Apple fans in Hong Kong will soon be able to add their Octopus transit cards to Apple Pay.
Support is “coming soon,” Octopus Cards Limited confirmed this week. It will allow you to use your iPhone or Apple Watch to pay for journeys and more with your transit card.
Score 10 Mac apps that will help you stay more organized, efficient and productive. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Macs are mighty productivity machines, but they’re only as useful as the apps you install. It can be hard to know where to start, so this massively discounted bundle of top-tier productivity apps offers an easy choice for any Mac user.
This lucky AirPod will live to see another day. Photo: Ashley Mayer
It’s frustrating when an AirPod falls out of your ear — especially if it decides it has had enough of being an AirPod and it jumps onto the subway tracks. That’s exactly what happened for Ashley Mayer.
But thanks to a makeshift sticky stick (duct tape on the end of a broom), this particular bud will live to see another day … or play another song?
That's a whole lot more levels than just about every other game in the App Store... combined. Image: King
Having launched back in 2012, Candy Crush Saga is, believe it or not, one of the veterans of App Store gaming. And, boy, has it hit the milestone to prove it!
This week, the game that’s known for having more levels than virtually every other game released its landmark 5,000th level.
Trump is worried French tax law could hurt tech giants including Apple. Photo: White House
President Donald Trump is stepping up to defend Apple. Well, kind of.
The president ordered an investigation into France’s planned tax on big tech companies like Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Amazon. The Office of the United States Trade Representative said the tax “unfairly targets” American companies.
Update 1:France passed the tax Thursday, according to Agence France-Presse: “The legislation — dubbed the GAFA tax in an acronym for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon — was passed by a simple show of hands in the Senate upper house after it was agreed by the National Assembly lower chamber earlier this month.”
Add Bluetooth to your old iPod and more. Photo: RHA
AirPods might just be the most convenient wireless headphones money can buy. But because they rely on Bluetooth, you can’t use them with everything. This little adapter from RHA hopes to change that.
The Wireless Flight Adapter plugs into any 3.5mm headphone jack to make it wireless. It’ll work with in-flight entertainment systems — as its name suggests — as well as the Nintendo Switch, TVs, old iPods, and more.
Walkie-Talkie vulnerability allowed users to listen in on each other . Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple temporarily disabled the Apple Watch Walkie-Talkie app after discovering a vulnerability that allowed users to listen in on another person’s iPhone calls without their knowledge.
The app will stay installed on devices, although it won’t work until Apple issues a fix.
It's a crash course in all things developer. Photo: Apple
WWDC may be best known to casual Apple fans for its keynote speech, but it’s a whole educational week for devs.
While the best way to experience the Developer’s Conference is to attend live, not everyone is able to. With that in mind, Apple has just made videos of all its 2019 instructional sessions available. And they’re fully searchable.
These people all know they are on a Zoom call. Photo: Zoom
Mac users who’ve used the Zoom video conferencing application can now be assured that a serious security flaw has been dealt with. Apple pushed out a patch that removed the vulnerability from every Mac, without users needing to do anything.
Before the fix, the flaw potentially let malicious websites force people into Zoom video calls.
This smart plug could be the start of your home automation makeover. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Satechi’s dual-socket smart outlet lets you easily dip your toe into home automation. There’s nothing to install — you just plug it in — but the Dual Smart Outlet still allows you to control two different appliances from your iPhone, iPad, etc. It uses Apple’s HomeKit so it’s compatible with plenty of other accessories.
Find out how you can take a first step into controlling your home with Siri voice commands in our hands-on review.
Dumping Face ID and a few other changes would allow Apple to make iPhones without a screen cutout. Photo: Apple
Apple is reportedly giving up on facial recognition and instead going with a full-screen fingerprint scanner. This will allegedly allow the company to leave off the “notch” from every iPhone model released in 2021.
Spoiler: It was pretty easy, although it required some simple home surgery from time to time. The only sad part is that the current lineup of iMacs almost certainly won’t last as long, at least not without professional attention.
Evidence that Apple is prepping new iPad tablets is popping up around the world. Photo: Apple
The first details about multiple unannounced 2019 iPad models are leaking out. Several Apple tablets just appeared in a Eurasian intergovernmental agency’s database.
And production for at least one of these devices begins this month, according to a source in Asia.
Google has decided it will no longer support the Nest app for Apple Watch. The move means you can’t control Nest smart devices from your wrist anymore. The Nest app for Google’s own Wear OS platform has also been ditched.
No, not that kind of sticker. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
iOS 13 automatically turns all your Memoji into iMessage stickers. Even better, anyone can create new Memoji, on any device. You no longer need an iPhone or iPad with a depth-sensing Face ID camera to create them.
Using the new Memoji creator tool in the Messages app, you can do almost everything that can be done with Face ID. Here’s how to make and use Memoji stickers in iOS 13.
Apple wants to give MacBooks a second display with a tactile keyboard, ditching the built-in one. Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac
Apple is considering a MacBook with two displays, with the second screen acting as a keyboard. By necessity, iPads already employ on-screen keyboards but these lack tactile feedback. Apple is looking for ways to make these virtual keys move when they’re typed on.
The company has been pursuing this project for years, as demonstrated by a patent it just received.
Happy customers in Dubai pick up their iPhone X in 2017. According to the iPhone Price Index, the cost of owning an iPhone in the UAE rose 123 percent. Photo: Apple
To a British Apple fan, a new iPhone is 133 percent more expensive than it was when the iPhone first launched in 2007.
They would be perfect for streaming Xbox games. Photo: Microsoft
Microsoft has started developing new Xbox controllers for mobile gaming. Prototype images reveal how the gamepads might attach to the sides of your iPhone and iPad for portable play.
The controllers would be ideal for Microsoft’s upcoming Project xCloud service, which will allow players to stream Xbox games to their smartphones and tablets.
Why Jony Ive is like Daenerys Targaryen and Apple is not doomed. Photo: HBO
It’s been more than a week since the shocking news that Jony Ive is leaving Apple, and everyone is still trying to make sense of what it means for the company’s future.
According to some, it’s an internal coup: Tim Cook’s operations team finally wrested control from Ive’s industrial design crew, and the company‘s glory days of innovation are over. Others claim Ive’s days have been numbered ever since his dream of a solid gold Apple Watch flopped.
How can there be so many conflicting accounts of one man’s departure? Surprisingly, it may be for the same reason that the final season of Game of Thrones sucked. It all boils down to how we tell stories.
Angela Ahrendts at the iPhone X keynote. Photo: Apple
It took Apple nearly a year to convince Angela Ahrendts to ditch Burberry join Apple as the company’s head of retail.
Ahrendts discussed Apple’s recruiting process in a recent podcast interview and said a 2012 Fortune magazine feature put her on Apple’s radar because Tim Cook was on the cover. Cook apparently tried to get Ahrendts to join Apple shortly after but Ahrendts felt like the timing wasn’t right. Months passed and she had another meeting with Cook who said eight words that completely changed Ahrendts’ life.
American business magnate and politician Ross Perot died yesterday at the age of 89.
However, while the world probably remembers Perot best for his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, Perot also played a crucial role in Apple history. Here’s how.
A young Fortnite fan has been streaming the game for 10 hours a day to raise money for his father’s cancer treatment.
ZylTV has already raised over $13,000 playing the hit battle royale game on Twitch. He has also racked up 20,000 followers since he started playing at the beginning of July.
Flaw allowed hackers to access other people's webcams. Photo: United Artists
Zoom conference calls are as much of a part of modern office working life as disagreements about the air-con system.
But security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh recently stumbled upon something extremely concerning. As discovered by Leitschuh, Zoom featured a vulnerability that allowed hackers to break into a target’s Mac webcam. This happened regardless of whether the Mac user was using Safari, Chrome or Firefox.
Fortunately, Zoom has, well, zoomed to correct it.