Apple expanded its enormous retail empire this weekend with the grand opening of its new Puerta del Sol store that let its first customers through the crystal clear glass doors Saturday June, 21st in Madrid, Spain.
Customers lined up early Saturday morning to be among the first customers to enter Apple’s newest sanctuary, with some reports claiming nearly 600 queued up before opening hours to see the second largest Apple Store in Europe.
With just months before the expected release of the iPhone 6, rumors continue to roll in about Apple’s next-generation smartphone. Will it have a thinner bezel? A bigger screen? A glowing logo on back? In today’s video, we catch up with all the latest speculation regarding the iPhone 6.
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No matter how many updates Microsoft makes to its Surface tablets, it just hasn’t been able to live up to its promise of killing the iPad and MacBook Air in one swoop, but now Redmond is ready to try another tactic — buying you out.
Microsoft announced that starting today, MacBook Air owners can walk into any Microsoft retail store and trade-in their Apple machine for $650 of store credit toward the purchase a Surface Pro 3, which Microsoft swears can replace your laptop, because you know, it’s got Office.
The sequel to one of our favorite games is headed to iOS this July 2. Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution 2 will be a premium title for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, so get ready to strategize your way to victory with new leaders Churchill and Kennedy on the go.
This is the first Civ game developed especially for mobile devices with new gameplay and controls that work well on touch screens. You’ll get the same core strategic and tactical joy the series is known for, but with more user-friendly controls and interface. You’ll also get some new historical leaders — like Churchill and Kennedy — who will take their place alongside favorites Ghandi, Lincoln, and Napoleon.
If you’ve been itching to create hilarious facial animations (and more) with your Mac, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is going to scratch that itch.
The CrazyTalk PRO Super Bundle packages CrazyTalk PRO 7 along with the Bouncy Buddies Character Pack, the Auto Animation Library, Organic Auto Motion Samples, and a CrazyTalk7 Training Video for 57% off the regular price. You’ll have everything you need to start creating amazing animations with this bundle – but the low price of $99.99 is only going to be available for a very limited time.
Not only are we likely to get Touch ID sensors included in all new iPhones and iPads this year — they will also be higher quality, too.
A new report suggests that 2014’s refresh of Touch ID focuses on internal modifications that will make Apple’s fingerprint scanning hardware much more durable.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is supposedly expanding its 8-inch chip plant in order in order to produce Touch ID sensors for the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3.
All Cult of Mac’s top news stories and features to peruse on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got the 411 on the forthcoming iWatch, plus views on the fruit loop Apple campus, more on the hidden features in iOS 8 and the new iMac.
Let’s face it: We all have some photos on our iPhones or iPads we don’t exactly want other people seeing. When I hand my mother my iPhone to show her photos of my honeymoon in Turkey, there are some photos taken on that trip I don’t want her swiping to.
In iOS 8, you have the option to hide the photos you don’t want other people seeing in the Camera Roll, but it’s clunky and the photos still show up in other albums. A much better solution is Don’t Swipe.
Amazon Instant Video — the official iOS app of the e-commerce giant’s Prime video streaming service — has just added a great new update.
The app will now attempt to lure you in by letting users stream the first episode of selected TV shows for free, with added ad breaks before and during playback.
In addition to this, the app features new video playback controls, including one-touch play/pause and 10-second skip forward/backward buttons, alongside a handy “Next Episode” button to make your binge watching sessions even easier and more tempting. It also promises faster playback start time after hitting play.
Agree or disagree with us on any of our picks? If there’s a concept, product, or feature you’d like to see Apple take another crack at, let us know in the comments below.
In famous ’70s sitcom Happy Days, Henry Winkler’s unflappably cool greaser, Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, has a superpower, described on Wikipedia as “an almost magical ability to manipulate technology with just a nudge, bump or a snap of his fingers for things such as starting a car, turning on lights, coaxing free sodas from a vending machine, or changing the song selection on a jukebox.”
It turns out that if you’re having camera issues with your iPhone 5, fixing it might be as simple as channeling the Fonz: Just try thwacking it.
Graphic designer Susan Kare is iconic — literally. The mastermind behind the friendly 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons used in the original Mac operating system, Kare’s work has reached more people than almost any other graphic designer on Earth.
Yet the way she stumbled into designing the icons for the Mac operating system was pretty much a lark, and in a recent presentation at the EG conference in California, Kare spoke a little bit about how she stumbled into the job.
It’s a fascinating talk, not just for the details she shares about early Mac operating system development, but also because Kare finally reveals why Apple switched from the Apple symbol to the Command key.
I’m a sucker for old school platformers in the vein of Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, and upcoming iOS game Escape from the Pyramid certainly fulfills those criteria.
Set across 45 levels — representing three worlds in all — the game borrows from ancient Egyptian art to create something that definitely looks like it could stand out in a year already full of interesting-looking iOS titles.
Apple sure is looking friendlier these days.
This year’s Worldwide Developers Conference was geekier, more welcoming and less locked-down than any in recent history. Apple also bid farewell to Katie Cotton — the much-feared queen of PR, whose frosty relations with journalists made her only slightly less terrifying than an angry Steve Jobs — with a call for a “friendlier, more approachable” public relations face to warm up the company’s relationship with the press.
“For the past few years it’s felt like Apple’s only goal was to put us in our place,” Panic’s Cabel Sasser recently tweeted. “Now it feels like they might want to be friends.”
These recent moves represent a major change in the way Apple does business, even as the company sits atop a $150 billion war chest amassed thanks to innovative products, ruthless leadership and heavy-handed policies that fostered a culture of secrecy and utter domination. But in a world where it’s drummed into our heads that nice guys finish last, does Apple’s approach risk killing the company with kindness?
CEO Tim Cook certainly doesn’t seem to think so.
A new exhibit showcasing hundreds of original Apple patents has opened in Denver.
Entitled “Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology that Changed the World,” the display offers a rare opportunity to look over some of the most influential and important patents in recent tech history — ranging from the original Macintosh through the iPhone.
Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet says that the exhibit, “provides a unique glimpse into one of our country’s most iconic innovators, highlighting Jobs’ wide-ranging portfolio and lasting influence on modern technology.”
Foxconn and Pegatron — the two leading manufacturers set to produce the iPhone 6 — have been on a massive hiring spree as of late.
According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, Foxconn will recruit in excess of 100,000 new workers in mainland China to help assemble Apple’s much-anticipated next generation iPhone. It had previously been reported that the company was opening up new factory space to carry out the work.
Rival Taiwanese assembler Pegatron will also be upping the workforce in one of its factories by 30 percent in order to meet the demand the influx of new work will place on it.
Sookie, Bill, Jason, LaFayette, Sam, and Jessica are back in the final season of True Blood, HBO’s killer vampire drama that’s in its seventh and final season.
We’re here to watch the writers and actors raise the stakes for the residents of Bon Temps as they try to make sense of a world terrorized by infected Hepatitis V vampires and the human bigotry of the small southern town in the series inspired by Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries novels.
If you missed the first six seasons, be warned: there’s a ton of spoilers here. If you want to catch up on the basics, though, head over to our monstrous six-season recap and then come on back, y’all, hear?
Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress and telepath who can read your every thought. This hasn’t made her feel welcome in the tiny Southern town full of bigots and racists where she lives. Worse yet, she’s fallen for a vampire, Bill Compton, who’s a champion for other vamps to “come out of the coffin” and live peacefully alongside humans. Oh, and werewolves, shape-shifters, witches and fairies are real, too.
HBO’s True Blood is a fun, sexy romp through an engaging universe of characters and supernatural goings on. Based on the best-selling novels of Charlaine Harris, True Blood heads into its seventh and final season tonight, and we don’t want to miss a minute.
If you’re a New York-based coder or wannabe coder looking to learn Apple’s new programming language Swift, you may want to check out an upcoming evening tech workshop organized by software development firm TurnToTech.
With the next session taking place Monday at their 5th Avenue offices, the number of spaces available has just been upped to allow more people to attend.
There’s a fire in the Amazon! I’m so sorry. Bad jokes aside, on this week’s CultCast we’ll tell you what we love and don’t about Amazon’s much-buzzed debut mobile phone. Plus: the iMac just got a lot cheaper… and slower; another Weibo leak reportedly shows a huge 5.5-inch iPhone 6; the cool additions to iOS 8 and Yosemite’s 2nd betas; this summer’s hottest mens’ bathing suit attire; plus, you asked, we answer—it’s an all-new CultCast Q&A!
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.
Click on for the show notes.
It’s been a great week of offerings at Cult of Mac Deals, with promotions that are sure to satisfy anyone.
If you’re looking for a great software package, then The Name Your Own Summer Blockbuster Mac Bundle (featuring Path Finder 6 and Fantastical) is going to be right up your alley. The Doxie One will give you one of the world’s most innovative scanners for only $99, and The Karma 4G Hotspot provides you with pay-as-you-go wifi that will keep you connected for just $69. Want to rip and convert movies, DVDs and videos to a ton of different devices? Then The MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack – priced at $19.99 – is another deal that is one of the best we’ve offered this week.
If you like the look of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud apps Sketch and Line, but don’t fancy buying the $200 official stylus to use with them, you should pick up Adonit's new Jot Touch instead. It has a tiny “Pixelpoint” tip instead of a disk or fat rubbery point, and it works just like Adobe’s Ink stylus, letting you copy and paste to/from the Creative Cloud as well as access files and Kuler color palettes. Best of all, it’s just $120.
LOS ANGELES — Free-to-play games don’t enjoy the same cache as games that cost money right out of the gate. Sure, they’re at the top of the “making money” charts, as gamers download freebies by the bucketful (and apparently purchase loads of virtual stuff from them), but ask any gamer what they think of them and they’ll typically give you a blank, slightly annoyed stare.
So I honestly didn’t hold out much hope that I’d see anything super-interesting at an Electronic Entertainment Expo luncheon sponsored by free-to-play mobile game maker DeNA last week.
However, the developer showed off a couple of pretty damn good games at the event. We saw the recently released Transformers tie-in game and several others, including Peter Molyneux’s latest effort, Godus. But what really stuck out for me were Royal Defenders and WARP.
No one has seen a single hardware leak of the iWatch but that didn't stopped the rumor mill from going ape-shit crazy for Apple's future wearable device this week. We saw whispers of sweat sensors, problems with the feds, and even celebrity athletes testing Apple's future fitness device.
Once again, we're taking the black cloth off our crystal ball and shining it up to see if we can spot what Tim Cook really has in store for the future of Apple. Come see which rumors are guaranteed to materialize and which are about to vanish like ghosts.
Stare into our crystal ball to see past the rumors and into the future...
A cheaper iMac that proves you get what you pay for, fresh beta updates for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, and a “rare” iPhone with a $15,000 price tag. You’ll get these stories and more in Cult of Mac’s video rundown of the week’s biggest Apple news.
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