ghanaian nurse “is granted permission serve defendant with the divorce summons using a private message through Facebook,” wrote Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper.
What’s next–small claims court via Twitter?
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is a giant iPhone 6 ripoff. And like Apple’s bigger-than-big devices, it also comes with some bending problems.
Tests have found that the Galaxy S6 Edge is just as easy to bend as the iPhone 6 Plus, only its display is even more likely to crack. Samsung finally responded today, claiming the 110 lbs of pressure used in SquareTrade’s tests were way more than would be exerted in real-world use. LG isn’t letting Samsung’s bendgate problems go unnoticed though.
Take a look at this tweet they sent mocking Samsung:
Apple leapfrogged the desktop competition last year with the 5K Retina iMac, but according to its display partner LG, Apple is going to announce an is going to release an ‘iMac 8k’ later this year.
The Korean display manufacturer published an explainer on its website last week claiming a super-high resolution iMac will be hitting stores later this year. It’s probably just an error or typo, but the comments have led to a lot of speculation among Apple fanboys on Reddit.
Here’s the full quote from LG:
The iPhone 6 has helped Apple shatter sales records worldwide, and nowhere is it bigger than in China. According to a new report from Kantar, Apple’s smartphone market share in China is at an all-time high of 27.6 percent.
China Mobile accounted for 59 percent of iOS sales in the country from December to February, adding to Apple’s momentum in key international markets. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were two of the three top-selling smartphones in urban China, with Xiaomi’s RedMI Note coming in second.
While Apple market share is up in developing nations, iOS market share shrank year-over-year in the U.S. and Japan. Five other countries also saw losses over the last three months. Look at how much Apple’s market share declined in January and February in seven of the world’s largest markets:
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