As good as the experience of shopping in a physical Apple Store undoubtedly is, Apple’s also making major leaps in its online sales business.
According to new data released by e-commerce research firm Internet Retailer, Apple had a great 2013: not only overtaking Staples to become the No. 2 online retailer, but actually growing faster than Amazon.
Like the world’s largest therapy session, social media is all about sharing our emotions. The team behind new Kickstarter project The Feeling Skin are hoping to build on that idea by combining a new social network based on emotion with a funky smartphone case, designed to help you stay in touch with friends.
The app lets you record short Vine-style videos, to which you can add either a “Mood Up” or a “Mood Down” emotion. A Mood Up, for instance, might be arriving at the airport for your holiday, while a Mood Down could be trudging to work in the rain on a Monday morning.
These videos can then be posted to the app’s network, along with Twitter and Facebook, for your friends to see.
What makes The Feeling Skin a bit different is its accompanying case designed for the iPhone 5/5s — which works with the app and glows different colors depending on your friends’ mood, thanks to a built-in LED. In addition you can ask your friends how they’re doing throughout the day by touching a “pulse” button on the back of the case.
If making money is what you like to do then the new app Make It Rain is just for you. Players can swipe their fingers across the screen to simply throw dollar bills from their bands, but making more money is where strategy comes into play. From business to political investments, build lemonade stands, hire politicians and much more to upgrade your benefits. How much money do you think you can make?
Take a look at the video to see what you think.
In the race to bestow absolute control over your home entertainment paraphernalia, the Blumoo device is a sort of a jack-of-all-trades standout.
Similar to the now-discontinued Griffin Beacon, Blumoo lets you control all your devices that normally work with a remote control — TV, DVR, Bluetooth player, stereo, etc — from an Android phone or iPhone. But it also does double-duty as a Bluetooth streaming device, giving you the ability to stream music to pretty much any set of speakers it’s physically connected to.
We had a little hands-on time with the Blumoo, and came away impressed with the device — but frustrated by the software. Also, unfortunately the Blumoo Android app is a few weeks away from availability, so we played around with its iOS sibling instead; we’re not expecting any major difference when the Android app eventually arrives. Here’s what we liked, and didn’t.
Apple plans to add another iconic location to its list of NYC real estate properties, according to a new report from Gary Allen at Ifo Apple Store.
The newest store location will be at a magnificent former bank building on the Upper East Side of New York City that was designed by architect Henry O. Chapman and offers over 9,000 square-feet of space, plus a vault in the basement – perfect for storing early iPhone 6 shipment.
Imagine a game that mashes up the best of a classic strategy game like speed chess and a modern hit like League of Legends. If you do, you’ll probably come up with something like Aerena: Clash of Champions, a steampunk-themed turn-based strategy game that uses the hero mechanics of other massively online battle arena games like Dota 2 in a painstakingly created digital board game arena.
The game will go free-to-play this Wednesday on Steam (it’s already out for Android tablets — iOS versions to come soon), and is a great new gaming experience — we’ve been playing it all morning. It takes only a short while for the casual gamer to learn how to play, but there is enough strategy and balanced mechanics to give core players a ton of depth.
If you’re super savvy, though, you’ll grab the early access copy today for $10, which nets you a full $30 worth of downloadable content, extra heroes and more. Either way, Aerena is a brilliant game and deserves your attention.
A new exploit has been discovered in iOS 7.1.1 that lets anyone access your full contacts list and send an email, text or call — just by chatting with Siri.
Egyptian neurosurgeon and part-time hacker Sherif Hashim, apparently the first to discover the security hole, posted a YouTube video detailing the steps of the exploit.
Check out how easy it is for a prankster to hack your phone in the video below:
Google Maps continues to show why it’s the best app for directions on any platform, with today’s impressive update that packs a number of small tweaks alongside one huge feature that will make following turn-by-turn directions easier and safer than ever.
For you gamers out there that aren’t looking to spend an arm and a leg for Call of Duty: Ghosts you can now experience this award-winning title for pennies on the dollar … thanks to Cult of Mac Deals!
Fighting as both a U.S Marine and British S.A.S. soldier, in Call of Duty 4 you will utilize sophisticated technology and weaponry to take control of the battlefield and to lead your squad to victory. You’ll get hours of action packed, gun wielding fun with one of the best FPS franchises out there. And all for just $9.99!
There’s nothing more irritating than wanting to use your iPhone and seeing that the battery is either low or completely dead. While plugging in your iPhone normally can get you a pretty good charge, it seems to take a long time. In this episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to’s we show you how to charge your iPhone quicker than normally with our easy steps.
Take a look at the video to see how to do it.
The unending stream of iOS games runs too fast and too fat for any individual to figure out which ones are worthy of your time and/or money. Freemium games? Check. Casual games? Sure. Hardcore games ported to your iOS device of choice? Plenty.
But which ones should you sit down and play right now? Our crack team of reviewers took a moment to call up the games they return to, day after day, when they feel like experiencing the finest the mobile gaming world has to offer. Above are the eight best iOS games you should download at this very moment.
The iOS App Store gold rush might be played out for all but the luckiest developers, but there’s another part of the Apple empire where coders can find breakout success: the Mac App Store.
“Compared to iOS, it’s definitely easier to have a hit in the Mac App Store,” says Andreas Hegenberg, the creator of successful gesture-based Mac app BetterTouchTool. “I think it’s still pretty easy to develop a Mac App Store app that can feed you very well. But it all depends on how you define a ‘big hit.'”
While games rule the increasingly cluttered roost in the iOS store — with many unimaginative developers looking to get rich quick with yet another Flappy Bird clone — the Mac App Store is home to more pedestrian offerings like accounting software and productivity tools.
The Mac App Store might not mint a new millionaire each day, but the developers we spoke with said writing this type of bread-and-butter software can provide a reliable source of income. Here’s why.
If you thought LinkedIn had cornered the market when it comes to employment social networks, think again!
New iOS app Jobr hopes to make careers by letting you “Swipe, Chat, & Discover Your Dream Job!” Instead of searching for positions online, sending in resumes, and then waiting for someone to call you back (or not), the app brings together job applicants and hiring managers in more of an informal social network-type environment.
If video killed the radio star, then the iPod helped kill the cassette tape.
Although perhaps not permanently enough.
According to new reports, Sony has developed a new magnetic tape capable of holding 148GB of data per square inch — meaning that if spooled into a cartridge, each tape would boast an astonishing 185TB worth of storage. To put that into context, it’s the equivalent of 3,700 dual-layer 50GB Blu-rays.
There have been many wearables and quantified-health applications over the past few years, but most have steered clear of proclaiming themselves medical devices. Some of the rumors about the iWatch (such as the fact that it will be able to listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict heart attacks) may sound a bit too good to be true. But the number of biosensor and biomedical engineers Apple has snapped up recently makes us think the iWatch could be a device that crosses over firmly into the "medical monitoring" category.
According to one recent report, a reason for the long delay before launch is that Apple is awaiting certification from the Food and Drug Administration to get the iWatch approved as medical equipment. Given Apple's recent announcement of the Health app for iOS 8 to collect and show data on calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels and more, plus the conspicuous absence of a health-tracking fitness band in Apple's last iPhone 5s ad, the idea that the iWatch will be geared toward health seems as close to a foregone conclusion as you get for a device that hasn't even been officially announced yet.
Are you sitting down? Because this news may shock you.
With the iWatch reportedly set to arrive later this year, noted original thinkers Microsoft recently published a patent related to its own dive into the Wonderful World of Wearables™.
Amazingly enough, Microsoft’s plans suggest the company is planning to take on the previously uncharted waters of fitness tracking — with a somewhat familiar-sounding device capable of keeping tabs on the wearer’s pulse, displaying the number of calories burns during a workout, and measuring distance traveled.
Telltale Games has released the first in-game screenshots of its upcoming Borderlands spinoff, Tales from the Borderlands, and do they ever look pretty!
A mash-up of first-person shooter and adventure game, Cult of Mac last shared details on Tales from the Borderlands earlier this year, when we reported on an announced panel with its creators taking place at SXSW.
What is known about the game is that it takes place after the events of Borderlands 2, and also from the point of view of two characters: Hyperion employee Rhys and con-artist named Fiona.
Like other Telltale games it will be an episodic release, with individual episodes setting you back $4.99 each, or less if you choose to buy a season pass. How you act in individual episodes of the game will influence how the overarching story plays out, while loot collected in the game will also reportedly be available in “other areas of the Borderlands franchise.”
It’s been a long wait for Angela Ahrendts to finally join Apple, but as the new VP of Retail just took office last week, Apple decided to make her move from fashion to tech much sweeter by granting her stock options worth a whopping $68 million.
Ubisoft’s upcoming Watch Dogs console game is hoping to upend the traditional boundaries between single- and multi-player gaming, allowing you to hack into other players’ games on the fly, earning experience and renown points which you can then use to level up your own character’s skill levels.
The game was a huge surprise at last year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), and has since been getting a ton of attention from gamers and the press as the May 27 release date looms.
Even better, you’ll be able to interact with the very same game and players via a free mobile app, letting you increase the heat on rogue players, as you can see in this fairly long and detailed play through video below. Sure, the video is ridiculously longer than most gamer’s attention spans, but it’s well worth a look.
For the second time in a row Samsung has been found guilty by a U.S. court of ripping off Apple’s patents, but according to the jury foreman in the latest Apple vs Samsung case, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence or testimony that sealed Samsung’s fate.
Jury members met with the media after being dismissed Monday morning, including ex-IBM executive and jury foreman Thomas Dunham, who said the revelation that Google agreed to protect Samsung from damages on a couple of patents in the trial was the biggest shocker of all.
AAPL shares have been extremely undervalued for years, according to CEO Tim Cook, but it looks like Wall Street is starting to warm on Apple as the share price crested above $600 this afternoon for the first time since 2012.
After hitting an all-time high of $702.10 in September 2012, Apple’s stock has failed to regain its old luster despite record iPhone sales and earnings. Tim Cook announced last month that the stock would be split 7-to-1 in June, sending shares prices on a steady climb since hitting $524 per share the day after the announcement.
Tweetdeck, now an official Twitter app, is one of those social networking clients with a ton of features that may be a bit of overkill if you’re a casual user. It’s got a columnar interface with tons of customizability, letting you decide what, specifically, shows up in each column.
If you’ve got multiple accounts on the big bird service you might want to save some column space by merging all your accounts into the columns you’re interested in.
A story was widely circulated throughout the blogosphere last week about a rumor that Apple’s next EarPods would feature biometric sensors for reading health vitals. The “leak” was originally posted on Secret, an anonymous sharing platform, by someone claiming to be an ex-Apple employee.
The info had no way of being verified, but that didn’t stop it from appearing in everywhere from major U.S. tech blogs to news outlets in the U.K. Now the creator of the rumor has come out and admitted that he made it all up while on the toilet.
Apple came out on top of its legal battle against Samsung in U.S. federal court last week, and even though the iPhone-maker was ordered to pay a small fee to Samsung, the jury came back to the courthouse in San Jose CA this morning to award more damages to Apple.
The federal jury awarded Apple $4 million in additional damages this morning, after it was discovered last week that one Samsung product violated one patent, but the jury failed to award damages.
One December years ago, in London’s Piccadilly Circus, a Santa Claus sat in a pavement cafe eating lunch with an elf. Santa had a pint of beer in from of him. I raised my old film SLR, which was prefocused and had the exposure already dialed in, and took a couple of shots.
I hoped they’d turn out well.
“Who are those pictures for?” said a guy, shouting as he jogged toward me. He’d come from somewhere nearby because it was too cold for just a shirt on a December afternoon in London, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket. I ignored him — there are a lot of nutters in Piccadilly any time of the year.
“Are you taking pictures of me?” he said.
Despite Apple’s claims that email attachments are safely locked away with data encryption in iOS 7, a new report has found that all your email attachments have been vulnerable and unencrypted for months.