Cult of Mac

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.

iPad users generated a massive 79.9% of North American tablet-based Web traffic over the month of September, according to a new report by Chitika Insights.

This number is down slightly from the 81% figure the iPad represented one year ago, although the iPad actually gained 1.9% points since July 2014 — the largest quarter-over-quarter usage share increase of any tablet brand out there.

Slo-mo videos have become my favorite new thing to shoot with the iPhone 6 Plus now that Apple added the ability to spit out gorgeous vids at 240 FPS, but my slo-mo addiction comes at a heavy cost: storage space.

The best smartphone camera in the world doesn’t mean jack if your 16GB iPhone can’t hold another 30 second video, so the guys at Leef have come up with a brilliant solution to ensure you never run out of room for all your video. It’s called the iBridge, and while it might look an ordinary USB-stick, it has the extraordinary ability to add storage to both your iPhone and Mac.

From answering trolls online to busting out near-fluent Mandarin in front of a surprised audience, Mark Zuckerberg’s all about defying expectations these days. That trend continued yesterday, as he gave a reasonable (and even Steve Jobsian) answer about why Facebook moved messaging out of its main app and into a standalone Messenger one.

Telling the audience at his first public Q&A that, “I’m grateful for hard questions” and “it keeps us honest,” Zuck noted how:

My math-averse daughter wanted to cheat on her algebra homework. So we downloaded PhotoMath, a free app that lets you take a picture of your mathematical and algebraic equations, solving them for you and showing the steps to the solution.

PhotoMath has been at the top of the App Store charts for a couple of weeks, hitting number one on the Education, Kids Games and Top Apps lists. Small wonder, as it seems like a great way to get out of doing homework.

However, despite the concerns of some parents and teachers, apps like PhotoMath just won’t help when it comes to cheating — they’re far too limited. Still, it’s a promising technology that, once it matures, might actually turn into the type of wonder tool for education we’ve long been promised, turning our iOS devices into useful educational tools that will help kids actually learn math, rather than simply giving them a shortcut to homework answers.

The online reality of the internet is a lot like real life. There’s a great deal of good out there, but hiding in the shadows is a criminal element that wishes to do you harm.

Get the tools to protect yourself from online thugs with The Cyber Security Developer Bundle, 88% off for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

Today Apple quietly added a new feature to the developer beta version of iCloud.com. Photos can now be uploaded directly from the browser to a user’s iCloud Photo Library, which was introduced with iOS 8.1.

Since Apple isn’t releasing its new Photos app for OS X until next year, this could very well be the only way to upload photos to iCloud from a desktop for months.

Today’s good news: a new Toy Story movie.

Pixar just announced that it’s releasing the fourth installment of Toy Story in June 2017. The movie will be directed by John Lasseter, the legend who directed the first two movies and currently serves as Chief Creative Officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Toy Story 3 came out in 2010 and earned nearly $1.1 billion worldwide at the box office. No plot or character details about Toy Story 4 have been revealed yet.

Via: Variety

iOS 8 has been technically jailbroken since October 22, but it’s taken weeks to get it polished enough for Cydia, the jailbreak alternative to the App Store.

Now that things are “stable enough,” Cydia creator Jay Freeman has flipped the switch to start allowing the sale of iOS 8 tweaks and themes.

Today CBS News added a new channel to the Apple TV. The network’s CBSN channel is the first of its kind to offer live, anchored coverage without a cable subscription.

CBS is now seriously competing with Fox, ABC, CNBC and other competitors on the Apple TV with a mix of streaming news and on-demand content.

In this new, three-minute-long trailer, Warner Bros. teases us with the epic conclusion to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film trilogy.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies will complete the story of Bilbo Baggins’ journey with Thorin Oakenshield and his company of dwarves as they reclaim the wealth of their homeland. But the heroes also must deal with Smaug (that pesky dragon they unleashed in the last movie) and take care of that badass orc that’s been following them from the get-go.

Check out the full trailer below.

Principal photography has wrapped for the much-anticipated Star Wars Episode VII, and to celebrate the crew has revealed the movie’s official title: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Aaron Sorkin was tapped by Sony to write the ultimate Steve Jobs movie, but the Oscar winning screenwriter says despite tons of other movies and books written about Jobs, Hollywood could make 10 more Steve Jobs movies and they’d all be worth watching.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Sorkin discussed his relationship with the Apple co-founder, revealing that Steve actually tried to recruit Sorkin to help write a Pixar movie, and another time Steve hooked him up with an pre-released MacBook Pro because Sorkin told the media he’s written everything on a Mac.

Sorkin says he and Steve only talked three times, one of which was to help him fix a couple typos in his famous Stanford commencement speech from 2005, but Sorkin says the message and the words were 100% Steve.

Watch the full interview below:

Microsoft announced new versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are coming to the iPhone today, giving users more tools to create and edit documents, so you can finally get some ‘real work’ done on that giant iPhone 6 Plus screen.

The new Office apps for iPhone are pretty much exactly like the iPad versions which were released in March, only they’ve been optimized for portrait mode, and unlike the old Microsoft Office Mobile app for iPhone, users will finally be able to do a whole lot more than just edit text.

In an interesting Wall Street Journal profile of Beats founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, the two music industry vets and current Apple employees describe their new $70m undergraduate academy at the University of Southern California as a training ground for future Apple and Beats employees.

“We wanted to build a school that we feel is what the entertainment industry needs right now,” Iovine is quoted as saying. “There’s a new kid in town, and he’s brought up on an iPad from one and a half years old. But the problem with some of the companies up north [in Silicon Valley] is that they really are culturally inept.”

“I’ve been shocked at the different species in Northern and Southern California—we don’t even speak the same language. The kid who’s going to have an advantage in the entertainment industry today is the kid who speaks both languages: technology and liberal arts. That’s what this school is about.”

From Klingon to GIF-based keyboards, we’re seeing some really interesting examples of new third-party keyboards with iOS 8.

Here’s a particularly exciting one, though: a keyboard which translates messages into other languages as you type. It does the opposite, too, which means that if you receive a text message in say, French, it can instantly translate it into English, or your choice of language. Neat, right?

Like many movie fans out there I couldn’t be more excited about the release of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, a spectacular-looking space epic from one of the greatest filmmakers working today. While I’m not going to get to see it until this weekend, its release gave me reason to revisit some of the best movie space epics in history — and dwell on a few of the worst, too.

Are you ready for a guide to both the best and worst the galaxy has to offer? Check out our picks after the hyper jump:

WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging platforms on the planet, finally offers one of the most basic messaging features — the ability to tell you when your messages have been read. The app will now display blue checks instead of green ones next to messages that recipients have seen.

A CNN political commentator has hit back at reports that he was using an iPad on air, instead of the Microsoft Surface he was supposed to be using.

The gaffe occurred during the coverage for the 2014 Mid-Term elections, when it was revealed that CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper and others were furiously, err, tapping away at iPads behind the sold wall of Surface Pro 3s that Microsoft had issued the network.

Tapper doesn’t deny that he was using an iPad, but argues that he was just using it for tweeting, while happily using his Microsoft tablet for everything else.

“I liked [the Surface] fine, I just wanted to keep the screen up with exit polls,” Tapper argued on Twitter, branding the online response “idiotic” and a “false meme.”

The public release of OS X Yosemite rolled out three weeks ago, and since then Apple has been gradually bringing all of its own services in line with the look and feel of its new operating system.

Having previously tweaked the iTunes Store and its iWork suite, Apple is now updating the Mac App Store, adding the thinner fonts, simple white backdrop and gray separators synonymous with Yosemite.

As of now, only some tabs feature the newer design, while not everyone is seeing the redesign. Some users have reported not seeing it at all, others are seeing it intermittently, and yet others permanently. You can launch the Mac App Store from Yosemite to see if you currently reflect the update.

AppleCare has started to rollout to enterprise, thanks to Cupertino’s new strategic partnership with IBM.

(Updated with Apple statement below.)

A new class of malware targeted at OS X and iOS is spreading like wildfire in China, according to new research by Palo Alto Networks. Dubbed WireLurker, the trojan hides itself in apps distributed through a third-party Chinese app store for OS X and side-loads itself onto iOS devices via USB.

What sets WireLurker apart from other malware is that it is capable of infecting non-jailbroken iOS devices, and it heralds “a new era in malware attacking Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.”

Apple’s newest smartphone, the iPhone 6, is here.

You could get one for free by entering The Epic iPhone 6 Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals.  But you had better hurry, because there is precious little time left to take advantage of this contest.

MXC has been in full damage control mode ever since its partners began blocking Apple Pay at stores, and while the consortium behind CurrentC claims there aren’t any fees for supporting Apple Pay, its partners should think twice before defecting.

In an interview with The Verge, MXC CEO Dekkers Davidson revealed what happens to stores that ignore the Apple Pay ban, stating merchants have to ultimately make the best decision for their businesses, but there are consequences for breaking ranks.