Cult of Mac

Apple manufacturer Pegatron is having to expand its production capacity to deal with the epic demand being heaped on it due to the success of the iPhone 6, according to a new report.

Earlier today, Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng told investors that his company has spent upwards of $200 million in 2014 in capital expenditure to help ramp up production, and that this figure is going to increase to a massive $300 million next year.

Although a slowdown in notebook demand meant that Pegatron’s overall revenue is down 6.8% versus the same quarter in 2013, revenue from the company’s communications products (which includes the iPhone 6) grew 10% year on year. Net profit meanwhile leaped an astonishing 92% in the July-to-September period.

For those keeping track at home, this is the same time Pegatron began shipping the iPhone 6.

If you’ve always wanted a camera equipped quadcopter but balked at their typically high prices, then you’ll want to keep reading.

Back by popular demand! You can get The Extreme Micro Drone 2.0, a fully functional, high tech, camera equipped micro quadcopter for the unbeatable price of $74.99 with free shipping at Cult of Mac Deals. That’s almost half off the regular price for this model!

Apple is set to open its first office in the UK’s innovation capital Cambridge in the next couple of weeks, according to a new report.

The address of the office — which will serve as an R&D lab — is the centrally-located 90 Hills Road, not far from the offices of streaming music rival Spotify. In addition to a healthy startup scene, other major tech companies with offices in Cambridge include leading microprocessor manufacturer ARM, Microsoft, and others.

Apple is being sued by China’s second biggest insurance company over claims that it allowed a “counterfeit app” to be sold in the iTunes App Store.

The app in question misleads users into thinking it is the official app of Lufax, the leading provider of wealth and financial assets management in China, and a subsidiary of the Ping insurance group.

Ping is arguing that users in China might download the counterfeit Lufax app instead of the legitimate one, and that the ensuing risk of fraud and potential loss for Lufax’s customers is significant.

One of the longstanding complaints about iMessage is how it can stay active even when you switch to an Android phone. The result is that texts often get sucked into some sort of purgatory where they never actually reach your contacts.

Today Apple released a new web tool that permanently deregisters phone numbers from iMessage. Anyone can enter their phone number and cut all ties with Apple’s messaging platform for good.

The iOS 8 Pangu jailbreak tool was made available on the Mac today after being on Windows only for the past few weeks.

There’s bargains galore on cool stuff every day at Cult of Mac Deals.

Today we put a spotlight on four select deals. The selection is always changing though, so check out Cult of Mac Deals frequently so you don’t miss out.

This week: more rumored details of a 12-inch iPad Pro; 755 new emojis are coming soon to your iDevices; with Christian Bale out, we make our list of the actors that should definitely NOT replace him in the Sorkin-penned Jobs movie; and finally… nude or not? Do you keep your iDevices bare or covered up in a case? We ponder the pros and cons and ask the question: why are so many iPhone and iPad cases horrid pieces of garbage? We’ll share some of our faves, too.

Chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

At Cult of Mac Deals, we’re all about bringing you amazing offers on the coolest gadgets, training, and services. These deals are so awesome, they just can’t stick around forever.

Today we feature four hot deals that are ending really soon. We don’t want anyone miss out on a good thing, so have a gander and buy now before they’re gone for good.

Huzzah! It’s Friday. The end of the work week is finally here! To celebrate, you might choose to go out with some friends and have a drink or two. It’s all good. You deserve it. But, are you sure it’d be safe to drive yourself home afterward?

Now you can take the guesswork out of deciding whether you can safely operate a vehicle after drinking alcohol with the BACtrack Vio, only $42.99 for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple is working on a new pair of Beats headphones, according to leaked FCC documents. They work over Bluetooth and appear to be pretty much identical to the Solo2 headphones Beats released in May.

Remember the iPhone 6 “prototype” that was listed on eBay and almost sold for $100,000 before getting mysteriously pulled? It was relisted last week and just sold for $11,100.

The seller got what he thought was a brand new iPhone 6 from Verizon only to find what appeared to be an unfinished prototype running internal software. After he told us that he was excited to hear from Apple regarding the prototype, the listing was suddenly taken down.

Apple and its former sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies have stayed quiet about their disastrous relationship, but newly unsealed court documents reveal that the two companies never had a chance of making things work.

Judge Henry Boroff ordered the sealed documents to be opened on Tuesday, and one of the affidavits from GTAT CEO Daniel Squiller claims Apple used a “bait-and-switch” strategy that was massively one-sided. When GTAT balked at Apple’s terms, execs were told to stop trying to negotiate and “put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement.”

Imagine futuristic and innovative design engineered into a display that’s capable of changing the way work with our computers as well as the way we view what we’ve created. And what if that display is the perfect tool for energetic collaboration?

Before you say anything, check out this new video from LG Electronics, which recently collaborated with artists who are passionate about genuine creativity.

Newark International Airport is renounced for its habitually tardy flights, but in an effort to woo (and distract) flyers, United Airlines announced today that it’s planning to give its main terminal an iPad makeover.

The airline is investing $120 million into a upgrade of its main terminal at Newark, which consistently ranks as one of the worst airports in the country, despite being the 14th most busy. To spruce up the terminal, United plans to rollout iPads and other tech flourishes that have become an expectation among fliers now.

We’ve all taken our fair share of selfies, those ego-stroking quick snapshots of ourselves and others engaged in the most fun moments of our lives, right?

What would it be like, though, if various figures from historical times, like, say, the Renaissance, had camera phones? Would they take photos of themselves?

Olivia Muus at the Museum of Selfies Tumblr blog thinks they might, and set out to prove it with her series of portraits as above.

“This is a project that started when my friend (aka. my right hand) and I went to the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen,” she writes on the blog page. “I took a picture for fun and liked how this simple thing could change their character and give their facial expression a whole new meaning.”

Apparently it caught on, because in addition to her original four photos, more and more folks are contributing their own “museum selfies” to the blog. Check out more of these fascinating portraits below.

Clearing the way for its own fitness-tracking wearables, Apple has stopped selling Fitbit activity trackers in the Apple Online Store, and has begun removing them from its brick-and-mortar retail outlets also.

Fitbit’s devices have been sold in Apple Stores for the past few years; quickly racking up close to 70% of the fitness-tracking device marketshare, courtesy of a head start over competitors such as Nike’s FuelBand and Jawbone Up.

Xiaomi has quickly become the world’s third largest smartphone supplier, thanks to its cheap Apple-esques devices, and all that copying is about to pay off big time. CNBC reports that the Chinese startup is raising $1.5 billion in capitol, the largest private financing deal of since Facebook in 2011.

Negotiations haven’t been finalized, but investors include Russian Internet company DST – which backed Facebook, Airbnb, and Alibaba – with a valuation expected to top $40 billion.

It’s easy to point a finger at Xiaomi, the Chinese phone maker that clearly draws a lot of… inspiration from Apple. And there’s Samsung, of course. But there’s another copycat offender out there that’s almost just as bad, if not worse: Lenovo.

The Chinese manufacturer has a new phone coming out called the Sisley S90. Excuse the fact that the device looks just like an iPhone 6; its website is basically a carbon clone of Apple’s.

Sometimes all a penguin needs is love, says the new Christmas ad from British department store John Lewis.

There’s a young boy with a real penguin. The penguin, named Monty, loves playing with the boy: swimming, sledding, building with Legos. but there’s one thing the boy cannot provide for poor Monty, and that’s a life mate.

Watch the full ad below and be sure to stick around for a delightful Calvin & Hobbesian moment at the end.

Monument Valley is my pick for iOS game of the year; a twisting, gorgeous, MC Escher-style puzzler that’s spellbinding from start to finish. And given that it has received upwards of 1 million downloads, I’m far from alone in thinking that way.

Which is why it’s great to hear that the game is set to receive its first expansion on November 13. Titled “Forgotten Shores,” the expansion will plunge players back into the world of Princess Ida, as she travels through eight entirely new levels, with a slew of fresh puzzles to solve on her journey.

In a much-requested feature, paying Spotify users can now use their iPhone or iPad to control the songs playing on their desktop computer.

Thanks to the update, you can now easily switch between desktop and mobile — perhaps using your iPad to skip and change tracks at a party, or shutting down your laptop, and then picking up listening on your iPhone from exactly where you left off on your phone.

According a rumor in BusinessKorea, Apple is set to switch from using the problematic TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash to MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. MLC NAND was used in the 16GB version of the new iPhone 6 devices, as well as some of the 64GB models, while the 64GB and 128GB models use TLC NAND.

A few days ago we detailed reports that a small percentage of users were having issues with their new iPhones crashing and becoming stuck in a boot loop, supposedly due to the controller IC of the TLC NAND.

Although the suggestion that Apple was looking at a full-on product recall were largely debunked, the company is supposedly looking to fix the problem going forward.