Cult of Mac

Long before Tim Cook brought his operations wizardry to Apple, Del Yocam lent his logistical prowess to Cupertino. Apple’s first chief operating officer, he helped transform the company from a chaotic, scrappy startup into a streamlined manufacturing powerhouse.

He also served as an early mentor to Steve Jobs, the young Apple co-founder who sometimes seemed out of his depth in 1979.

“When I first got to know him, he was lost,” Yocam told Cult of Mac. “He was no longer involved in the Apple II and no one wanted him around, especially management. He didn’t care about money at that time. He was like an orphan, living away from home.”

In many ways, Yocam was the proto-Tim Cook, a manufacturing and operations specialist who helped transform a dysfunctional startup into a massive, moneymaking leader of the early PC industry. He also helped take the rapidly growing company international.

Yocam deserves more credit for helping build Apple than history has so far accorded him. He was one of the main players at a crucial point in Cupertino’s history.

Yocam, now 76, recently talked with Cult of Mac about Apple’s early days. In this exclusive interview, he discusses his friendship and working relationship with Jobs, Apple’s challenging, fascinating, and sometimes malodorous co-founder.

He also reveals new details about Jobs’ tearful ouster from Apple — and how Jobs later offered him an amazing job, only to revoke it at the last moment.

Security researcher Patrick Wardle has discovered what may be the first malware optimized for Apple Silicon Macs. The malware, details of which he published this week, involves a Safari adware extension called GoSearch22.

The adware delivers unwanted ads, collects browser data, and modifies browser settings. GoSearch22 is relatively low risk. However, it can result in users being redirected to certain websites or suffering an otherwise impaired browsing experience.

Apple is reportedly investigating Foxconn regarding concerns that workers at its plants are overworked and underpaid.

Foxconn remains, for better or worse, Apple’s best-known contract manufacturer. While Foxconn, which employs around 1 million people, has far more clients than just Apple, it is most closely associated with the Cupertino tech giant.

There are plenty of situations where you need your iPhone in a pinch — a last-minute video call, for example, or finding a local coffee shop when you’re on the road. In those moments, the last thing you want is for your iPhone to be running low on battery, right when you’re relying on it the most. That’s where this MagBuddy Wireless Charge Desk Mount comes in handy. It allows you to keep your hands free and your device fully charged while you’re otherwise occupied.

Apple could start manufacturing iPads in India this year if the country boosts incentives for exporters, Reuters said Thursday.

LG Display is reportedly working on a foldable panel for a future iPhone, Digitimes reports.

The report, which cites industry sources, says that the company is working on a prototype with Apple. However, it is not clear whether LG would be mass-manufacturing the screens for Apple were such a product to come to market.

Benjamin Lyon left Apple after being with the company for 21 years. He worked on a variety of products, but most recently he’d been a senior director in the team working on the Apple Car.

But he’s going to go be a rocket engineer instead.

So much to do, so little time. These days, we’re expected to be more productive than ever thanks to technology. Unfortunately, that can leave you with more emails, news articles and company reports than you know what to do with — and that doesn’t even account for all the hobbies that keep you sane, like gardening or taking long walks.

Luckily, there’s SpeakMe. It’s an ingenious, easy-to-use Mac app that converts text to audio and exports those audio files into a shareable format.

Apple TV+ and Skydance Animation inked a deal that will see two new movies and a series released on the streaming video service. The upcoming films for children are Luck and Spellbound. Plus, Apple signed up for two seasons of The Search for WondLa.

Brydge has a new feature-laden keyboard case for the low-cost 10.2-inch iPad. It brings a large trackpad to this tablet. And the Brydge 10.2 Max+ offers 4-foot MIL-STD drop protection thanks to a built-in Otterbox case.

This company’s keyboards for the iPad Pro are aimed at professionals. The newest one for the low-cost iPad seems to be for younger users.

iPhone 12’s display glass is the toughest you’ll find in any smartphone today, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get scratched. You’ll need a good screen protector if you want to keep yours looking brand-new.

Pick up one of Belkin’s newest protectors on Amazon at up to 30% off its usual price today only.

Americans are united about one thing: the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Market research from two different sources finds that the Apple’s super-size handset is the most popular 5G phone in the US.

Shad Ahmad was a hard-studying freshman majoring in biology and minoring in history at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

Going home to continue classes for a semester remotely from his parents’ house in Wisconsin may not have been ideal, but Ahmad found a comforting upside. Integrated smart technology makes his life easier, he told Cult of Mac.

Apple’s second trailer for its Apple TV+ Billie Eilish documentary, The World’s A Little Blurry, shows off a bit more of what fans can expect from the upcoming film.

The documentary, which Apple reportedly paid $25 million to acquire, will debut on Apple TV+ later this month, February 26. It features footage of Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, growing up, as well as recording some of their smash hits.

Check out the trailer below:

According to new figures by IDC, 2020 is the first year in which Google’s Chrome OS was found on more new computers sold than macOS.

That’s due to the success of Chromebooks made by the likes of Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. While no figures are given, it seems likely that these now outsell Macs.

Want to take your art and design skills in an unexpected direction? You can learn to create characters of all sorts with The Learn to Draw Comic Book Characters Bundle.

Whether you already love to draw, or always wished you could, these courses will show you traditional and creative ways to render your vision. With lifetime access to the coursework, you can learn at your own pace. But you’d better jump on this deal right now if you want to take advantage of a massive 97% price cut on the four-course bundle.

Berkshire Hathaway — the investment firm belonging to Warren Buffett, one of Apple’s biggest cheerleaders in recent years — reduced its stake in the Cupertino tech giant last quarter.

According to a regulatory filing made this week, in Q4 2020, Berkshire Hathaway cut 6% of its Apple shares. By contrast it kept its Amazon shares steady, while growing its stake in T-Mobile by a massive 117%.

The battle between Apple and Fortnite maker Epic Games continues as Epic is appealing to European Union antitrust regulators to take action, Reuters reports Wednesday.

The report notes that Epic is turning to Europe after “failing to make headway” in the United States. The EU already has multiple antitrust investigations ongoing involving Apple. These concern the App Store and Apple Pay, both of which they are concerned show Apple abusing its marketplace position.

Apple has paid out a massive $163,338,890 in “accrued historical unmatched royalties” for Apple Music. That’s more than any other streaming music service, including Spotify, which currently leads the overall global market share.

The Mechanical Licensing Collective received a total of $424.3 million in these historical royalties. Variety notes this means some songwriters and publishers will receive a big “windfall.”

The Apple Magic Keyboard and Smart Keyboard for iPad are amazing but they prevent putting the tablet into most cases, so it has to be “naked” when not clipped to the keyboard. That’s no problem for the SwitchEasy CoverBuddy, a protective case that Apple’s clip-on keyboards can work right through.

When it comes to stock photography, you can never have too many options — or too big of a budget. If you need a steady supply of high-quality images for your website or promotional materials, but don’t want to break the bank on costly single shots, this Icons8 subscription will give you the eye-popping visuals you need.

This discounted one-year plan lets you choose from more than 100,000 stock photos, 3D-rendered objects and backgrounds that will make your project(s) look totally pro. It also comes with easy-to-use software that lets you tweak and combine images to your heart’s content. And it works on Mac and iOS (as well as Windows and Android).

Long before we all started carrying around powerful computers in our pockets, there was the tiny Toshiba Libretto. A game-changing device when it arrived in the 1990s, the Libretto downsized the entire Windows PC experience into a subnotebook the size of a paperback.

As the world’s smallest commercially available Windows PC, it certainly proved revolutionary. The only problem is the Libretto was … well, a Windows PC.

YouTuber Action Retro recently set out to right that wrong with an awesome Hackintosh project. After transforming the diminutive Libretto into a miniature Mac, he spoke with Cult of Mac about the experience (and his love of vintage Macs).

The new Mobility Metrics feature that Apple added in iOS 14 offers important insights into your health and fitness. Using its built-in sensors and some extremely smart software, the iPhone in your hip pocket captures data and analyzes how you walk at all times. Then, the Health app serves up seven key measurements that provide an overall picture of your strength, coordination and cardiovascular health.

Even if you don’t experience any mobility difficulties, you might still be interested to see what these new stats reveal about the way you walk.

Austin, Texas-based photographer Matt Tran initially built his impressive setup to share his pics on Instagram, and you can certainly see a lot of them there. But now he uses his workstation, centered on a MacBook Pro and two monitors of vastly different sizes, to film and edit videos.

“I like having the 38-inch [LG] ultrawide to view the timeline on Final Cut Pro and the smaller, 15.6-inch Desklab portable monitor to review the footage,” he told Cult of Mac.

Almost exactly one year after it arrived on iPhone, Microsoft’s unified Office app is now finally available for iPad. The app combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in one single package.

That means that all your documents are in one place, and you don’t need to switch between apps depending on whether you’re editing a text document or using a spreadsheet.