Cult of Mac

Apple is ramping up its social media efforts today with the creation of the company’s first ever Tumblr page dedicated to the top iTunes picks for music, movies, TV shows and books in 2014.

With iTunes sales slumping for the second straight year, Apple is adding more ‘social’ to its marketing plan with a Tumblr page that allows viewers to like and share their favorite GIFS, pictures and videos that Apple created to promote its favorite artists of 2014.

Apple has re-opened its online store in Russia after temporarily closing it last week following “extreme” fluctuations in the valuation of the country’s currency, the ruble.

But while that’s good news for people wanting to order Apple goods over the holidays, it’s not likely to go over well with the majority of customers — since prices have dramatically increased.

The cost of an iPhone 6, for instance, has risen 35 percent: with a 16GB iPhone 6 selling for 34,990 rubles before the shutdown, and 53,990 rubles now. That means a base level iPhone costs $980 in Russia.

One of the best features launched with OS X Yosemite this year was the ability to make and receive phone calls from your Mac, provided it is paired with a compatible iPhone.

But while it’s usually great receiving phone calls with the feature, making outgoing calls yourself is not so straightforward: You must launch the FaceTime app, turn on your webcam and then maneuver through an interface that’s clearly more complex than it needs to be.

Thankfully, this is where DockPhone app comes to the rescue. If you use your Mac to makes calls with any regularity whatsoever, consider this an early Christmas present to yourself.

Worried that the cops might bust in your door any minute, or simply really paranoid? How cool would it be if you could initiate a self-destruction sequence for your Mac using only your voice, just like Captain Picard would use to destroy The Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation?

Well, awesomely, you can. And it’s pretty easy to do!

Whatever your thoughts on last week’s BBC documentary about the poor worker conditions in factories producing the iPhone, there’s no doubt that it’s brought the topic back into widespread circulation.

Unlike the majority of previous reports, this time the target wasn’t Foxconn, however, but instead the Taiwan-based firm Pegatron Technology, which has been taking an increasing amount of Apple orders as of late.

With negative press circulating about the company mistreating its workers, Pegatron today filed a statement with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, pledging to inspect all negative claims carried in the report and implement improvements to make sure these problems are solved.

Apple’s new 12-inch Retina MacBook Air is expected to enter mass production in the first quarter of 2015, manufactured by Quanta Computer, according to a new report released today.

The new notebook is expected to boast Intel’s Broadwell processors, and a chassis redesign which will further reduce the device’s already-slimline thickness and weight.

Every comics-loving kid has spent more than a few houra wondering who would win in a fight: Superman or Thor? Captain America or Batman? Spider-Man or the Flash? Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel?

In comics, we’ve seen those questions answered a few times, most recently in Marvel and DC’s Amalgam crossover of the mid-90’s. But when it comes to Marvel and DC’s cinematic universes, we’ve never seen a cross-property showdown.

This epic trailer, though, gives a pretty good idea of the movie that would emerge if Marvel and DC did decide to team-up for a summer blockbuster.

With an estimated 71.5 million iPhones predicted to sell over the holidays, and more buzz surrounding Apple than ever, it’s no surprise that advertisers are keen to muscle in on the action.

In the case of digital marketing company Truth NYC, that means producing a holiday video campaign for luxury skincare brand Erno Laszlo using the iPhone 6 Plus.

Check out the two videos after the jump.

It’s been a great year to be an Android user. Not only have we seen the release of Google’s massive Material Design makeover and all kinds of wonderful new features inside Android 5.0 Lollipop, but we’ve also had oodles of awesome apps to enjoy.

In this roundup, we’ve selected the best Google Play releases from the past 12 months. We’ve got great launchers, amazing email apps, terrific Twitter clients and lots more. (Some are also available on iOS.)

We know that Eddy Cue has used Apple Pay to buy Frozen toys before, and from December 24 he can take his Disney love to the next level, thanks to the news that the Walt Disney World Resort is set to begin accepting Apple Pay on Christmas Eve.

Initially, payments using the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will work in the majority of stores, quick service restaurants, bars and ticket sales booths. Locations which use portable payment terminals (such as table service restaurants) will be added later.

The lengthy list of logistics involved in starting any business eventually lands on what to do about equipment and office space.

James Turner and Holly Kennedy run their user experience design consultancy out of a single backpack each as they trek from country to country like nomadic college students with a free summer.

Kennedy says you won’t find the couple “wearing bandannas or growing dreadlocks” but they are happy living life on their own terms — with an unconventional commute and ever-changing scenery. Cult of Mac caught up with the ex-Londoners, both 26, in northern Thailand, where they were working around spotty Wi-Fi and a client 13 time zones away.

Every day, Cult of Mac Deals features cool prices on hot products designed to make your life better.

Today, we feature some of the best there we have right now. Of course, you can go to Cult of Mac Deals to see all that’s everything we have to offer.

Merry CultCast, boys and girls! This week: Santa gets a little “grabby”; Apple wins a major lawsuit; our iPhones deserve “rollover” data plans; the incredibly low payouts artists get from Spotify; and the high-end gifts we really want but will never get on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.

Thanks to Audible for supporting this episode. Audible, the home of over 150,000 audio books from practically every genre in existence. Grab our Leander Kahney’s book, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products, for free with a 30-day Audible trial.

Catch the full show notes ahead.

Awesome tech products for less is what Cult of Mac Deals is all about. Deals like the ones we present every day can’t stick around forever though.

This is your last chance to get NetSpot Pro, the NES30 Bluetooth Controller, iMazing, the Striiv Fusion, and Adobe KnowHow. Get these now before you miss out.

Read receipts. They’re the first thing I turn off when I get a new messaging app or iOS device. But Facebook is doubling down on read receipts in the new Facebook Messenger, which has new, blisteringly fast notifications showing you exactly what’s going on with your message after you send it.

With iOS 8, Apple has been showing a lot more indecision about what kind of app extensions, keyboards, and widgets are and aren’t allowed under the developer guidelines. This has caused even popular apps like PCalc and Drafts to have to scale back features, because they have inadvertently stepped over some invisible line in Apple’s mind about what a third-party app should be allowed to do.

Now, there’s another fatality of Apple’s weird App Store waffling. Jormy, the developer behind the popular (and absolutely insane) iOS 8 keyboard Nintype, has been informed by Apple that he needs to remove one of his app’s most useful functions in a future update.

“A keyboard? How quaint,” said C. Montgomery Scott, the USS Enterprise’s Chief Engineer, when it was suggested he use a keyboard instead of voicing commands to a computer. How quaint indeed.

Now, with Dragon Dictate for Mac 4, you can give your own quaint keyboard a well deserved rest. Get this revolutionary software for your Mac for just $99.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Universal Pictures is eyeing Kate Winslet to play the lead female role in Aaron Sorkin’s movie on Steve Jobs, reports Variety.

It’s still unknown what character the Titanic star might play, but after a couple of other Oscar-nominated actresses have dropped out of the project, Winslet’s addition could be the extra jolt needed for the movie that’s expected to feature Jobs’ daughter Lisa as the heroine.

This post is brought to you by IdeaSolutions, creator of KYMS.

What better way to keep your media safe than to encrypt your files and hide them behind an iOS app that appears to be nothing more than a stylish calculator? KYMS (Keep Your Media Safe) encrypts all your multimedia files, photos, documents, passwords and much more, then stashes them inside a military-grade vault that’s hiding in plain sight.

As we watch the hordes of moviegoers heading out to see the final film in The Hobbit trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies, we can’t help but rejoice a little that this endless epic journey is about to end.

In this parody trailer for the previous installment, The Desolation of Smaug, you can “Rejoin Middle Earth’s other, shorter, less interesting fellowship as they continue their slow journey to Scrooge McDuck’s vault,” as the gravelly-voiced narration actor says in the hilarious trailer.

Check it out below.

Tim Cook has told Apple employees he’s “deeply offended” by the BBC’s critical documentary Apple’s Broken Promises that investigated working conditions inside Apple’s supply Asian supply chain.

In an email obtained by The Telegraph from Apple VP Jeff Williams to the company’s workers in the UK, Williams said he and Cook are offended by the BBC’s suggestion that Apple broke promises with workers in the supply chain, and that no other company is doing “as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions.”

Williams also countered the BBC’s claims that Apple uses tin sourced through child labor in Indonesia, saying Apple is spearheading the movement to hold the tens of thousands of artisanal miners more accountable, rather than getting out of the country altogether.

We recently got our first look at the Jurassic World trailer, the spot for Universal’s fourth installment in the blockbuster dinosauring-gone-awry franchise. And while I was listening to all of that crappy dialogue and looking at the pretty graphics, something felt weird. Kind of … familiar.

I couldn’t quite figure out where the déjà vu was coming from, but something made me want to watch the trailer for the first movie again.

As it turns out, Universal is recycling a lot of the same imagery from the older ad in hopes of making us excited about the movie in an almost subliminal way. Check it out:

Jewelry maker Mat Brown is getting married, and the romantic in him is hard at work creating wedding rings out of an alloy of silver and gold called electrum.

But on the practical side of sharing a life, Brown recently created space in his kitchen with shelves as unique as his jewelry: Brown used a glow-in-the-dark resin to fill in cracks in the wooden shelves, and happily shared the luminescent process and result on his blog.