Cult of Mac

Steve Jobs may have had an astonishing ability to predict where tech was going next, but he very nearly missed out on the iPhone and iPad altogether.

That’s because — according to a quote from Jony Ive in today’s freshly-released biography, Becoming Steve Jobs — Apple’s late CEO didn’t see “any value to the idea” of multi-touch: the breakthrough touchscreen technology which makes iOS regulars like “pinch-to-zoom” possible.

And it was left up to Ive and a few other core Apple employees to save it.

Fritz the Golden Retriever may be adorable with his bandanna and soulful doggy eyes, but man he can’t catch a damn thing. Well, except maybe a french fry near the end of this hilarious video that looks like it was shot on an iPhone in slo-mo mode.

Since it’s National Puppy Day, let’s all empathize with this sad canine and wonder — what kind of owner keeps tossing food at its head?

Woof.

Those lucky enough to have gone to high school with Steve Jobs are starting to cash in on their connection to the late Apple co-founder.

The world’s obsession with all things Jobs has extended to his days as a young, long-haired high schooler. A 1972 Homestead High School yearbook with Jobs’ senior picture sold today for over $12,000, and now more yearbooks are being auctioned off at hefty prices.

It’s been over three years since Steve Jobs died, however the hole he left at Apple and those closest to him still hasn’t been filled. Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli’s upcoming book Becoming Steve Jobs is full of anecdotes and events that showcase just how much Steve meant to his friends.

One such event happened in 2013, during Laurene Powell Jobs’ fiftieth birthday. Pixar CEO John Lasseter recounts in the book that he got there early and started talking to Tim Cook.

“Do you miss him? I really miss Steve,” Lasseter said, and then pulled out iPhone to show Tim that Jobs phone number and photo were still on the list.

Apple Pay has quickly become the most-used mobile wallet solution in the world, but finding businesses that accept it still isn’t all that easy. To help ease that pain, Apple launched a website today that offers free Apple Pay decals that participating merchants can apply to their registers and windows.

Twitter is looking to take a swipe at YouTube’s viral video crown by adding a new feature that will automatically play videos in your timeline.

Starting today, some Twitter users in the U.S. on iPhone and iPad may see videos that start playing, whether you want them to or not. This goes for videos ads and users uploaded videos alike, as the company tests whether people are more likely to sit through a video if the action’s already started.

Google’s first foray into wearables didn’t do as well as the company expected. Despite closing the Google Glass explorer program in January though, Eric Schmidt says the project isn’t dead yet. It’s just getting ready for users.

Nest founder Tony Fadell, took over the project earlier this year after the company decided to stop selling the first version of Google Glass. According to Schmidt the technology behind Glass is too important to scrap, so they’ve moved it out of the Google X research lab and are developing it into a standalone unit.

Sometimes you just need to emphasize something. One of the best ways to do so when you’re texting is to make the words you really need to get across in all capitals. Or maybe you just want to shout at someone, and an ALL CAPS sentence will certainly get that across for you.

Before now, I’ve always just deleted the word I was trying to emphasize and re-typed it after double-tapping the Shift key in iOS (for Caps Lock). Now, however, it looks like you can change the case of the word after you’ve typed it without deleting anything.

Here’s how.

The Instagram faithful churns out 70 million photos daily. But if you weren’t able to share your meal or tell the story of your quirky cat in a single picture, you had to post multiple photos.

That changed Monday. Instagram introduced Layout, a new free app that lets you combine images into a single post. The news was announced on the Instagram blog.

Users can open Layout and drag and drop photos from their camera roll to any of the custom templates. Flip, rotate, resize and create mirror effects in your layouts.

Getting your game featured by Apple is the best way to jumpstart your indie game success. Sometimes, even games that seem rather basic at first glance can become powerhouses.

Mr. Jump is seeing some phenomenal success with five million downloads in the last five days since its release. It’s shaping up to be another Crossy Road-style success story, and the developers at 1Button games attribute the game’s instant success to Apple.

“I think that being featured by Apple in most countries has initiated the buzz,” says
Jérémie Francone, one of the co-founders at the studio. “That’s what really launched the game.”

Tech pioneers like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk have warned humanity of the dangers of AI for years, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says he’s finally a beliver in the doomsday scenarios.

“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question,” Woz told the Australian Financial Review in a recent interview from his US home.

The man who sparked the personal computer revolution with the invention of the Apple II says ‘the future is scary and very bad for people’ because computers will eventually get faster than us and wipe us out.

Nathalie Lawhead speaks swiftly, a gentle European lilt in her accent. On the screen behind her is a random-seeming collection of internet memes rendered in outsider art chic. At first glance, her games look absolutely absurd, random, and ridiculous.

“If Monty Python made games, the Orange County-based developer told Cult of Mac at the Game Developers conference last month, “this is what they would look like.”

Separating kids from their iPhones and iPads can be a big struggle for most parents, but for one mom in Boulder Colorado, things got down right deadly after her daughter tried to poison her for taking away an iPhone.

Two charges of attempted first degree murder were eventually filed against the daughter, who mixed household bleach into her mom’s drinks trying to kill her.

Boulder County’s sheriff office detained the 12-year-old girl at a juvenile center after her mother noticed a bleach smell in her smoothie a few days earlier. Officers say the mom thought the daughter had just cleaned the glass and that there was a lingering bleach sent. Then she got sick.

One company suggests you could use their product to keep the neighbors on edge while the competition promises “endless possibilities of entertainment.”

Gosh, they’re both right. I need a flamethrower.

Two companies with very different designs are working to meet the needs of a public clamoring to clear brush or light their bonfires from a distance with devices that look like like the tool soldiers once used to clear jungles and machine gun nests during times of war.

Apple redesigned the LED backlights for the new MacBook keyboard, and it appears a similar update could be coming soon to the Apple Wireless Keyboard.

Several images of an updated keyboard appeared on the online Apple Store for the Czech Republic as well as an Arabic keyboard in the U.S. store. Some of the images of the keyboard have already been pulled, but the redesign adds toggles for brightness to the F5 and F6 keys, as well as a power button on in the upper right corner.

Apple may not sell close to the number of Apple Watches it wants to in the coming months — and it’ll have nothing to do with lack of demand on the part of customers.

According to a new report, Apple’s plans to manufacture between 2.5 and 3 million smartwatches every month could be cut by as much as half thanks to supplier yield problems, which mean that only 1.25 – 1.5 million watches are being churned out every four weeks.

No matter who you are or what you do online, internet security should be of great concern. If some of the largest corporations in the world can get have their networks compromised, so can you.

You have only a short while longer to protect yourself from the criminal elements that dwell on the internet, get peace of mind, and save $185 with a 3 year subscription to Anonymizer Universal VPN, at Cult of Mac Deals.

Square Cash is one of those few apps I can show my non-techy friends and immediately get a wide-eyed, “whoa” kind of response. Its ability to quickly send and receive money is super slick.

Today two big changes to Square Cash will make it an even more attractive peer-to-peer payments service. First, anyone can now create a web profile for accepting money without needing a standalone app. Second, businesses and nonprofits can get in on the action.

You may have suspected that the new biography Becoming Steve Jobs had Apple’s official endorsement the moment it was revealed that Jony Ive, Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s John Lasseter and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, offered their participation.

However, with just one day to go until the book’s release, the word is now officially out: This is Apple’s sanctioned version of the Steve Jobs story.

“After a long period of reflection following Steve’s death, we felt a sense of responsibility to say more about the Steve we knew,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “We decided to participate in [the] book because of [author Brent Schlender’s] long relationship with Steve, which gave him a unique perspective on Steve’s life. The book captures Steve better than anything else we’ve seen, and we are happy we decided to participate.”

Google’s official Android Wear app for iOS could be right around the corner if you believe the reports, but one developer has been proving that the two platforms can already be forced to play nicely together without any jailbreaking.

We’ve seen Wear receiving iPhone notifications and taking calls, and in the latest video from Mohammad Abu-Gabreyyeh, we see that watches like the Moto 360 and the LG G Watch R are capable of controlling music playback, too.

Sure, Steve Jobs might not have been quite the one-man-temper-tantrum he was portrayed as for much of Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography, but he still wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of.

According to authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli in their new book Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, Jobs flipped out after former Apple exec Jon Rubinstein decided to join Palm in 2007: never again speaking with a person he had been close to for years.

Ahead of the April 24 launch of the Apple Watch, Cupertino’s debut wearable continues its world tour with a new style guide in Australia’s Elle magazine — advising on how Apple’s smartwatch can be used as a chic wearable everywhere from cocktail parties to the workplace.

For a cocktail party, for instance, the magazine suggests that you might want to pair it with a “tuxedo suit and sexy heels (think Le Smoking Saint Laurent style with Alexander Wang black heels), or if you have the legs for it, a killer cocktail dress.” For the weekend, meanwhile, you can “Wear it with trackies, your boyfriend’s shirt (worn cuffed and loose) and a chic cashmere overcoat.”

The tech world is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Apple Watch and Siri, it seems, isn’t any different. With the launch of Apple’s debut wearable just a month away, the iOS virtual assistant is apparently just as obsessed with the device as we are — as a simple “What are you doing now, Siri?” question will attest.

Check out some of the amusingly geeky responses below.

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We’re all looking forward to the Apple Watch, but there’s one thing I’m definitely not looking forward to: the ability to answer phone calls on my wrist. And this clever video shows exactly why.