On Sunday, HBO debuted the first trailer for its upcoming Mike Judge comedy series Silicon Valley.
Hoping to be viewed as Entourage for the startup scene, the series promises to take viewers inside a fictionalized Silicon Valley, complete with cameos from real-life high tech players.
Today marks the 59th birthday of Steve Jobs, who was born February 24, 1955.
To mark the occasion, here’s a video tribute created by several Apple employees for Jobs to mark his thirtieth birthday in 1985:
For iOS users it seems that 2014 is something of a golden age for classic Nintendo gaming.
That’s because over the past few weeks we’ve seen not one, not two, but three separate emulators bringing classic NES and Game Boy action to iOS.
Yahoo has released the first update to its new summarization iOS app, Yahoo News Digest.
Arriving in the App Store last month, Yahoo News Digest is based on the Summly app acquired by Yahoo for $30 million in 2013. It provides a summary of all the important, need-to-know news each day — with digests of news stories (called “atoms”) delivered once in the morning and again in the evening.
This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.
Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself (and from the parties, if we don’t lose our phones).
Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. And if you want us to check something out, Tweet us @mistercharlie or @killianbell.
Check it out:
Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress has always been about mobile – of course – but this year it finally seems like the world has caught up, and mobile is more important than desktop. To mangle the words of Steve Jobs, these days the truck companies are desperate to be let into the car show.
On February 21st, Apple released iOS 7.0.6, a small software update that provided “a fix for SSL connection verification.” The same SSL fix was also released for older iOS 6 devices and the Apple TV. Apple pushes out smaller bug fixes from time to time, so at first glance 7.0.6 seemed like a pretty normal update.
But in reality, Apple patched a major security flaw that has potentially compromised millions of peoples’ data for years. Nicknamed “gotofail,” the bug has been flying under the radar for quite some time, and it still hasn’t been patched in OS X.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that an Android-powered smartwatch is coming from LG and Google. The Journal’s source said other companies may also be involved, and that the device is likely to be unveiled at Google I/O, Google’s developer conference, which is scheduled to begin June 25.
According to the report, the watch will be integrated with Google Now.
The report didn’t specify the N word, but this information reeks of a quasi-reference design product in line with the Nexus strategy. It’s easy to imagine all this as a Nexus-branded smartwatch with all the core attributes of the Nexus lines of phones and tablets. Let’s go ahead and call it the Nexus Smartwatch.
So what are these Nexus attributes when applied to a smartwatch?
We’ve all experienced the unreliable Bluetooth connection or finicky car radio where you have to dial a new station every time you get static, all your problems are solved with this high quality auxiliary cable.
You can’t argue with the reliability of an auxiliary cable, especially when there’s six (6) feet of cord that allows you to change songs without getting up from the couch. Reliability is key and the Griffin Audio Cable is exactly that – unlock a new music experience. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $6.99!
Welcome to Barcelona. The official Mobile World Congress starts tomorrow, but today the press shows begin. Follow along for our live blog of ShowStoppers and later Mobile Focus.
This Cult of Mac Deals offer delivers a software solution that will keep your photos looking flattering and takes those unflattering portrait photos and eliminates them for good.
Portrait+ 3.0 allows users the ability to upload hundreds of portraits and have the faces automatically detected, and then have natural or glamorous portrait enhancing filters applied as seen fit. And for a limited time you can get this revolutionary piece of software for 64% off the regular price – just $89.99!
A really great article published in Advertising Age this week by data specialist Kate Kaye about Apple and Amazon said (to paraphrase Breaking Bad’s Saul Goodman): “You two suck at peddling ads. Period.”
Well, that’s what Madison Avenue thinks, anyway, according to the piece. Here’s why Madison Avenue is wrong.
Greetings, comrades! This time on CultCast: we travel to mother Russia and dance with gogo dancers (no, really); Apple talks to Tesla, we talk iCars. Plus, for the first time, Apple brings the iTunes Festival to the United States; Facebook buys WhatsApp (but why?); Jony Ive vanishes from Apple’s website; and don’t miss an all new Faves N Raves where we pitch favorite tech and apps then vote one which one’s best!
Belly-laugh 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 thanks to Fresbooks for sponsoring this episode! FreshBooks, the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners – just like you – who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free 60 days, and enter “CultCast” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.
Ruby programing is no joke and can get pretty complicated. The course being featured on Cult of Mac Deals this time around starts with the basics of the Ruby language so you can get up to speed and ready to roll.
This course specifically focuses on the features that are exploited in Rails to support productivity and quality. You then get lead progressively through the main features of the Rails framework and asoon enough you’ll be coding like a champ. And you can get this stellar course for the special price of just $19 thanks to Cult of Mac Deals.
Blackberry has been dealt another blow as yet another major customer jumps ship to iPhone. The U.S. Air Force is planning on replacing 5,000 Blackberries with iPhones.
Did you miss the Flappy Bird phenomenon?
Well, if you’re a Twitterific user, no need to download one of the seemingly infinite number of clones: an Easter egg within the popular Twitter app lets you play a great 8-bit Flappy Bird clone with just a gesture.
If you own a Fitbit Force — a fitness tracker with a built-in OLED display that we like quite a lot at Cultofmedia — you might want to check under the band.
Do you see any redness? If so, you should avail yourself of a voluntary recall of the Fitbit Force.
After releasing iOS 7.0.6 yesterday with an important SSL bug fix, jailbreakers were put in a quandry. The bug that iOS 7.0.6 fixes a seriour security flaw that makes SSL/TLS sessions insecure, which puts your personal details in web transactions at risk of being stolen. On the other hand, is it really worth sacrificing your jailbreak for?
Luckily, it turns out that iOS 7.0.6 is still capable of being jailbroken using the existing Evasi0n jailbreak. Although Apple has patched out the Evasi0n jailbreaking exploit in iOS 7.1, iOS jailbreak dev winocm has said on Twitter that iOS 7.0.6 is still jailbreakable.
Of course, the existing Evasi0n jailbreak installer hasn’t yet been updated to support iOS 7.0.6, but if previous iOS 7.0.x updates are anything to go by, it won’t take long. In the meantime, if you want to jailbreak iOS 7.0.6 and don’t mind doing some hex editting, you can do so by following the instrucions here.
Personally, I love the look of the new stealth engine Mac Pro, but some people find it to look, well, a little too much like a trash can (which may not be a coincidence).
Jarred Land, one of the key figures of the Red Digital Camera Company, obviously agreed. He built himself a machined aluminum chassis to keep his Mac Pro in, plus an integrated Redmag Mini card reader with 8TB internal Thunderbolt RAID, and a monster fan to keep things cool.
It looks pretty awesome, but sadly, it’s a one-off: Land says he did it just for fun.
Source: Facebook
Thanks: Chuck W.
This week in Cult of Mac Magazine – No Fail iPhone Photography, the best tips, tricks, and practical advice on using that amazing camera you carry around in your pocket.
We’re celebrating Apple’s astonishingly great iPhone camera with a whole issue dedicated to all things iPhoneography. Cult of Mac’s own photography guru, Charlie Sorrel, weighs in with some choice technical advice on photography that applies across all cameras, iPhone or not, while Buster Heine gives you the lowdown on all the greatest peripherals you’ll want to gear up with before the big shoot.
Olloclip’s Michele Baker drops some wisdom on how to best capture “silver” with your iPhone, in honor of the winners of this week’s Photography contest, and our very own Nicole Martinelli interviews one of the best street iPhonographers around.
We’ll take some time out to showcase the top ten entries in our #CoMSilver photo contest, with the top three winners and some fantastic runner ups.
Of course, we’ll start off with the usual Best Apps, Books, Movies and Music from the past week and then end with our famous “Ask A Genius” column, so be sure to subscribe and download the issue.
We’ve been excited about Tengami ever since we saw it at a gaming conference a couple of years back. The long development time has paid off for developer Nyamyam, as Tengami is by far one of the best games of its type we’ve seen on any platform.
It came out for iOS just this week, and we’ve lost ourselves (and our sense of time) playing through the lushly illustrated pop-up book. The story is told without dialogue, tasking us with moving from one beautiful environment to the next, solving puzzles along the way to keep the journey going.
Here’s a video of some of our play through of the game.
Have too much stuff on your computer and don’t know what to do with all of it? This Cult of Mac Deals offer will make sure that your problem isn’t only solved…but stored.
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Well-known jailbreaker “winocm” announced today that he will be taking a job at Apple later this year.
When reached for comment, the 17-year-old hacker declined to elaborate on what his new role at Apple will entail. He also declined to provide his real name, which is a common theme amongst high-profile jailbreak hackers who prefer to hide behind their online pseudonyms.
While winocm did not work on the recent iOS 7 jailbreak, his expertise in reverse engineering iOS will undoubtedly make him a valuable asset at Apple.
Apple has purchased Burstly, the company behind iOS app beta platform TestFlight. The specific details of the buyout have not been disclosed, but TechCrunch reports that Burstly’s engineers are working at Apple already.
This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple Store Genius who answers all your questions about working at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.
This week our Genius answers questions on whether Apple gives Specialists commission on sales, as well as a break down on how many employees it takes to effectively run an Apple Store.
Got a question you want the inside scoop on? Send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.
Q:How does the pay compare to other electronic retailers? Do you guys get any form of commission?
I’ve never worked at Best Buy, Staples or any of the other tech retailers, but from what I’ve heard from co-workers the pay is pretty solid at Apple which is one of the draws, along with corporate culture and getting to work for the most influential tech company in the world.
If you’re just a Specialist working the floor, don’t except to make too much more than average retail at first. There’s no commission of any kind on the sales we make, but Apple keeps track and you’re encouraged to hit certain metrics. After a few months you’ll be eligible to apply for other posts.
Genius Bar positions start out at around $17 per hour, but you can make quite a bit more than that if you work full-time and stick around for a while. I know a few making more than $25 an hour with managers making even more.
Q:How many employees does it take to effectively run an Apple Store?
A lot. Apple places a lot of emphasis on employee-to-customer ratios so that even if the store is jam packed, there will still be a Specialist available to help you.
Of course each store is different but I work at the smallest of five Apple Stores in my metro area and we still have about 40 employees on an average day. If its a launch day that number jumps between 60-90 employees, but at other stores like Fifth Ave. I’ve heard they have more than a hundred staff on-hand for a regular retail day.
Q:What is the worst thing a customer has ever brought in?
Apple is pretty laid back on what they allow you to bring into the store which makes it pretty interesting, sometimes disgusting, to see what people tote in alongside their computers to the Genius Bar.
A lot of people bring in food which is fine, unless it’s some smelly weird stuff. I had one lady bring her cat in with her to her appointment at the Genius Bar. It sat in her purse the entire time we fixed her iPod. Others have brought in dogs.
As far the worst tech that’s been brought in, one customer’s toddler stuffed a CD smothered in peanut butter into a MacBook Pros SuperDrive once. Unfortunately, peanut butter damage isn’t covered under warranty.