Cult of Mac

Google-owned robotics firm Boston Dynamics is no stranger to creating robotic beasts that can do freakish feats, but their latest robotic quadruped — a 160-pound doglike machine named Spot — takes the crazy factor to an all new level with a smaller, nimbler, more-kickable form factor.

To be perfectly honest, Spot scares the hell out of me. When Elon Musk warned about the possibility of humans becoming slaves to AI, this is what I imagined — legions of weird-looking robots that can go anywhere to hunt you down and put you in your place. Spot doesn’t feature any futuristic weapons to punish his human masters, but the cybernetic canine has some serious skills when it comes to exploring difficult terrain and balancing.

If you don’t think the robot threat is real, here are six GIFs of Spot in action that might change your mind:

When Prince presented the Grammy for best album this week, he made an impassioned case for a musical format that many seem ready to write off as dead.

“Albums, remember those?” he said. “Albums still matter. Albums, like books and black lives, still matter.”

That’s how you present an award, folks.

Albums are collections of musical pieces that work together to create an auditory gestalt larger than the individual songs themselves. With the massive growth in streaming audio these days, many people might be missing out on this incredible old-school experience.

Here’s the cure: a list of amazing albums you should listen to in their entirety, even if you don’t do vinyl. iTunes might have helped kill CDs, but it’s still a great place to buy albums rather than shortchanging yourself with a bunch of singles. There are dozens of other albums you should explore, depending on your musical tastes, but this list should remind us all how awesome albums are as a concept. You can thank us later.

We still don’t know the exact launch date of the Apple Watch, but if you just can’t wait to load up on accessories for your Apple wearable, the first Apple Watch dock is already available on Kickstarter.

ChronosDock, a “luxury” bedside dock, is the first Apple Watch accessory we’ve seen launch so far. Its makers, Kickshark, say it’s “the most indulgent, opulent piece of docking jewelry” they could imagine. It only costs $99, but they insist it’s “excessive in the extreme” to satisfy all you high-end fashionistas.

We think it looks kind of boring, but take a look for yourself:

Tim Cook made a big stand for climate change yesterday by announcing Apple’s plan to invest $850 million in a solar farm that will power the company’s Cupertino campus as well as all retail operations in California.

“We know at Apple that climate change is real,” Cook said yesterday. “Our view is that the time for talk is past and the time for action is now.”

Apple has already put its money where its mouth is by powering all data centers with renewable energy, but the Monterey solar farm is the biggest thing Apple’s ever done in renewable energy, and breaks the record as the biggest-ever solar procurement deal for a company that’s isn’t a utility.

Apple has a reputation for not being afraid to move on.

Buy a new iPhone, and you’re lucky if iOS supports your device just four years down the line. Buy a Mac? Apple’s constantly making older models obsolete with every new OS X release. Heck, there’s an entire ocean of old PowerPC apps that were orphaned by Apple when they migrated to Intel.

Yet Apple isn’t without loyalty to the gadgets that once made it great. Case in point: If you plug a first-gen iPod into your modern-day Mac, iTunes 12 will still sync with it.

For many, the iMac represents computing perfection. It combines state of the art technology with a streamlined operating system that provides the user with flawless productivity that will stay flawless for years.

You could win this kind of computing perfection by entering The iMac Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals. Better hurry though, as this is your last chance to enter.

Bad news, jailbreakers. Apple has stopped signing iOS 8.1.2, the last jailbreakable version of the iOS 8 operating system. That means that unless you already have iOS 8.1.2 installed, you won’t be able to jailbreak using existing methods until another exploit comes down the pipeline.

Anyone who enjoys old-school games will most likely have experienced the crushing disappointment of finding a favorite title in the App Store — only to discover that whichever company ported the game to iOS took no care whatsoever in doing so.

Fortunately, one game series you could absolutely never throw that accusation at is the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, thanks to the remastering efforts of fans Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley. For anyone interested in game restoration and porting, their story is kind of inspirational.

It looks like we might be witnessing the end of an era. Apple is apparently taking down the iconic atom symbol signs from behind the Genius Bars of many of their Apple Stores, removing one of the most whimsical and fun branding elements from their retail presence.

The bigger the screen, the more data you use. That’s the maxim that anyone looking to min-max their data plan every month should follow if they want to keep their bills low.

As highly-desirable and premium-priced tech goodies, it’s no surprise that iPhones have previously been among the most stolen items we carry around on a regular basis. In fact, police have even correlated spikes in crime rate to the launch of new iPhone models — suggesting that it’s not just upstanding citizens who keep an eye on the blogosphere.

That all changed when Apple added its Activation Lock feature with iOS 7, allowing users to locate, lock and even wipe their iPhones remotely in the event that they are stolen. Based on that, a new report claims that the number of stolen iPhones fell significantly in major cities around the world between September 2013, when Activation Lock was introduced, and one year later.

Take that, iCriminals!

One of the big selling points of wearable devices is that they will be able to help us keep track of various fitness metrics.

However, a new report claims smartphones are just as good (if not slightly better) at tracking physical activity as the most popular wearables on the market.

Unlike Apple, which is more comfortable (and lucrative) than ever with its business strategy, here in 2015 Samsung is having a bit of an identity crisis. Is it a freedom-fighting Internet of Things company making smart refrigerators and connected TVs? Is it a Xiaomi competitor, turning out cheaper smartphones than ever for the developing Indian market?

Like a deer in headlights, the company seems to be skittishly veering from one idea to the next, without any real understanding of what it needs to do to once again be competitive.

Of course, there is one idea that has worked for Samsung in the past, and with its mobile division falling on hard times, that strategy seems to be one the South Korean tech giant is more than happy to return to: copying Apple.

Flipboard has taken the leap from mobile to desktop. What started as one of the first iPad apps is now accessible through any modern browser via Flipboard.com, a beautiful web interface for consuming online content.

Like the iPad and iPhone app, you can not only read articles from sites you follow, but also create custom “magazines” based on sources you choose.

Blind dates can be full of surprises, but few ever end with the man crapping his pants – and with cameras rolling.

Such are the scenes in a Ford Motor Company promo video for the 2015 Mustang, in which a hidden-camera captures a gorgeous blonde stunt driver and her unsuspecting dates.

The video, which has racked up more than a quarter-million views since it was posted to YouTube late last week, runs just under three and half minutes. It shows technicians installing tiny cameras in the car’s dash.

Life at Apple has been phenomenal ever since Tim Cook took over as CEO. AAPL shares are up 120 percent. 750 million iOS devices have been sold. $100 billion was returned to shareholders. And Apple just became the first $700 billion company in history.

To celebrate a successful 2014 campaign, Cook sat down with Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn today to talk about how Apple achieved its unbelievable results, as well as what other tricks the company has up its sleeves.

Here are the 12 biggest revelations from Cook’s Goldman Sachs tech conference appearance:

Boom! That’s the sound of AAPL stock hitting yet another all-time high Tuesday, making Apple the first $700 billion company in history.

Microsoft made history in 2000 when it became the first company to close at $600 billion, so this feat must make Tim Cook and the entire Apple team incredibly proud.

Apple is building a massive new solar farm in California to power the company’s upcoming spaceship campus and other facilities, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday.

The solar farm will occupy 1,300 acres in Monterey, California. Cook said the move is a testament to Apple’s commitment to environmental responsibility.

How does Apple defy the law of large numbers as the company posts ever-increasing iPhone sales?

That’s one of the first questions Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked at today’s Goldman Sachs technology conference. While Apple posted a record 74.5 million iPhone sales last quarter, Cook says he sees no reason why that number can’t keep growing.

Going to college is supposed to be all about going to parties, drinking heavily, hooking up and maybe squeezing in a few classes if you find the time. But when it comes to college students today, it turns out what they really want most is an iPhone.

Researchers at Student Monitor asked 1,200 U.S. undergraduates last fall to choose “what’s in” among students from a list of 77 options. Not only did students rank the iPhone as more popular than coffee, texting, drinking beer and college football, but Apple’s smartphone somehow managed to top the collegiate tradition of “hooking up” to take the No. 1 spot.

The iPad didn’t do too bad in the survey either, topping Instagram, laptops and selfies. Here’s the rundown on what college students ranked as most important:

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.

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 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.

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:

Samsung isn’t the only smartphone maker experiencing a decline in sales thanks to Apple’s latest iPhones. New data shows that the popularity of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus caused Android sales to decline for the first time ever during the fourth quarter of 2014.