Cult of Mac

Ready for your next nerdy dose of Star Wars awesomeness? Lucasfilm Animation and Disney have put together an all-new animated adventure that takes place 14 years after the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (the third and final prequel in the Star Wars saga) and five years before Star Wars: A New Hope (the original movie that came out in 1977).

If you have an Apple ID, you can check out the first regular episode of the series right now on iTunes for free. How’s that for a deal?

Check out the extended trailer for the Star Wars: Rebels series below.

It’s not that Apple’s emoji keyboard is necessarily bad, but it could be better. If you’re a hardcore emoji user, you know that it’s a pain to scroll through and find the perfect emoji in the moment.

Maybe you’re looking for the perfect funny face or food item for the conversation. To take your emoji game to the next level, you need a third-party keyboard called Emoji++.

Nestled among the vintage globes, surgical drawings and reflecting telescopes at Bonhams New York’s upcoming “History of Science” auction are spectacular several Apple-related goodies.

Most impressive of all of these is an Apple 1 motherboard, circa 1976. Described as being in “superb overall condition,” this is the first computer ever built by Steve Wozniak under the Apple banner, prior to the far more successful and mainstream Apple II.

Only 200 units of the Apple I were ever made, although just 63 are thought to still survive — and only 15 of these are documented as having worked since 2000.

This is one of them.

Will the Apple TV become a hub for controlling your smart home in the near future? Signs are pointing to yes.

Apple is quietly testing HomeKit support for its TV set-top box with developers. The functionality can turn an Apple TV into an always-conntected bridge device for communicating between hardware peripherals that support Apple’s HomeKit framework.

Apple has seeded a second Gold Master candidate of OS X Yosemite to developers this afternoon, following the release of iOS 8.1 beta 2 earlier this morning.

OS X 10.10 Yosemite GM Candidate 2 is now available in the Mac Dev Center and the Mac App Store to members of Apple’s developer program. Xcode 6.1 GM seed 2 was also released this morning, along with an Apple TV Software beta update.

The idea that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus would have a sapphire display was one of the most widely reported errors leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s next gen iPhones.

But while plenty of time was spent discussing the possibility, very few people made any money through the speculation — except for Tom Gutierrez, CEO of sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies, which just filed for bankruptcy protection.

According to the Wall Street Journal, one day before Apple revealed its new iPhones wouldn’t feature sapphire screens after all, the boss of the struggling company cashed in more than 9,000 shares of GT stock for an average price of $17.38 — bringing in a total of $160,000.

Since February this year, Gutierrez has sold close to 700,000 shares in his company, valued at more than $10 million.

Got three minutes? Then you can travel Turkey, north to south, through this shifting and cunningly edited short film, called Watchtower of Turkey, by Leonardo Dalessandri.

He traveled over 3500 kilometers in 20 days, filming the lush landscapes and varied peoples of this middle eastern land, across eight different regions and cities in the Republic of Turkey, a land that has been inhabited since the paleolithic age.

“I’ve crossed Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Ephesus, Istanbul, Konya; and tasted baklava, kunefe, doner, the turkish tea; and got the chance to meet the soul of Turkey, its people,” writes Dalessandri on the video page, “and got their smiles and their hospitality.”

You’ve got to see this short film below.

If you’ve always wanted to own a dilapidated bungalow on Detroit’s East Side, but all you have is an iPhone 6, today is your lucky day: A Motor City homeowner is so desperate to get rid of his house that he’ll trade it to you for an iPhone 6.

Just about everything in the brick colonial listed for sale needs to be demolished, but the house does feature a basement, garden and city views from the second-floor balcony. The seller of the house lives overseas, and after failing to sell the home for months, he’d gladly accept the greatest smartphone on Earth as payment for his nearly worthless property.

Take a look of the 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath residence below:

Facebook has drawn criticism for its mandated use of real names on its social network, but to satisfy demands of anonymity – and take on Snapchat – the New York Times reports that the company plans to release a stand-alone app that lets you chat without using your real name.

In the ultra-competitive world of mobile payments, Square Cash continues to set itself apart as the quickest and easiest way to send and receive money.

Now money transfers are easier than ever. Thanks to a new feature called Nearby Payments, you can use the app to send and receive cash over Bluetooth.

Apple has seeded the second beta of 8.1 to developers today, ahead of its rumored public release later this month. A new beta build of Xcode 6.1 has also been released on the iOS Dev Center, along with Apple TV software beta 2 that includes support for Family Sharing and can be used to test AirPlay and HomeKit in iOS apps.

Apple’s release notes  for iOS 8.1 beta 2 don’t mention the addition of new feature – though Apple Pay was discover in the last build –  but it does list a number of bug fixes.

We’ll let you know what type of new goodies we find once we get it install on our devices. The new beta can be download from the iOS Developer Center or via the direct download links below.

Here are the direct download links:

Three out of four drivers in America believe that using hands-free technology like Siri is a safer way to cruise the highway than fiddling with buttons and knobs, but a surprising study from AAA found that using Siri on the road is actually dangerously distracting.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety tested the distraction levels of a number of hands-free solutions from auto-manufacturers that allow drivers to compose messages, change the radio, and navigate complex menus with voice commands, and found that trying to chat with Siri while driving is more distracting that composing a text.

Most of us take videos from time to time. You know, the kind of videos that are repeatedly taken from boring, ground based, vantage points. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the freedom to take high definition videos from any angle or elevation?

Meet the DJI Phantom FC40 drone. Using its on-board Smart Camera, you can record just about any event from one stunning perspective after another. Now, the DJI Phantom FC40 can be yours for the very low price of $499 at Cult of Mac Deals. As an added bonus, use the promo code PHANTOM35 to get an additional $35 off!

Popcorn Time makes it ridiculously easy to “freely” stream almost any movie you want to your iOS device, but unless you have a jailbroken iOS device, actually getting it on the iPhone 6 is impossible, unless you know of a little loophole that allows you to install the banned app.

Adventurous iPhone owners can finally get Popcorn Time by utilizing the same time-hack loophole that allowed others to install Nintendo game emulators and other apps, no jailbreaking required. Popcorn Time isn’t strictly legal, but that’s not stopping thousands from pirating the app onto their iPhones and iPads by simply rolling back the clock on their device.

Here’s how to get ‘the Netflix of torrents’ on your iPhone right now:

A neat trick that allows old console emulators and other unapproved apps to be installed on iOS devices without jailbreaking is set to be wiped out with iOS 8.1. Apple has finally taken action against the “date trick” many users have long been taking advantage of, and it’s going to make playing your favorite SNES and Game Boy games much harder.

It’s official: kids love the iPad more than they do Oreo cookies. According to the “2014 Young Love” study — an annual survey carried out by leading youth and family research firm Smarty Pants — the iPad beat out 255 other brands (including Disney, Nickelodeon, Toys”R”Us, McDonald’s and YouTube) to be named the #1 brand among children aged 6-12.

The survey was conducted among a representative sample of U.S. households, with a total of 256 consumer brands evaluated as part of a three-month study of 6,661 children and their parents. Scores were based on a composite scale of 0-1,000 based on brand awareness, love, and popularity.

The top ten brands can be seen below:

AT&T has a confirmed that it suffered a data breach back in August, carried out by one of its own employees.

The now-former employee accessed personal information relating to an unspecified number of users (thought to be in the region of 1,600), such as their Social Security and driver’s licence info, along with customer metadata — including time, duration and destination of phone calls.

Call it pent up demand for a larger-screen iPhone if you want, but the phablet-sized iPhone 6 Plus is proving a whole lot more popular than even Apple thought it would.

That’s according to a new report, citing sources from the upstream supply chain, which claims that Cupertino is adjusting its supply ratio for the 6 Plus and 4.7-inch iPhone 6 to account for the unexpectedly massive number of people ordering the 5.5-inch model.

The sources note that iPhone 6 shipments are set to be 3-4 million units lower than originally anticipated, with the production orders instead being directed toward producing more units of the iPhone 6 Plus.

Things are looking far from rosy in Samsung-land. According to a Re/code report on Tuesday, the company’s third-quarter earnings are set to fall below market expectations — thanks to falling TV prices, decreased display shipments, and more competition than ever in the smartphone sector.

Although Samsung smartphones actually increased in number in terms of shipments, the operating margin was lower as the result of higher marketing costs, less demand for high-end phones, and a lower average selling price for handsets.

Having the ability to switch from iOS to OS X on your iPad when you need to get real work done sounds like an awesome idea, but Apple’s full desktop operating system isn’t designed to be used with a touchscreen. That’s why a new rumor that claims the upcoming 12-inch iPad will run both platforms is just downright crazy.

Apple loves to tout how quickly people update to its newest software, but with iOS 8, many are choosing to hold back. The company’s own numbers show that only 1% of the iOS user base has upgraded to iOS 8 in the last two weeks.

Only 47% of users are on iOS 8 vs. 46% the week of September 21st. Adoption rates usually slow down as time wears on, but these unusually low numbers indicate that many are choosing to not upgrade to iOS 8. Unfortunately, Apple has given a few reasons why that’s the case.

1Password has been hovering near the top of the App Store’s charts since it went freemium alongside the launch of iOS 8. Developed by Canadian company AgileBits, the popular password manager has been on the forefront of app development for Apple’s latest OS since WWDC in June.

After releasing an iOS 8-compatible version with iCloud Drive sync, Touch ID integration, and an adaptive layout, 1Password 5.1 is out today with more refinements.

When Tim Cook unveiled the gorgeously curved edges of the iPhone 6, I thought apps that use the iPhone 5/5s’ flat edges to create hands-free 360° panoramic photos and video, would quickly sink into the App Store abyss, but the minds at Cycloramic have created a brilliant work around, and all you need is your iPhone 6 charger.

Cycloramic for iPhone 6 was released on the App Store over weekend and brings with it the power to turn your iPhone charger into a panorama machine by simply laying it facedown on a smooth surface, and delicately wedging your iPhone 6 between its power prongs. Using the iPhone 6’s vibration motor the new Cycloramic app can rotate 360 degrees to capture videos and photos, completely hands-free.

Check it out in action:

As a prototype iPhone 6 on eBay shoots above $100,000, the seller is just dying to hear from Apple.

Although the company might cancel the auction, as it has done with several secret prototypes in the past, the seller is such an Apple fan that he’s more excited about hearing from Cupertino than collecting $100,000.

“I don’t think the bids are real at this point,” the seller told Cult of Mac. “I’m excited about Apple getting in touch because I have loved their company for so long and this is just such an amazing opportunity.”

The seller’s name is Alex. He’s 24, lives in Los Angeles, and works in sales and marketing. He unintentionally purchased the prototype iPhone for his mother.