One of the great things Starbucks does for its customers is its Pick of the Week promotion. By just wandering into your local coffee shop and ordering a cup of joe, you can pick up a killer app or iBook, all for free. And it’s been going strong since 2011.
The Pick of the Week has given out some great apps in its time, but this week’s giveaway is a real winner: Starbucks is giving away Threes!, the killer side-swiping game that Apple declared one of the best-designed apps of 2014.
According to new research from market intelligence firm ABI Research, the iPhone was the world’s most popular smartphone in Q1 2014, leaving competitors in the dust as the top-selling handset globally.
Despite ripping off ideas, paying celebrities to endorse their products, and having a confusing matrix of dozens of smartphones on the market, Samsung was unable to capture the no. 1 spot from Cupertino — with Apple’s flagship iPhone 5s 16GB coming in at the premier position.
Yesterday, we reported that Foxconn CEO Terry Gou had promised shareholders that the Chinese iPhone manufacturer was ready to deploy an army of 10,000 robots to help build the iPhone 6.
But while that report seems accurate, don’t expect these so-called Foxbots to completely replace humans on the assembly line. As it turns out, the iPhone 6 is going to require way too much finesse to assemble for a mere robot to do it all.
I’m a bit of a sucker for anything remotely magical, and I love the idea of blasting spells around to save the world. If you’re also excited by that, and love hordes of monsters too, then Storm Casters will be right up your alley.
Packing a library of spells so extensive that even the great Gandalf would be in awe, Storm Casters’ enchanting design aesthetics and whimsical outlook will make you a fan straight off.
Get Set Games (developer of Mega Jump) has a lot to be proud of when it comes to Storm Casters. The company’s latest dive into the world of dungeon-crawling and spell-casting is especially appealing to newcomers as well as fans of the roguelike gaming subgenre.
Has the iPhone done away with the good-old-fashioned celebrity autograph? The answer is a resounding “yes” according to pop singer and professional bitter-ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift. In a new op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Swift writes that:
Siri does many things, not all of them as well as others. But one thing she’s really great at is reminders: Tell Siri to remind you to call your Mom on her birthday every year, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.
While Siri is great at reminding you to do things, though, one thing she can’t do is remind you to remember things. But there’s no reason she can’t, and it would make an absolutely killer feature.
The city of Claremont, North Carolina, has approved a new development that will allow Apple to build a new sustainable solar farm.
With an initial investment of $55 million, Apple’s latest solar farm will be a massive, 100-acre, 17.5-megawatt project, likely to take five years to complete.
It’s a trick photographer Luke Olsen learned when he was surrounded on the streets of his hometown. His shots from the Portland Zombie Walk showcase the lean and mean side of his stylish but macabre portraiture.
The organized chaos of events like the zombie walk offers comic relief from formal photography sessions filled with intricate lighting, staging and models. Any opportunity to capture inspired lunacy is technically practice, but Olsen gravitates toward flash mobs to cut loose with his camera-wielding compatriots. He’s thrown himself into the thick of SantaCon, the infamous alcohol-fueled rampage that grew from absurdist San Francisco street theater into a national headache. The moribund Portland Urban Iditarod, where teams of costumed runners dragged tricked-out shopping carts from bar to bar, has also been shutter fodder.
“It’s a great deal of fun to wander into a large event with a group of friends, shoot the event and reconvene later to see what everyone got,” says Olsen. “It’s like The Bang Bang Club, just 100 percent less deadly.”
Back on June 29, thousands of Apple employees and their families marched in the San Francisco Pride Parade, coming from all over the world to support LGBT rights and to celebrate Apple’s commitment to equality and diversity. Tim Cook and Apple environmental adviser Lisa P. Jackson were two of the prominent Apple employees to attend, while Apple gave out $1 iTunes gift cards to onlookers at the parade.
Apple has never had an official retail presence of any kind in the Middle East, until now. Thanks to a deal struck with Jarir Bookstore, Apple is directly providing its products in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Arabian government cleared Apple to operate in the country a couple of months ago. The agreement with Jarir will have Apple working with Saudi Arabia’s largest books and electronics retailer.
We got our first taste of the flexibility of the iPhone 6’s new sapphire glass display this morning, but in a new video posted by YouTuber Marques Brownlee, Apple’s super-tough new display is subjected to a brutal scratch test and comes away completely unscathed.
To test Sapphire glass’ durability, Marques stabs an alleged 4.7-inch iPhone 6 sapphire display repeatedly with a knife after a quick key scratch test yields no results. Both tests fail to make a dent on the display panel, but your mouth will drop when you see him forcefully try to bend the display with his foot.
Check out how insanely durable your iPhone 6 will be in the video below:
iTunes Radio quickly became known as an underdog after its release last fall, with Apple facing an uphill battle against established services like Spotify and Pandora. In today’s video, we take an in-depth look at iTunes Radio, its features, its future — and why it deserves your attention.
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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.