Cult of Mac

Older games that we all loved and played relentlessly as kids tend to disappear as the old operating systems that we played them on are sent out to pasture.

The Internet Archive, a free library of millions of free books, movies, websites, and other media, has also archived thousands of older MS_DOS games, like Maniac Mansion, Prince of Persia, and–yes–Oregon Trail, and has given us all access to them for free.

Turns out, you can still get dysentery while traveling to Oregon, even if you haven’t kept your old PC or Mac to play the seminal educational game on.

“The collection includes action, strategy, adventure and other unique genres of game and entertainment software,” writes Jason Scott, the Software Librarian for the Internet Archive. “Through the use of the EM-DOSBOX in-browser emulator, these programs are bootable and playable.”

If you look at the work of photographer and graphic artist Alberto Seveso, you might inadvertently feel you’re in the throes of a Rorschach inkblot test.

You are staring at ink for sure and, mesmerized, you can’t help but process what the eyes and brain see. Looks like lava, melted plastic or the gas explosions from an evolving star in deep space. The heart will no doubt see beauty but the gut may roil and struggle.

Seveso, a highly sought-after editorial and commercial photographer, hopes he is stirring our insides when he captures the fleeting art of ink or paint being poured into water.

LAS VEGAS — Drones are everywhere at the International CES show. You can’t walk though the South Hall without hearing the feverish buzz of quadrocopter wings luring people to their booths.

Most of the new drones we’ve seen are either too expensive for normal people, or they’re cheap and lack compelling features. But after hours of searching we’ve found the one drone you should pay attention to in 2015: The Hexo+.

On the outside, Hexo+ doesn’t look too different from other drones, but it packs a killer “auto-follow” feature that will allow budding drone photographers to capture epic aerial videos without needing a dedicated pilot to frame each shot.

LAS VEGAS — Your iPhone captures great imagery, but sometimes the built-in zoom just isn’t enough. An ingenious gadget that quickly connects smartphones to almost any optical device gives your everyday camera superpowers.

The Carson Universal is an incredibly simple idea, but it delivers some pretty astonishing results. You can use it to connect your smartphone to telescopes, binoculars, microscopes, spotting scopes or almost any other optical device with a rounded eyepiece. Instead of buying a specialized, device-specific adapter, it’s a one-size-fits-all optical attachment.

“It kind of opens up the possibilities,” said Michelle Hyers, the engineer who designed the Carson Universal.

We’re just one week into 2015, and already the App Store is setting new sales records. Apple today announced that during the first week of January alone, customers around the world spent almost half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases, with New Year’s Day 2015 the single biggest day in App Store sales history.

LAS VEGAS — Want to avoid gingivitis and tooth decay? There’s an app for that. More than one, actually, and they work with Bluetooth-equipped toothbrushes to help ensure you’re properly cleaning your choppers.

The app for Oral-B’s electric Bluetooth toothbrushes is designed to develop good brushing habits and keep your teeth healthy.

“We have a product that will work — if you use it,” Oral-B rep Kris Parlett told Cult of Mac during International CES.

It was Philips that managed to beat, err, Beats to the first Lightning headphones last year, and at CES the company has taken it to the next level: announcing a new $299 pair that also offers noise cancellation.

Called the Fidelio NC1L, the battery-free headphones plug straight into iOS devices using the Lightning connector, and boast their own integrated 24-bit digital-to-analog converter rather than the one Apple builds into its devices.

You could say Emma Young is nuts about Doctor Who.

So much so, the craft maker and mother of two from Hampshire England made a squirrel feeder out of the head of a Cyberman, a villain on the popular British Sci-Fi television show.

The Cyberman head used to be a shower radio and Young gutted it, loaded it with peanut butter and nuts and suspended it from a tree branch in her garden.

If you’re a long time Mac fan like I am, you probably remember a time in the 90’s when you would have paid anything to watch then Microsoft CEO eat shit and die.

Of course, since leaving Microsoft, Bill Gates has become quite the humanitarian… one who is especially concerned with the problem of getting clean drinking water to the rest of the world. So these days, I have no interest in seeing him eat shit and die.

But drink shit and live? Sign me up!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the EFF, fights the good fight. An international non-profit digital rights group, the nonprofit is famous for standing up against big companies who think they can use baseless legal threats or intimidation to deny users their rights. But now they are setting their sights on Apple. Who is right?

Foxconn’s new $2.6 billion factory dedicated to building displays exclusively for Apple will supply OLED panels for future iPhones and wearables, according to a report from leading Japanese newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun.

Long-time Apple manufacturer Foxconn is supposedly working with touch panel company InnoLux to put together an ecosystem, allowing it to produce sixth-gen low temperature poly-silicon films, aimed at entering mass production in 2016.

Do you live in the European Union? Canada? Norway? Russia? Bad news, friends. Your App Store prices are about to shoot up. But hey, if you live in Iceland, great news: your app prices are going down!

The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and already it’s picking up some fairly high profile cheerleaders.

Not long after T-Mobile CEO John Legere jumped on the Apple Watch bandwagon by predicting the device will “mark the tipping point when wearables go from niche to mainstream,” MailOnline North American CEO Jon Steinberg has announced his Apple fandom, too — by viciously trashing the competition.

Check out his comments after the jump:

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2014 wasn’t a great year in Samsung land. The company has just issued its earnings guidance for the year’s fourth quarter — and the news isn’t good.

With operating profit standing at 5.2 trillion won (around $4.74 billion) for the quarter, the company’s overall profit for the year will likely come in at 25 trillion won: its lowest figure in three years.

Imagine a lifetime job with Apple, that doesn’t require you going into the office every day, from which you can never be fired, but which still gives you a sizeable guaranteed paycheck at the end of each month.

If that sounds like a dream come true, apparently you share the same utopian vision as a little company called Hall Data Sync Technologies: a non-practicing patent troll company which just filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple.

Getting your hands on an iPhone 6 in China isn’t always easy. Finding a nearby Apple Store can be tough, and once you get there you must deal with the long lines and the hassle of shelling out cash to Apple. So a group of Chinese men came up with a different solution: They dug their way to the iPhone 6.

Beijing police said Wednesday that they’ve detained three men suspected of tunneling into a warehouse to steal 240 iPhone 6 handsets. The heist netted the thieves about $228,496 worth of devices but authorities still haven’t found a single stolen iPhone 6 unit, after the crew blew all their money on cars, gold and gambling.

Drones are remote controlled flying machines that have gained in popularity recently. Some can perform pretty cool aerial stunts while others take breathtaking HD videos. The more expensive models can even act as delivery vehicles!

There are quadcopter drones to suit every skill level and budget at Cult of Mac Deals. Read on to find the one that suits you and your needs.

LAS VEGAS — I got an Apple Watch today, and it only costs 35 bucks.

It doesn’t have a functional Digital Crown, apps or even a touchscreen. But it looks exactly like an Apple Watch, and in the land of Vegas, where appearance is everything, that’s all that matters.

“We took the Apple Watch and made a few tiny changes so Apple won’t get mad,” Oplus Tek‘s Lily Yin told Cult of Mac when asked about the inspiration behind its new timepiece.

LAS VEGAS — Of all the amazing technology on show here at International CES, the most surprising so far is Hewlett-Packard’s weird Sprout, a multitalented Franken-puter that looks like a ton of fun.

The HP Sprout is a touchscreen computer married to a multitouch pad, with a projector/camera/3-D scanner peering overhead. It looks like a bad prop from a Lego version of War of the Worlds.

I’d seen the press releases when it launched last October and had pretty low expectations. It just looked too weird. But I was genuinely delighted to see it in action.

LAS VEGAS — Companies are throwing sensors into everything this year. Toothbrushes, cookie jars, mouth guards … you name it, and someone is trying to cram some sort of sensor into it. Next up is your backpack.

AMPL Labs’ upcoming SmartBackpack promises to keep your tech items safe and charged for days by combining “smartsensors” with battery packs woven into the fabric. The end result is a supercharging backpack that can tackle anything from an iPhone to a MacBook, allowing wearers to charge multiple devices on the go.

“We found that 85 percent of consumers worry about their devices running out of power at least once a week,” said AMPL’s David Migdal. “So we developed our SmartBackpack to address all their power needs.”

LAS VEGAS — Your iPhone is really great at finding places to eat, recipes to cook and stores to buy food at, but when it comes to actually analyzing the things that go in your mouth, it’s not very futuristic. That’s where Consumer Physics comes in with its molecular analyzer called SCiO that brings Star Trek-like tech to your pocket.

SCiO is a tiny spectrometer similar to the giant ones found in laboratories that are used to analyze the molecular makeup of objects. Only instead of pumping out nothing but nerdy scientific facts, SCiO was designed to help iPhone users analyze everyday objects, so you can discover things like how much fat is in a piece of cheese or whether a watermelon is ripe.

“Your iPhone can tell you what song is playing on the radio, but when it comes to telling you the nutritional value of food it’s kind of clueless,” says Consumer Physics’ CEO Dror Sharon. “With SCiO we’re encouraging explorers to help us on our mission to map the physical world.”

The muse of the Hubble Space Telescope is even more alluring 20 years later.

Of all the breath-taking photos from the telescope’s camera, the blooming pillars of gas of the Eagle Nebula from 1995 became Hubble’s most iconic image, depicted on stamps, tee-shirts and in several cameos for film and television.

Hubble recently took another look at the star-lit towers of gas and cosmic dust – dubbed the Pillars of Creation — with a newer camera (installed in 2009) and captured greater detail that should give astronomers a chance to see how the clouds of oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur have changed since the first photograph.

LAS VEGAS — Bryan Chaffin loves his Casper mattress.

“I don’t even know where to start,” effused the Mac Observer executive vice president. “It’s the most comfortable mattress I’ve ever slept on. It was dead-easy to set up. It’s just incredibly comfortable.”

Chaffin is a satisfied customer of Casper, a New York startup shaking up the tired old mattress industry. Casper is doing everything differently, from the design of its all-foam mattress to the way it sells and ships direct to customers.

LAS VEGAS — Nobody wants to get hacked like Jennifer Lawrence’s iCloud account. Everyone, including Apple, is pushing two-factor authentication in the wake of the high-profile hack that exposed dozens of celebrities nude selfies, but verifying an account login with a code sent to your phone is a total pain.

In the not-so-distant future, we might all be storing two-factor authentication on our keychains.

Yubico is already providing eight out of 10 Silicon Valley companies with a tiny USB dongle called YubiKey that securely verifies an employee’s online identity. You just plug it into a computer and tap it when it’s time to log in. Now that Gmail has started supporting YubiKey on the front end, anyone can use it as the second verification step for getting into their inbox.