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Apple Watch’s secret port could unlock cool accessories

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Apple
38mm rose gold Apple Watch Edition. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

The Apple Watch has a secret connector port the company hasn’t shown off, yet it could unlock some exciting possibilities in the future for Apple’s wearables.

Apple designers placed a secret Lightning port inside one of strap connector slots during development, reports TechCrunch which confirmed Apple is only using it to debug watches, but it could unlock an new ecosystem of Apple Watch accessories in the future.

Octopus tries to eat camera that made him famous

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An octopus reacts to a GoPro camera put in its tank by turning it around before trying to eat it. Photo: Benjamin Savard/Middlebury College
An octopus reacts to a GoPro camera put in its tank by turning it around before trying to eat it. Photo: Benjamin Savard/Middlebury College

GoPro may have a new celebrity endorser, but he seems like a real sour pus.

An octopus in the neuroscience lab at Middlebury College apparently did not like having a GoPro placed in its tank. It turned the camera around on his photographer before trying to eat it.

Benjamin Savard, a digital media producer for the College, retrieved the camera and was surprised to discover the photos, which he posted to Reddit following Monday’s shoot.

Beats Music redesign will be ready to rock WWDC

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Apple has big ambitions for its new music streaming service.
Beats redesign is coming to WWDC 2015. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

The next episode of Beats Music won’t be making an appearance at Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event next week.

Sources “with a knowledge of the company’s current plans” have told TechCrunch that Apple will debut the new service — which ditches the Beats branding for tighter iTunes integration — during Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference.

Bless me Snapchat, for I have sinned

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A Texas man claiming to be a priest will take confession over Snapchat now through March 16. Photo illustration: David Pierini/Cult of Mac
A Texas man claiming to be a priest will take confession over Snapchat now through March 16. Photo illustration: David Pierini/Cult of Mac

Snapchat may wipe away your messages after a period of time, but don’t count on it to wipe away your sins.

A man in the San Antonio, Texas who goes by “@Priest David” is hearing confessions via Snapchat through March 16. News 4 San Antonio interviewed the man, who said he has been a priest for 23 years and started taking the Snapchat sacrament as a way to help a college student with a class project.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous released a statement to News Radio 1200 WOAI said religion needs to “engage young adults, where they are and how they live.”

Apple may offer personal engravings for Apple Watch

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

The Apple Watch will be the most personal device ever, and that might include engravings too.

Apple plans to offer personalized engravings for online purchases of the Apple Watch, according to a new rumor from iPhonote. The site’s sources claim Apple hasn’t finalized when it will begin offering engravings, but the customization will almost certainly emerge eventually.

Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac preview is now available for free

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Photo: Microsoft
Microsoft is showing the Mac a lot of love these days. Photo: Microsoft

The Mac platform has been treated as an afterthought by Microsoft’s software engineers for decades. That slowly started to change last year with new apps for iPhone and iPad, but with the public release of Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac, Microsoft is making its biggest play yet to woo Apple users to its productivity software.

Microsoft released a free preview build of Office 2016 for Mac today. You’ll be able to buy the final suite of Office apps later this summer, but Microsoft is luring Mac users by giving out the beta to the public.

How Apple spun success out of its every failure

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The Apple Newton. Failure, or precursor of the iPhone?
The Apple Newton. Failure, or precursor of the iPhone?

Anyone who’s followed Apple for a long time knows the company has not always been the kind of world-beating success it is today. An entire book could be written about Apple’s failures over the years — and there are the doomsday predictions to prove it.

But Apple has succeeded in taking those seemingly disastrous mistakes and learning valuable lessons from them. The graphical user interface of the Apple Lisa? Apple learned that sometimes you need to stick with good ideas for a while before they catch on. The takeaway from Apple’s QuickTake Camera? Rushing to beat everyone else to market isn’t always the best idea.

A new infographic runs down 21 of the biggest Apple flops in history — and what Cupertino learned from them. If you’re a long-time Apple fan it’s a great trip down memory lane. If you’re a newcomer, it’s a fascinating introduction to how Apple has learned from even its most grievous errors and become the undisputed giant it is in 2015.

Kids’ coding academies aim to bridge ‘skills gap’

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The Flatiron School in New York is expanding its kids coding academies to six U.S. cities this summer. Photo: Flatiron School
The Flatiron School in New York is expanding its coding academies for high school student sto six U.S. cities this summer. Photo: Flatiron School

There are plenty of schools with computers. But find a teacher with tech industry experience and you’ve found a “unicorn,” says a school director who wants to introduce kids to the language of coding.

Lyel Resner, director of K-12 curriculum at New York’s Flatiron School, is promoting a series of summer workshops across six U.S. cities to teach high school students programming fundamentals, app development, front-end web design and how to get a startup off the ground.

Soviet space propaganda: rocket porn from the past

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Space will be ours. Long live the first woman astronaut!
Space will be ours. Long live the first woman astronaut!

The Cold War and that whole mutual assured destruction thing sure made the space race fun.

Every astronaut strapped into a rocket and sent toward the stars was an ideological finger in the chest of the other side, each mission asserting who had the better technology or, more importantly, the most firepower.

The United States took its licks as the Soviet Union was first to launch a satellite, put a man in space (and then a woman) and execute the first spacewalk. Only after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon could the Americans begin to perceive they were finally winning the race.

But the Reds were absolutely unmatched when it came to using talented illustrators to make the average citizen believe their country would conquer the cosmic frontier.

What to expect from Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ Watch event

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Apple is taking over the Yerba Buena Center in San Fransisco. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is taking over the Yerba Buena Center in San Fransisco. Photo:Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple’s March 9 “Spring Forward” event is just around the corner, and its tagline can only mean one thing: Apple Watch news galore.

Scheduled for the day after daylight saving time kicks in, we expect Apple to shower us with details about the upcoming wearable, including pricing and availability. Select Apple Watch apps from App Store developers will likely be shown off as well to whet our appetites for what’s to come.

While there’s a chance some new Mac hardware could share the stage Monday, we expect the event to focus mostly on all the unanswered questions surrounding the Apple Watch.

What are those questions? Glad you asked:

6 audacious fan films that could teach Hollywood a lesson

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Dawson and Starbuck in a gritty future war? Yes please. Photo: Adi Shankar/YouTube
A recent Power Rangers fan film created major excitement online. Photo: Adi Shankar/YouTube

Fan films are the ultimate way for devotees to pay tribute to the characters they love. They give fans the chance to show how the beloved heroes (and antiheroes) should be portrayed — without the creativity-sapping “benefit” of focus groups, hack screenwriters and overpaid producers.

With a war raging between the fans who make these productions and the rights-holders who argue they’re being damaged, Cult of Mac runs down six of the best fan-created short films doing the round on the interwebz.

Check out our picks below.

The Wankband aims to be the Apple Watch of masturbation

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post-314287-image-29dd381d491711237695f653380cb2ca-gif

Every wearable maker out there right now is trying to figure out how they’re going to compete with the Apple Watch once it lands. Leave it to adult website Pornhub to actually figure it out: It’s just unveiled a tongue-in-cheek concept for a wearable band that would allow you to charge your other gadgets using the power of masturbation.

12-inch MacBook Air may arrive in time for WWDC

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MacbookAIr
The 12-inch MacBook Air may finally find its way into your hands this June. Photo: Apple

Apple could launch its eagerly anticipated 12-inch MacBook Air around the time of the Worldwide Developers Conference this June.

Claiming to have spoken with unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal writes that Apple will release its first refresh of the MacBook Air since April 2014 “in large quantities” during the second quarter of 2015, although no definite date has been nailed down. Suppliers are reportedly already manufacturing the notebook, and are building up supplies ready for shipping.

‘Microsoft tech support’ scammer threatens murder in Canada

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A scammer pretending to be a Microsoft employee threatened to murder someone who disbelieved his credentials. Image: WMKY
A scammer pretending to be a Microsoft employee threatened to murder someone who didn't believe his credentials. Photo: WMKY

Apple’s customer service is tops. Go into any Apple Store, and a Genius will be happy to assist you with even the most trivial of technical support problems.

I bet the guy on the other end of a call from an alleged Microsoft tech support guru wished he was talking to an Apple Genius instead. The “support” guy turned out to be a scammer, and when the victim called him out on it, the fake Microsoft agent actually threatened to murder him.

Indie dev hopes Zombie Match Defense will chew its way to the top

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This guy really wants his game to do well. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
This guy really wants his game to do well. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

SAN FRANCISCO — After his best friend deemed it impossible to make a fun game using the oversaturated staples of mobile gaming — match three, tower defense and zombies — indie developer Jake Sones made a bet.

Now Sones and his three-person team at Shovelware Games are ready to win that bet with upcoming game Zombie Match Defense, which makes players defend a row of scientists against an attacking horde of zombies by matching three or more brains of the same type. It’s as if Plants vs. Zombies and Candy Crush had a goofy baby and invaded your iPad.

The makers of Monument Valley want to redesign your car dashboard

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Monument Valley
Who wouldn't want the team behind Monument Valley rethinking the way we drive. Photo: Ustwo

What do you do as a second act after creating one of the most beautiful iOS games in history? If you’re Ustwo, the devs behind the Cult of Mac favorite Monument Valley, the answer is simple: you redesign the car dashboard.

Yes, you read that correctly.

It might be a long way from the M.C. Escher-inspired iPad puzzle game, but Ustwo has teamed up with the company Car Design Research to create a prototype for a simplified in-car display that shows only the information you need at the time you need it. And, unsurprisingly, it looks spectacular.

iPad Pro may boast superior display, USB 3.0 ports and more

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Are you ready for the giant-sized iPad Pro? We are. Photo: CURVED
Are you ready for the giant-size iPad Pro? We are. Photo: CURVED

Two bits of news have emerged for anyone excited about Apple’s upcoming 12-inch-plus iPad Pro. Sources from the Chinese supply chain suggest the tablet will come equipped with Oxide LCD display technology, while a separate report from The Wall Street Journal (paywall) claims Apple is considering adding USB 3.0 ports (among others) to the devices.

What is unanimously agreed upon is that we are unlikely to see the plus-size iPad until the second half of the year, with a Digitimes report suggesting it may not even go into mass production until the third quarter of 2015.

If the rumors are anything to go by, it’ll be worth waiting for, though.

How Crossy Road developers made $10 million in 90 days

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Who (and what) will make it across Crossy Road? Photo: Hipster Whale
Who (and what) will make it across Crossy Road? Photo: Hipster Whale

SAN FRANCISCO — Crossy Road developers Andy Sum and Matt Hall never set out to rake in a pile of cash. They did, however, want to create a popular game.

“We wanted to make the next Flappy Bird,” said Sum at the duo’s Game Developers Conference session here Tuesday.

“But our goal wasn’t to make money,” added Hall.

And yet make money they did. While Crossy Road hasn’t hit Flappy Bird levels of success (or notoriety), it pulled in 50 million downloads — on iOS, Android and Amazon — during the game’s first 90 days. It also generated $10 million for Hipster Whale, Sum and Hall’s development company.

Not bad for a game that was originally named Roadkill Simulator 2014.

Production of Apple’s giant iPad has been delayed until September

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The iPad Pro could delay the iPad Air, cancel the iPad mini.
An iPad Pro concept. MacBook for scale. Photo: CURVED
Photo: CURVED

Apple really is making a giant iPad Pro, according to a new report from Bloomberg, but the Cupertino-based company is running into production issues that have delayed the long-rumored tablet’s release.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, production of the 12.9-inch iPad is now scheduled to start around September, after delays involving the supply of display panels pushed the project back.

iOS 8.3 reveals emoji combos with a simple backspace

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emoji-trick
Emoji combos can be revealed on iOS 8.3 with backspace. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

 

Apple snuck a major new emoji feature into its first iOS 8.3 beta, and we’re not talking about the racially diverse kind. Along with the new skin-tones for emoji added last week, Apple has included a potentially big feature with the new emoji keyboard that lets users deconstruct some emoji to discover their emoji combos.

By tapping backspace on emoji like KISS (man, man), users can reveal the combination of two or three emoji that represent the original emoji selected. The feature only works on some of the kissing and couple emoji, but it could be expanded to include more in the future.

Here are the different combos you can unlock:

Apple is in talks to launch HBO streaming service next month

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hbo-go-apple-tv
Photo: Cult of Mac

HBO is finally going to let people pay to access its content without a cable subscription, and according to a new report, Apple TV could be the company’s first major partner.

The International Business Times reports that HBO is in talks with Apple to make Apple TV one of the launch partners for its highly anticipated streaming service that is expected to debut next month alongside Game of Thrones Season 5.

Next-gen MacBook Air specs leak in alleged screenshots

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The new MacBook Air has more graphics power than it appears at first. Photo: Apple
Apple might surprise us with new MacBooks. Photo: Apple

Screenshots of what appears to be the spec sheet of a next-generation 13-inch MacBook Air were allegedly posted on the Chinese forum site Feng.com today, claiming to reveal new info about Apple’s new notebook lineup.

The MacBook Air hasn’t received an update since April 2014, but according to the screenshots, a hardware update could be imminent. The pictures suggest that the update won’t include a Retina display, but new processors and upgraded RAM are supposedly on the way.

Take a peek at the screenshots below: