Cult of Mac

According to sources in the Taiwan-based iPhone supply chain, Apple is preparing the parts and components to manufacture up to 80 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices before the end of 2014.

Barring unexpected component shortages or low yield rates (thought to have been responsible for Apple abandoning its use of sapphire for the iPhone 6-series devices), sources estimated that shipments of the iPhone 6 family will reach 10 million units by the end of September, with the remaining units shipping over the subsequent three months.

We’ve had a couple of days to let the massive announcements of Apple’s September 9 keynote sink in, but if you want to relive the event you might want to check out this new video from Jonathan Mann.

Who is Jonathan Mann, you may ask? The brilliant YouTube musician who created the celebrated Mario Opera close to a decade ago is the answer. An unabashed Apple fan, Mann was previously responsible for composing the iPhone Antenna song which Steve Jobs publicly danced to, and earlier this year composed a great WWDC ear worm which is still rattling around my brain months later.

Following Apple’s Tuesday keynote Mann is back in Apple territory with a new musical tour-de-force entitled “Apple Watch: The Musical,” which somehow manages to compress Apple’s entire Tuesday event into just 3 minutes and 13 seconds.

For the last 2,078 days, musician Jonathan Mann has been composing a song a day.

For his latest ditty, Mann summed up Apple’s entire iPhone 6/Apple Watch event in song form, covering everything from the rather underwhelming iPhone 6 debut to the excitement of Apple announcing its first new product category in years. There’s even a funny chorus about the bizarre Chinese voice-over in the livestream.

More and more retailers are already using NFC terminals, but there is an additional reason why those without them might want to hurry up and get onboard: because Apple Pay could lead to more impulse purchases.

That at least seems to be the rationale of Walt Disney World, according to a new report.

A partnership with Walt Disney World was announced on Tuesday, and as per About.com theme park expert Arthur Levine, Disney is convinced it’s going to prove a great way of upping the amount customers will spend.

“It is surely hoping that by giving visitors the ability to use its cash-less system anywhere across the Disney World campus, they will increase spending, especially on impulse purchases,” Levine says.

While the rest of us were celebrating the unveiling of Apple’s much-anticipated smart watch on Tuesday, Apple’s European legal team was busy rushing to file six trademark applications for the name “Apple Watch.”

Of these applications, four featured the Apple logo in front of the word “Watch,” while the other two referred to the two words “Apple Watch.”

Apple’s legal firm filed the trademarks under a total of 11 International Classes for protection and clarification, covering areas including financial transactions, fitness and wellness sensors, and more.

Being Steve Jobs’ son or daughter would surely mean a never-ending supply of new high-tech devices to play around with, right?

Not according to a New York Times article by Nick Bilton, who claims that Jobs set out to purposely limit the amount of time his kids spent using their iPhones and other gadgets — even going so far as to stop them using Apple’s latest must have-devices altogether.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Apple’s reveal on Tuesday of their first smartwatch was that it was square.

Many of us were expecting something that was at least curved, if not round: a more traditional watch form factor that represented an evolutionary step away from the square displays Apple has embraced since the original Apple I.

Of course, as we all know, the Apple Watch is boxy, at least for now. But as these renders show, the Apple Watch design and UI would work just as well, if not more so, in a round casing, with a round display.

Two things strike me about the camera in the new iPhone 6 models. One is that you can take better pictures; the other is that the iPhone is now a much better place for viewing those pictures.

With their bigger, brighter screens — and iCloud’s new Photo Albums feature (which stores all your photos, ready to view, in iCloud) — the iPhone 6 and its larger sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus, are looking to be the best smartphones yet, from a photographic point of view.

With its latest iOS 8 beta, Apple added a bunch of gorgeous new wallpapers. Some of them appeared on stage during the company’s special event on Tuesday, and others can be seen on the its website decorating the home screens of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.

But you don’t need to wait until iOS 8 goes public next week to get your hands on them, because they’re all available to download right here.

One of the biggest disappointments from Apple’s announcements yesterday was the lack of a sapphire screen for the iPhone 6. A seemingly-neverending string of part leaks and rumors indicated that 2014 would be the year the iPhone got a nearly indestructible sapphire display cover.

And while sapphire is used for the Apple Watch’s display, Apple made no mention of sapphire for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

What happened?

With all the livestream trouble Apple had during its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch unveiling, it’s likely you missed at least part of the big reveals.

Cult of Mac is here to help with this 90-second version of the Apple keynote that will show you all the most important highlights.

There’s tons more that Tim Cook and Co. announced but it’s impossible to cram it all into a minute and a half. Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to keep up-to-date with all the latest Apple news, reviews and more.

Apple is officially a watchmaker. And like all fancy watchmakers, the company has created a trove of gorgeous marketing close ups of its timepieces, only Apple has hidden a subtle to diss to competitors that its way ahead of their analog challengers.

Most watchmakers set their watch faces to 10 past 10 o’clock in advertisements. Rolex is anal about using 10:10:31, TAG Heuer uses 10:10:37, and Bell & Ross are dedicated to 10:10:10, but Apple’s so far ahead, it set the clock of its watch to nine minutes past 10 o’clock.

There are a lot of Apple skeptics out there. CNBC thinks the new iPhone 6 models are nothing special, and dis the Apple Watch because it doesn’t work with Android. Watch Cult of Mac editor and publisher Leander Kahney set them straight in the video above. See also our report card for Tim Cook’s first three years as CEO.

Apple’s first wearable is heading full-stream down the product pipeline ahead of its early 2015 release, and to aid with the launch of its first fashion accessory, Apple has recruited the talents of Gap Inc’s second top marketing executive.

Marcela Aguilar joins Apple with a deep background in fashion and ad agencies after serving as Gaps senior global director of marketing and communications, and has plenty of global expertise that will come in hand as Apple tries to convince fashion forward women and men to slap an Apple Watch on their wrists.

Apple is growing like wildfire in China, and Tim Cook expects the country to eventually overtake the US as his company’s largest market.

That’s why it’s a big deal that Apple has delayed the launch of its new iPhones in China. No explanation has been provided to carriers, although it’s suspected that there are still hurdles to overcome in gaining regulatory approval from the government.

The Apple Watch and iPhone 6 event yesterday in Cupertino may have been Apple’s most fashion-forward event ever. In addition to the usual schlubby tech journalists, there was Vogue editrix Anna Wintour leading a pack of fashionable scribes into the squat Flint Center as if it were a runway show in Paris or Milan.

It was Tommy Krul, however, who stole the show. He took the stage during the glitchy keynote to demo his company’s latest game Vainglory. Standing off to one side of the stage, his role was just to play the game on an iPhone 6 while co-founder Stephan Sherman of Super Evil Megacorp talked it up behind a huge video screen showing the action.

But Krul, the company’s CTO — sporting a chunky purple infinity scarf that brushed against a collar-length pageboy haircut — quickly became all anyone talked about.

The closing of Macworld is the end of an era. Thirty years ago, the publication was the midwife to the launch of the Macintosh.

Cult of Mac has a series of exclusive recollections by the magazine’s founder Dave Bunnell, which chronicle the journalist’s close encounters with a young and volatile Steve Jobs, the Mac’s difficult gestation and the birth of modern desktop computing. It’s a great trip down memory lane — with plenty of outbursts, last-minute changes and even a cameo by Ella Fitzgerald.

Read on for the full series.

Like clockwork, along with Apple’s new product announcements came a protest against them. The Free Software Foundation’s anti-DRM campaign took a timely if predictable potshot against the Apple Watch and Apple Pay after the products were unveiled Tuesday.

“It is astonishing to see so much of the technology press acting as Apple’s marketing arm,” said FSF executive director John Sullivan in a statement Tuesday after Cupertino’s big Apple Watch reveal. “What’s on display today is widespread complicity in hiding the most newsworthy aspect of the announcement — Apple’s continuing war on individual computer user freedom, and by extension, free speech, free commerce, free association, privacy, and technological innovation.”

The Apple Watch looks far more elegant than the rectangular smartwatches we’ve already seen from competing companies, but we couldn’t help noticing that some of its straps look a little… familiar.

In fact, several of Apple’s new strap designs look almost identical to straps from luxury watchmaker Ikepod, which not so coincidentally used to be run by Marc Newson, an Australian industrial designer who recently became a part of Apple’s design team.

Macworld is closing its doors. Parent company IDG has laid off much of its staff, including longtime employee and Editorial Director Jason Snell.

Tim Cook and the team at Apple seemed mighty proud of their incredible Apple Watch achievement yesterday, but Cook’s excitement was just a flash in the pan compared to the world’s truthiest Apple fanboy: Dr. Stephen T. Colbert

The late-night news show host was seen catching up on the iPhone 6 keynote when show started last night, but once the Apple revealed the device that’s going to revolutionize the way you look at your wrist, Colbert unleashed an explosive celebration and capped it off by making his boring dumbwatch as obsolete as possible.

Stephen even managed to get an exclusive look at the upcoming WristPad. Check out his hilarious Apple Watch segment below:

Apple crushed its introduction of the Apple Watch yesterday in Cupertino, but while Kevin Lynch and Jony were waxing poetic about the design of watch and its revolutionary UI, there was one feature everyone steered clear of: battery life.

Other than introducing the new inductive charging cable, Apple was mum on how long its timepiece will stay charged. According to a report from Recode, that’s because Apple is still trying to improve it ahead of the early 2015 release, but sources say Apple Watch battery life currently last about a day, and will require nightly charging.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, you’re probably unaware that Apple has announced that its newest smartphone, the iPhone 6, is just days away from hitting store shelves. Now, you could stand in a big line up at your local retailer and pay big bucks to get one, or you could get one for free with no lineups by entering The Epic iPhone 6 Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals.

With the poor streaming quality from yesterday’s Apple Event, you may have missed some of the juiciest bits — like the unveiling of the Cupertino company’s exciting new wearable. Well, fear not; the video above will tell you all you need to know about Apple Watch in just six minutes.

While you’re waiting for the Apple Watch to be released, be sure to subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to see more videos like this one — as well as the latest Apple news, and much, much more.