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.
The James Bond movies have given us plenty of memorable headquarters over the years — mostly belonging to supervillains. While the most famous one is probably Blofeld's hollowed-out volcano lair from You Once Live Twice, I’ve always been partial to Karl Stromberg’s underwater hideaway Atlantis, from Roger Moore’s best Bond entry, The Spy Who Loved Me.
Not only can the self-sufficient HQ rise to the ocean’s surface or dive below it to suit requirements, but it’s also got four helipads, plenty of luxury dining space, and a shark tank for getting rid of those pesky guests who overstay their welcome.
Photo: Eon Productions
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:
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.
LAS VEGAS — It’s hard to say what’s most amazing about Elio Motors’ three-wheeled car: its sexy frame, its extreme fuel efficiency or its jaw-dropping $6,800 price tag.
That princely sum — a little less than a 12-core Mac Pro costs — gets you a sleek two-seater that looks like something you’d see in a sci-fi flick. It’s got two wheels up front, one in back and a built-in holder for your iPad.
And on the International CES show floor here, Elio’s got a team of breezy boosters who tout its many forward-looking features with the quick-witted humor of the best car salesmen.
“For $6,800, we ought to charge you for the air in the tires,” Elio Motors rep Don Harris told Cult of Mac when we asked if the iPad was included in the purchase price.
LAS VEGAS — I hate hunting. Not because I’m morally opposed to needlessly slaughtering animals, but because I’m a horrible shot.
I couldn’t hit a deer even if it was only 100 yards away, which is why I need TrackingPoint’s Internet-connected rifles. They boast the same type of precision-guided technology that fighter jets use to blast targets from miles away, while letting your family and friends watch the slaughter from the comfort of their couches.
LAS VEGAS — When Garmin launches a $600 smartwatch just a few weeks before Apple is about to introduce its category killer, the company must be pretty confident.
Here at International CES, Garmin is showing off its new line of Fenix 3 Sports Watches — multisport fitness trackers with built-in GPS that can pair with a smartphone to show various alerts and notifications. It comes in three models, including the handsome Sapphire, which has a hard sapphire crystal face. It’s a beauty, but surely doomed, right?
When asked if Garmin was worried about the Apple Watch, due to be launched sometime this spring, a spokeswoman confidently said absolutely not. She explained that Garmin’s watches are unapologetically outdoor fitness devices built for sportspeople who want a watch to do very specific things — track workouts – and aren’t interested in beaming heartbeats or sending emojis.
“They are purpose-built,” she said, gesturing at the display. “They’re built for hiking, biking and running. Garmin has been in the wearables market for 10 years. We’re not worried at all.”
LAS VEGAS — Keith Nothacker is living proof that persistence pays off.
Nothacker is here at the giant International CES gadget show to introduce a key-size version of his pocket breathalyzer — the first personal, police-grade breathalyzer approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Connected by bluetooth to your iPhone, a quick puff into the $49 BACtrack Vio will tell you instantly if you’re too juiced to drive — or take part in any other activity best done sober.
But 13 years ago, Nothacker was fighting the FDA to bring the device to market.