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Oppo beats Apple to a sapphire smartphone

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Apple failed to get its sapphire glass ready for its latest smartphones, but Chinese manufacturer Oppo did not. Its new RC1, a midrange handset with a 5-inch display, has a sapphire back panel that allows the device to be incredibly thin but still surprisingly sturdy.

Robot Chicken and Power Glove: a match made in animation heaven

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Anything else is child's play. Photo: Dillon Markey
Anything else is child's play. Photo: Dillon Markey

Dillon Markey animates one of the hottest Adult Swim programs on television, Robot Chicken. Better yet, he uses an old Nintendo Power Glove to do it.

The Emmy-winning show consists of short sequences of stop-motion animation using action figures of pop culture characters, like Bill Gates or Shigeru Miyamoto, the famed Nintendo game designer. Funny enough, Markey used his modified Power Glove the first time on that specific scene in Robot Chicken.

Check it out in the video below.

Can’t decide on a wearable? Here’s how you can sample 5 for a week

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With so many wearables to choose from these days, how do you decide which one is right for you? Are you better off investing in a cross-platform device like the Pebble, or do you want the color display and other benefits that Android Wear brings?

The best way to decide is by trying these devices out before you buy them. Not for five minutes in a store, but for as long as you like as you go about your day. Lumoid’s rent-to-own program lets you do just that; you can sample five wearables for a full 7 days before deciding which one you want to buy, and if you don’t like any of them, you can just send them all back.

Garnar frash! The Sims 4 is coming to Mac

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Photo: EA
The Sims 4 is coming to Mac. It's about time. Photo: EA

I’ve been a huge fan of The Sims franchise since I first laid my hands on the original version back in 2000. Since then, I’ve played every major version, a large number of the expansion packs, and the freemium version for iOS… but never The Sims 4.

That’s because despite having been launched on PC back in September last year, the fourth incarnation of the popular people simulator has yet to make it onto Mac.

Fortunately that’s about to change, since The Sims 4 developers have finally announced that a Mac version of the game is coming next month. Here’s what we know about it so far:

Meet the artist who creates surreal masterpieces with his iPhone

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A brilliant white lightning bolt strikes the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In Venice, Italy, a whale splashes joyfully through a street system made up of canals. In New York, an elephant is lifted high into the sky by a mass of colored helium balloons.

These may sound like the most fanciful of cheese dreams, but they are, in fact, the work of a fantastic artist double-act: German-born Robert Jahns and his iPhone.

Using his iPhone to assemble his surreal masterpieces, and then posting the resulting pictures to Instagram under the name nois7, Jahns is taking the art world by storm. And like many contemporary artists, he couldn’t have done it without his trusty Apple device.

Could Apple have already lined up the sapphire supplier for the iPhone 6s?

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Could this be our first look at the iPhone 6s's sapphire display? Photo: Desay
Could this be our first look at the iPhone 6s's sapphire display? Photo: Desay

Due to its failed relationship with GT Advanced, Apple missed out on releasing the iPhone 6 with the rock hard, all sapphire display that was initially rumored.

But what about the iPhone 6s? It’s still unknown, but an Apple supplier, Desay, has just announced their own smartphone with an “unbreakable” sapphire display.

Watch what happens when an iPhone 6 meets an angle grinder

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This doesn't end well! Photo: TechRax
This doesn't end well! Photo: TechRax

The whole Bendgate incident prompted Apple to release some details about its own internal stress-testing policies for new iPhones. It’s unlikely that anyone at Cupertino carries out iPhone stress-testing quite to the degree of YouTube user TechRax, however.

Masquerading as a tech channel, Ukrainian YouTuber TechRax is really just using that an excuse to destroy the latest must-have gadgets. This week, he turned his attention to the iPhone 6 — a device that has previously had its endurance tested by him in boiling Coca-Cola, deep snow, under the treads of a tank — and a variety of other scenarios that, frankly, are unlikely to befall your precious smartphone.

In TechRax’s latest “experiment” he sets on the gold iPhone 6 with a DeWalt angle grinder. The results are… well, largely what you’d expect. You can check out the video after the jump.

Xiaomi wants to be the only name on your wrist in 2015

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Xiaomi may have risen rapidly to become the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker, but that’s not enough for a company which seems to have Apple-sized ambitions to go along with its Apple-borrowed designs.

With wearables being the next huge tech revolution, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has laid out its expectations for 2015 shipments of its Mi Band smart bracelet, as announced last summer — and they’re big.

CARROT Hunger is a smart calorie counter with a mean streak

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In their efforts to trigger mass market adoption, most food-tracking apps and tools go out of the way to be nice to you. After all, who wants an app which publicly shames you for gorging on unhealthy food — or choosing a greasy takeout over five sticks of carrot and a crouton?

Try telling that to the creator of CARROT Hunger, an hilarious new smart calorie counter which rewards you for healthy eating — and brutally punishes you for overindulging.

Apple and Ericsson battle it out over patent royalties

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$1 trillion value
Plenty of money's at stake in the latest lawsuit Apple is wrapped up in. Photo: Pierre Marcel/Flickr CC
Photo: Pierre Marcel/Flickr CC

Ericsson’s former CEO has gone on the record as saying his company should have taken the iPhone more seriously when it arrived back in 2007. Today, everyone takes the iPhone seriously — and there are the lawsuits to prove it.

In the latest of these, Apple and Ericsson are suing each other after failing to come to an agreement about the pricing of Ericsson-owned patents used by Apple.

Apple is claiming Ericsson is chasing excessive royalty rates, while Ericsson is holding out for more cash.

And when you’re talking about a handset like the iPhone 6, which sold upwards of 10 million units in its first weekend, who can blame it for trying?

Save 96% on the mammoth interactive iOS & swift bootcamp [Deals]

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Apple’s newest version of iOS as well as its new coding language, Swift, were released this past fall. If you’ve ever considered a future in iOS development, either as a professional opportunity or just as a hobby, you’ll need to know how iOS 8 and Swift work. Even if you are already an app designer, you could always use refresher and upgraded training.

Today we highlight offers from Cult of Mac Deals that will give you the training required to excel in iOS app development. Each of these courses are presented with steep discounts so this is a marvelous opportunity to get the training you need without breaking the bank.

BlackBerry gets caught tweeting from an iPhone

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Even Blackberry prefers iPhone. Photo: The Verge

BlackBerry isn’t quite dead yet, but don’t tell that to the person running their Twitter account.

The classic BlackBerry keyboard is great for pounding out 140-character tweets, yet whoever is tweeting from @BlackBerry was spotted using an iPhone to implore the brand’s few faithful remaining fans to keep up with the BlackBerry conversation on Twitter.

Apple just patented a wearable camera that’s better than GoPro

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GoPro shares have dropped 42 percent since hitting an all-time high in October. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

Shares of GoPro stock plummeted as much as 15% this afternoon after it was announced that Apple was awarded a patent that could put the wearable camera company in serious trouble.

Apple was granted a series of 34 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today relating to a camera system that can be mounted to helmets and scuba masks and controlled remotely. That patent specifically mentions weaknesses in GoPro’s system, which has sent investors worrying that Apple is aiming to crush the sports camera giant.

Macintosh gets a facelift after 31 years in this fun concept

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The Macintosh gets a facelift. Photo: Curved
The Macintosh gets a facelift. Photo: Curved

The Macintosh will celebrate its 31st anniversary in 11 more days, and while Apple’s design team has moved on from the tiny all-in-one form factor of the first Macintosh, our friends at Curved decided to bring a facelift to Steve Jobs’ creation that led the PC revolution.

For their futuristic redesign, the Curved team slapped an 11-inch MacBook Air screen into a thin brushed aluminum frame that mimics the original shape of the Macintosh. Instead of running regular OS X, the new Macintosh packs touchscreen controls to go with 128GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM.

Take a look at some of the mockups below to see if you’d like this concept to grace your desktop.

‘Hitman’ will send glittery message to your enemy

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An artist rendering shows the reaction of a recipient of a glitter bomb. Illustration: shipyourenemiesglitter.com
An artist's rendering shows the reaction of a recipient of a glitter bomb. Illustration: Ship Your Enemies Glitter

Glitter is the “herpes of the craft world.” Once on you, it doesn’t seem to ever go away.

You might have some moral hang-ups about giving an enemy herpes, but a fast-spreading glitter bomb, while still hostile, seems less malicious and eventually forgivable. Now an Australian startup will be your glitter hitman for a small fee.

Here’s how Apple should reinvent the address book

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There's got to be a better way. Photo: Frank Costa
There's got to be a better way. Photo: Frank Costa

The address book is outdated. On the iPhone, while most of my contacts reside in the Contacts app, I rarely go in there. Instead, I connect with people on Facebook, via SnapChat, WhatsApp and more.

Product designer Frank Costa feels the same way, but he went one step further than simply banishing the Contacts app to an unused folder on his Home screen and designed this address book replacement concept, something he calls an Invisible Address Book.

While having a list of phone numbers might be silly, he says, there is benefit to having information about the people we contact frequently in one place.

“Therefore, as a design exercise,” writes Costa on Medium, “I elaborated on a couple of ideas to turn that seemingly static list of people into a slightly more ambitious project.”

Work out with your dork out: Private Gym strengthens your man muscle

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Get stronger, go longer with a pelvic fitness program from Private Gym . Illustration: Private Gym
Get stronger, go longer with a pelvic fitness program from Private Gym. Illustration: Private Gym

The promise of rock-hard abs is still not incentive enough to get many men to the gym. But promise a rock-hard — well, you know — and you might launch a boner-fide exercise craze.

The makers of Private Gym guarantee “100 percent satisfaction” for gents and their partners, thanks to a pelvic fitness program that includes a rather chunky-looking piece of wearable tech.

Apple eyes big improvements for iPhone 6s camera

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The iPhone 6 camera was one of its most popular features. But things could get even better. Photo: Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus featured Apple’s best-ever iPhone camera, but Apple is always on the lookout for ways to beat its own sky-high standards.

According to a new report from the Chinese language website United Daily News, Cupertino is planning to create a dual-lens camera with optical zoom capabilities and a 3D pressure sensor for the iPhone 6s, which will likely arrive this September.

Apple Watch shows up on the arm of mystery man

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Whose arm is it? Photo: Suzy Menkes

We’ve known for a while now that a fortunate few people with close ties to Apple have been testing the Apple Watch in the wild, but this may be our best glimpse yet.

Posted on Instagram by Vogue international editor Suzy Menkes, the picture shows a man’s arm (thereby ruling out Menkes herself) sporting the chic Apple smartwatch, which Apple has been heavily promoting in fashion and design circles.

“So here is that new Apple watch gleaming and glinting and performing at the dinner table,” Menkes wrote. “Who owns the arm?! A free Apple watch for anyone who guesses right!”

Sadly, she went on to add that she was “only kidding.”

5 new iOS games you should play right now

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You'll want to take a break from work with these amazing iOS games. Photo: Stephen Smith
You'll want to take a break from work with these amazing iOS games. Photo: Stephen Smith

There are tons of new games out every week, and it’s hard to decide which ones to purchase, let alone which free games to download. We’re here to take some of the guesswork out of your decision, though, as we’ve scoured the best games that have come out so far this year.

From time wasters to deep strategic gems, this list will have you gaming in no time. Grab your copy of these five great –and brand-spankin’ new — gaming experiences today and you can thank us later.