Cult of Mac

Swift, a completely new programming language for the App Age, was one of the biggest announcements that come out of WWDC and now it’s also got its own blog.

Apple launched a new blog dedicated to the development of Swift on its developer site this morning to educate coders on the new language that has replaced Objective-C to build iOS and Mac apps. The blog will give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the design and development of Swift from the very engineers who created it. News and hints will also spill over the blogs’ pages to help devs become more productive with the Swift language.

Here’s the first post:

The back of your iPhone is about to get a little more minimalist.

Thanks to a new bill introduced in the Senate, manufacturers may soon be allowed to use digital stamps on smartphones, laptops, and other gadgets, instead of using the strange symbols etched onto the back of your iPhone.

People who work in creative industries know that the best media creation software is products made by Adobe. Whether it’s getting pictures just right with Photoshop or putting together a whiz bang digital newsletter with InDesign, Adobe makes software to tackle just about any creative dilemma.

While Adobe products are the industry standard in creativity software, they can also be complex and frustrating for novice users. That’s why Cult of Mac Deals is offering Lifetime Access To Over 5,000 Adobe Authorized Training Videos for the remarkably low price of $79.

Someone looking for a meme worthy video could do worse than overlaying the soundtrack of a Savannah wildlife documentary with footage of tech companies vying for users to buy their next big smartphone.

Just like a lion feeds first, while the scavengers hang around and wait for scraps of spare meat to show up, so a new report from Digitimes claims non-Apple smartphone vendors looking to release high-end models in the second half of 2014 are getting increasingly worried that there aren’t going to be enough component supplies available. The reason? Component makers are all working on the iPhone 6.

And that’s just the start of it.

Spend any time watching trailers for new iOS games, and quickly you’ll find that one merges into the other: all stock music, quick gameplay snapshots, and (if the title’s any good) a stream of title cards reading things like “Brilliant” and “You’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before.”

Inventive platformer Leo’s Fortune has just received a new trailer and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s every bit as original as you’d hope for from the recipient of a 2014 Apple Design Award. In fact, dare we say it, it’s worth watching even if iOS gaming isn’t really your bag.

Luca Redwood, the creator of the super-addictive sliding tile game 10,000,000, has been working on a sequel to that game called You Must Build A Boat for the last year, but that’s not the only app he has up his sleeves.

Yesterday, Redwood announced that he had another game in the pipeline. Called Smarter Than You, it’s a modern take on rock, paper, scissors, but with subterfuge and a malevolent A.I. named M.E.T.I.S. mixed in.

While Apple is making money hand over fist today, it’s not that long ago (OK, 37 years) that it was a new business with the same cash-flow problems faced by all small companies.

To help speed up its business transactions, Apple today will officially sign up to a new White House initiative called SupplierPay, a voluntary program in which companies commit to pay small suppliers faster, or else aid them in getting access to lower-cost capital.

The rumormill is reaching a fever pitch when it comes to Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6, and one of the hottest new reports concerns the handset’s alleged A8 chip.

While we’ve been seeing a new A-series processor each year, there’s still been no definite confirmation that Apple plans to include the A8 chip in its next generation devices, especially since developers have yet to push the A7 to its limits.

With that being said, the Chinese media is claiming that the A8 will not only happen, but that it will blow the current A7 out of the water: boasting frequencies of 2.0 GHz or more per core (compared to the 1.3Ghz A7 SoC found in the iPhone 5s and Retina iPad mini, or the 1.4 GHz found in the iPad Air).

When it was first released on iOS devices in 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was just a shadow of what it was on the PC. Where as the PC version contained infinite worlds, Pocket Edition’s worlds were tiny and self-contained. There were no monsters, nor underground chasms. And so on.

For Minecraft fans hoping to play the game on the go, these omissions were disappointing. But over the years, slowly but surely, Pocket Edition has caught up with the features of its progenitor, and the 0.9.0 updated, released yesterday, makes Minecraft: Pocket Edition almost indistinguishable from having the PC version in your pocket.

The Brompton’s not a new bike. It’s not even new to me. But it is the best folding bike around, and it will change how you travel long distances, too. I’ve had mine ever since I recovered enough from a broken leg (busted playing bike polo) to hobble up to the local bike shop and order one. That was a few years ago, and since then the bike has come with me to three different continents, traveling on planes, trains, trams, automobiles and buses.

You can even ride it to the airport and pack it up when you get there.

The iPhone brings untold billions of dollars of industry into China thanks to the manufacturing jobs it creates, but that hasn’t stopped the Chinese Government — through their state-controlled media mouthpieces — from calling the device a “national security concern.”

Why? Because iOS can track your location, which according to a China Central Television report, could be used to betray Chinese state secrets to the rest of the world.

Apple sure is making us wait for the iWatch, and if recent rumors are to be believed, that wait isn’t about to end any time soon. If you’ve decided to spend your cash on an LG G Watch or Samsung Gear Live instead, then why not add a touch of iOS to it yourself with the free iWatch theme for Android Wear.

Will Apple have iWatches ready to hit the shelves when it announces the wearable at its rumored event in October? Probably not.

Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, who is undoubtedly the most accurate Apple analyst on the planet, is saying that Apple won’t begin mass production of the iWatch until November. He has also lowered his sales projections considerably because of “complications” Apple has to deal with concerning new materials like sapphire.

As user-friendly as they are, Macs are complex machines. They’re absolutely loaded with features, some of which might not be obvious from the start. In today’s video, we take a look at five basic tips that can help make everyday use of your Mac much more enjoyable. Find out how to clean up your desktop, customize your Dock, tweak audio settings and more with just a few quick clicks.

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

iTranslate has been one of the most popular language tools on iOS for a long time, and today it comes to the Mac.

With support for over 80 languages, voice output to help with pronunciation, and a clean menubar app design, this is an app definitely worth checking out.

With Uber or Lyft, you can summon a car to pick you up with a tap on your iPhone. TaskRabbit makes it that easy to find someone to do your grocery shopping or even stand in line all day for the new iPhone.

Until today, TaskRabbit has operated on an auction-like bidding system for handling tasks. Not only is TaskRabbit killing that model, but it’s releasing a redesigned app with automatic Client and Tasker pairing, one-click hiring, and its own messaging platform.

After today’s changes, TaskRabbit has become a blend of two things. It’s a more evolved, mobile-friendly version of the jobs section of Craigslist, and it’s applying the on-demand aspect of Uber to just about any kind of errand or odd-job you could hire someone to do.

If you want to delve into the deep end with a massively online battle arena game, you can head on over to Riot Games’ League of Legends or Valve’s own Dota 2 with your computer, download a free copy of each game, and then dive in.

Or, you can grab a copy of Fates Forever, a surprisingly well-tuned and deep version of the popular game genre and eSports phenomenon. It’s been over a year in development by the team led by the founder of proto-Game Center Open Feint and one of the first hit game devs on the iOS platoform (Aurora Feint), Jason Citron.

When we spoke to Citron last summer, he was full of excitement about his promising game-in-development. The wait has been worth it, as Fates Forever puts on an impressive show, squeezing a fully-realized MOBA game complete with distinctive heroes and cunningly designed infrastructure that can encourage and include everyone, from those brand new to the genre to the more veteran MOBA players, all on the iPad.

This is a fantastic game, and you’ll want to check it out right now.

The first vehicles to support Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system are just starting to roll off the assembly lines, but within five years CarPlay could be the most popular car platform in the world, with over 24 million cars sporting Cupertino’s dashboard system.

Despite being in its infancy, a host of auto manufacturers from Audio to Volvo are partnering with Apple on CarPLay, and ABI Research estimates that more vehicles will use CarPlay by 2019 than MirrorLink, the #1 open source solution that integrates popular smartphone apps with your vehicle’s dashboard.

Buying movies on iTunes just got a lot more like purchasing a Blu-ray from Best Buy, thanks to the addition of an all-new iTunes Extras features for HD movies. The new feature is part of the iTunes 11.3 update Apple released this morning, that brings new content to movies played on your Mac and Apple TV.

Enhance your smartphone’s camera with the Fisheye Universal Lens Kit

Your smartphone’s camera is a great tool to carry around in your pocket. While it’s certainly handy, sometimes it would be nice to have the ability to take different kinds of shots, like you could with a fisheye or wide angle lens.

Now you can have the freedom to take these kinds of shots with the Fisheye Universal Lens Kit for only $23.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Here’s one to file in the “exciting, but most likely not happening” category.

A new Chinese media report suggests that one of the iPhone 6’s “secret weapons” could be the inclusion of advanced haptic feedback technology. Sources claim that the tactile feedback linear motor would be capable of producing different types of subtle vibration depending on the app being used, and could even emit different vibrations depending on the part of the touch screen that is being pressed at the time, or how hard it is being pressed.

Google Maps now gives users the ability to measure the distance between two or more locations simply my placing markers down on a map. The feature, available only in Maps on the web for now, lets users choose a starting point and then creates a path to each additional “measuring point.”

The iPhone 6 is one of the most eagerly anticipated iPhone refreshes in years, but just how anticipated it is might surprise you.

Taiwan’s Business Weekly is reporting that Apple has orders at least 68 million units of its new iPhone. To put that in perspective, if true this is twice as large as the order Apple placed for the iPhone 5.