Cult of Mac

Steve Jobs was notorious for channeling all of Apple’s efforts into one product at time. In 2007, Apple had to issue a press release explaining that it was delaying the release of OS X Leopard to finish making the iPhone.

Google is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s always releasing new products, and many never see commercial success. In a recent interview, Google CEO Larry Page shared how Jobs used to tell him that Google was “doing too much” stuff at once, and why he didn’t listen.

The iPhone 6 is poised to become the thinnest, lightest iPhone Apple’s ever made, but all that thinning might mean the iPhone still won’t be able to hold a charge for more than 10 hours.

Eight iterations of iPhones have been released and we’d love to see true all-day battery life added to the features list, but according to a report on the the iPhone 6’s battery, the thinification of the iPhone 6 means it will see minimal battery gains when it launches this fall.

Alongside the third beta of iOS 8, today Apple released a new developer preview of OS X Yosemite. The upcoming OS is still very much in the beta process, as Apple is continuing to make interface tweaks and add features.

The spotlight on Tim Cook isn’t going away anytime soon, especially when Apple has yet to unveil any of the new “product categories” he promised would come this year.

In a new profile by The Wall Street Journal, Cook’s efforts to shape and mature Apple are detailed, including the fact that he is “actively seeking” new members for the company’s board of directors.

Cook has been consistently bringing in fresh blood to help him lead Apple, like former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts. It makes sense for him to also expand Apple’s board, were the current leadership is very engrained in the history of Apple under Jobs’ leadership.

After taking a three week break Apple has released the refinements for iOS 8 in its newest beta available to developers today. Most of iOS 8’s major features were announced at WWDC, but Apple has been slowly and refining the UI of the new OS ahead of its fall release.

Major new features don’t make an appearance in today’s update, but Apple has added a number of setting toggles, tiny UI tweaks, new wallpapers, and flipped the switch on iCloud Drive.

Here’s a rundown of all the new tweaks and features added in iOS 8 beta 3:

Along with the new iOS 8 beta 3 release this morning, Apple has also seeded the third preview build of OS X 10.10 to developers.

We’re still waiting for Apple to open up the beta program to the public as promised at WWDC, but for now only developers can grab the new OS X Yosemite Preview 3 from the Mac Dev Center. You can also scoop up the update via the Mac App Store or by clicking Software Update under the Apple menu.

Other beta releases this morning included Xcode 6 beta 3,  Apple Configurator 1.7 beta, and new builds of Find My iPhone and Find My friends.

Yosemite brings a revamped UI to OS X along with a host of new features aimed at making your iPhone and Mac work smarter together. No official word from Apple on what’s inside the new preview but we’ll let you know what we find as soon as its installed.

Apple has released the newest beta version of iOS 8 to developers this morning, three weeks after the release of that last major update.

iOS 8 beta 3 can be downloaded via an over the air update. Developers can also pick 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:

The iPhone 6’s sapphire glass display could be the secret weapon that gives your device ultimate durability. Apple’s Sapphire glass factory has been busy spitting out displays for the iPhone and iPad (and maybe even the iWatch), and now thanks to Sonny Dickson, we’ve got a little taste of its flexibility.

In a stress test video of an alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 display, the screen is subject to some limited stress tests, coming away unbroken. Along with some bending action, the hands-on video shows the panel’s measurements and compares it to the iPhone 5s screen size.

Check out the full video below:

Arguably the most-anticipated game for the new generation of consoles, Destiny aims to be a sci-fi first-person shooter from the same folks who all but created the genre with Halo back in 2001.

Today, Bungie put out the call: pre-order the game now (which is set to launch to retail in September) and get early, exclusive access to the Destiny beta.

PlayStation 4 owners will get to play first, with a July 17th beta launch date, while Xbox One gamers will get to play just a week out on July 23rd. The beta itself will terminate on July 26, with a special event for all gamers who show up on the games servers before the end of the day.

Check out the trailer below for some gorgeous visuals along with a few details.

The weather is getting warmer, the shorts are coming out of the dresser drawers, and the swimming pools are opening up. That can only mean one thing: summer is upon us!

Cult of Mac Deals isn’t about to let that occasion pass by without offering another great deal. That’s why you can get 10 award-winning Mac apps, donate to a good cause, and name your own price with The Summer Blockbuster Mac Bundle!

First-person shooter Borderlands 2 offers up a ton of guns and a huge, open-world map with more in-jokes and Easter eggs than you can shake a boom-stick at. With the help of our friends over at Aspyr (publisher of the Mac version of the game), we’re going to share with you four of the hardest-to-find secrets from within the post-apocalyptic sci-fi video game.

Plus, read till the end and you’ll get a special deal exclusively for Cult of Mac readers who want their own copy of the Game of the Year edition of Borderlands 2 (the one with all the DLC packs along with the basic game) at a heavily discounted price.

AirDrop, the wireless file sharing technology built into OS X, is fantastic when it works for the occasional file, but it can be a bit finicky.

For power users who constantly find themselves sharing files online, we recommend Dropzone, a great little Mac App that can significantly boost the ease with which you share files between computers, and drag-and-drop files in general.

Now, Dropzone has gotten even better. With Dropzone 3, the app gains a new Drop Bar for temporarily storing files, AirDrop support, as well as integration with Imgur.

For years now, Foxconn has been expressing its interest in replacing its workers with robots, raising the possibility that future iPhones could be built with machines. In fact, in December of 2012, Foxconn quietly began testing a program to replace human workers with iPhone-building robots.

But now, it appears that Foxconn is hitting the accelerator on the program. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou has just told shareholders that they will be deploying some 10,000 “Foxbots” to start building iPhones soon.

Are you the kind of nostalgic soul who looks back at the Underwood, Remington, and Smith-Corona typewriters of yesteryear and sigh plaintively? Yet are you simultaneously a modern tech nerd, who couldn’t go without the conveniences afforded by an iPad or iMac? Well, then, the Qwerkywriter — an 84-key keyboard that looks just like a vintage typewriter — might be just the thing for you.

Most of us couldn’t have been any more excited for the iPhone and iPad. Then again, most of us aren’t the Finnish Prime Minister.

Speaking to Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri, Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has accused Apple’s late-founder Steve Jobs of crushing his country’s job market with two innovations that caught Finland completely off-guard.

“We had two pillars we stood on: one was the IT industry, the other one was the paper industry,” Stubb said — noting that both were affected by the arrival of Apple’s smartphone and tablet combo in the mid-2000s.

iOS 8’s Handoff feature looks totally rad. Imagine starting off a task on your Mac and then being able to continue where you left off on your iPhone or iPad without waiting. Just pick up the device and everything has already synced.

But wait! There’s no need to imagine this, because you can already do it right now, and you don’t even need iCloud. Handoff looks truly useful, and will blur the lines between our devices more than ever before, but let’s take a look at some apps that already work seamlessly between platforms.

July 4th may be (sadly) over, but Apple’s latest mobile OS is all too happy to tell you when the national holiday might be. It could be lying, though.

iOS 7.1.2 features a bug in its Calendar app, which gives the wrong list of holidays in certain countries. The bug was first spotted by an iPad user in Lithuania, who claims that Apple has acknowledged the error.

The iPhone 6 is promising to be thinner, lighter and have a bigger, brighter display than any iPhone before… but no matter how advanced the next iPhone is, rumors still peg it as sucking the juice it needs to run through a Lightning cable.

Meanwhile, there are tons of Android and Windows Phone smartphones that charge using wireless technology. When is Apple going to catch up?

This concept by designer Vishal Bhaunushali for what he calls the iPhone 6 Pro imagines an iPhone that wirelessly charges when placed in close proximity to an aluminum, Apple-branded puck, similarly to most current wireless charging solutions.

And even cooler? He imagines a Smart iView cover that not only protects the screen of your iPhone, but can show you the current date, time and charge level of your iPhone, without ever waking up the device.

Check out the full video below.

On Sunday, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission on Sunday ordered both Google and Apple to make changes to their Android and iOS app store policies, to make after-purchase refunding more friendly to consumers.

Under the new terms, Google will need to establish a refund system based on developers’ individual policies, while Apple must send out notifications to App Store users every time the company updates its contract terms and conditions.

It’s easy to poke fun at Microsoft when it comes up with its own knockoff version of an Apple’s long-awaited iWatch, iPad, iPhone, iPod, or pretty much any other innovation in the company’s history. However, when it comes up with its own ideas, it kind of makes us think that “thinking different” isn’t really in Microsoft’s DNA at all.

According to a recently filed patent application, Redmond’s latest Apple slaying idea is for something Apple hasn’t expressed any apparent interest in: a mood changing/health device in the form of a robotic butterfly. Yes, really.

True Blood’s seventh and final season continues tonight with the third episode of the season: “Fire In The Hole.”

Death comes to us all, and that’s no empty promise with this series. Reverend Daniels calls it out: “Death is a dark and blinded motherf-cker, whether you see it coming or you don’t,” he tells Sam Merlotte.

This week’s episode is all about love. Sookie’s unequal love for Alcide, Pam’s love for Eric, Sam’s love for his lost fiancee and unborn child, Reverend Daniel’s love for Lettie May, and Andy’s love for his daughter Adilyn. All the characters act out of love and sometimes lust, but even the good guys are going to need more than blind faith in each other to survive.

Spoilers below, so consider yourself warned.

As the week winds down, Cult of Mac Deals wants to highlight some of the best deals that were offered in the past week.

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While Google and Samsung’s smart watches seem designed with function over form in mind, it looks like Apple’s iWatch will be more of a luxury fashion item. A key executive from TAG Heuer, a Swiss watch maker, has been hired by Apple to help market its upcoming wearable.

Along with this latest hire, Apple has been slowly building a team of fashion industry experts who will be instrumental in making the iWatch a commercial success.

If you are like most people, you have a number of connected devices in your home or business. Of course, you have your iPhone, your computer, and you probably have an iPad or two kicking around also.

Wouldn’t it be great to have one keyboard that will easily work with all three without having to reconfigure the Bluetooth settings every time? That’s why you need to enter the Multi-Sync Keyboard Giveaway from Cult of Mac Deals. It’s free!