Apple is looking to up its selfie game in a new patent awarded to the company by the United States Patent and Trademark Offices today. The new patent would allow iPhone and iPad users to unlock their devices by simply taking a selfie, rather than using Touch ID or a passcode.
Android phones have had facial unlocking features for year, and there have been iOS jailbreak hacks as well, but Apple’s patent comes with a twist – devices will also automatically lock when they don’t recognize your face.
Apple today announced that all members of its Developer Program can now officially submit Watch apps to the App Store; potentially triggering a gold rush similar to that seen when devs were first able to create iPhone apps early on its lifecycle.
Developers are encouraged to submit their WatchKit app, icon, screenshots, and description for review by Apple’s testers.
What will the news of the future look like when we’re all busy staring at our tiny smartwatch screens instead of an iPhone or Mac? You’re not likely to scroll through long-form stories on your wrist, so The New York Times plans to roll out one-sentence news blasts to Apple Watch.
Microsoft’s early attempts to the tablet crown from Apple hasn’t really gone according to plan. All the Surfaces from the original to the Pro 2 were flops, but Microsoft seems to have hit its stride with the Surface Pro 3. Now it’s ready to take on the iPad with an even cheaper tablet.
Today, Microsoft unveiled its thinnest and lightest tablet ever, the Surface 3. At 1.37 pounds it’s just a little bit heavier than the iPad Air 2, but boasts a bigger screen and price tag that starts at $499.
A Chinese smartphone maker has apologized for an ad comparing Apple to mass-murdering Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.
The ad depicted a cartoon Hitler performing the Nazi salute, with his red armband showing the Apple logo instead of a swastika.
Text on the advert read, “Under the arrogant regime of iOS domination that developers around the world love yet hate, we are always carefully asking, ‘is this kind of innovation okay?'” It went on to describe Apple as a “dusk empire,” suggesting that it’s on the wane as a company.
Check out the CEO’s grovelling apology below.
You know when you’re away from the kitchen and you really need to chop up some meat, but all you have with you is your phone? We’ve all been there, which is why Samsung is launching Galaxy Blade Edge, a brand new smartphone that doubles as a meat cleaver.
Amazon has made ordering stuff online ridiculously easy with its huge warehouses shipping online orders to Prime members in an instant. Apparently ordering stuff online is just too damn hard though, so today Amazon announced it’s newest creation: Dash buttons.
The new Wi-Fi connected buttons can be placed throughout your home, allowing you to replenish supplies of your favorite products with just the push of a button. Once pressed, Amazon creates an order and sends an alert to your phone so you can cancel if the kids are spamming for more mac and cheese.
Gene Simmons has a show-stopping demonic tongue wag. But it’s nothing compared to the tongue action of a panther chameleon.
BBC Earth’s web series Earth Unplugged put the quirky chameleon in its slow-motion studio, shooting him at meal time at 1,500 frames per second, then playing it back 60 times slower than real time.
This chameleon’s tongue can shoot out of its mouth at a speed that’s four times faster than the highest acceleration of a fighter jet. The slow-mo treatment allows the viewer to appreciate the artistry of both the filmmakers and their hungry star.
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Google has kicked off the April Fools’ Day festivities early this year by putting Pac-Mac inside of Google Maps. The game turns real-life roads into a virtual maze, and the more roads there are, the trickier it gets.
Tim Cook makes frequent visits to Apple Campus 2 – which is still without an official name. It seems like drone enthusiasts visit the site more than Apple’s CEO. Search YouTube for ‘Apple Campus 2′ and you’ll get over 192,000 results, but this latest video is the best yet.
You can see the top floors of Steve Jobs’ spaceship start to take shape in Dane’s video that was shot on a DJI Inspire 1 drone with built-in 4K video. Dane told Cult of Mac he was in the Bay Area shooting a wedding and decided to get a view of the new campus. He setup in a nearby neighborhood and flew over the site.
Shot by starting off on the other side of the road from Apple Campus 2, the super-high resolution video really captures how massive the new campus will be once it’s finished in 2016.
Watch the full video below:
Humankind is not depending on me to cure some terrible epidemic. That takes the pressure off and lets me have a little fun as I try a device that turns my iPhone into a fairly powerful microscope.
With a clip-on aspheric lens and transmitted light base that weighs only a few ounces, the makers of uHandy Microscope boast of it having a resolution comparable to a traditional microscope that weighs down a lab table in a classroom.
Samples can be magnified and viewed in the field using your smartphone’s camera app to record the image and, of course, an instant ability to share the image with colleagues in other places.
First Twin Peaks, and now this. Fox is bringing back its seminal monster-of-the-week series The X-Files for a six-episode run, complete with original stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.
We don’t know yet what former agents Mulder and Scully have been up to since we left them floating in the middle of the ocean at the end of 2008 film I Want to Believe (they had a raft; don’t worry). But I imagine it will involve aliens, conspiracies and perhaps an alien conspiracy or two.
If you’re excited about these series making their returns, here are five ’90s cult TV shows to take you back to the world of crappy computer effects and even worse pants. And be sure to let us know more of your favorites in the comments.
The Apple-Ericsson confrontation continues to heat up. The U.S. International Trade Commission says it will investigate Apple, based on two complaints alleging that Cupertino illegally infringed on Ericsson patents.
Ericsson previously asked the ITC to block Apple products, such as the iPhone, from selling in the United States while the case is being investigated.
With an innovative architectural style that brought elegant living to the masses, real estate developer Joseph Eichler left an indelible mark on California in the 1960s.
His beautifully simple blueprints also had an undeniable impact on Apple’s co-founders — although Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs took very different lessons from his work. Remarkably, Eichler’s design philosophy continues to shape Apple’s products, inside and out, to this day.
“I was very lucky to grow up in an Eichler,” Wozniak told Cult of Mac, referring to his family’s four-bedroom home in Sunnyvale, California. “It greatly influenced my liking of simplicity and open style. I like it whenever I see those attributes in any architecture.”
On his Kingdom Come album, Jay Z talked about being a big star “befo’ Steve Jobs made the iPod.”
Now, close to a decade later, the hip-hop mogul is keen to show that he is still ahead of Apple by introducing his new streaming music rival to Spotify and Pandora, prior to Apple’s own rumored Beats Music rebrand.
Speed isn’t the only reason to buy a smartphone, but it’s certainly interesting to see how Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 stacks up against Apple’s bestselling iPhone 6.
Thanks to YouTube user Android GameE, we have our first speed test of what, undoubtedly, will be many. Given the fact that Apple’s latest iPhone has been the most successful in the company’s history, while Samsung is banking on its S6 to turn around its ailing mobile division, it certainly makes for interesting viewing.
Who wins? Check out the video below.
Your Uber account is handy for catching a ride. It may also be handy for someone else to get around town on your dime.
Stolen Uber customer accounts have turned up for sale on the dark web for as little as $1, according to a report by the website Motherboard.
One seller claims to have “thousands” of user logins for sale.
Apple’s stock has been a bit stagnant the last few weeks, but that could quickly change next month after Apple reveals to investors how much profit it raked in during Q2 2015.
Apple announced today that it will hold it’s quarterly earnings report for Q2 2015 on Monday, April 27th. Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri will reveal how many iPhone 6 units were sold in what’s expected to be the company’s second biggest quarter of sales ever.
When you’re flying down the road on a bicycle at night, visibility could mean the difference between life and death at the hands of an automobile driver.
Volvo has designed what it’s calling Life Paint as a way for cyclists to protect themselves on the road, but the spray’s other use cases are potentially just as interesting.
Amazon already delivers your toilet paper. Now it wants to deliver your plumber.
The online retail giant debuted a new service today called Home Services. It’s designed to take the simplistic Amazon ordering approach and apply it to real-world service needs, like fixing your home computer, cleaning the gutter or teaching aerial yoga lessons.
Facebook is building its own kind of app store around Messenger, or so was the pitch at the social network’s F8 conference last week.
But now that the new platform, which manifests itself as a list of approved iOS apps that integrate with Messenger, is out in the wild, it’s not that impressive.
I’m still on the fence over whether society should allow monopod poles selfie sticks to exists, but this latest invention is pushing me over to the “hell no” side of the argument.
We still haven’t gotten a glimpse of Apple’s long-rumored 12-inch iPad Pro, but a new set of images of an alleged iPad Pro dummy unit show that the mythical giant tablet might actually be real.
Images of an alleged iPad Pro case posted to Weibo today could potentially reveal some of the new features Apple has in store for it’s enterprise-focused tablet, including a USB-C port in a very unexpected place.
Take a peek:
Tim Cook called the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the biggest advancements in the history of iPhone. It’s barely been six months since the bigger-than-big devices launched, but we’re already craving some upgrades.
With the first iPhone 6s leaks and rumors starting to hit the Internet, we decided to dream up what Apple could possibly do to make its next smartphone kick more ass than ever.
Here are nine upgrades we hope the iPhone 6s gets this fall: