Why help with the iWatch when you can refresh Swatch's Swatch Touch product line?
Last week there were rumors that Swatch might be partnering with Apple to work on its iWatch project. Swatch quickly denied the report, saying that the only business relationship Swatch has ever had with a mobile phone maker is to supply integrated circuits and other electronic components.
Now a new piece of the puzzle has emerged, with Swatch CEO Nick Hayek providing Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag with another reason why his company isn’t going to be helping Apple: because it’s making a smartwatch of its own.
Apple's home to some pretty big players these days.
The European Commission today gave its approval to Apple’s $3 billion takeover of Beats Electronics and Beats Music. The regulator concluded that the two companies are not close competitors, and that the headphones they sell are “markedly different in function and design.”
Apple is in talks to buy Swell, a startup described as “Pandora for talk radio,” according to several sources.
Swell’s service compiles different podcasts and sorts them into personalized streams, thereby acting as a sort-of podcast recommendation system. The deal would reportedly set Apple back a cool $30 million.
Doug Menuez photographed Steve Jobs for close to a decade. Picture: Tereza Machado-Menuez
Family and a few close friends aside, very few people got the inside track on Steve Jobs.
One of the few exceptions was Doug Menuez, an award-winning documentary photographer. For almost a decade between 1985 and 1994, Menuez shot an unprecedented number of photos of Jobs during his wilderness years outside Apple. And, as can be seen in the gallery above, he also took some astonishing inside shots of Apple during this same time frame.
In the process, Menuez became one of the foremost documentarians of an incredible period in Silicon Valley history. To celebrate the launch of his new book, Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000, Menuez spoke with Cult of Mac about his background with one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs to ever live.
A new report in the U.K. states that doctors and nurses at Middlesbrough’s James Cook University Hospital are using iPads and iPod touches to streamline the hospital’s current reliance on paper notes.
Violet is angry, like usual. Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO
It’s time for the various residents of Bon Temps to face the music. Karma’s a bitch, and in the latest episode of the final season of this hit vampire romance TV show from HBO, we’re gonna watch most of the main characters deal with the consequences of their past behavior and poor choices. Andy, Holly, Bill, Sam, Sookie: Each of these True Blood staples have to stand up and own their life choices.
This is a pretty expository episode, so we spend a lot of time watching characters explain their situations in sometimes excruciating detail. Let’s hope that our karma for watching the show will be some more action-packed and hilarious scenes in the upcoming shows left in the season, rather than a payback for following the show for so long. We still have faith, though.
Spoilers abound below, so be warned. Find out what happened on last night’s episode after the jump.
Particularly with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite set to make all your Apple devices work together better than ever, it’s important to have a neat way of keeping your iPhone, iPad and Mac in close proximity.
Looking to solve the problem of messy desktops, a new Kickstarter project aims to create the first all-in-one stand for Apple devices — featuring integrated dock and charging system for your mobile and tablet devices.
We may be on the verge of receiving a refreshed 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro line, according to a leaked pricing chart apparently from Apple’s Chongqing, China store.
The chart shows three different configurations of the MacBook. The first of these features an Intel Core i7 2.2 GHz processor and 16GB of RAM standard (the current 15-inch base model Retina MacBook Pro has 2.0 GHz Intel Core i7 and 8GB of RAM.) The second features a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM (compared to the current 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 processor.)
A third, higher-end Retina MacBook is also included — boasting Intel’s new 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of flash storage, and Intel’s Iris Pro graphics, alongside a NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M.
This week: Yosemite beta is not for the faint of heart; William Shatner is the coolest grandpa ever; to take on Apple, Microsoft doubles down on design; Apple inches closer to a digital wallet; why the Apple on your iPhone 6 could glow; iBeacons are a marketer’s best friend; and then… if you could ride any animal into battle, what would it be? We’ll answer that question and more on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Quietly chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.
Our thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.
A whole roster of special power-ups keeps Dragon Raiders fresh and exciting.
I’m soaring through the air, dodging fallen trees and rocky overhangs, and evading plumes of sooty black smoke while trying to collect as many runes as I possibly can — and I’m loving it. Who would have thought being a dragon would be so cool?
In Dragon Raiders, an intriguing new iOS runner game, you’ll duck, dive and dodge your way through endless levels of entertaining fun to save the land of Landslandia from the meddling Megawobblins.
A Mac computer is a solid choice when picking a user friendly machine. Still, users both new and old sometimes have difficulty becoming familiar with everything the Mac and it’s most popular software titles can do.
Now you can easily master your computer with The Mac Mastery Bundle, available for a limited time at 92% off at Cult of Mac Deals.
Is Apple vs. Amazon the next “thermonuclear” tech war?
Perhaps not quite yet, but with Amazon moving into smartphones, and Apple choosing to stock the books Amazon refuses to, competition is certainly heating up. That may go some way toward explaining Apple’s acquisition of BookLamp, a startup described as the “Pandora for books,” which offers personalized book recommendations.
You know our culture's obsession with fame has reached moronic levels when Kim Kardashian has the top game on the App Store. Christopher Beha's new novel, Arts and Entertainments lands this month with a biting and incisive take-down on our love for the fame game thanks to the hilarious story of Handsome Eddie Hartley who disastrously dives into the spotlight by releasing a sex tape of his ex-girlfriend who has since become a popular TV-star.
Booty as in treasure, you perv. Photo: Rob LeFebvre, Cult of Mac
Full disclosure: the publisher of the naughtily-named Age of Booty: Tactics sent Cult of Mac a really nice wooden treasure chest with some fun promotional stuff in it. This usually means that we’d give it a skip, as generally, the better the swag, the crappier the game. We were pleasantly surprised, then, when we found Age of Booty‘s first outing on iOS to be a pretty darn great free-to-play game, with only a few caveats for the novice player.
The original Age of Booty was a 2008 downloadable real-time strategy game for Xbox and PlayStation, developed by Certain Affinity and published by Capcom. This time around, Certain Affinity took the concept to iOS with Age of Booty: Tactics, which switches things up, adding some new mechanics to the strategy formula and putting it into an asynchronous multiplayer format.
The graphics are charming enough, the soundtrack is appropriately pirate-themed, and the sea and boat sounds are nicely atmospheric. It’s in the strategic gameplay, though, that Age of Booty: Tactics surely shines.
Party on your bike with an iPhone speaker and a bottle cage for a hip flask, or protect your camera from water and dirt with dust-repellent filters and a great roll-top backpack. Or just forget everything and take your frustrations to the beach, with the SBOD tote bag.
Yo went from being what was considered a dumb joke to an amazing success basically overnight. The app’s idea dead simple: let the user send only the word “Yo” to a friend in a push notification. Now there’s an API for the app and it’s being used to warn citizens about missile strikes in the Middle East.
As you can imagine, there are plenty of app makers trying to jump on the Yo bandwagon after all the attention it has been getting. One app that sticks out from the rest is AHOY, a new iPhone app that takes the Yo concept one step further by adding location to the mix.
Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup for details on a lawsuit filed by Apple employees. Plus, you’ll get info on the latest Apple software updates, a look at the Starbucks app’s new capabilities and Jimmy Kimmel’s hilarious iWatch prank.
AOL just got bought by the king of mobile. Photo: Verizon
Verizon has announced that it will begin throttling customers still on an unlimited data plan beginning this fall. Until now, Verizon has only throttled 3G data usage, but the new policy will also apply to LTE usage in congested network areas.
Today the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that lets customers legally unlock their cell phones and switch carriers. The same bill was passed in the Senate last week, and now President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
The process of unlocking a phone to take it to another carrier in the U.S. has been a convoluted and questionably illegal one. The “Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act” is designed to make the process easier for those looking to take phones to a different service provider. But there’s an important caveat.
Beats just launched a legal assault against Chinese copy cats earlier this month, but it looks like the company just got hit with a legal bomb for copying another headphone maker itself.
Bose Corporation has filed a lawsuit against Beats for allegedly infringing on the company’s noise-canceling patents, according to CNBC’s Josh Lipton.
You know how it is — you want to share that lovely photo of your new puppy, but you really don’t want the person you hand your iPhone to swiping to those over-the-top party photos from your last lost weekend.
Overswipe, a new app from developer Haley & Hughes, aims to solve that very problem in a super intuitive way. All you do is open the app, tap on the photos you want to share, and then hand over the iPhone. Your intended viewer will only see the photos you chose, and won’t be able to swipe into anything super embarrassing.
Apple can afford to lose some marketshare because of how profitable it is. Illustration: Cult of Mac
There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Apple right now, but if you believe Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, we’re just getting started.
Based on Apple’s quarterly SEC filing, Huberty believes Apple’s revenue is set to explode over the coming quarters, since she claims Cupertino’s off-balance sheet commitments “confirm major product ramps later this year.”
What’s better than getting new tech? Winning new tech! Winning stuff is kinda of like taking all the good things in life and rolling them into one ultimate, insanely happy feeling.. only better!
Now, at Cult of Mac Deals, you have the chance to walk away with some amazing new technology, like a PS4, a MacBook Air, and a multi-sync keyboard, in three separate giveaways.
The PlayStation 4 Battlefield Bundle Giveaway
The next generation of console gaming is here and the new Playstation 4 is a popular choice among gamers. With great titles like Battlefield 4 in its constantly expanding library, you’d be nuts to not want one.
Battlefield 4 is the latest Battlefield franchise. As the name suggests, you are a soldier and are immersed into an action packed war zone. With realistic sounds and imagery, you’ll think you are actually there!
You can read the full giveaway details here or enter today for your chance to win The Playstation 4 Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals.
The Rumor: The iPad mini 3 will be 30% thinner than its predecessor.
The Verdict: Unbelievable. Jony Ive will have to work some impressive sorcery if the tiny iPad mini is really going to drop 30% off its 0.29 inches of thickness.
UDN reports Apple might even slap the Air moniker onto the iPad mini line once it drops a few ounces, but you must be huffing more glue than Charlie Sheen if you think the iPad mini Air could ever be a real Apple product name.
