Cult of Mac

The Black Eyed Peas’ co-founder apl.de.ap is at the top of his game in the music industry and a total Apple fan. He’s also just beginning to speak out about his journey from a young boy with a visual impairment to his current status as a star vocal coach on The Voice of The Philippines.

“I was born with my eye condition,” apl.de.ap, aka Allan Pineda, told Cult of Mac. “Today, I feel much less handicapped by my legal blindness as technology has helped me a lot…. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely tough at times, and occasionally I still feel challenged by it.”

He lives and breathes by his MacBook Pro, thinks Siri is amazing and messes about with music apps on his phone. He shared with Cult of Mac the story of his early life, the visual problem known as nystagmus, and his reliance on and use of technology and Apple products, which he says have helped him get through “a lot of things that would otherwise leave me helpless.”

Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana has been pretty vocal about bashing rival services like Apple’s Siri. But she may soon get the chance to put her money where her mouth is.

That’s because, according to a new Reuters report, Cortana is about to bust out of the Windows Phone ghetto and make her way to both Android and iOS.

The version of Cortana set to arrive on non-Windows devices is reportedly a new, improved version, using research from an artificial intelligence project called “Einstein.” This same version will also be available on Windows 10 desktops this fall.

Samsung might finally be kicked the curb when it comes to who gets the lion’s share of Apple’s chipmaking business. According to analysts Olivia and Rick Hsu from Daiwa Securities, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is likely to snap up 70 percent of all Apple’s A9 and A9X orders, leaving rival chipmaker Samsung out in the (relative) cold.

The reason for this is reportedly the “superior yield” and “manufacturing excellence in mass-production” exhibited by TSMC, which will get it a large percentage of the A9 orders, and all of the A9x orders for the next generation iPad.

All week, it’s been reported that Apple is using a “new gold” in the gold Apple Watch Edition. According to Bloomberg, Slate, Gizmodo and many others, Apple has patented a new process to create a “metal matrix composite” by mixing gold with ceramic particles.

The composite supposedly allows Apple to save on the amount of gold it uses, while making the substance super-hard and adding other amazing properties.

But according to Atakan Peker, a materials scientist and one of the co-inventors of Liquidmetal, which Apple holds an exclusive license on, it’s extremely unlikely Apple is using any kind of “new gold” for its watches.

He knows this because Jony Ive says so.

It was only ever going to be so long until this happened! Less than a week after Apple announced its insanely expensive $10,000 Apple Watch Edition and already we have the first attempt to crowdfund one of Apple’s gold timepieces.

Does that mean you’ll get to share in its oh-so-expensive glory; perhaps borrowing it for your graduation or a random night on the town? Of course not, silly rabbit.

Who knew that Tim Cook was a Mad Money fan? The Apple CEO surprised CNBC’s Jim Cramer by calling in today to congratulate the show host on his 10th anniversary of being on air.

The two men discussed ResearchKit, dealing with competition, Apple’s incredible growth on Wall Street over the last decade, and more.

It’s taken all week, but I finally think I have a pretty good idea why Apple is selling a crazy-expensive, super-exclusive gold watch.

Initially, the very idea that Apple would make something for the one percent seemed abhorrent. What makes Apple great is that it sells affordable luxury to the masses.

Apple’s well-designed and well-made products should really only be for the rich, but they are generally affordable to the middle classes. Apple pulls off the miraculous, selling us BMWs at Kia prices.

This is what makes the gold Apple Watch Edition stand out. At first glance, it’s obviously not a product for us. But even though you and I will probably never own one, the $10,000 timepiece is actually kinda democratic, because it’s all about selling $350 watches to the masses.

Apple’s design team went to extreme lengths when redesigning the new MacBook to be more portable than ever. The most drastic move was to toss out the fan and extra ports for a super-tiny logic board.

The new MacBook logic board is two-thirds smaller than any board Apple’s designed before. It’s the highest-density Mac logic board yet, but really, it’s more like a super-iPhone or iPad logic board. Put side by side with the iPhone 6 logic board, the new MacBook logic board is barely twice its size.

This comparison image might shock you:

For the first time, Apple has made it possible for those without an App Store developer membership to use iOS betas. Anyone can legitimately download and install today’s iOS 8.3 beta by joining Apple’s official Beta Testing Program.

OS X Yosemite was the first software release that could be beta tested by non-devs, and now that Apple has flung open the gates on iOS, many more people will likely opt-in to be on the cutting edge of where the operating system is headed.

I can’t wait to read Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. The upcoming biography, by veteran reporters Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, promises to be the definitive telling of Steve Jobs’ life.

The writers scored interviews with major players including Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. The result is a book loaded with interesting anecdotes and insights about the former Apple CEO.

I haven’t yet read the whole thing (it comes out March 24), but while pre-ordering my copy on Amazon, I could initially access a significant portion of the biography through the site’s “Look Inside the Book” feature. (Amazon later blocked out far more of the book’s contents.)

From what I’ve seen, some of the stories are pretty sensational — providing new details into the close relationship between Jobs and Cook, revealing Jobs’ secret plan to buy Yahoo!, and much more.

Want a few of the highlights? Check them out below.

The battle of Mac versus PC is raging strong, thanks to the new MacBook. While Apple fans are still debating whether they really want Jony Ive’s minimalist gold notebook, rival PC markers have been quick to shoot down Apple’s latest innovation on Twitter.

ASUS, Lenovo and Dell all took shots at the super-thin MacBook, quickly pointing out that while terraced batteries and gold paint are nice, these notebook companies have been selling even thinner laptops for over a year now.

Take a look at their tweets calling out the new MacBook:

A new beta build of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 has been seeded to developers this morning alongside the release of iOS 8.3 beta 3. The new update is available in the Mac Dev Center or via a software update, and comes two weeks after Apple released the second OS X 10.10.3 beta to developers.

The biggest new feature added in today’s beta is the inclusion of a new set of developers APIs that work with the Force Touch trackpad in the new MacBook and Macbook Pro. The new APIs will allow developers to add a new dimension of control and interactivity to their apps.

Here’s some of the new features developers can add:

Apple has released the third iOS 8.3 beta to developers this morning. The free download is available both in the iOS Developer Center, and as an over-the-air update for developers still running iOS 8.3 beta 2.

The release notes for iOS 8.3 beta 3 don’t mention any new features, however previous beta’s have included a new emoji pane, as well as racially diverse emoji. Two-factor authentication for Google was also added in the first beta, along with numerous bug fixes.

We’ll let you know what new features we find as soon as the update is installed on our device. Until then, you can grab a direct download from the links below:

We’re still waiting for the unbelievably gorgeous 12-inch MacBook to ship, but our friends at iFixit have already done a teardown on the updated MacBook Pro, revealing the secret sauce behind the new Force Touch Trackpad and Taptic Engine that both new Macs share.

The teardown shows that the Pro’s new trackpad is supported by four spring mounts and a panel that isn’t likely to be present on the 12-inch MacBook. It does have the same Force Touch engine, which is really just a bunch of wire coils wrapped around a ferromagnetic core to create the clicky vibrations.

Check out the full gory details below:

The nightmare of tangled wires strikes all too often when you want to listen to your favorite tunes. The Bluetooth Cloud Buds fix that by going wireless, and they offer some other great features, too.

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 at Cult of Mac Deals at a great price.

Tablet sales are on the decline, and the iPad is “the weakest leak,” according to the latest report from International Data Corporation.

The organization has scaled back its five-year forecast for tablets, expecting market growth to come to a near standstill. With 234.5 million units expected to be sold in 2015, the tablet market will only gain a modest 2.1 percent year-over-year.

After years of rumors, the Apple Watch is finally shipping next month, but according to a new report coming out of China, it’s not likely to be a relaxing month for Tim Cook and pals to spend clinking champagne flutes and celebrating a job well done.

That’s because Apple Watch manufacturer Quanta apparently continues to have yield problems with the debuting wearable device, causing a defect-free rate of less than 30 percent. In other words, really, really bad.

Yesterday’s Apple outages brought digital sales for services like iTunes to a standstill, but it also caused things to grind to a halt in some brick-and-mortar Apple Stores. The down time sent retail back to the days before, well, Apple was there to shake it up.

For a window of approximately two hours, Apple Store employees in certain places were unable to check in to work, stores were unable to make sales and Genius Bar appointments were unable to be kept. Employees were apparently unable to check email for even longer.

British singer Sarah Brightman has a five-octave vocal range and millions have paid top dollar to hear her sing. But to hit the highest note of her career, Brightman is spending her own money.

Brightman is paying a reported $52 million to become the first singer to travel in space. She will board a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 1 for a 10-day trip aboard the International Space Station. It is the most expensive space tourist trip on record, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.

Photos of Brightman’s training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow, can be found on her website and in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, which gave a detailed account of her training.

Mitch Silverstein would have many visions of the future in 1964 and the first would appear in full-color wonder, his big 6-year-old eyes staring back at him in disbelief.

He was seeing himself on a color television at the RCA Pavilion at the World’s Fair at Corona Park in Queens, New York.

“It left such a big impression on me,” Silverstein said. “That was a first for most people because that was a pretty major technological step.”

For all the things the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 was said to get wrong, the fair showcased several technological wonders that, some 50 years later, we take for granted.

Lat Ware is a pretty loquacious dude, without a bit of shyness in his persona. We came across Ware at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the first week of March and tried out his upcoming game, Throw Trucks With Your Mind. He was strapping headsets onto conference attendees and keeping up a steady stream of patter to keep them off balance when trying to manage their character in-game.

You see, Throw Trucks With Your Mind uses an $80 headset from NeuroSky to actually read your brainwaves. Ware has set it up in the game to track opposite parameters: focus and relaxation. When you focus intensely, the onscreen red bar will fill up, allowing you to do things like jump, push, and toss heavy in-game objects. When you relax, a blue bar fills up and lets you do four other cool things for a total of eight different ways to interact with the game using your mind.

Try that while some chatty indie dev is all up in your ear, trying to distract you.

I’m not sure about you, but even with the aid of the Apple Store app, I’ve sort of intuitively felt that the Apple Watch just must be huge, and certainly way too huge to put on my wrist.

Well, maybe it is. I won’t know until I go into an Apple Store and actually try one one, which I intend on doing at the first opportunity. But as this image proves, even the biggest Apple Watch is positively tiny compared to the Asus Zenwatch.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average measures the strength of American industry based upon how 30 large, publicly owned companies in the United States have traded in the stock markets. Companies come in and out the Dow periodically, according to whether their fortunes are waxing or waning.

When Apple joins the Dow Jones Industrial Average next week — replacing AT&T, which has been on the index since 1916 — the Dow will be at a historic high (assuming nothing catastrophic happens between now and then). But if Apple had joined the Dow in 2008, that value would be even more historic. It would have added more than 4,300 points to the Dow.

You can keep your new ultra-thin MacBook and your high-priced Apple Watch; for me, the most exciting thing at Monday’s “Spring Forward” Apple keynote was the announcement of ResearchKit, a new open-source iOS framework that essentially turns your sensor-filled iPhone into a crowdsourcing medical diagnostic device.

The idea is that researchers will be able to tap into Apple’s enormous base of iPhone users to gather medical data. Users simply sign up to participate in huge global studies about diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes, letting researchers build up giant data sets in a fraction of the amount of time it would normally take. Think Kickstarter for medicine!

And according to Bloomberg, initial reports are really, really positive.

We all know that professional industry analysts often say the darndest things, but the Apple Watch has unleashed some truly muddleheaded commentary, especially from people who get paid to know better.

There are the customary and entirely predictable predictions that the Watch will fail — just as the pundits predicted the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad would bomb. This kind of commentary is so knee-jerk and silly, it’s best to just ignore. But then there’s a higher tier of analysis that says the Watch’s success depends on apps (duh, yeah) or the device’s potential for upgrades (completely wrong).

I’m interested in smarter takes on Apple’s strategy, pricing and marketing. Surprisingly, some of the most insightful commentary I’ve seen is on reddit — known generally as a salty hangout for spotty teens and weirdos. Here are some key points outlined by reddit users.