Cult of Mac

“It just works.”

Those three words are synonymous with Apple. It’s the slogan Apple fanboys use when trying to convince their Android-loving friends that iOS is a better option. And it was used over and over by Steve Jobs as he unveiled new products at Apple keynotes.

That makes it even more embarrassing for the Cupertino company when things don’t “just work.” Especially when it royally screws things up — as it did with the hideously half-baked iOS 8.0.1 update that rolled out to millions of users Wednesday morning.

Microsoft’s $400 million plan to flood the NFL with Surface tablets hasn’t caught on too well this season. The hardware fumbled out the gate during preseason and even coaches and players have admitted the tablets are too complex to figure out, so in its latest ad for the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft has taken a page out of Beats’ marketing playbook.

The ad feels more like an commercial for NFL Stars than a tablet promotion and it’s got all the elements that have made Beats’ cinematic ads great: Pre-game preparations, close ups of super-star athletes, touchdowns, and some heavy rock music.

Beats launched a similar ad for its Studio Wireless headphones, only instead of starring super-star cornerback Richard Sherman from the Seattle Seahawks, Microsoft’s ad features super-star quarterback Russell Wilson from the Seattle Seahawks.

Watch Microsoft’s NFL ad below and see how it compares:

The internet offers users a wealth of applications. From social media, to shopping, to banking, you can do pretty much anything online. With every website you join, however, you need to have a login name and password and, with passwords becoming necessarily complex, it can be difficult to remember all of your login information. Now, you can use Dashlane Premium to take care of your passwords for you.

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It turns out that things made out of thin pieces of aluminum will bend under enough force. Who’d have thought it? But fortunately for those who are experiencing the well-documented “Bendgate” issue with a new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple is not ignoring the problem: The company will replace devices under warranty so long as they pass a visual inspection.

Apple was aware of the iCloud vulnerability which resulted in dozens of nude celebrity images being leaked earlier this month.

According to emails between Apple and noted security expert Ibrahim Balic, Cupertino was given information of a similar security flaw as early as March of this year. In an email from that month, Balic informed an Apple official that he had successfully bypassed the feature designed to stop a so-called “brute-force” attack taking place.

Five top Apple execs — including Tim Cook and Phil Schiller — unloaded $143 million AAPL shares as part of a 10b5-1 planned sale, according to a new report from Barron’s.

Cook sold 348,425 Apple shares for $35,250,297, while Schiller dropped 348,846 shares for $35,256,000.

Other Apple higher-ups who did the same include CFO Luca Maestri, who sold his entire direct holdings for $1,631,286; Jeffrey E. Williams, senior vice president of operations, who raked in $35,233,446; and Bruce D. Sewell, general counsel and senior vice president of legal and government affairs, who made $35,393,915 on the deal.

In the business world, Apple entering your product category is a little bit like a tsunami crashing into a home aquarium. What had previously seemed like a nice, small and self-contained ecosystem suddenly runs the risk of being obliterated by a giant wave-maker.

When Tim Cook announced the Apple Watch at Apple’s recent media event, the crowd went wild. But exciting as it was for consumers, it represents a seismic shift for the currently $330 million wearable tech industry.

Devices that can serve up smartphone notifications, track fitness goals and even advise us on health matters have the potential to be huge — but they’re not yet. That’s about to change, according to Juniper Research, which forecasts that wearable devices like smartwatches could hit sales of $19 billion by 2018.

What happens to Apple’s marketplace rivals as this sea change takes place? Cult of Mac did some digging to find out how companies like Jawbone and Fitbit plan to survive Apple’s smartwatch revolution.

Aside from the fact that it features a “flexible Retina display” and is capable of “reading” both soft and hard presses, Apple hasn’t let much out of the bag about the sapphire display for its eagerly-anticipated Apple Watch.

A new report from research firm NPD DisplaySearch has a bit more to say, however — including the price Apple is apparently paying for the sapphire laminate panels it’s using for its wearables debut.

G-funk might have made Dr. Dre famous, but Beats made him wealthy to the tune of $620 million in pre-tax earnings, according to Forbes‘ recently published “Hip-Hop Cash Kings” list, which officially named the former rapper/producer the richest person in rap this year.

Off the back of Apple’s $3 billion acquisition, Dre’s so rich, in fact, that his wealth outstrips the other 24 “Cash Kings” on the list put together — which includes names like Jay Z and P-Diddy, who each took home $60 million from a combination of music, live concerts and endorsements.

Late last week, former NBA player Rex Chapman was arrested by police in Scottsdale, Arizona, after being charged with theft and trafficking in stolen property as a result of stealing over $14,000 worth of equipment from his local Apple Store over the course of nine visits between May and early August.

As can be seen from the below security footage, Chapman picked up various items from the store, pretended to pay for them using Apple’s EasyPay app, before popping the goods into an Apple carrier bag, at which point he headed off to a local pawnshop to sell them:

If you regularly use an iPhone or iPad app that uses a built-in browser, you could be vulnerable to a major vulnerability in iOS that allows unscrupulous app developers to spy on your typing.

Apple has promised to roll out a new iOS 8 update in the “next few days” that will fix the issues plaguing iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users who updated to iOS 8.0.1. In the meantime, users are being advised to downgrade to the initial iOS 8 release that came pre-installed on their devices.

Microsoft has been having quite a bit of fun with Siri in its new Windows Phone ads. Reminiscent in feel of Apple’s old “Mac vs. PC” ads, the Cortana vs. Siri ad campaign shows Microsoft’s digital assistant having fun at the expense of slow, dumb ol’ Siri.

Not afraid to whip a dead horse, Cortana is now back in two news Windows Phone ads, showing just how much more she can do on Microsoft’s new Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 635 than Siri can do on the iPhone.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt claims that Samsung had the iPhone 6’s technology one year ago, in a new interview for Bloomberg TV.

Sitting down with Google’s former Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg to promote their new book How Google Works, Schmidt fended questions about the Android vs. iOS competition from “Market Makers” hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Schatzker.

At one point in the interview, Ruhle asks Schmidt how he feels seeing people lined up around the block to pick up the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which sold a massive 10 million+ units in their first weekend on sale.

“Even though way more people carry Android phones how does Apple have that desire factor?” Ruhle says.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Schmidt answers. “Samsung had these products a year ago.”

With iOS 8, iPhone and iPad owners for the first time ever can replace Apple’s default virtual keyboard with a third-party alternative.

Doing so — with keyboards made by SwiftKey, Swype, Fleksy and others — could vastly improve your touchscreen typing experience. Not only do some of these keyboards make typing easier, but they also boast innovative features, like the ability to type words using simple swipes instead of taps. Many of these keyboards are completely customizable, so you can set their size and color scheme to suit you.

If you haven’t already installed a third-party keyboard, you’re missing out on one of iOS 8’s best features. In this guide, first we’ll tell you about the best keyboards available from the App Store right now. We’ll also run through the features that make them unique, show you how you can customize them and make them work for you, and explain some important concepts, such as “Full Access.”

The YouTuber who set the world ablaze by bending the iPhone 6 Plus is back.

Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy has a new video out in which he tries to bend the regular iPhone 6 like the Plus. Those who are actually worried about their iPhone’s bendability will be glad to see that the 6 holds its shape much better than its larger sibling. And you’d basically need some kind of power tool to bend the iPhone 5s.

Hilsenteger also tries bending some iPhone competitors, and the most durable smartphone might surprise you.

iPhone 6 unboxing videos are a dime a dozen nowadays, expect when they come from the wildly wacky Blue Man Group.

The popular performing group released their own quirky take on the iPhone 6 unboxing video and it’s unlike any unboxing video we’ve ever seen. Rather than using traditional unboxing tools like fingers and or a knife, the blue dudes employ some saws, electric drills, and plenty of feathers.

Watch it below:

Team “Uncage the Soul” spent three days in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, capturing some stunning moving images with their new iPhone 6 Plus.

While videographer Ben Casales found the iPhone 6 Plus to be an amazing bit of video technology, he’s not worried about his day job.

“Is the iPhone 6+ amazing? YES. Would I bring it to a job shooting for a client? No,” he writes on the video page. “It will shoot 240fps, but it degrades and is not what you’d want full size in a polished video. The in-camera stabilizer in the Instagram Hyperlapse app is AMAZING, but it exports final video in 720 not 1080. Timelapse looks great when the conditions are stable, but changing light has the phone struggling to smoothly change exposures following the light.”

Still, check out the amazing footage below and dream of all the things you can do with it when you’re out and about in a hipster ear-flap hat and drinking PBR. Just be prepared for the very twee pop song by Hugo Hans “Wildrunners.”

If the sheer volume of tower defense games on the App Store is any indication, people (and developers) love them. Defending your base against endless hordes of creeps is a wonderful way to spend some gaming time on your portable device; they’re not super twitch-dependent, and they definitely encourage the zen-like focus a lot of us enjoy when playing games.

Add a hot property like Star Wars to the mix, and you’ve got a game full of potential. Rebels and Stormtroopers in a tower defense game? Sign me up!

This is, however, a Mobage/DeNA free-to-play joint, so it’s hard to tell exactly whether it will be a compelling bit of playtime, or just another way to spam your friends with social media requests. The pre-release sign up allows you to earn some points to be used in-game already; this does not bode well, even with a Star Wars branding.

That said, I’m still pretty excited about playing this game. Check out the developer diary below to see if you’re just as excited.

Apple just rolled out its first update for iOS 8 with a bunch of bug fixes to resolve problems with third-party keyboards, HealthKit, and other features, but what Apple failed mention is that the update also knocks out your cellular connectivity and breaks Touch ID.

If you haven’t updated already, WAIT! It seems that the bugs might be just affecting users of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus but we’ve reached out to Apple for confirmation.

In the meantime, if you’ve already upgraded to iOS 8.0.1 and want your cellular service back, here’s how to manually restore your device to iOS 8.0.

“Will it bend?” has become the hottest question in tech this week as some iPhone 6 owners have discovered that the laws of physics still apply to the aluminum frame of the new Apple phones … even when neglected in a back pocket.

We pointed out yesterday that any smartphone made of metal will bend when subjected to pressure, but the Internet has jumped on the BendGate controversy like a joyful Steve Wozniak pounding through the polo fields on his mighty Segway.

#BendGate, #BentGate and #BendGhazi started trending on Twitter within the last 24 hours, and while Apple’s PR machine remains silent, the Internet has given its hilarious opinion on the controversy.

Here are some of the funniest BendGate reactions:

Update: iOS 8.0.1 upgraders are reporting problems with Touch ID and cellular connectivity after installing Apple’s update. You should wait before taking the plunge. If you’ve already installed iOS 8.0.1, here’s how to downgrade to iOS 8.

Apple has pulled an iOS 8.0.1 update that fixed problems with HealthKit and various other features after iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users discovered the update broke Touch ID and blocked cellular connectivity.

The iOS 8.0.1 update was also supposed to improve Reachability on the iPhone 6, but it has already been removed while Apple addresses the nest of new bugs it unleashed.

More than ever before, our connected world is a mobile one. What good is having a strong web presence if it isn’t optimized for use with mobile devices? That’s where having your own app comes into play. It allows your audience to connect with you in a personalized way.

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The iPhone 6’s sleek design is undeniably sexy, but the big glass display and those sexy curved edges can cause problems if you leave your phone sitting on a smooth surface.

If you’re not careful, you could find your iPhone in pieces on the floor.