Cult of Mac

Update: Initial reports claim that China’s top three wireless carriers have already accepted 1 million iPhone 6 orders in the first six hours of availability alone.

Apple’s initial failure to secure regulatory approval for its next-gen handsets means it’s been a harder than expected slog for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to make it into China through official channels.

Today, however, marks the occasion on which the iPhone 6 family of devices officially became available for pre-order in China, ahead of the handsets landing in stores Friday, October 17.

“We are thrilled to bring iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our customers in China on all three carriers at launch,” Tim Cook said in an official Apple statement. “With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus customers will have access to high-speed mobile networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom for an incredible experience.”

Having welcomed its first Apple Store back in April, it seems that Turkey’s second brick-and-mortar Apple retail outfit is just about ready for primetime.

Whereas the first store was opened on the European side of Istanbul, in the upmarket Zorlu Shopping Center, the second store will be on the city’s Asian side, in the Akaysa Shopping center.

With GT Advanced Technologies asking permission to close down its Arizona factory after less than a year, it’s a fair question to ask where exactly Apple plans to get the sapphire displays for its forthcoming Apple Watch.

Earlier this week, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the bankruptcy filing wouldn’t affect Apple’s forthcoming wearables debut. According to a new report from Digitimes, the reason for this is that Apple has a backup plan in the form of two other sapphire cover suppliers besides GT Advanced: the South Korea-based Hansol Technics and China-based Harbin Aurora Optoelectronics Technology.

As someone who seems to care far more about the perfection of the beautiful objects he creates than about the trappings of celebrity, one word you’d be unlikely to associated with Apple’s design guru Jony Ive is “vain.”

According to a story told by Ive at yesterday’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit that’s exactly the accusation that was once levelled at him by Steve Jobs, however.

Here’s why:

GT Advanced Technologies is apparently getting out of the sapphire production game, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the start of this week.

As reported by Re/code and the Wall Street Journal, the beleaguered company is asking the court’s permission to “wind down” operations at its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona — and, yes, for those keep track, that does come less than one year after the company first announced its game-changing deal with Apple.

It’s that time of the week again — all of Cult of Mac’s best news stories and features, compiled in one place to peruse easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got heartfelt remembrances of Steve Jobs, some products we’d like to see updated along with the coming new iPads, a look at upcoming Twin Peaks in our modern era, and some hard lessons learned in running the top iPad magazine. Plus, some great new apps to look at and a reminder that the iPhone 6 continues to sell like, well, iPhones.

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine October 10 Edition, Free on iTunes

Microsoft has dropped its new Skype for Mac 7.0 update, which is now available as a free download. Requiring OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later, the update brings the popular voice and video calling service in line with the appearance of Skype’s iOS app for iPhone and iPad.

With Apple’s last keynote live stream being an utter disaster, we weren’t holding out much hope for another one in the foreseeable future. But the company has today posted a note on its website that confirms you will be able to tune into next Thursday’s iPad event via the Apple website.

While some may see Xiaomi, Samsung, and other players in the smartphone race as iPhone copycats, Jony Ive sees it as downright “theft.” That was the clear takeaway from Ive’s interview at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit today.

Apple has made it obvious that it’s making a big fashion play with the Apple Watch.

After inviting the fashion industry press to the product’s unveiling and staging a one-day showing during Paris Fashion Week, the Apple Watch is getting its own Vogue cover. Well, Vogue China, to be specific.

A young girl gets out of jail and is given back her paltry few belongings. A baseball cap, some gum, and a pin. The pin? Isn’t hers.

“What if there was a place, a secret place,” says the voiceover in this new teaser trailer for Disney’s Tomorrowland, “where nothing was impossible. A miraculous place, where you could actually change the world.”

As she touches the pin, the world around her changes. She freaks out.

Says the man in the voiceover, “You wanna go?”

If this would have happened to me when I was a young kid, enthralled with the idea of sci-fi-themed Tomorrowland as the best place to go when visiting Walt Disney’s happiest place on earth, I would have grabbed the pin in a heartbeat. Check out the trailer below.

Today Apple seeded the third golden master of OS X Yosemite to registered developers. The update is available in the Mac App Store for those already on the Yosemite GM and through the Dev Center.

It’s been only two days since the second Yosemite GM, which is curious given that Apple has typically saved the GM label for OS versions that are ready for public release. That wasn’t the case for last year’s Mavericks release, however, as it also underwent multiple GM updates.

Apple is expected to announce the public availability of Yosemite at next week’s media event, and these GM updates indicate that the company has needed to make last minute changes to the OS.

It’s been one month since Apple blasted U2’s loud, proud, and totally free new album, Song of Innocence, onto every iTunes account in the world, and now the the complaints have died down, Eddie Cue has revealed how enormously successful the free album has been.

Over 81 million iTunes users have ‘experienced’ Song of Innocence Cue told Billboard, and further divulged that downloads of the album in its entirety have topped 26 million.

First of all Microsoft announces plans for a flagship Fifth Avenue Store to compete with Apple’s iconic glass cube, and now Amazon apparently wants to get in on the brick-and-mortar game, too.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon plans to open its first physical retail store in time for Christmas on Manhattan’s 34th Street.

While that might seem counter-intuitive for a company which essentially dealt the death knell to many brick-and-mortar stores, it’s designed to be an extension of the online experience — offering customers the ability to pick up orders placed online, or return and exchange products.

We’ve known that Apple Pay is coming sometime in October, but now more details have to come to light about when banks will start supporting the service.

It’s likely that Tim Cook doesn’t exactly look forward to hearing from Carl Icahn, but it’s difficult to argue that the activist investor isn’t a massive cheerleader for Apple.

As promised, Icahn published his open letter to Tim Cook today and the big surprise (spoiler alert!) is that he feels his 45 million shares of AAPL stock are grossly undervalued.

In a message entitled “Sale: Apple Shares at Half Price,” Icahn explains why he believes Apple stock is currently trading at half its true value, instead claiming it should be priced at $203 per share — based on growth forecast for the next two years, alongside the company’s massive cash reserves.

iPhone 6 buyers were slightly disappointed to learn that Apple’s newest smartphones only come with 1GB of RAM, but according to the Chinese site GeekBar, Apple is planning to beef up performance on the iPad Air by packing 2GB of RAM onto the new tablet.

The third-party Apple repair site posted a photo on Weibo of what it claims are the new 2GB RAM chips made by Japanese manufacturer, Elpida. Take a look at the chips below :

Tired of being stuck with tiny little Emojis?

Well, the developer for new app LOLy has the solution: huge, animated emoticons that you can send to friends via text message, Facebook, or email. You can also just copy them and send along to any other text-accepting app, like Twitter, Kik, or Whatsapp.

The images are cute and fun to send, and once you’ve used the images included with the free LOLy app, you’ll want to grab a couple more packs for $0.99 each.

“I primarily designed this app for women with a focus on the 30s-50s demographic,” says app developer Gina Pell. “I had a hunch that most emoji were geared towards teens and lacked the sophistication, style, or wit that my friends or I would find interesting.”

When constructing an iOS app, there’s so much more to consider than just the source code. Your app needs to be as user friendly as possible, which is where design skills come into play.

Now you can learn to bring both coding and design skills to the table with Design + Code: Learn iOS Design & Xcode at a savings of 66% for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

How GT Advanced Technologies could have filed for bankruptcy, despite Apple’s best efforts to prop it up, is still something of a mystery — and it’ll stay like that if the company gets its way.

According to a Reuters report, GT Advanced has requested that the New Hampshire bankruptcy court currently overseeing its case put the kibosh on releasing key documents related to a “third party,” claiming that this would allow it avoid paying damages thanks to confidentiality agreements.

Massive demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus may have resulted in Apple’s eagerly anticipated 12.9-inch Retina iPad being pushed back to 2015, according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. This chimes with August reports from Bloomberg claiming that the mythical iPad Maxi would arrive by early next year.

Apple reportedly planned to produce the larger iPad in mass volume starting in December, but had to put that idea on hold so its supply chain can fulfill iPhone 6 orders — particularly for the iPhone 6 Plus, which has proven more popular than even Apple expected.

Current rumor suggests that the next iPad Air will be even thinner than the last one.

And as we know from the release of the last iPhone, when something’s thinner… well, it’s likely to get bent.

So what will happen if Bendgate comes to the iPad? Our favorite concept designer Martin Hajek imagines the next iPad Air if it proves as pliable as the iPhone 6.

There are more images after the jump. What do you think?

Update: False alarm. As we suggested was a possibility, Philips was misunderstood by a reporter. They are actually just bundling Apple TV’s with new televisions, not building in the hardware.

We don’t know exactly what Apple plans on announcing next Thursday, but one thing’s for sure: It’s not just new iPads.

The tagline for the event — “It’s been far too long” — implies that we’re about to see a new version of a product that hasn’t been updated for a while.

One strong candidate is the Apple TV. But if a (possibly premature) announcement by consumer electronics company Philips is anything to go by, Apple might not just be giving the Apple TV a spec bump. Cupertino might announce instead that it will be integrating Apple TV hardware into third-party television sets!