Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Ensenada, Baja California.
A coastal city in Mexico, on the Baja California Peninsula, Ensenada is a popular cruise ship destination. Photos of the vessel in dock were sent in by Cult of Mac reader Felipe Cornejo. Cornejo notes that he did not see any of Jobs’ family at the site, and that dock workers he spoke with weren’t aware this was Jobs’ boat.
From the highs of the Steve Jobs portrait made out of 20lbs of electronic waste, to the lows of the hideous statue that looked like a totem from Hellraiser, there have certainly been some “uneven” tributes to Apple’s late co-founder.
So which camp does this creation fall into, then?
Called “Baked Apple,” the fountain-sculpture depicts a deformed Apple II sitting on top of a column (previously the base lamp), adorned with images of Jobs and the Apple logo. It was created by artist Robbie Schoen, who once attended Jobs’ alma mater. Schoen, and made his creation with the aid of a real-life Apple II, formerly belonging to the school’s science department.
Remember when Tim Cook said he wanted Apple to be a “force for good” in the world, in terms of sustainability?
In keeping with Apple’s plans to use 100% renewable energy to power all of its facilities, it has recently taken over a small hydroelectric project at a Central Oregon site, near to the company’s data center in Prineville.
Since these data centers consume massive amounts of electricity (read: the equivalent of a small city), Apple has been keen to explore alternative sources of energy to keep them in clean, renewable energy.
Apple has reportedly hired Karl Heiselman, chief executive officer of branding agency Wolff Olins, to join the company in a new marketing communications role.
The former CEO and branding expert has been with Wolff Olins for a total of 14 years — and during his seven years as chief executive officer has worked with a number of high profile clients, including Apple.
Forged in the fires of Silicon Valley and backed by venture capital power players comes Lyft® – a service revolutionizing public transport. You request a ride through the free iOS or Android app, then watch on a real-time map as your driver approaches.
Lyft drivers are friendly, always available, and cheaper than a cab – why would you ever take a taxi again? And right now Cult of Mac Deals has $30 of Lyft credit available for just $10, meaning you’ll save even more money.
Faster than a speeding bullet,
As one of last year’s top-grossing iPad apps, the digital comics platform has sold an astonishing 6 billion comic book pages since its 2009 debut — 4 billion of those coming in 2013 alone.
In helping revive an industry that was almost dead on its feet, ComiXology has done for comics what iTunes did for legal music downloads.
At the height of its success, it’s now been snatched up by Amazon for an undisclosed amount of money — prompting the question of whether Apple has missed out. (Particularly when taking into accounts the reports that Amazon is reportedly set to debut a smartphone of its own — capable of busting out 3-D.)
After all, ComiXology’s CEO David Steinberger has always had big ambitions. He once wrote that his “crazy goal” was to turn everyone on the planet into a comic reader. Sounds just like Steve Jobs.
Before the acquisition, CEO David Steinberger told Cult of Mac ComiXology’s backstory and its deep ties to Apple. Sometimes the Cupertino company has acted as its Krypton-esque home planet, and other times more like its Lex Luthor-style nemesis.
Ready for ComiXology’s secret origin story?
Need an all-in-one movie player for your Mac? Leawo Blu-ray Player for Mac is exactly what your looking for. This comprehensive Mac media player gives you the ability to play Blu-ray, DVD, HD video, audio and ISO files on your Mac in lossless quality.
Mac Blu-ray playback software allows you to adjust subtitles, audio and video for a high-quality video experience that allows full playback control and detailed navigation that will deliver a better movie-viewing environment. And Cult of Mac Deals has this all-in-one movie watching solution for only $9.95 during this limited time offer.
By now you’ve heard all about the catastrophic Heartbleed bug and how it has siphoned passwords, credit card numbers, emails and other data to the vampires who would drain all of us dry. From your love life (OKCupid) to your tax returns, there’s a lot at stake.
Since 66% of web servers are vulnerable to the bug, that means you’re faced with only task more fun than decluttering the garage: changing your passwords.
To help you on your password resetting chores, we’ve compiled the best tools to make the process as quick and painless as possible. Also, they’ll sync your new passwords to your iPhone — all in under 10 minutes. Leaving you time to watch Silicon Valley again. You’re welcome.
Here’s how:
Elder Scrolls Online is a new massively multiplayer role playing game by Zenimax Studios and Bethesda Game Studios that attempts to compete with the behemoth of the premium subscription MMO, World Of Warcraft, on its own turf in the fantasy genre. While the base gameplay is fairly similar — go on quests, fight bad guys, level up, game with thousands of other players — this new MMO has a lot that’s unique to offer gamers.
What Elder Scrolls Online brings to this competitive gaming genrea is a long history of games set in fantasy world Tamriel, beginning in 1994 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena and continuing through three the present day with four sequels: Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. There’s a ton of lore and backstory here, as much as any high-fantasy Tolkien-esque novel you might read, and this deep infusion of fictional reality — as well as the action gameplay style of the original single-player games mentioned above — is a solid asset in Bethesda’s favor.
Reviewing any MMO is a massive undertaking itself, and so we decided to dig in deeper than we usually do to give you a better sense of the world of the game, filtered through the eyes of a new Elder Scrolls Online player.
Here’s what we came up with.
Imagine a world where you can summon a drone from your iPhone like an Uber car. Flying minions help you navigate traffic and find where to eat. It’s a futuristic kind of reality that feels pretty cool and scary at the same time.
Gofor was created as a concept to explore what an on-demand drone service would look like for normal people. While the service is obviously not real, the finished product is packaged together so well that it almost seems possible.
It has been months since I opened Reeder, my longtime app of choice for RSS. I don’t have anything personal against Reeder, it’s just that RSS has lost a lot of its appeal for me. Twitter is where I mainly get my news now.
Reeder 2 for Mac, which launches as a public beta today, might just make me give RSS a second chance.
The best online courses are the ones that provide you with all the dirty little details. This HTML5 Crash Course starts with the first principles of HTML and builds your skills as you go through to the end.
Let’s be honest, you’ve come up with a stellar idea but have had no where to take it. So do it yourself! Now you’ll have the skills to take that idea to the next level, bringing it to life for all to marvel at…and for just $29 to boot!
I’m not usually a big fan of the whole “do it over and over until you get it right” genre of games typified by the Trials series of games, but this one has me hooked. Developed by RedLynx and now published by Ubisoft, the latest version of the game is also the first on mobile: Trials Frontier. You can grab it for free now for your iPad or iPhone.
Like all of the other installments in the series, Frontier is all about piloting a motorcycle with a rag-doll rider through increasingly intense tracks with jumps, loops and environmental hazards.
Here’s a quick gameplay video to show you how it works.
A good challenge every now and then is great to keep your mind fresh and alert. While many developers release new games every week, only some are able to give players the difficulty their minds ask for. Sinkers is a new strategy puzzle game where players have 20 moves to try and obtain the highest score removing colored cube like bits from the screen. With bits turning hollow and players having to sink them to keep moving, do you think you can play well enough to top the high-score charts?
Take a look at the video and see what you think.
I know that your iPhone already has a calculator in it, but here’s a specialty app for people who suffer from the curse of Man Thumbs.
SwipyCalc is a basic calculator that gives all the screen space to the numbers. Only the numbers. You enter your basic functions — adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing — with swipes in one of four directions. It’s fast and easy, especially once you realize that the comma in the lower left corner is what you use for a decimal point.
Unless you’re in one of the 60+ countries that uses the decimal comma. That won’t slow you down at all.
Ambition isn’t a bad thing, but it can get in the way.
Time Gap is a free-to-play title that tries to be all free-to-play games at once. It’s mostly a hidden-object game with a plot about the ghosts of famous historical figures guiding you on a mission to discover where all the people of Earth disappeared to, but along the way, you’ll also play minigames like the ones you tab over to during the day instead of working.
It does all of these things capably enough, and it’s an interesting compendium with a lot of variety. But in the end, it’s a free-to-play game, and it is free-to-play as hell.
Sure, a simple passcode with four numbers will keep most casual folks out of your iPhone, but if you want it to be really secure, you should think about using an alphanumeric password, like you would on a website or your Mac.
The idea here is simple, the more characters you have (and the less obvious your password is), the better your security. Balancing a large enough number of characters with ease of recall can still be tricky, but I’d bet you’ve got it fairly worked out on the websites you visit — why not use that same acumen on your iOS devices?
Here’s how to turn off the simple passcode in iOS, and set up a more secure one.
Queue the spy music, cause on this week’s CultCast, our very own Buster Heine sneaks into Apple’s under-construction Arizona Sapphire Crystal factory and reports back what he’s found. Plus, WWDC dishes out golden tickets like they’re Willy Wonka; what you can do about HeartBleed; all that’s been revealed in the ongoing Apple V. Samsung trial; and you asked, so we answer: why we love Apple but would never want to work there.
Hem and haw 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!
And our thanks to iFixit for supporting this episode. You’ve seen iFixit’s amazing tear downs of the hottest tech and gadgets, but did you know you can use their free step-by-step repair guides to fix virtually anything? Check them out at iFixit.com/cultcast, and save $10 off their excellent Pro Tech Toolkit with code “CultCast” at checkout.
Click on for the show notes.
Technology group Kudelski has become the latest company to file a patent lawsuit against Apple.
Kudelski’s OpenTV and Nagravision subsidiaries are claiming that Apple is infringing on five of its U.S. patents in pretty much every product under the sun — including iOS devices, Apple TV, the App Store, iTunes, iADS, Safari, and Macs running OS X.
Fancy being able to use fingerprints to enable payment verification on PayPal for making purchases?
Having announced that feature with the Samsung Galaxy S5 at Mobile World Congress back In February, PayPal finally debuted that integration today — letting users in 25 different countries login to PayPal by simply placing one of their chubby digits on their brand new phone’s fingerprint sensor.
Back in the heady days of 1996 — when Apple shares were worth less than the cost of a VHS tape of Independence Day — one of the many awful ideas the company came up with was to latch onto the then-popular trend for theme restaurants, by announcing the debut of Apple Computer cybercafes.
These were supposed to start in Los Angeles, before eventually spreading over the entire world.
Needless to say, they never happened — but if they had done, they may have served pizzas bearing the face of Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. (Or possibly not, since he wasn’t with the company at the time.)
Either way, if you’ve been waiting for the past two decades to finally have an edible snack in the form of Apple’s late co-founder and CEO, you may want to buy a plane ticket to take you to Papa’s Pizza restaurant in Puerto Rico, where pizza artist Wilhelm Rodriguez can whip you up a pizza pie like the above.
Have a great app idea written down in a notebook that would make you a millionaire if only you could turn it into a working prototype? (Sure you do!)
Marvel is a great iPhone app that lets you take sketches and turn them into a free prototype, by applying “hotspots” to your images and then letting you link these hotspots with other photos to create a demo you can tap your way through.
Got a tough, possibly life-changing ethical decision to make? Why not make your iPhone part of the decision-making process?
A recently released app called Ethical Decision Making lets you work through your options by prompting you to identify the people who have a stake in your decision, consider your options through five different ethical perspectives, weigh different approaches, and score and rank potential decisions.
When last summer solstice we heard tell of the legend that Microsoft was planning to bring ye olde strategy franchise Age of Empires to iOS, we did rejoice greatly.
Today scouts from the Pacific Northwest (read: Redmond, WA) have traveled to bring tidings, and moving pictures, of the game known as Age of Empires: World Domination.
I like this Hammerhead Lightning cable for two reasons: it’s red, and the cable is flat. Actually, make that three reasons – it’s called the Hammerhead, like the frikkin shark.
