Cult of Mac

Everyone knows that Apple does a stellar job of getting its users to upgrade to its latest version of iOS, but how does it do at convincing customers to buy its latest iPhones and iPads, rather than settling for cheaper older models?

Very well, and getting better all the time, according to new market research from the Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Looking at consumer data for the calendar quarter which ended June 30, CIRP noted that the flagship iPhone 5s accounted for an impressive 62 percent of total iPhone sales in the quarter, while the iPad Air took 52 percent of all iPad sales in the quarter. Why is this significant?

Apple seeded the 4th beta for OS X 10.10 Yosemite to developers this morning with preview build 14A298i.

The Yosemite beta program still hasn’t been opened to the public, but anyone with a developer account can pick up the OS X Yosemite beta 4 download from the Mac Dev Center. The update can also be scooped up from the Mac App Store by clicking Software Update under your Apple menu.

The newest beta version of iOS 8 has been seeded to developers by Apple this morning, two weeks after the release of iOS 8 beta 3.

iOS 8 beta 4 can be downloaded via an over the air update. Developers can pick also it up from the iOS Dev Center or from the direct download links posted below. We’re still downloading the update on our devices and will let you know what we new goodies we find. In the meantime, get to downloading:

In order to take breathtaking still pictures and earth shattering video, you need to have the proper lighting conditions. No one will see your fantastic photographic subject if the room is too dark. A lack of sufficient lighting also won’t do your videos any justice.

Now you can have the right lighting every time with The KICK. The KICK is a totally new way of lighting your photos and videos to make sure you get perfect exposure every time. It’s just like having a studio in your pocket, and it’s available for just $149 at Cult of Mac Deals.

The iPhone 6 could include a MacBook-style light-up logo, according to new photos uncovered by renowned Apple leaker Sonny Dickson.

The photos show an apparent iPhone 6 case, with a thin plastic space that would allow for a light to shine out. While nothing concrete suggests this, if true the light could be used to indicate at a glance what type of notification a user was receiving at any moment — perhaps pulsating white for a call, or flashing blue for a text message or Twitter update.

Best Buy is living up to its name with yet another Apple-related special offer. This time the deal in question concerns iTunes vouchers.

If you’re looking to pick up a $100 iTunes Gift Card, Best Buy is selling them for just $85 — representing a reduction of $15, with free shipping thrown in to make the deal that much better.

Is iOS spying on you for Apple?

According to forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski, quite possibly: Several undocumented services run regularly in the background on over 600 million iOS devices, which could be sending data to Apple.

A good mobile puzzle game is always welcome, and if you’re looking for something to augment your TwoDots and Threes games, developer Ricardo Fonseca is hoping he has something for you.

Called Dropu, his new iOS game is — as Fonseca describes it — what would happen “if Tetris and Sudoku had a baby.” As with Tetris, blocks fall from the sky and it’s your job as player to make sequences of them in order to clear lines.

To celebrate the upcoming release of Modern Combat 5: Blackout, Gameloft has rolled out an awesome new challenge inside one of its other hugely successful titles, Asphalt 8: Airborne. It features a new track inspired by the hit FPS series that’s full of explosions and crumbling buildings — and there’s a nice prize for the best racers.

I know that TwoDots, the followup to last year’s megahit Dots, has been out for a little while, but I have a pretty good excuse for not having reviewed it yet: I’ve been playing it this whole time.

It’s taken me so long to get to this article, in fact, that the developer has since released an update with a bunch more levels, and now this review is timely again. So take that, Time.

Anyway, TwoDots is a lot of fun. Provided you’re incredibly lucky.

Apple is set to open a new brick-and-mortar retail store at the Paradise Walk mall in China’s Jiangbei District of Chongqing, according to Apple’s official retail website.

The store will open at 10am local time on Saturday, July 26, and will represent the company’s eleventh Apple Store in China: the first of several that will be opening in 2014 and 2015.

When Steve Jobs was still alive, he seemed adamant that the size of the iPhone’s screen was perfect, since it was the maximum width a screen could be and be comfortable to hold while typing one-handed.

With the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 on the horizon, though, it appears that Apple no longer agrees. But why? Why are smartphone screens getting bigger anyway?

Getting into the streaming TV business might be all the rage right now, but it’s far from an easy game to play. (Which is why Tim Cook referred to Apple TV as “a hobby” for so long.)

Proof positive of this is Qplay, the Internet video-device and iPad app startup launched by the founders of TiVo, which has announced that it’s closing shop less than six months after launching its debut product.

We’ve heard a lot of rumors about the upcoming iPhone 6. But which ones are true? With the release of Apple’s latest and greatest smartphones just three months away, we can start synthesizing the likelihood of which rumors will pan out (and which won’t).

This gorgeous infographic exploding the iPhone 6 into its various components does a great job of showing where the consensus is right now.

Inside a New York City morgue, the rich, famous and celebrated rest in the same space with the soldier, the wheat farmer and nuns trained in the martial arts. There’s even a car show model who was mauled by a lion.

Darcy Eveleigh pulls drawers at random and gives these people another day. They’re not dead, just filed.

Eveleigh is a New York Times picture editor who curates the popular Tumblr blog, The Lively Morgue, a collection of historic and often quirky images found in the Times’ photo archive.

Eveleigh will not live to see every photo. The files are believed to hold between 10 and 20 million images. The site reports that if Times picture editors posted 10 new archived photos on the blog each day, they might have every picture online by the year 3935.

“They are all accidental small treasures I did not mean to come across,” Eveleigh said of the serendipity she relies on during her regular visits to the morgue, located three stories below ground level.

Google Now users can now use Google Search to create new reminders from their desktop. It’s as simple as visiting Google.com in your browser, and typing things like “remind me to call mom when I get home” into the search box.

Apple today announced the eighth annual iTunes Festival in London with a whole bunch of massive acts already confirmed. Those lucky enough to bag tickets will see the likes of Pharrell Williams, Maroon 5, Kylie, Sam Smith, and Blondie.

Lifetime Access To Over 5,000 Adobe Authorized Training Videos

Get Lifetime Access To Over 5000 Adobe Authorized Training Videos that are designed to teach beginners to advanced users how to navigate software titles such as Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and more.

Plus, you get video training in related technologies such as WordPress, Javascript, and HTML5, just to name a few. The courses are updated for Creative Cloud 2014 and you can take the courses at your own pace. You can even print out your own certificate of completion at the end!

Is former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney talking to Apple about becoming its new head of PR? That’s the question still circulating around Silicon Valley after a pair of conflicting reports came out earlier this week.

According to a friend of Carney’s who spoke anonymously to Bloomberg, Carney has indeed talked to Apple about potentially filling the recently vacated position.

This time on the CultCast: rumored new Apple tech could give weeklong battery life to future iPhones; why your grandma will love the new iTunes; after a 30-year feud, Apple and IBM kiss and make up; Kim Kardashian’s iOS app makes way more than it should; Beats brings the marketing magic back to Apple; and we pitch our favorite apps and tech then vote on which one’s best—it’s an all new Faves N Raves!

Hem and haw 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 TextExpander for supporting this episode! TextExpander for Mac saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text, pictures, code blocks, and more, and it’s an application we use every single day. Try it out for free at Smilesoftware.com/cultcast.

In what has been a great year for iOS gaming, Monument Valley stands head and shoulders above most of its competition. Part M.C. Escher and part Fez, the game lets you journey through a surrealist world full of optical illusions and hidden paths — all the while avoiding and outsmarting the sinister Crow people.

It’s great, compelling fun — and apparently we’re far from the only people to think that, since developers Ustwo announced late last week that their game has now been downloaded in excess of 1 million times.

People waiting for the rumored 12-inch Retina MacBook may just have to keep right on waiting, according to a new report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, which blames the wait on Intel’s delayed 14-nanometer Broadwell chips, which are reportedly used in the computers.

Because of these production delays, the report claims that the 12-inch MacBook may not ship until Q3 2014 or even early 2015, when the chips will be in greater supply.

Could it be that the much-anticipated sapphire displays for the upcoming iPhone 6 isn’t actually sapphire at all? Sort of, according to a new video posted by YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

Brownlee made waves a few weeks back when he apparently managed to get hold of one of the super-tough 4.7-inch displays reported to feature in Apple’s next generation handset, and ran it through the most brutal assault course this side of Full Metal Jacket. The display was subjected to a scratch and shatter test involving keys, a knife, and even Brownlee himself trying to bend it with his foot.

Provided the display (supplied by renowned Apple leaker Sonny Dickson) is genuine, this test suggests that the iPhone 6 screen will be considerably stronger than the displays used in its predecessors.

But it may still not be pure sapphire. Here’s why.