If you listen to the CultCast, you know how much our own Leander Kahney loves Sonos. It’s actually kind of scary.
You don’t have to feel as strongly as Leander about Sonos to appreciate the major update to its remote app that’s available today in the App Store.
Beats Music is in an interesting spot as a new service, mainly because we don’t know when (or if) it will be swallowed by Apple.
After it was revealed last week that Apple plans to buy Beats for billions, the company’s fledgling music subscription service has received a new level of attention. But that doesn’t mean its growth has been healthy.
According to a leaked royalties report, Beats Music only had around 111,000 subscribers as of last month.
Those are incredibly low numbers for a startup with a lot of funding, aggressive advertising, and a juicy promotion in place with AT&T. But to Apple, stagnant growth isn’t an issue. It’s about what Beats Music can do for iTunes.
The second charity auction to offer a sit-down with Tim Cook has closed, and $330K has been raised by the winning bid for the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.
The winner, who’s identity has not been disclosed, will get to have lunch with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Another perk was added by Cook before the auction closed, but even that failed to garner as much interest as the previous auction.
At a price of $3.2 billion, Beats Audio is the most Apple has ever paid to acquire a company in its 38 year history, but even after writing that fat check Apple will have nearly $148 billion in cash burning a hole in its pocket.
Tim Cook says he’s not afraid to go on a shopping spree, so what else should he buy while he’s tossing around mountains of cash at companies? The folks at Funny or Die have a few ideas of their own, including a $13 billion acquisition that could finally bring the iToilet to your bathroom in classic Apple white.
Check it out:
Weather apps are a dime a dozen, but what do you use when you want to know the exact temperature where you are right now? That’s the question that drove app company Robocat to make Thermodo, a small thermometer that plugs directly into a smartphone’s headphone jack.
What makes Thermodo incredibly unique is the overwhelming amount of support it received on Kickstarter last year. The project raised over 10 times its original goal of $35,000. People clearly loved the idea of a portable thermometer for the iPhone, as over $336,000 has been pledged by backers.
Now that Thermodo is shipping and out in the wild, does it live up to the all the hype?
Apple’s rumored iWatch could give the watch industry a much needed shot in the wrist once its finally revealed, but what if Apple decided to make iWatch a platform like CarPlay instead of an actual product?
It sounds crazy but putting Apple’s tech in the hands of the world’s classiest watchmakers could yield better results than if Cupertino dives into the fashion world alone. In its newest concept, Curved imagined what Rolex could do with the iWatch and the result is the manliest smart chronometer a non-geek could want.
Checkout the full concept video below:
When it comes to getting sued over U.S. patent infringements, no one gets targeted more than Apple.
A new study from legal analytics firm Lex Machina found that in 2013 Apple was the most frequent target of patent lawsuits, followed by Amazon at No. 2, as both companies came under heavy fire from a group of 10 “patent monetization entities” that were responsible for a staggering 13 percent of the 6,092 patent-infringement suits filed last year.
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 most-sued companies:
Sliding two distinctive iRings between my middle and ring fingers on each hand and then conducting the bouncy electronic beat coming out of my iPad mini and into my big fat headphones made me feel less like a conductor and more like an awkward boxer, punching at a touchscreen.
Once I relaxed into it, though, the music started to flow and my hands began to dance; this is one cool iOS music-making peripheral.
The iRing is made for making music, but the potential here is stunning: Imagine a video game controlled with your hands, a webpage that scrolls at a speed you define with your fingers, or an e-book that turns pages with a swipe through the air. This is a truly innovative new product.
Cult of Mac Deals prides itself on delivering the best value in both quality products and top-notch resources that will help you take your skills to new heights. The offer we present to you today is no exception.
We’ve put together a deal that features 8 web development courses and over 70 hours of elite training. The Full Stack Hacker Bundle boasts e-learning courses that’ll turn you into a full blown web developer – and all for the incredibly low price of $49!
Here’s a fitness app with an interesting extra feature.
BetterFit lets you keep track of when and how you exercise. You can design custom routines from a giant list of activities or make your own. But it also includes a second tracker that lets you measure how much protein you consume during the day. It has a list of preset food items, or you can input it manually and set daily goals to make sure that you’re feeding your muscles properly.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stock up on lentils because they’re as delicious and full of protein as they are fun to say.
Here’s a quick, funny, and surprisingly challenging word game for movie buffs.
Plot Twistz presents you with a slightly modified plot to a famous film, and your job is to figure out the name of the augmented movie. You get the answer by changing one letter of the original title, which doesn’t sound like much, but you’d be surprised.
It’s also pretty hilarious if you love puns.
iOS still beats Android when it comes to quality apps and games. But lots of us use Android tablets and smartphones for one reason (price) or another (freedom), so we might as well make the best of it.
You can find some great games on the Android platform, many of them free or low cost, too. So don’t settle for the same old free-to-play crap — download these great Android games today.
A list of links and prices follows.
The look comes from a stroke of bad luck: While on a 2011 photographic pilgrimage to the modern ruins, Van de Sande’s gear crapped out and he was forced to make due with a loaner.
“I was limited very much with the equipment so I borrowed a fisheye lens,” he says over FaceTime from his home in Hasselt, Belgium. “I’m not a big fan of the fisheye thing but I tried to shoot as if it was just a wide-angle.”
A new survey, reportedly taken from a sample of 50,000 smartphone users around the world, reveals the reasons consumers made the phone purchasing decisions they did.
According to IDC’s findings, battery life is the number one most important factor when it comes to choosing a smartphone — coming above ease of use, screen size, camera resolution, and touch screen. When asked, almost half of all iPhone owners quizzed named battery life as the main reason for their selecting the device.
As if the reported $3.2 billion Beats deal isn’t enough evidence, Apple seems to be quite big on this “music” thing.
According to new reports, Apple will introduce high definition audio playback in iOS 8, alongside new versions of its In-Ear Headphones. The iOS rumor corresponds with earlier reports that Apple will announce high-fidelity iTunes music downloads at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). As it currently stands, iOS 7’s standard Music app can’t play high quality 24-bit audio files which contain a sampling frequency beyond 48 kHz.
Apple might be among the companies which settled the Silicon Valley anti-poaching dispute out of court last month, but one plaintiff isn’t happy — calling the $324 million settlement “grossly inadequate.”
The trial was supposed to begin at the end of May, which would have potentially led to months of revelations about Apple’s anti-poaching practices. Ultimately the four tech companies involved, including Apple and Google, settled for $324 million: a figure substantially lower than the $3 billion in damages requested by the suit, or the $9 billion which could have been awarded if the defendants were found to be guilty in court.
Microsoft Office for iPad only landed six weeks ago, but Microsoft claims it’s already been downloaded a whopping 27 million times.
The figure was thrown out by Julia White, the general manager of Microsoft’s Office division, who mentioned it during a keynote speech on Monday at Microsoft’s TechEd customer conference in Houston.
Look, making an app that will run on your iPhone is hard.
Luckily, adsy.me just made it chimp simple for normal folks like you or I to make a mobile app right on your iOS, Android or computer. You don’t need to download anything, learn to code, or even leave your touchscreen.
Make an app to show off your disco band, complete with links to Soundcloud, or share recipes with your friends, linking them to your favorite chef sites. Explain your passion project and connect your Twitter followers to a wealth of knowledge that you can curate on your very own mobile app.
Seriously, if you want to make a mobile app and have no clue about C++ or Xcode compilers or other such fooferaw, adsy.me is your best bet.
The iWatch may be set to mark Apple’s debut into health and fitness tracking, but one company is taking the concept of wearables a step further.
The forthcoming $199 OMsignal shirt promises to be the gym wear of the future — featuring a ton of health sensors sewn into its fabric, which constantly monitor the condition of the wearer. Sensors are capable of tracking heart rate, breathing rate, breathing volume, movement (including steps and cadence), movement intensity, heart rate variability, and calories burned.
“The data is sent via Bluetooth to a specially developed iPhone app, which lets you see all of it in real time,” says Dr. Jesse Slade Shantz, the firm’s Chief Medical Officer. “Your iPhone beams the data up to the cloud, and algorithms we’ve developed then push back various metrics — showing you information about your breathing during workouts, and information like that.”
Apple’s biggest acquisition ever is all the tech world can talk about, and Apple hasn’t even confirmed the news yet.
Last week it was reported that Apple has plans to acquire Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion. Shortly after the news broke, Beats co-founder and legendary producer Dr. Dre called himself the “first billionaire in hip-hop.”
Now Dre and music industry tycoon Jimmy Iovine are rumored to appear onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next month. What exactly the future holds for Apple and Beats remains unclear, but here are five things to know about the monumental deal:
It’s easy to quickly fill up your camera roll on your iOS device with tons of different photos. While you have photos of different types and categories, creating albums is good to maintain a sort of organization and sanity on your device. In today’s episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to learn how to add new photos to your existing albums and more.
Take a look at the video to see what to do.
The icon-tiled interface of iOS could use more than just a flat facelift from Jony Ive to feel more modern and even though jailbreakers have enjoyed widgets for years, maybe it’s time Apple added them in Control Center.
This iOS 8 concept from Ryan Gilsdorf envisions widgets coming to iOS 8 through Control Center where users can swipe between music, calendar, weather and third-party widgets to control apps from the homescreen.
Take a look at the full concept video below:
We’ve all got them: the freaky friends. Those who comment on and like every. single. status update.
Those who post long, ranting political polemics to your happy cat poster images. The friends that creep you out in a subtle, yet plausibly deniable way.
Or maybe there’s the friends you want to get your freak on with who really don’t need to see you in those embarrassing photo updates that you send to your frat brothers.
However you rank your friends, Facebook has some non-intuitive list tools to help you finely tune your groups of friends. Here’s how to use them, and then how to view your profile through the lens of any specific person on your friends list, to make sure your list tweak was effective.
I have a confession to make: I wear socks with sandals.
That’s not so bad in itself — I live in Germany, where otherwise-rational men wear socks, sandals and fanny packs all at the same time, and women still talk to them.
The kicker is that I started this habit when I lived in Spain. The reason? Keen’s amazing outdoor Clearwater CNX sandals.
Have you ever experienced that giddy feeling of good fortune when a slot machine starts pouring out quarters, or a winning poker hand lets you put your arms around a big pile of chips and pull them towards your side of the table? Dragon Coins, a combination arcade “coin-pusher” and casual RPG, recreates that feeling every time you play.
It’s a dangerous precedent. Dragon Coins literally piles on the treasure when you’re on a roll, emulating the psychological appeal of casinos. As long as you are able to put the game down from time to time, or grind out low-level battles to earn extra experience, you probably won’t end up mortgaging your home or draining your kid’s college fund to pay for this game.