Cult of Mac

Here in 2014, news of a new Apple Store in the U.S. may be nothing special, but when you hear that Cupertino plans to open 25 retail stores in China in the next two years you sit up and pay attention!

According to Tim Cook, who was interviewed during his current China visit, Apple is set to greatly increase its retail presence in the country — from 15 stores currently, to 40 stores in 2016.

Cook also discussed China’s potential as the biggest Apple market in the world, saying that, “In the future China will become Apple’s biggest revenue contributor. It’s just a matter of time.”

Update: The leaked Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer has been pulled from several sources, but once the toothpaste is out of the tube, even superheroes can’t put it back. Marvel Entertainment has responded with an appropriately cheeky tweet (see below) and released the official trailer in HD.

It’s hard not to contain our excitement for the upcoming Joss Whedon joint, Avengers: Age of Ultron, especially with this new leaked trailer. It’s not the high-quality one you’ll likely see when Marvel Studios puts the official trailer up on YouTube, but it definitely looks legit.

The trailer gives us our first glimpse of baddie Ultron, voiced by James Spader, and features some creepy use of the Pinnochio song, “I Got No Strings” — a reference to the fact that Ultron is no longer a puppet, perhaps?

Check it out below:

An ultra-rare working 1976 Apple-1 computer — thought to be one of the first 50 ever produced — has sold at auction for an incredible $905,000, between twice and three times the expected asking price.

The computer was part of Bonhams History of Science auction in New York City. It sold to the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, a museum dedicated to showcasing the ingenuity and innovation that helped shape America.

The machine had been expected to fetch “just” $300,000 to $500,000.

“It’s very rare to be able to collect the beginning of something, but the Apple-1 is exactly that,” Henry Ford curator Kristen Gallerneaux told Cult of Mac, speaking after being onsite at the auction earlier today.

Apple announced its newest lineup of iPads last week without giving a specific launch date, but if you didn’t get in on the pre-order action you can just go to your local Apple Store and pick up a new unit starting today.

Pre-orders deliveries for the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 began earlier today, but Apple retail staff has informed Cult of Mac that stores should receive their first shipments this afternoon, even though most Apple Stores are still waiting for their display units.

Google’s got a new way to manage email: Inbox. It’s a refinement of Google’s already pretty rad Gmail service, and it’s headed up by the folks, like Jim Denis, who used to work for Sparrow, a fantastic Mac email app that was acquired by Google in 2012.

“Built on everything we learned from Gmail,” says the Inbox announcement, “Inbox is a fresh start that goes beyond email to help you get back to what matters.”

Apple appears to have acquihired the small team behind Pin Drop, a location-bookmarking app set to close down at the end of the month.

Based on redacted information, Cult of Mac has reason to believe that at least some members of Caffeinehit, the London-based development team behind Pin Drop’s iOS and Android apps, will soon be part of Apple’s iOS engineering team.

Chances are, you’ve got a camera within a few feet of you at all times. Cameras are built into our smart phones, tablets, and many of us have have dedicated cameras for our photographic needs. With all these cameras, shouldn’t we know how to take fantastic pictures?

That’s why Cult of Mac Deals, for a limited time only, is offering Adobe KnowHow: Learn Photography From The Best at a shocking 87% off, only $29.99.

If you’ve been happily tapping up charges with your iPhone 6 using Apple Pay, you might want to double-check your bank statement.

Some early Apple Pay users with Bank of America accounts have reported that Apple’s new tap-to-pay solution has become a huge headache by charging their accounts twice for a single purchase. Bank of America has confirmed to Cult of Mac that it is issuing refunds for duplicate Apple Pay charges.

Thanks to how apps can hook into each other with Extensibility in iOS 8, third-party developers are able to rival the systemwide functionality of Apple’s stock apps like never before.

So is the case with Flexibits, maker of the popular calendar app Fantastical. In a big 2.2 update today, Fantastical has not only been optimized for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but it’s received a number of iOS 8-only features.

Here’s a confession: I was terrible at math in school. From Algebra 1 on, I just couldn’t keep the various symbols, numbers, and denominators I was faced with straight, and so I flunked pretty much every test.

But I grew up in the 90’s. If I was in high school today, I’d never fail a math test again. I’d use the new iOS app PhotoMath instead, which literally solves math problems like magic.

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to have every episode of The Simpsons ever streamable on your iPhone or iPad, there is no longer any reason to, as a certain yellow-skinned tyke might say, “have a cow.”

You can now stream the complete Simpsons archive over an iOS app, no matter where you are. But there’s a catch.

Apple’s great at hopping into new markets just as they’re set to explode, and it seems that the upcoming Apple Watch is no different.

Despite mixed reports about consumer interest, research firm IHS thinks demand for sensor-equipped wearable tech devices is going to see a major acceleration starting next year — largely thanks to Cupertino. Just how much of an increase are we talking about? Try 7x the size of the existing market by 2019, according to analysts.

“Similar to the iPhone and iPad, IHS expects the Apple Watch will set a de facto standard for sensor specifications in smartwatches,” says Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst, MEMS & Sensors. “Most other wearable [original equipment manufacturers] will follow Apple’s lead in [incorporating multiple sensors into devices] — or will add even more sensors to differentiate.”

The iPad Air 2 is starting to hit doorsteps for preorders today, and already, the benchmarks are blowing us away, with an early Geekmark score showing that the iPad Air 2 is the fastest, most powerful tablet out there. Period.

But that’s not the surprising thing about the iPad Air 2.

Tim Cook has met with a top Chinese government official in Beijing, to discuss the reported “man-in-the-middle” phishing attack on iCloud users in China, reportedly being carried out by authorities.

While very few details of the meeting have been made public, it is reported by the Chinese media that it took place on Wednesday in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing complex which houses China’s central government.

Cook and Vice Premier Ma Kai discussed user privacy and “strengthening cooperation” going forward.

If you’ve been holding out on upgrading to iOS 8 until a jailbreak is available, your wait is over — courtesy of Team Pangu.

Currently available for Windows only, the promised iOS 8 and 8.1 jailbreak works on devices up to and including the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and iPad Air 2, as well as earlier devices.

Apple may be out-earning its rivals, but there’s one place it’s lagging behind: political lobbying.

While companies like Google and Facebook continued to pour millions of dollars into influencing U.S. lawmakers during Q3, Apple spent a fraction of this sum.

According to recently published data, between July and September Google spent $3.94 million on lobbying, while Facebook spent $2.45 million. Apple, for its part, spent just over $1 million — mainly pushing issues related to consumer health legislation, transportation of lithium ion batteries, international taxes, e-books, medical devices, and copyright.

If you’ve got a business that Apple Maps just keeps on getting wrong, great news. Apple has just launched a new portal for U.S. businesses to add or edit their listings within Apple Maps.

SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty-five years ago, a bike messenger sat in his garage and used an old-school Singer sewing machine to stitch his mark on the world.

That bike messenger was Rob Honeycutt, and the bags he made in 1989 were called Scumbags. They were designed for use by the city’s notorious two-wheeled delivery riders, whose fashion sense tended toward crude cutoffs, T-shirts and hoodies.

A year later, Honeycutt changed his operation’s name to Timbuk2, and the company’s been crafting an increasingly ambitious line of bags ever since, expanding far beyond the world of tattooed dudes on fixies.

“Timbuk2 wasn’t going to the office 25 years ago,” CEO Patti Cazzato told Cult of Mac during a recent tour of the company’s Mission district factory, where all of Timbuk2’s custom bags are made.

Preorders for the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 will start arriving on doorsteps as soon as tomorrow, and now a flood of early reviews has hit the web.

There’s a general theme throughout these dozen or so reviews of Apple’s newest tablets: boring. While these are unequivocally the best iPads every (like every year since the original), that’s not quite enough anymore.

Apple is in the market for a new sapphire supplier.

GT Advanced Technologies and Apple have reached an agreement that will see the two companies amicably parting ways, after the sapphire supplier filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month.

I typically try out a new product for review without reading any of the documentation or media relations stuff that the folks who send us such things want us to look at. I want to have as pristine an experience as possible. Sometimes that leads to little surprises.

I put these new Astro Gaming A38 Bluetooth headphones on my head last week, and paired them with my iPhone to play a little music. After a few songs of various genres, I stopped the tunes and took these off my noggin. I suddenly realized that my girlfriend had been blending up a protein shake in the nearby kitchen. It was surprising because I honestly could not hear it with the headphones on my head and playing music at a relatively low volume – and our blender is really loud.

While they’re great for music, these are also fantastic sounding headphones that help you immerse yourself into any game on your iPad or iPhone, cutting down on the auditory distractions from the outside world when they’re powered up.

Recent reports of iCloud phishing attempts in China illustrate just how important it is always verify that you’re logging into legitimate websites before you enter your precious passwords.

To help, Apple today outlined how users can protect themselves from phishing attacks, in which bad guys pose as legitimate entities in an attempt to gain sensitive data on the web. Apple’s simple PSA page shows how web surfers can verify the authenticity of any website.

Apple Pay is set to completely change the way we pay for things at the register, and to reward early adopters’ use of the new mobile payments system, Apple is planning to launch a new Apple Pay loyalty program in time for the holidays.

The rumored Apple Pay loyalty program supposedly wasn’t slated to launch until 2015  (to go with the launch of Apple Pay 2.0), but after market demand was stronger than expected, Bank Innovation reports the program could be here in time to help you with your Christmas Shopping.

Wondering how many solar eclipses there have been since the day you were born? How about when your next birthday on Mercury is? Perhaps you want to know how much Earth’s population has changed since your very special day.

You can answer these questions and more at BBC Earth with this interactive tool — you just plug in your birthdate, height, and gender, and you’ll get all sorts of interesting facts about our planet, as it relates to your lifespan.

“Find out how,” says the BBC site, “since the date of your birth, your life has progressed; including how many times your heart has beaten, and how far you have travelled through space.”

Heady stuff, indeed.

Apple mysteriously didn’t mention an exact launch date for the iPad Air 2 or the iPad mini 3, but if you pre-ordered your new tablet last week, it could be on your doorstep as soon as tomorrow.