Cult of Mac

Apple’s not even announced its rebranded Beats Music streaming rival to Spotify yet, and already it’s under investigation from regulators.

According to a new report, multiple record labels and digital music companies have been contacted for questioning by the European Commission for what could be a redo of the Apple’s antitrust ebooks controversy, in which the company was forced to shell out $450 million in damages.

The mystery part: since such investigations are usually triggered only by a formal complaint to the commission, there’s plenty of finger-pointing going on regarding who’s responsible for throwing accusations Cupertino’s way. In true Clue fashion, was it an existing streaming music provider, in the dining room, with the endangered business model?

All will (presumably) be revealed.

What if you combined the viral nature of Vine with the mini-story capability of Snapchat? That’s what Facebook is trying to do with Riff, a new app that’s available for download today.

The 12-inch MacBook with Retina display is sexy to behold, but its specs may leave more to be desired.

Thanks to some new benchmarks, we have a clearer picture of what to expect from the new MacBook’s processor. And it’s basically as powerful as a 2011 MacBook Air.

As of OS X Yosemite, the little green button in the upper left-hand corner of all your apps and windows has recently undergone a change in function. Instead of maximizing or re-sizing the windows, as in all previous versions of OS X, now the green button will take your window or app full screen.

If you’re tired of going full screen every time you click the green button, here’s how to avoid the screen take over.

April Fools’ is the day that a lot of tech companies announce fake products to get a laugh. Some are good, but most suck.

Tesla has arguably won April Fools’ Day this year with its spoof of the Apple Watch.

More details surrounding Apple’s unreleased TV streaming service are leaking out as its Worldwide Developer Conference approaches in June.

There’s still a lot we don’t know for sure, but a new report sheds light on how Apple is proposing to handle the actual streaming of live TV to its millions of users.

To best honor the man beloved for playing Mr. Spock, Phi Vu did what comes most logical to him. He used his talents as a 3D artist to create a bust of the late Leonard Nimoy.

The result is a bronze-colored likeness of the regal Starfleet first officer that rivals anything that could be created on the Enterprise’s holodeck.

The 1/3 scale bust has the high cheekbones, a brow lifted by severely angled eyebrows, and those signature Vulcan ears.

Dish has reached a new agreement with Turner Broadcasting to keep TBS, TNT, and CNN on its Sling TV service. That’s great news for cord-cutters, but what’s even better is that HBO is coming aboard too — and in time for the new season of Game of Thrones!

Matt Stopera had his iPhone stolen last February from his favorite bar in New York City. Like most of us, he was upset, but not overly so. Matt got a new phone and went about his life.

A year later, odd pictures of a Chinese man standing in front of an orange tree started appearing on his new iPhone, via iCloud.

Unlike most of us, Matt is a blogger on Buzzfeed. He wrote up a quick post on the site about the photos appearing on his iOS device, and got some attention for it. What happened next is nothing short of amazing.

Apple’s partnership with IBM has birthed eight new enterprise apps that the companies announced today on Apple’s Business apps page. The new MobileFirst apps focus mostly on healthcare by providing hospital techs and nurses new methods to access patients records, log data and track progress.

Along with the four new healthcare apps, IBM and Apple also created apps for insurance agents, flight attendants, retailers and industrial production.

Take a quick tour of the new apps below.

Apple’s new MacBook won’t go on sale for another week-and-a-half. But if you want to get an advance glimpse of the next-gen notebook, you can check out a new unboxing video, which shows off the device’s ultra-thin form factor for the first time in all its glory.

The video’s in Vietnamese, but if you’ve been keeping up with our coverage here on Cult of Mac, you should know what to expect — from the edge-to-edge keyboard to the minimalist USB-C port. Did I mention how much I want one?

There’s not a more annoying day of the year to get on the Internet than April Fools’ Day. Ready or not, it’s here, and companies are spewing out a wave of fake product announcements, some of which we actually wish were real.

Don’t get pranked by this year’s jokes. We’ve rounded up the best and the worst of this year’s Internet jokes so you can laugh along, rather than being that embarrassing friend on Facebook peddling news that Tupac has come out of hiding.

Call it karma if you want, but after years of copying Apple’s iPhone designs, Samsung’s much-praised Galaxy S6 smartphone has apparently already received its first knockoff.

Made by a company called No.1, the phone looks extremely similar to Samsung’s new device, only minus the Samsung logo, featuring the Note 4’s user interface instead of the S6’s, and sporting a wonky home button which looks like it’s a firm shake away from falling out.

Check out more of the incriminating photos below.

Quality of design, comfort, functionality, and convenience. Those are the qualities that music afionados look for in a pair of wireless earbuds.

Don’t just listen to your music; immserse yourself in it with a pair of Wireless Bluetooth Cloud Buds equipped with noice cancelling technology, available right now – but only for a couple more days – at Cult of Mac Deals at a great price.

Apple’s China trade-in program only went live today, but already it’s on the receiving end of criticism, as would-be sellers are disappointed to find that Apple is offering far less credit than is offered by private third-party buyers.

Welcome to the club, we say.

Let me save you a huge headache — don’t set an EFI password on your Mac unless you have the original receipt for that machine.

If you buy your Mac off Craigslist, like I did, and your daughter writes half a novel for her high school class but never backs it up elsewhere (note – always back up your stuff!), and then her MacBook Air suddenly won’t boot up, the EFI password the previous owner put on the laptop will prevent you or Apple from accessing the hard drive or ever using the computer again.

Hypothetically, of course.

If you don’t want to have to tell your daughter she loses her computer and will need to wait a week while you find a way to connect her SSD to another Mac and find her files, disable that EFI password now.

Here’s how.

Here’s a pretty incredible story: The CEO of Apple touchscreen glass supplier Lens Technology has been named China’s richest woman, after demand for her company’s output saw shares climb 10 percent in a single day.

What’s impressive isn’t just that an Apple supplier rakes in enough cash to accumulate a $7.1 billion fortune, however, but rather the journey that 44-year-old Zhou Qunfei has taken to get there. Prior to getting into the glass manufacturing business as an executive in 2004, Qunfei worked on the factory line for another glass-maker in tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen.

Apple continued its drive to grow its brand in China today with the announcement that customers in the country can now trade in their old iPhones and iPads to let them upgrade to the latest models.

The Apple Watch could be Apple’s next mass-market iPod-like product, but the company’s not quite ready to see it popping up everywhere yet.

With the Apple Watch launch just 24 days away, Apple has reportedly declined to supply the U.K.’s largest mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, with its debut wearable device.

“We would love to be able to stock the Apple Watch,” Carphone’s chief executive Graham Stapleton told The Telegraph newspaper. “I’ve got to be careful what I say but I think they are just going another way with it. We have not been given the opportunity.”

The world has gone mad again, and Max is there to witness. We’ve got a whole new trailer for the Mad Max: Fury Road reboot, and it’s full of insane-looking characters, viciously modded cars and a simply deranged flaming electric guitar that shows up a little over halfway through the trailer.

“In this wasteland, I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead,” says (presumedly) Tom Hardy’s Mad Max in a voiceover. “A man reduced to a single instinct: survive.”

An extra bonus — besides a shaved-headed Charlize Theron looking like a totally sane badass — is that bizarre-looking long-haired dude with the Bane-like dentistry mask who seems to be glaring at everyone and everything in several of these short, action-packed scenes.

CarPlay has a shortlist of app partners so far, including Spotify and iHeartRadio. One major music service that’s been missing is Pandora.

The iTunes Radio rival has been quiet about its CarPlay plans, until now.

Apple Pay is off to an excellent start, according to Tim Cook and the rest of the company’s top brass. But a recent study found that the majority of users are having issues using the mobile payments service at checkout.

Crowd-sourced navigation app Waze has got a neat little idea for this coming Easter: little eggs you can drive over while using the app for points (three per egg!) and bragging rights.

So, as you drive down the street, headed to the grocery or picking up the kids, you can maximize your route to get as many egg points as possible.

This fun little promotion is happening now (it started last week) and will last through April 5.

Flying saucers from Mars is the stuff of science fiction. But a flying saucer from Earth is part of the mission to get astronauts to the Martian surface.

NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory completed a successful spin test of a saucer-shaped experimental craft in front of a live web audience Tuesday. The saucer will next lift off by balloon from Hawaii, where from 120,000 feet it will be dropped to test a new kind of parachute and an inflatable Kevlar ring to add drag for a slower descent.