Cult of Mac

Tim Cook may be the Apple CEO we picture when we think of the mission to make Apple a “force for good” in the world, including enhanced accessibility for deaf users. But Steve Jobs was the person who first got the ball rolling.

During the Tampa Bay Business 100 awards last night — an event dedicated to honoring the 100 largest private companies in Tampa Bay, Florida — the CEO of a company which makes Internet video communication tools recalled how Jobs helped him use the so-called ZVRS technology with FaceTime.

Well, here’s one for the record books. Apple just rejected a developer’s app for violating its policies against pornographic content.

Nothing weird about that, except for the way that Apple went about it: by sending that developer pictures of a dude masturbating. What?

Continuity is one of the best features of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, allowing your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to all operate more seamlessly together than ever before. But there’s a problem: Continuity requires Bluetooth 4.0 LE to work, and many older Macs don’t have it.

But don’t despair. A new tool has been released makes it possible to easily hacktivate Continuity, even if Apple doesn’t want you to.

Third-party keyboards like SwiftKey and Swype vastly improve touchscreen typing in iOS 8, but sometimes you need to go that extra mile to really express yourself. Sometimes you need to send text messages in Klingon, or get your point across visually with an animated GIF or an off-the-cuff doodle.

Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, showcased a Klingon Keyboard during last week’s iPad media event, and that’s just one of the amusingly offbeat keyboards flooding the App Store in this new era of freedom.

Cult of Mac talked with the developers behind the Klingon Keyboard and other wacky alternatives for this guide to the weird world of third-party iOS keyboards. You’ll never type the same way again!

Unlike every other major smartphone company, Apple launches new flagship iPhones just once a year, meaning that whenever a customer buys a new iPhone around release time they can rest safe in the knowledge that their device is going to remain current for a whole twelve months.

Seeing the kind of success Apple has had with this model, Song Mobile has reportedly gone back to the Xerox machine drawing board, and decided to scrap their own twice-yearly policy of refreshing its flagship Xperia phone in favor an Apple-style annual overhaul.

During its earnings call yesterday Amazon gave some clues about just how spectacularly its Fire Phone business is tanking — making it seem one of the worst tech ideas since the RMS Titanic shipped without lifeboats.

How bad are we talking? At the end of its disappointing third-quarter the company still has a massive $83 million worth of unsold inventory sitting around.

It’s now taking a $170 million charge “primarily related to Fire phone inventory valuation and supplier commitment costs.”

If you are the proud owner of a new iPhone 6 or 6+, you are going to want to protect it so it will work like new for years to come. But most cases that really protect your iPhone cost more than they should. And, let’s face it, while those expensive cases protect well, they don’t exactly have a lot of style.

Now you can provide your new iPhone 6/6+ with real protection without skimping on style with The Retro Classics Nintendo & Gameboy iPhone 6/6+ Cases for a paltry $14 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Have you ever wished for an app that lets you know exactly who you’ll be sitting next to on a flight — right down to perusing your would-be neighbor’s Facebook profile to see what you have in common?

A new social check-in feature for airline app Quicket lets you choose a seat on an airplane, then immediately check who you’ll be paired with, complete with an optional link to their social media page.

Yes, it’s possibly the year’s creepiest app feature, and one that’s not even trying to hide its reason for existing. Check out this excerpt from its press release:

A crucial part of making apps involves the beta testing process, and Apple has released a new tool to help streamline the process for everyone.

After initially previewing TestFlight for third-party developers alongside iOS 8 at WWDC in June, Apple made it available for use today. Developers can now invite up to 1,000 beta testers, including non-developers, to try early builds of their apps before they hit the App Store.

Apple’s sapphire ambitions with GT Advanced Technology have been a complete disaster. But even though the plan to turn Mesa, Arizona, into the Sapphire Capital of the West failed, Apple executives are still looking for a way to repurpose GT’s new factory.

The city of Mesa and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer bent over backward to bring Apple to the Grand Canyon State, but now that GTAT plans to shut down operations, Apple says it’s still committed to helping the area.

It turns out that the rumored app that Facebook has been working on isn’t an anonymous chat app, but rather a platform that lets you create your own chat room right on your iPhone.

Basically, Rooms is an iPhone app — soon coming to Android — that lets you make tiny message boards to post photos, videos, and text to. You’ll create a different username and identity for each Room you create or visit, and you’ll let other people join via a QR code you can generate and share via the internet or in real life.

Head developer Josh Miller told The Verge, “We’re not trying to build the next Snapchat — we’re trying to build the next WordPress.”

iOS 7 made it easier than ever for iPhone users to toggle the brightness on devices through Command Center, but if you’re too lazy to go through a few flicks and swipes to adjust your screen’s brightness, we’ve discovered a way to dim your display by simply pressing your home button three times.

To activate the setting you have to do some digging through the Accessibility settings in iOS 8.1, but once you’ve set it up you’ll never go back to Control Center to adjust your brightness.

Here’s how to do it:

Email has become somewhat of a necessary evil lately, with a attempts like Google’s recent Inbox to use software to corral the over-abundance of the technology into something that makes better sense for us humans.

Designer Brendan Dawes worked with email marketing provider Mailchimp to come up with these fascinating single-use gadgets that bring email into the real world. Nim, the gadget named for a famous chimp in linguistics, is a light switch that lets you turn your email off. And on again, assumedly.

“Email is an interface we’ve been using for years,” Dawes told Wired, “so why not leverage its power some more?”

Dawes has several other gadgets he’s designed in concept. Each one tries to make the digital real and interactive. Some are more successful than others, of course, but they’re all fascinating.

One of the easiest ways Google could compete with Apple Watch is to make its Android Wear devices compatible with iOS. Some say it’ll never happen, but according to Android Wear product manager Jeff Chang, support for other platforms is something the search giant is “very interested in.”

Steve Wozniak changed the world when he co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs to create the first personal computer. Now, after revolutionizing the tech world, he’s ready to impart his wisdom upon the top tech minds in Australia.

University of Technology, Sydney announced that it’s hired Woz on as an adjunct professor for the school, where he’ll start teaching in December.

Apple’s deal with sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies went sour just one year into the company’s agreement to build a sapphire factory in Mesa, but after a tense few weeks, the companies have reached a settlement that allows them to part ways.

As part of its ‘amicable’ separation from Apple, GTAT will be expected to pay back $439 million over the next four years without interest, by selling off over 2000 ASF sapphire growth systems it purchased for the Mesa factory.

Pebble has finally begun teasing its next smartwatch ahead of an official unveiling next year, and according to Pebble evangelist Myriam Joire, it’s going to deliver “more everything.” It won’t only be prettier than its predecessors, but thinner, too — and it’ll offer a whole new level of customization.

One of the things that makes a Mac a Mac is the beautiful startup sound it makes when you turn it on: a soothing, sonorous noise that sounds like electronic harp strings being plucked as you enter the gardens of Zen.

But it wasn’t always this way. When the original Macintosh was released, the startup sound was horrible. Yet it wasn’t Steve Jobs who fixed it. It was an unknown sound engineer who hated it with such a passion that he defied his bosses and literally snuck it onto the Mac.

For the last decade or so, Apple has made some of the most beautifully designed devices on the planet. But because those devices are technology, not furniture or art, they have an incredibly short half-life in our home. Yet these are still classic designs that, in any other context, we might keep around for decades.

That’s why I like this bench built by Klaus Geiger.

Tim Cook wasn’t kidding when he said that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were proving to be Apple’s most popular iPhones of all time.

Two new reports coming out of Apple’s Chinese supply chain today demonstrate the extent to which this is true. According to one report, Apple’s Chinese production line is on course to ship a total of 50 million iPhone 6 devices by the end of 2014 — referring only to the 4.-inch iPhone 6 and not including the 6 Plus.

By comparison, for the calendar fourth quarter of 2013, Apple sold a total of 51 million iPhones all-in, which itself marked an all-time quarterly record.

As they so often do when new Apple products land, the gadget vivisectionists at iFixIt have used one of their trademark spudgers to crack open a brand iPad Air 2, and there’s at least one interesting finding.

All the iPad Air’s specs have improved this generation except for one critical thing: battery.

First arriving on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) way back in 1992, Final Fantasy V is one of the greatest RPGs ever made — and thanks to a new update by Square Enix, its iOS port is now more playable than ever.

Following on from Apple’s Handoff feature for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, the update similarly encourages you to pick up play on whichever iOS device is closest to you with a new iCloud save syncing feature. What this means is that game data saved using iCloud can now be shared across devices, so you can enjoy working through Final Fantasy V on an iPad at home and an iPhone while on the move.

Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped by an iPhone factory in Zhengzhou yesterday during a trip in China, and not only did he spend a few minutes having a laugh with an assembly line worker, he even tweeted a picture about it.

There have been plenty of rumors and today we have confirmation: Christian Bale will play Steve Jobs in the upcoming movie adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s bestselling 2011 biography.

Confirmation of the casting was made by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) during an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang for an upcoming edition of Studio 1.0.

“We needed the best actor on the board in a certain age range and that’s Chris Bale,” Sorkin said. He went on to observe that Bale didn’t have to audition for the role, although “there was a meeting.”

The film is said to begin shooting in the next couple of months, with Slumdog Millionaire‘s Danny Boyle attached to direct.