Cult of Mac

Apple has retained its position as the world’s most valuable brand, according to the latest Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report. Last year Cupertino seized the No. 1 spot from Coca-Cola, a company 90 years older than Apple.

The report valued Apple’s brand at a whopping $118.9 billion, compared to the $100 billion it was valued at in 2013. In doing so it beat out Google, Coca-Cola, IBM and Microsoft, which filled out the remaining top five spots on the list.

Other tech companies which ranked highly on the top 100 list included Samsung (No. 7), Intel (No. 12), Cisco (No. 14), Amazon (No. 15) and Facebook (No. 29).

When Twin Peaks mesmerized us with its weird mix of mystery, mysticism and Americana in the early ’90s, smartphones didn’t exist. But even if the iPhone had already conquered the world, it’s possible nobody in the small Pacific Northwest town that served as the show’s setting would have owned one.

The forested fantasyland of Twin Peaks was a purposely backward backdrop upon which series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost could project their twisted vision of the darkness that lurks below the wholesome surface of American society. While the show was set in 1989, the small-town setting was a deliberate throwback to ’50s-style innocence, which was quickly shattered by the discovery of a beautiful teen’s corpse.

When Twin Peaks resurfaces in 2016 on Showtime, the cultural landscape will have changed radically from where the series left off a quarter-century ago. What kind of fascinating freak show will Lynch and Frost craft as they bring the show into the digital age?

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports about the death of PCs have been greatly exaggerated. Or they have for Apple, at least.

According to new numbers from market analysts IDC, Apple sold an impressive 4.9 million Macs in the third quarter of 2014, representing an overall increase of 8.9% year-over-year. What does that mean? In short, that Apple is now in the top five PC vendors worldwide based on number of units shipped.

Before the iPhone 6 was officially announced, developers confirmed the higher resolution of the iPhone 6 by examining the beta for iOS 8, specifically in the way apps would prefer to load a 3x image over the 2x image on existing Retina Devices.

Now the iOS 8.1 beta is out, and developers are discovering that it will similarly call up 3x versions of many iPad UI assets, implying that the iPad could be seeing a resolution bump sometime soon.

Apple is throwing its name into the hat of big name tech companies trying to even the male-female ratio within high tech, by sending hundreds of its employees to recruit students attending this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference.

The three-day conference — this year celebrating its twentieth birthday — is dedicated to closing the gender gap that exists in technical jobs in Silicon Valley. It is named after Grace Hopper, a U.S. computer scientist who was one of the first programmers of World War II’s groundbreaking Harvard Mark I computer, and invented the first compiler for a computer programming language.

Other companies attending the conference include Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

When The Magazine ceases publication this December, owner Glenn Fleishman will be closing shop on an ambitious two-year experiment in digital publishing.

It’s not a total surprise — subscriptions were already on a downward trend when Fleishman transitioned from editor to owner of The Magazine after purchasing the publication from Marco Arment last year — and it’s not a total bummer, either.

In fact, Fleishman says he’s feeling pretty good about stopping here: he’s met his obligation to provide Kickstarter backers with their one-year subscriptions, and he’s ending this fascinating experiment while it’s still profitable.

“I’m even able to pay myself an ever-declining hourly rate for my time,” said Fleishman, who spoke with Cult of Mac about what went right, what went wrong, and his feelings about pulling the plug on a project that was his full-time job for the last year and a half.

In Apple’s invitation to the company’s October 16th Town Hall event at its Cupertino headquarters, the company’s tagline is: “It’s been way too long.”

This has prompted a lot of speculation. It hasn’t been too long since Apple’s last event, which was just a month ago. And there aren’t that many other Apple products that we haven’t seen updated in the last year, with the exception of Thunderbolt displays, which frankly aren’t important enough to reference in an Apple tagline that the whole world will scrutinize.

But here’s a good theory. What if the tagline doesn’t reference a single product, but a variation of product? What if we’re about to see the return of colored Macs?

The tagline for next week’s Apple media event is “It’s been way too long.” While that might be nothing more than a sarcastic nod to the fact that Cupertino announced the Apple Watch and iPhone 6 just last month, it could be a cryptic indication that we’ll see updates to some of the company’s neglected products.

Rumors suggest new iPads and Macs will share the stage at Apple’s October 16 event, and we’ll probably get OS X Yosemite’s release date and more talk about iOS 8 and Apple Pay, but what about the rest of the product lineup?

Here’s a look at Apple products currently languishing in update hell, along with some rumors and speculation about what the future might hold.

Bendgate was the Internet’s Meme of the Week at the beginning of October, so if you’re still banging your head to come up with a funny Halloween costume idea, why not  poke fun at your own love for Apple and rollout in this DYI Bendgate costume?

The folks at Halloween Costume created this simple iPhone 6 costume you can make at home with just foam or cardboard paper. The display is slightly more forgiving in bend tests, but that might because they forgot to update their iPhone 6 to iOS 8.

If you’d rather go geeky than ghoulish this Halloween, here’s how to make your own Bendgate costume:

Bullish activist-investor Carl Icahn is back again! In a tweet sent earlier today, Icahn noted that he plans to send Tim Cook an open letter tomorrow. The contents of this letter are unknown, but Icahn promises it will be “interesting,” to say the least.

Popcorn Time’s popularity has taken off this year by bringing BitTorrent streaming into the mainstream with a lineup of apps that let users watch nearly any new blockbuster they want for free with just the tap of a finger.

We published a hack that brings the popular Netflix-alternative to iOS 8 users for the first time ever without a jailbreak, but before diving into an endless buffet of the world’s most popular movies and TV shows, you might be wondering just where this magical software came from, and most importantly: can it be trusted?

After being available to the public for more than seven months, many aspects of Popcorn Time are still a mystery – like who’s actually building it – but, here’s everything you need to know about the hot new torrenting service:

The Magazine, one of the best original technology-focused Newsstand magazines out there, is closing up shop as of December of this year.

The Magazine raised the bar for a digital-only publication, providing well-written and edited short and long non-fiction that ranged topically from Apple to personal stories with true warmth and impact. We’ll miss the twice monthly title and wish the team the best.

When asked on Twitter why the publication was ending, The Magazine’s official account cited money issues.

Smartphones made of metal are far fancier than their plastic counterparts, but like other metallic objects, they will bend with enough force. No, “Bendgate” is not exclusive to the iPhone 6 Plus; Samsung’s new Galaxy Note 4 — its first phablet to sport a metal chassis — will bend just as easily if you’re not careful with it.

Quick – grab your iPhone and take a picture of something nearby — the remote control on your coffee table, a pair of Warby Parkers, anything, really. Now take that photo and turn it into a fully editable vector graphic that can be used by a host of drawing and artistic programs across your iPhone, iPad and Mac, all via the magic of Adobe’s Creative Cloud.

That’s precisely what Adobe Shape CC does, one of a host of new apps available on your iOS device to make capturing the real world much easier than ever before.

Here’s a quick video rundown of how it works.

Apple’s plan to put sapphire glass in everything took a tumble this week when its exclusive supplier GT Advanced Technologies filed for bankruptcy, and according to Apple’s spokesman, they were just as shocked as all of us.

In a statement issued this morning to Reuters, the Apple spokesman Chris Gaither said the company was ‘surprised’ by GT’s decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but they haven’t given up on its AZ plant yet.

Your music is awesome, and awesome music deserves to be played using equipment designed to let the listener hear every guitar note, every percussive beat, and every lyric like it’s being played live in the room by the artists themselves.

Today, we feature two such high quality audio devices: The New Soundfreaq Double Spot, and the AIAIAI TMA-1 Pro Quality Headphones. Both are available at deeply discounted prices for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple isn’t quite done rolling out its new products for 2014, as the company just sent out invites to a special Town Hall event being held on its Cupertino campus on October 16th at 10AM PT.

The event comes just weeks after the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch were revealed, but the invites provide few clues about what they’re going to announce yet. The iPad Air is expected to get an update, and the rumor mill has spit out claims of a Retina iMac making an appearance too.

OS X Yosemite will also be introduced publicly at the event, and we could even see a new Mac Mini or some other goodies. All will be revealed soon when Tim Cook and the gang take the stage next Thursday. Cult of Mac will be liveblogging the event so stay tuned.

Apple is expected to announce its new iPad lineup at an event next week, but manufacturers in Vietnam have leaked a hands-ons on video of a high-quality iPad Air 2 dummy unit, that reveals all the subtle design tweaks coming to the world’s most popular tablet.

One of the biggest changes is addition of Touch ID as well as the disappearance of the the mute-switch, which has been completely removed from the left side of the iPad Air 2, while the volume buttons are a bit more recessed.

Check out the hands-on video below to see some of the other changes:

Within hours of Apple seeding its second iOS 8.1 beta to developers, dev Hamza Sood has discovered several pertinent pieces of information related to Apple Pay — including the setup screen within the Passbook app, the setup screen in the iOS 8.1 setup, and the setup screen on the iPad.

Sood previously discovered references to Apple Pay in the first iOS 8.1 beta.

Quanta Computer has reportedly started production on Apple’s ultra-thin 12-inch MacBook Air notebooks — although production challenges may mean that it doesn’t hit shelves under after Christmas.

Citing sources in Taiwan’s supply chain, the Digitimes report states that the new MacBook Air is slimmer than both the existing 11.6- and 13.3-inch models, and may well sport Retina displays.

This ambitiously slim form factor is pushing component makers to the limit, however, and currently yield rate is not satisfactory, which has resulted in low output. It is hoped that this will increase from November onwards, although this may not be enough to see the notebooks arrive for the holiday season.

The iPad may be more popular than ever among young people, but according to one analyst that same level of excitement doesn’t carry over to the forthcoming Apple Watch.

In a research note to clients, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster describes reaction to the Apple Watch among teens as “tepid,” despite the fact that Apple remains an incredibly popular brand.

According to Munster, interest in the Apple Watch actually fell over the past year — starting out at 17% interest from teens in spring, and lowering to 16% just prior to Apple’s September 9 unveiling of its wearables device.

We all know that Apple’s advertising is a cut above the competition, but sometimes Cupertino’s competitors stoop so low that all you can do is just shake your head in embarrassment.

That’s certainly the way I feel about Toshiba’s racist new ads. Released in Croatia, they feature a couple of slanted tablets that have been placed to look like squinty eyes, just like the way Asians have been stereotypically portrayed in Western media for centuries. Face palm!

New details have emerged about the surprise bankruptcy protection filing of GT Advanced Technologies, a.k.a. the company that was supplying Apple with its sapphire.

As per the Wall Street Journal, Apple agreed to lend GT Advanced a total of $578 million to help get its large sapphire factory in Arizona up and running, only for Cupertino to withhold the final $139 million payment it was due to make, for reasons which aren’t yet clear, but likely relate to the company’s failure to deliver sapphire to Apple’s satisfaction.

Which weighs more? An iPad filled with media and apps, or an iPad with no media or apps installed?

It sounds like a trick question — the digital age equivalent of “What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of rocks?”

But surprisingly, an iPad without anything installed on it does weigh less than an iPad that is full.