Cult of Mac

The seemingly never-ending saga of Apple vs. CurrentC may come to an end sooner than expected. When CVS and Rite Aid turned off NFC support to block Apple Pay, it became clear that were backing CurrentC, a rival mobile wallet service coming in 2015.

Despite repeatedly denying any sort of enforced Apple Pay ban, MCX, the consortium behind CurrentC, is holding its merchant partners to an exclusivity agreement. The good news is that the agreement is set to expire in less than a year.

Samsung as good as pioneered the “bigger is better” approach to mobile device display size, so what do you do when Apple plans to launch a 12.9-inch iPad to compete with your Galaxy Note Pro 12.2? Build a bigger tablet, of course.

According to new reports coming out of Korea, Samsung is planning to launch a new 13-inch tablet by the end of the year. Although details currently remain scarce, it is reported that Samsung may adopt an LCD display for its 13-inch tablet, rather than the Super AMOLED used for devices like the Galaxy Tab S series.

Racial diversity has been a problem for emoji for years now, but the Unicode Consortium has finally proposed a new solution that will add more than 755 new character options to the little pictograms that have quickly replaced all our words.

Five new skin tones will added to the mostly white faces of the emoji character set, according to a draft for Unicode Version 8.0 that will hopefully get adopted pretty quickly to get, after Apple and others began to push for characters that reflect the diversity of its users.

Amazon Prime has always been a pretty incredible deal, and it just keeps getting better. As of today, Amazon is giving all subscribers unlimited photo storage at no extra cost with a new cloud-based backup service called Prime Photos.

Apple may be blamed for hurting Finland with its success, but according to new figures from Australia’s Bureau of Statistics the popularity of the iPhone can help rescue economies, too.

Retail turnover in the country jumped 1.2% in September, compared to a minuscule 0.1% increase the month before. What could have prompted this?

“This figure was influenced by the release of the iPhone 6 during the month,” noted the Bureau of Statistics in its press release. “The increase in electrical and electronic goods retailing represents about half of the total Australian sales movement of 1.2 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms.”

Competition is heating up between Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to build Apple’s next generation A9 chips, according to a new report citing industry sources.

TSMC is currently manufacturing the majority of the A8 chips used in Apple’s latest iPhones, thanks to a deal inked in 2013. Samsung, however, is keen to reestablish its previous position as the sole provider of Apple’s A-series chips — and is willing to lower its quotes to do so.

Samsung is also pushing the fact that it can provide other services to Apple, including the manufacture of flash memory and backend services in-house.

Shortly after releasing the OS X 10.10.1 Yosemite beta to developers, Apple has followed up with the first developer build of iOS 8.1.1, comprising various bug performances and performance tweaks.

The bug fixes mean that iOS 8.1.1 performance is improved on both the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, which are two of the oldest generation devices to support Apple’s latest mobile OS. There have also been minor tweaks to the Health App.

The beta release of iOS 8.1.1 comes roughly two weeks after Apple officially launched iOS 8.1 to the public. The biggest change in iOS 8.1 was Apple Pay, meaning that iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners can now use their Touch ID at NFC registers to pay for retail goods. The update also boasted SMS relays to your Mac, an Instant Hotspot feature, iCloud Photo Library to replace Photo Stream, and the return of Camera Roll.

Window’s Blue Screen of Death was the tech world’s joke du jour for poking fun at Microsoft’s crash-friendly software, and while many believed the blue screen had finally died, it looks like Windows Phone is carrying on the proud tradition of the horrific error notification.

Ars Technica tech editor, Peter Bright tweeted the picture above of his Nokia Windows Phone with the fatal error screen. Other Twitter users have also posted shots of their Windows Phone afflicted by the BSoD ‘process initialization failed’ error.

The Blue Screen of Death has been around since the days of Windows NT and was updated to include a sad face emoticon for the disastrous release of Windows 8. Microsoft is uniting its mobile and desktop operating systems with the upcoming release of Windows 9, but rather than coming up with a new error screen, it looks Redmond decided it’s still better than an insanely annoying spinning beach ball.

Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the Code Black Drone with HD camera, back by popular demand!

You will have non-stop fun with the exclusive and limited edition Code Black Drone, which can be pre-ordered now for half price, just $89 with free shipping, at Cult of Mac Deals.

The first beta of OS X Yosemite has been seeded to developers this afternoon since the operating system was released to the public last month.

Apple released OS X 10.10.1 beta with build number 14B17 to registered developers as an App Store update, and should be available via direct download in the Mac Dev Center later today.

The release notes don’t mention any major new features, but Apple has added several improvements for WiFi Connectivity. The Yosemite beta also adds fixes for Exchange support to Mail, as well as some updates to Notification Center and general bug fixes overall.

As vinyl enjoys a resurgence in interest and availability, it’s no small wonder that the publisher of Grand Theft Auto V is creating a special boxed set of tunes on physical media.

The six-disc vinyl and three-disc CD box sets will include 59 tracks from the game, including the original score, songs from the in-game radio stations (including real recording artists like A$AP Rocky and Tyler), and even some new content from DJs in the game, including Big Boy, DJ Pooh, Nathan and Stephen from WAVVES, Kenny Loggins, Twin Shadow and Cara Delevingne. The soundtrack is already available digitally through iTunes, but the new collection will come out on CD and vinyl in a 5,000 copy collector’s edition run. You’ll be able to grab a copy starting Decemebr 9, though no price point has been revealed.

Christian Bale says he’s not the Steve Jobs we deserve.

The actor was tapped to star as the iconic Apple CEO, but has reportedly turned down the part in Sony’s upcoming biopic that is also rumored to star Seth Rogen as Woz, with sources saying he doesn’t think he’s fit for the part.

Google’s been hard at work overhauling all of its apps for Android 5.0 Lollipop, and we’ve already seen the fruits of its labor inside the latest versions of Gmail, Google+, and Google Play. The next big update will be for the search giant’s Calendar app, and it will deliver a gorgeous new look and awesome new features.

This post is brought to you by Withings, creator of the Withings Aura smart sleep system.

Every morning when you wake up, do you hit the snooze button? You’re not the only one. According to a Withings sleep survey, over half Americans do. And even more Brits. A lot of people even think about smashing their alarm.

A lack of overall sleep and an abrupt awakening when your alarm clock or smartphone goes off in the morning are causing a lot of people to feel tired and unrested throughout the day, affecting their well-being and productivity.

Most people would prefer not to wake up to the sound of a loud noise, and rather let their internal body clock pull them out of sleep naturally in the morning. Now French connected health company Withings has developed the Aura, a cleverly designed sleep system that is set to provide a smooth wake-up experience and put an end to the snooze button.

The dream of replacing all the pieces of plastic in your wallet with your smartphone got a little closer to reality today as Starwood hotels announced that its new keyless entry system – SPG Keyless – is rolling out to hotels worldwide.

Guests at Aloft, Element, and W Hotels around the globe can now use their iPhone and the SPG app to skip the hotel front desk altogether, walk straight to their room, and unlock it, no key required.

Southwest Airlines can’t guarantee you’ll get the seat you want on your next flight, but starting this week you’ll be slightly more entertained wherever you end up, as the airline is introducing free Beats Music streaming on flights.

Beginning today, Southwest will provide all WiFi-enabled aircraft with a custom curated Beats Music experience that’s free for all flyers.

A group of banks added support for Apple Pay today, including USAA, PNC Bank, US Bank, Barclaycard and Navy Federal Credit Union.

USAA and PNC had previously said Apple Pay wouldn’t be supported until November 7, but their cards have already started working in Passbook as of this morning.

Just weeks after a rare Apple-1 computer sold for record numbers at auction, another operational unit of Apple’s first ever computer is set to go under the gavel.

Christie’s is expecting the machine to fetch more than $500,000 at auction in December, which doesn’t seem unrealistic when you consider that the previous Apple-1 mentioned fetched a whopping $905,000.

A monument to Steve Jobs has been removed from St. Petersburg in the aftermath of Tim Cook publicly coming out as gay.

While Cook’s eloquent and poignant essay was largely greeted by celebrations online, in Russia it prompted bigoted comments from politician Vitaly Milonov, whose government has now insisted the Jobs statue be removed as further punishment.

Apple is reportedly planning an investor call for later today ahead of a possible bond sale, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

This would be the third bond sale in the company’s history, and may be the first in which Apple issues bonds in euros rather than dollars.

In its earnings call in April, Apple acknowledged that the majority of its cash and securities are held offshore. Since repatriating this money would incur heavy U.S. taxation, it’s cheaper for Apple to raise money through bond sales. The euro in particular represents a very good deal, since it is currently at its lowest rate relative to dollar-denominated debt in six years.

Almost two decades after Apple shuttered its Newton MessagePad platform, a new video compares the device’s handwriting recognition to today’s touchscreen-based typing on the iPhone.

The fact that you had to plug your Newton into your Mac to manually transfer information makes it seem incredibly outdated. But the handwriting recognition, which was way ahead of its time in 1993, still impresses in terms of speed, as shown in the video below

Microsoft has been taking so many shots at Apple as of late that you could be forgiven for thinking we’ve slipped back through a wormhole to 1996. This tendency doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, either, if you go on Microsoft’s latest ad.

Called “Let’s dance,” the ad compares Lenovo’s Yoga 3 Pro convertible laptop to Apple’s MacBook Air, showing them side-by-side and comparing them on size and features. And, wouldn’t you know it, Microsoft’s preferred option comes out on top.

It’s been another busy week at Cult of Mac Deals. There are a ton of killer deals being offered right now, and it’s easy to miss some of the ones we’ve written about.

Today we highlight some of the best we have right now. You can always go to the Cult of Mac Deals page to learn about all the deals available to you right now.