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Apple bans hazardous chemicals used to make iPhone screens nice and shiny

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In the past, the chemicals benzene and n-hexane, which are chemicals that make your iPhone screen so shiny, have been said to cause health problems for factory workers breathing in the fume.

But Apple has just announced that as of the iPhone 6, these complaints will be a thing of the past, as they are banning the use of the chemicals across their entire assembly line.

Apple’s Phil Schiller dumps a bucket of ice cold water on his head

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If you’ve been on the Internet at all over the last few days, you’ve probably heard about the Ice Bucket Challenge. The idea is simple. Someone challenges you online to dump a bucket of ice water all over your head. If you choose not to do so within 24 hours, you are asked to donate $100 to a charity to fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Speaking as an observer, I can say conclusively that the Ice Bucket Challenge is best when accepted by buxom 19-year-olds in string bikinis. But watching Apple’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing dumping a bucket of ice water on his head? Definitely a close second.

Samsung’s new ads mock iPhone wall huggers in real life

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Samsung is taking its wall hugger shaming marketing campaign to the airport this week, with new ads plastered over electrical outlets that draw in battery-drained iPhone users with the promise to quench their thirst for a little more power.

Touting the Ultra Power Saving Mode on the Galaxy S5, CNET reports that the ads will pop up at JFK International as well as O’Hare and Midway in Chicago, and they’ve included a subtle jab at Apple’s latest ad campaign.

Apple customer says store gave him receipt with anti-gay message

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Apple-Genius-Bar

Tim Cook has led Apple into the front of the LGBT-rights movement with company appearances at Gay Pride parades and Wall Street Journal op-eds demanding equal rights for gay workers, but according to one Apple Store customer in Portland, some of Cook’s employee don’t share his enthusiasm for inclusion.

Adam Catanzarite, who self-identifies as queer, has taken to social media after an Apple specialist printed off his receipt for a set of EarPods with a not-so-subtle homophobic slur tossed in the spot reserved for his email addresses.

Take a look:

Mailbox gets a bunch of new features and support for 19 languages

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Mailbox, the beloved email app owned by Dropbox, received a pretty big update today in the App Store. As the Mac beta of Mailbox continues to roll out slowly, the app is maturing on iOS.

19 languages are now supported by Mailbox instead of just English, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese French, German, Russian, and more. Printing, Passbook support, starring, trash emptying, and more have also been added.

Google & HP are in talks to create an enterprise version of Siri

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Apple’s mega deal with IBM could give it a death grip on the enterprise market, but according to a report from The Information, Google’s Android team has been deep in talks with HP on ways it can push Android deeper into enterprise itself.

Using Google Now’s voice-search powers, the Android unit and HP have been discussing the potential of creating a mobile search product nicknamed “Enterprise Siri,” that could access financial data, product inventory, and more to become the perfect Siri-like tool for enterprise customers.

AT&T slashes $200 off iPad if you buy an iPhone

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iPad Air and iPad mini

Apple is about to make the iPhone 5s and 5c obsolete, but if you’re in the market for a brand new iPhone and need an iPad to go with it, then AT&T is ready to lure you in with a $200 discount on any iPad you want, as long as it has 4G.

To score the deal you must be willing to venture into an AT&T retail store to buy your iPhone 5s or 5c, but like any carrier deal, there are a few strings attached.

Filco MiniLa Air Bluetooth: Clackety keyboard on the go

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filco keyboards
The Filco MiniLa Air Bluetooth, alongside my own tenkeyless Filco Majestouch. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

I took the Filco MiniLa Air Bluetooth keyboard with me on vacation this year to use with a MacBook Air propped up on the fantastic Roost stand. I use the tenkeyless Filco Majestouch at home, and I was hoping for the same super-accurate, clicky-key action in this battery-powered, portable wireless version.

And I almost got it. But for one major flaw, the MiniLa is almost as good as the desktop version. The good news is, that flaw might just be a personal quibble.

These killer apps turn your Mac into a social media machine

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While looking at social media on your favorite iOS devices is smooth, making the transition to the Mac just isn’t quite the same. Though there are plenty of top-notch applications for looking at Twitter or Snapchat on iOS, the social media gems on Mac can be hard to find.

In today’s video, we’ll show you the top social media apps for Mac so you can transport the fun from iOS to your desktop in the most efficient ways possible. Here’s how to enjoy the fun of Snapchat, Instagram and more, all on your Mac by downloading some killer social apps.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Alleged killer asked Siri where to stash body

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siri
Siri's usefulness has stood the test of time, but can 3D Touch?
Photo: Apple

A Florida man accused of killing his roommate allegedly asked Siri to help him find a hiding place for the body.

“I need to hide my roommate,” 20-year-old Pedro Bravo told Apple’s virtual assistant on the day Christian Aguilar was kidnapped and strangled in September 2012.

All your base does not belong to upcoming tower defense game Alien Creeps HD

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Listen up, soldier! The aliens are headed our way and it’s up to you to keep them out of our base. You’ll have access to a variety of offensive towers that you can upgrade along the way, as well as a special Hero and other power ups to turn the tide of battle in our favor.

If you’re like many of us, you love a good tower defense game on the go. There are a few good ones out there (Fieldrunners, Kingdom Rush), but we’re always willing to give a new take on this classic gaming genre a spin.

The true test of a tower defense game, however, is whether it keeps you in that zen-like flow state while you play, and whether or not you want to keep playing it.

Survey suggests iPhone 6 could be Apple’s most desired handset yet

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Photo:  Thomas Moyano and Nicolas Aichino
Photo: Thomas Moyano and Nicolas Aichino

The idea that the forthcoming iPhone 6 (expected to be unveiled September 9) is the most anticipated refresh of Apple’s smartphone in ages was given further credibility by a recent survey by financial firm R.W. Baird.

Quizzing 1,000 residents surveyed in July, 6.8 percent of respondees said that they planned to buy the iPhone 6 without ever having laid eyes on it. This number is up from the 4.4 percent who answered that same way back in February.

The firm also notes that this intent to purchase is higher than the number of people who said they would buy the iPhone 5s after it had already been announced.

Facebook fixes long-standing iOS bug, eliminating 50 percent of app crashes

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It’s hard to know what to make of an app update that promises to “cut crash rates in half.” If you’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, you’re happy with the increased stability. If you’re a glass-half-empty guy, though, you wonder why the hell they can’t get around to fixing the other 50 percent of unexpected software crashes.

I’m sort of a glass-half-empty kind of guy, at least when it comes to Facebook. So when they announce that their latest update to the Facebook for iPhone and iPad app has “solved a long-term mobile debugging problem and reduced the crash rate for people using the Facebook for iOS app by more than 50%,” I wonder why the hell a multibillion dollar corporation can’t fix the other half.

Candy Crush not so sweet after disappointing earnings

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Candy Crush Saga

We may be in something of a golden age for iOS gamers, but Candy Crush maker King isn’t reaping the benefits quite as much as it had hoped.

With revenue shrinking, and having been unable to recapture the lightning in a bottle of its breakout hit Candy Crush Saga, the company dropped 21 percent in value yesterday after posting disappointing earnings. The company’s earnings fell 5 percent (or $30 million) from the first quarter this year.

iPhone 6 production lines almost ready to roll

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A new report coming of China suggests that the eagerly-anticipated iPhone 6 is currently in the PVT (Product Validation Test) stage of production. During this stage, the assembly line runs at full speed to produce a small number of finished units for quality assurance purposes. If any issues are highlighted at this stage, the production line can be adjusted to ensure that all faults are ironed out by the time mass production begins.

If there are no faults highlighted, Foxconn can begin work producing the “unprecedented” numbers of iPhone 6 units for Apple, ready for its expected September 9 unveiling.

Apple’s ‘innate fear of BitTorrent’ is reason for no torrenting apps, says rejected dev

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Photo by Alex Heath/ Cult of Mac
Photo by Alex Heath/ Cult of Mac

Apple has a long history of keeping BitTorrent apps out of the App Store. If you search for “BitTorrent” in the App Store now, only two results show up. Neither of them allow you to actually download torrents.

That’s why it was surprising when an app called Blue Downloader showed up in the store a couple of days ago. Its secret sauce is that it allows users to find and download torrents through sources chosen by its developer, Tyler Harrison, making it hard to use for illegal downloads like grabbing Expendables 3 off The Pirate Bay.

Apple approved Blue Downloader, but after Harrison made a change that allowed searching Google for torrents, the app was suddenly pulled. In an interview with Cult of Mac, Harrison explains how Apple’s response reflects its “innate fear of BitTorent” and his plans to get his app back in the store.

Rime’s emotional new trailer will cure your wanderlust

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Beautiful piano music, a young protagonist, gorgeous visuals and landscapes fill the new trailer for upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive, Rime, from TequilaWorks and Sony Computer Entertainment.

The young boy, reminiscent of other young wandering protagonists like Link (Legend of Zelda), Wander (Shadow of the Colossus), and Oliver (Ni No Kuni), finds a keyhole in a distant tower, and races across the landscape to get there.

Why is he running? What will he find when he finally attains the tower? Is this even the right tower? The just-posted trailer (linked below) has no answers, but makes us want to find out.

Lightning envy: Next-gen USB enters production with reversible design

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A concept of what a Lightning-to-USB Type-C cable would look like.
A concept of what a Lightning-to-USB Type-C cable would look like.

We’ve known for awhile that the next version of USB will copy Apple’s Lightning connector with a reversible design. Now the next-gen connector is ready for production, which means you’ll start seeing it in new desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and accessories.

Today the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced that work on the new design, called USB Type-C, is done and ready to be implemented.