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5 hot Raspberry Pi projects for Mac geeks

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Photo: Lucasbosch/CC Wikimedia
The tiny Raspberry Pi computer can power many cool DIY projects. Photo: Lucasbosch/Wikimedia CC

The credit-card-size Raspberry Pi has taken the tech world by storm. Thousands of geeky kids and adults use the tiny, low-cost computer boards to learn about coding and create fun projects like motion detectors, birdhouses that tweet when birds are present, and mini weather stations.

You, too, can use this sweet little nerdy device to reproduce some of the cool things your Mac can do, without dedicating your entire computer to the project. Let’s take a look at what kinds of things might be interesting to an Apple fan with a new $35 Raspberry Pi 2.

iPhone 6s may feature updated Touch ID sensor for better Apple Pay

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Touch ID
Touch ID is ready for an upgrade. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Touch ID is going to get a big upgrade in the next iPhone, according to a new rumor from reputable Apple analyst Ming Chi-Kuo.

In his latest note to investors, Kuo says Apple plans to upgrade the fingerprint scanning technology in its Touch ID module this year to reduce the number of reading errors and offer a “better and safer Apple Pay user experience.”

Tim Cook to speak at Goldman Sachs tech conference today

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As if Tim Cook doesn't already have enough on his plate!
Tim Cook Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook doesn’t make many speaking appearances at non-Apple events, but the Apple CEO is in San Francisco today to speak at Goldman Sachs’ technology and Internet conference.

Cook attended the conference in 2013 and 2012, but skipped the event last year. Apple fans can listen to streaming audio from the conference, which starts at 12:30 p.m. Pacific.

Apple would take a bite out of GoPro with this action cam concept

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The iPro action cam concept. Photo: Curved

 

 

It’s no secret that Apple has given some thought to wearable cameras. The company already has a patent that would crush GoPro if it ever decided to make sports cameras, but there’s not enough money in the market for Apple to even bother.

We’ll probably never get to see what Jony Ive’s perfectly designed answer to GoPro would have looked like, but our friends at Curved have been busy dreaming up the perfect action cam that works seamlessly with the iPhone and Apple Watch. Their answer is called the iPro: an action cam that looks so good, you’ll never want to beat it up.

Take a closer look:

Apple Pay projected to crush PayPal at big box stores in 2015

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Apple Pay is going everywhere in 2015. Photo: Apple
Apple Pay is going everywhere in 2015. Photo: Apple

Apple Pay has already become the fastest growing mobile wallet but the only thing holding it back is the limited number of retailers that accept it. A new study has found that PayPal is still leading the mobile payments race with 13% of retailers accepting it more than any other alternative payment type.

Boston Retail Partners surveyed the top 500 retailers in North America and found that only 8% currently accept Apple Pay, but Apple’s mobile wallet is expected to make a big push this year and take the top spot with nearly 40% of big shops in the U.S. accepting Apple Pay by the end of 2015.

Here’s the full breakdown:

Neil Armstrong’s ‘bunch of trash’ is space history treasure

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A bag of forgotten moon mission artifacts was found in a closet in Neil Armstrong's home. Carol Armstrong photo: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
A bag of forgotten moon mission artifacts was found in a closet in Neil Armstrong's home. Carol Armstrong photo: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Neil Armstrong had just been the first man to walk on the moon but now had to put out the trash.

It was a critical step home. Precise weight had to be calculated for re-entry and to make way for moon rocks, miscellaneous space travel items had to be discarded in the lunar module.

Just before sending the Eagle crashing into the surface of the moon, Mission Control records Armstrong’s voice saying nothing historic, certainly not as memorable as “One Small Step for Man…”

“You know, that – that one’s just a bunch of trash that we want to take back . . . We’ll have to figure something out for it.”

This audio proved to be an important piece of provenance when the wife of the late astronaut discovered a white bag in a home closet.

Apple could sell 320 million iOS devices in 2015

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Photo: Cult of Mac
Photo: Cult of Mac

Last year, despite the constant cries from naysayers that Cupertino had lost its edge, Apple blew past all expectations by shipping over 259.5 million iOS devices.

So how many iOS devices will Apple ship in 2015? According to one reputable industry analyst, a staggering 320 million iOS devices.

Sling TV, the Netflix for cable, opens doors to all subscribers, with new channels coming

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sling on iPhone
Sling television interface. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Sling TV — the Dish-owned streaming service that does for cable what Netflix did for video tentals — has just announced that it is opening its door to the general public. And if the cable stations it currently has on offer don’t entice you to sign up for its $20 per month subscription, well, some more channels are coming down the pipeline soon.

Robot vacuum tries to suck up sleeping woman

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Paramedics work to free a woman from the grips of her robot vacuum. Photo: Changwon Fire Service
Paramedics work to free a woman from the grips of her robot vacuum. Photo: Changwon Fire Service

Robot vacuums might be having a moment.

Should sales suddenly spike, it may be because of the unintentional endorsement from a South Korean woman, who made news when her hair got sucked up by her robot vacuum.

The woman had to make a “desperate” call to her local fire department and paramedics spent about a half-hour trying to free her hair, according to the newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun.

While such a device allows you to nap while your floors get cleaned, its seems like a bad idea to sleep in its path.

Don’t expect the 12-inch Retina MacBook Air this month

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You may have a little longer to wait if you want a Retina MacBook Air. Photo: Martin Hajek
You may have a little longer to wait if you want a Retina MacBook Air. Photo: Martin Hajek

Like you, we’re excited about Apple’s next MacBook Air, a device that is rumored to be a an ultra-sexy 12-incher with only a single port and a beautiful Retina Display.

Now we’re hearing that Apple is planning on updating the MacBook Air later this month. But don’t get too excited. This is not the MacBook Air you’re waiting for.

JetBlue will soon accept Apple Pay at 35,000 feet

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As soon as next year, Apple may make it possible for you to send money to friends and family from your iPhone.
Apple Pay is taking off in a big way. Ba-doom-tish. Photo: USA Today
Photo: USA Today

The hope with Apple Pay is that everywhere there are financial transactions, there will be Apple’s mobile payment solution — and, yes, that includes the sky.

Starting next week, passengers on select JetBlue Airways flights will be able to pay for food, drinks and assorted on-board amenities (such as upgrading seats) using their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. This gives JetBlue the claim to fame that it is the first airline to accept Apple Pay at 35,000 feet.

Donate your old iPod to help people suffering from Alzheimer’s

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iPods can play an extraordinary part in helping people suffering from dementia.
iPods can play an extraordinary part in helping people suffering from dementia.

As tech fans, it’s easy to take a forward-looking view of technology: constantly excited about the next iPhone or smart wearable, while our old gadgets gather dust in the back of a cupboard somewhere.

Hoping to reach some of those tech owners, the SIU School of Medicine in Illinois is currently requesting old iPods as part of what it calls the “Music and Memory” program to help people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.

As the medical school explains it, the iPods are used for a form of musical therapy designed to help calm patients and make them happier and more sociable by playing music from their younger years.

Spider-Man will appear in future Marvel Cinematic Universe films

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Spider-Man and the Avengers could team up soon! Photo: Marvel
Spider-Man and the Avengers are teaming up! Photo: Marvel

Sony and Marvel have struck a deal, paving the way for everyone’s favorite sass-mouthed wall crawler, Spider-Man, to appear in films alongside Iron Man, Captain America and the Avengers.

Let’s rewind a bit. The year is 1996, and after overextending itself during the previous decade’s comics boom, Marvel Comics is broke. But along comes an Israeli toy designer named Avi Arad to save the company, who famously tells creditors not to give up on Marvel yet (“Spider-Man alone is worth a billion dollars,” Arad reportedly said at the time).

Samsung could be about to give up on Japan as iPhone sales soar

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Things aren’t looking too rosy for Samsung at the moment. Having seen profits slip due to its falling mobile sales, the flailing South Korean tech giant is reportedly considering throwing in the towel altogether in Japan, where it’s struggling more than elsewhere.

Samsung currently represents a miniscule 4 percent of the Japanese smartphone market, which puts it in sixth place. According to sources with Samsung, staying in Japan is actually losing rather than gaining the company money.

While Samsung hasn’t traditionally been a top-seller in Japan, here in 2015 it’s doing worse than ever: with the company’s favorite metric, marketshare, shrinking from 17 percent two years ago to low single digits today.

Design firm Ammunition takes top honors for innovation

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A $3,000 Octovo surfboard is just one creation of design firm Ammunition. Photo: Fast Company
A $3,000 Octovo surfboard is just one creation of design firm Ammunition. Photo: Fast Company

San Francisco design firm Ammunition beat out Apple and others to be named Fast Company’s top “Innovative Company in Design.”

Co-founded by Robert Brunner, the former head of Apple’s industrial design studio who hired Jony Ive, Ammunition is most famous for designing the Beats Electronics headphones. Ammunition was named most innovative not just for the string of hit products it’s helped bring to market but for taking an equity stake in the companies with which it works.

10 hilarious memes that prove Brian Williams can’t escape the Internet

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Maybe TV anchor Brian Williams just mis-remembered this.  Photo: ‏@robx_d/Twitter
Maybe TV anchor Brian Williams just mis-remembered this. Photo: ‏@robx_d/Twitter

Brian Williams may be waiting for the brouhaha to wear off his “mis-remembering” of which helicopter he was in during the 2003 war in Iraq, but the internets will just not let it go.

He might have conflated his experience as a reporter with that of the actual soldiers who were fired upon, but the meme police are making sure this faux pas lives on forever, creating hilarious photo “evidence” that not only was Williams at Gettysburg, but also present for the first moon landing and riding along with O.J. in his white Bronco slow roll.

Check out some of the choicest photographic “evidence” of the disgraced news anchor below, from some of the funniest minds on the interwebs.

Peek inside the most expensive puppet ever created: Jabba the Hutt

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It took two to three people to work the monstrous Star Wars character. Photo: Lucasfilm
It took two to three people to work the monstrous Star Wars character. Photo: Lucasfilm

Galactic crime lord Jabba the Hutt may just be the most costly puppet ever made.

“I knew that he was expensive in that with the full crew involved,” says puppeteer Toby Philpott in a new video, “it would be about a dozen people.”

In this new documentary from London-based Jamie Benning, you’ll get a literal inside look at how this immense, multi-person operated puppet was put together and performed by the two to three men inside the Hutt, as well as the various people controlling the eyes via radio control outside.

Take a look at the video below to peek inside the creature.

Where to watch the Better Call Saul premiere for free online

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Bob Odenkirk as infamous lawyer Saul Goodman. His show has already been renewed for a second season. Photo: AMC
Bob Odenkirk as infamous lawyer Saul Goodman. His show has already been renewed for a second season. Photo: AMC

Breaking Bad is dead, but it’s all good man. Saul Goodman is back!

The Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul, broke cable records with 4.4 million viewers last night, and there are several ways to watch the premiere online.

iTunes and AMC are offering Episode 1, titled “Uno,” for free.

MacBook Air survives 1,000-foot plunge out of plane

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Imagine cruising low around South Africa in your small plane at 105 knots. You’re enjoying the scenery below when all the sudden your plane’s canopy pops open just wide enough to send your bag with a MacBook Air plummeting 1,000 feet to its death.

That’s exactly what happened to one pilot, only lucky for him, the MacBook Air miraculously survived. Redditor av80r posted pictures of his still-functioning MacBook Air after it fell out of his plane mid-flight. According to his story, the farmer who found it claims he heard a whistling sound. He looked up and saw a bag hurtling towards him and took one step to the left and watched it land near where he was standing.

Despite the crash landing, the MacBook Air still works. Although the cooling system is damaged and the glass on the trackpad was busted into a million fragments, the display is hanging on like a champion.

Here’s a view from the side:

Hands on with OS X’s new Photos app

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Photos for Mac is coming this spring. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Photos for Mac is coming this spring. Photo: Stephen Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s upcoming Photos app will give Mac users powerful new tools to manage, tweak and share their favorite images. While it won’t be released until later this year, we got a chance to play around with the beta version now available to developers, and we found it to be an easy-to-use and streamlined piece of software.

For a detailed and visual look at this new iOS-influenced app, check out the video below for a quick run through some of Photos’ hottest new features.

Everything that’s new in iOS 8.3

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Your iPhone is about to get some new features. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple’s release notes for the first iOS 8.3 beta don’t mention any new features, but we’ve combed through the just-released update to discover a number of goodies.

iOS 8.3 won’t overwhelm you with new features, but if you love CarPlay, emojis and Apple Pay, you’ll enjoy a couple surprises.

Here’s everything that’s new in iOS 8.3: