For many of us, our iPhones are already the most-used remote controls in our entire house. But come June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple’s ready to make that official. A new report says the company is planning a platform that would turn its iOS devices, including the iPhone, into universal remotes for the internet of things inside your house. Think of it as Made for iHome.
Apple has made a slight but also important update to the way the App Store handles apps that have been refunded by developers to customers.
While you used to be able to request a refund for a paid app and continue getting updates, that is no longer the case. Once a refund has been granted, the customer is unable to get support for the app or download it again.
As warmer weather hits even San Francisco, we’re pooling our beer money for a robot bartender. And some wasabi-flavored toothpicks. Our ever-expanding crew could use some of these modular Modos bookshelves and stools, too. There are so many things on Kickstarter that we want — jeans, maps, comic books — that we’re sharing our wish list with you.
Even cranky futurist Jaron Lanier supports Kickstarter — it “turns consumers into a priori funders of innovation” and we’re pretty sure that translates into robotic cocktails for everyone.
Scientific calculator app Archimedes has received its first significant update in quite a while.
Adding the expected iOS 7-compatible design tweaks, the app also adds a number of useful improvements. The first of these relates to Archimedes’ plotting function. Curves now feature fluid navigation and crisp rendering, and are adjusted in real-time as their associated formulas are edited.
In Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a scene in which a tribe of early hominids, having encountered an extraterrestrial Monolith for the first time, are suddenly evolved to the next stage of human consciousness, and are capable of using tools for the first time.
This video of children from the ages of 6 to 13 trying to figure out how to work a vintage Apple II is like the opposite of that. And it shows just how inexplicable computing was to pretty much everyone before Steve Jobs released the original Mac in 1984.
Ever since Apple first unveiled the iPad, we’ve been hearing rumors about Apple switching to ARM-based Macs. Now, the rumor is back again, with a French website claiming that Apple is actively developing 64-bit, quad-core Mac variants with ARM-based chips. But we’re just as skeptical as we’ve ever been.
If you thought that round two of Apple vs. Samsung was the end, you are sadly mistaken.
Although Apple recently won $119 million in a second victory against Samsung in patent court, that modest figure is nowhere near enough to make Apple back down. Not only is Apple seeking a retrial, but it wants to ban past and potentially future Samsung phones from being sold.
If you’ve been looking to get your hands on the latest state-of-the-art gaming console, then Cult of Mac Deals has a giveaway you’ll definitely want to check out.
We’re giving one lucky person an Xbox One, the game Titanfall, two controllers, a Kinect and a headset. All you need to do is click here to enter.
Apple’s two latest ads in its expanding ‘Your Verse’ campaign tout the iPad as a content creation tool and instrumental part of the creative process. Calling them merely “ads” doesn’t actually do them justice, as they are much fuller stories than 30-second TV spots on Apple’s website.
Called “Orchestrating Sound” and “Exploring Without Limits,” the first narrative is a profile of renowned composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and how he uses the iPad to make symphonies. The second addition follows the deaf travel blogger Chérie King and how she uses the iPad on all of her trips around the world.
To end off your weekend, we’ve got three offers at Cult of Mac Deals that will keep your stuff powered up, let you record Internet radio, and keep that wallet bulge from happening.
First up is a package of 100 AA and 50 AAA Duracell batteries. Available for just $56 through this limited time offer, you can get dependable power for your devices. Duracell’s “coppertop” batteries are engineered to be some of the most dependable in the world.
It’s the second part of our roundup of 10 great, quick tips for your iPhone, some of which you probably don’t know about yet. Make sure to check last week’s five tips.
This week: two awesome Apple artifacts hit the auction block; Oompa-loompas leak pics of a super-sized iPad; forget headphones, the Beats acquisition could be all about video; Woz sets the FCC straight on net neutrality; iPad is where the Gov-er-na-tuh stores his shirtless selfies; a popular travel app you should definitely download, like, right now; and, is Apple building out their own content delivery network?
Heartily guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!
Our thanks to Smile Software for supporting this episode! If you haven’t tried TextExpander from Smile software, you’re missing out on one of the most useful apps available for the Mac. TextExpander saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text and pictures, and it’s an application Erfon uses every single day. Try it out yourself for free at smilesoftware.com/cultcast.
Click on for the show notes.
I started writing stories this year – short fiction and a couple of novellas so far – and I’ve found I need to make a lot of notes. The iPhone is pretty great for this, as you’d expect, but not always: Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to tap away on a cellphone, and sometimes you might want to make little drawings, or maybe you just find it easier and faster to pull out a paper notebook or index card.
The biggest advantage of iPhone notes is that they are sync-able and searchable. Paper is neither. But using a combo of apps, old-school paper hacks and an easy-to-maintain “workflow”, I came up with a simple note-taking system that keeps paper and pixels together, both equally searchable, sync-able and usable.
Apple’s video chat feature FaceTime has bridged the miles for families, sparked a ton of romances and probably shattered a few marriages.
This may be the first time it’s ever shipwrecked someone, though.
John Berg was sailing off the coast of Kona, Hawaii when a FaceTime login request started messing with the navigation app on his iPad. Although sailing apps on smartphones and tablets so popular they’re credited with having sunk the market for Garmin products, imprecise navigation has been a concern.
We get slammed 24/7 with new Apple rumors. Some are accurate, most are not. To give you a clue about what’s really coming out of Cupertino in the future, we’re busting out our rumor debunker each week to blow up the nonsense.
This week we get cooking with a gadget-charging camping stove and a slick, iPhone-friendly food thermometer. We also do DIY projects (without tenderizing our thumbs) with the German Latthammer, charge our flagging phones with a purse that packs a built-in battery, and record everything using the super-dorky Lifelogger camera. Is the sun shining? Yes it is!
With another week full of news in the past, your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest features. Facebook’s alleged Snapchat competitor, Microsoft’s latest attempt at an ‘iPad killer’ and iCloud’s hacking are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown.
Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another. Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
If you’re like me, spending $60 on a game these days is rare. I may have too many game consoles connected to my television, and I may have way too many games on my Steam account, not to mention my iOS devices, but every once in a while, a game shows up for the big screen that just makes me stop and start counting out the twenties.
Watch Dogs, coming out next Tuesday across the US for PlayStation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, is one of those games, and if the trailer below is any indication of how it’s going to feel playing it, I would spend twice as much to do so.
“I saw something no one was meant to see so they came after me,” says vengeance-minded protagonist, Aiden Pearce. “But someone fucked up and the wrong person died. Now, I’m coming for them.”
Drop the needle on avant-garde musician Brian Eno’s latest album release (on vinyl, of course), and you’ll hear all sorts of future-retro electronic sounds composed to stir your emotions in sometimes unpredictable ways.
Aim your iPhone at the very same vinyl record, and if you’ve installed the app made for the purpose, you’ll see a whole different scene, a 3D hologram-like cityscape that rises up from the spinning platter. Check out the video (below) for a sneak peek.
A set of images of the iPhone 6’s alleged backlight panel have been leaked on the Chinese site Weibo this morning. User “顾Gooey” who posted the pictures claims they’re fit for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 that Apple is rumored to release later this year.
We can’t verify the legitimacy of the photos, but the part does appear to be produced similar to the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. However, Nowhereelse.fr notes that the connector has been moved slightly from the iPhone 5c backlight, and the pins are slightly different, signaling some possible changes from Cupertino.
Here’s another shot of the display from the back:
Apple’s sapphire glass could be the biggest thing to hit the iPhone since Touch ID, and even though it hasn’t announced an iPhone 6 or iWatch with a Sapphire glass display yet, its chummy parasitic buddy Samsung is already looking for a way to copy.
Cult of Mac Deals regularly offers “name your own price” bundles, and we’ve got another here for you that assembles 9 apps and an iOS course that really deliver the goods … and the savings!
These types of bundles are time-limited opportunities to buy a collection of apps for whatever you want to pay! The bundles are exclusively constructed and are made for anyone looking to discover the best apps from around the globe. And The Name Your Own Price Mac Bundle 5.0 is no exception.
Countless “endless runner” games have made it big in the App Store—all the way back to Canabalt in 2009. Now we have more titles like Tiny Wings and Badland that pride themselves on not only fun, causal gameplay, but immersive design.
The next game in the endless runner camp to make it big could very well be Alto’s Adventure, an upcoming title from Snowman, the small developer behind popular to-do app Checkmark. In an exclusive peek at the game’s artwork given to Cult of Mac, we’re shown the incredible design that’s going into bringing Alto’s Adventure to life.
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Thailand is one of the world’s most coup-prone countries. It’s also home to people who smile the most in selfies. So even when the tanks roll in, the urge to snap takes over. Better yet: get that shot with the soldiers. Or the tank. That’s what’s happening in Bangkok, where the smartphone set is taking keepsakes as the coup comes to town.