If you can't say something nice ... Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
The world of quotes is a poorer place without Steve Jobs, who was a quote machine. Nonetheless, plenty of people talked about Apple this year, whether lauding the company’s successes or damning its strategies.
Gone from the iPhone, not from the MacBook Pro. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
A few people were surprised to see a 3.5mm headphone jack appear on Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptop, just weeks after the company very publicly discarded the port for its new iPhone 7.
But according to Phil Schiller, speaking in a new interview, it’s not an example of inconsistency on Apple’s part. Instead, it speaks to a much deeper philosophical question on Apple’s part about the difference between mobile and non-mobile devices.
The MacBook Pro has a special T1 chip inside. Photo: Apple
Serious professionals hoping for tons of RAM on the new MacBook Pro are out of luck.
Apple decided to limit RAM options on its beautiful new machine to just 8GB or 16GB. That’s the same amount as the last MacBook Pro, which is more than enough for most consumers, but Apple claims adding more would be also be bad for pros.
Desktop computers aren’t going away any decade soon. Not if Jony Ive and Phil Schiller have to say anything about it.
In an interview with Ive, Schiller and Magic Man Craig Federighi, Apple’s team of vets explain that they don’t plan to ever morph the iPad and Mac together to make a Frankenstein desktop tablet like the Surface Studio.
Are you ready to finally get some new Macs? It seems like forever since Apple busted out big updates for the iMac and MacBook, but today the wait for something new is over.
Apple’s “Hello Again” event is expected to feature tons of new Mac hardware. The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. Pacific today, and will livestream from the company’s HQ in Cupertino, California. We’ve already seen tons of pictures of the new MacBook Pro and heard of a new app for Apple TV that’s coming, too. But today’s event could feature some game-changing hardware no one was expecting.
Cult of Mac is here to to liveblog all the action once the festivities start, with all the brilliant analysis, dull wit and pithy snark we can come up with. Join us for the wild ride.
Apple's new camera lens is cool, but it may not be pure sapphire. Photo: Apple
We may not yet have sapphire glass on our iPhone screens, but Apple has been claiming to use the ultra-hard material for its iPhone camera lens since 2013’s iPhone 5s.
However, those claims are being called into question by a new durability test carried out by YouTuber JerryRigEverything, who compares the hardness of the iPhone 7 camera lens with the sapphire display of a Tissot sapphire watch — and finds that the iPhone camera lens scratches far more easily.
Tim Cook and his crew killed it with the iPhone 7 event. Photo: Apple
Far from the “boring” launch predicted by haters and relentless Apple rumormongers, Wednesday’s iPhone 7 event delivered plenty of big surprises.
Along with our first legitimate looks at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and the new Apple Watch Series 2, we got a promising peek inside Apple’s increasingly powerful and polished ecosystem. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s iPhone 7 event.
The iPhone 7 is nearly here. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Welcome to iPhone Day 2016.
Months of rumors and leaked parts finally culminate today at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, where Apple CEO Tim Cook and his merry gang of techno wizards are expected to unveil some new iPhones and Apple Watch.
Cult of Mac is set to liveblog the festivities today. We’ll be mixing real-time details and analysis with all the dull wit and pithy snark we can muster for what is expected to be one of the “most boring iPhone updates” ever. The event starts at 10 a.m. Pacific, but we’ll be getting started well before that.
Today’s event promises to be Apple’s biggest event of the year, so turn on the stream on your Apple TV and join us in the iPhone 7 event liveblog below.
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller has joined the board of gene sequencing company Illumina. The California-based firm is the most significant in the life science industry, currently manufacturing around 90 percent of the machines used for gene sequencing today.
Get ready to pay for more app subscriptions. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Starting next week, Apple will roll out major changes to the App Store that will effect how — and how much — you’ll pay for some of your favorite apps.
In a rare interview ahead of next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple VP of Marketing Phil Schiller talked about the company’s “renewed focus and energy” on the App Store. He also outlined key changes that will be unveiled during Apple’s WWDC keynote on June 13 in San Francisco.
Among the many changes coming to the App Store are search ads for apps, better revenue-sharing for developers, and new incentives for app makers to switch to subscription-based models.
Is Tim Cook underpaid? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, but when it comes to CEO pay, Tim Cook is conspicuously absent on the latest list of top 200 paid CEOs in the US.
Don't call them 'iPhones' Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple’s VP of Marketing Phil Schiller has revealed that pretty much everyone pronounces Apple’s product names completely wrong — and they don’t even know it.
Saying the plural form of “iPhone” seems like a fairly straightforward deal. It’s “iPhones,” right?
Not so, says Schiller, who unleashed a tweetstorm lecture on the official way to tell your friends that you own lots of Apple smartphones.
The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is the best tablet Apple's ever made.
Small was the new big at Apple’s “Let us loop you in” keynote today. And while some felt the 64-minute unveiling was the most snooze-worthy event ever, Apple used it to unleash the most important iPad its made since the original tablet launched in 2010.
The new 9.7-inch iPad Pro is much more than just a smaller variant of the 12.9-inch super slate Apple came out with last year. It’s a machine built to target Apple’s next big customer pool: the 600 million people still using 5-year-old PCs.
“That’s just sad,” Apple VP Phil Schiller said onstage, describing the unfortunate souls toiling with aging Windows machines. And the new, right-sized iPad Pro is exactly what those people need.
Evolution, not revolution, was the tone of today’s low-key Apple event. Smaller is better, says Apple, with two big product “reveals” that show off compact new devices with impressive internals.
While most of the announcements today have already been discussed and dissected, like the 4-inch iPhone SE, new Apple Watch bands and a smaller 9.7-inch iPad Pro, there were a couple of surprises.
Here are the biggest takeaways from Apple’s oddly low-key “Let us loop you in” event.
Jony Ive shows Charlie Rose the company's secret design studio. Photo: CBS
60 Minutes host Charlie Rose took a deep dive into all things Apple in an episode that aired Sunday.
Featuring interviews with Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Angela Ahrendts and others, the show explored everything from the iPhone’s inner workings and Apple’s manufacturing in China to Cook dancing around the question of whether Apple is building a car.
New titles and responsibilities in management could reshape Apple. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple made some promotions and tweaked the responsibilities of some of its managers Thursday. Companies do it all the time without much notice or disruption to the goods and services they create.
But this is Apple. Any change in the way it does business could ultimately change our experiences with its product. That is the point behind CEO Tim Cook shifting and shoring up duties for some of his closet managers.
The man described by Fortune as "Tim Cook's Tim Cook." Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac
Apple today announced a bit of a corporate reshuffle — with Jeff Williams named Chief Operating Officer, VP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji getting a boost up to Senior Vice President level, and Phil Schiller expanding his role as Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing to include running the App Store across all platforms.
When will we see another "1984?" Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Chances are you can vaguely remember the last Apple ad you saw, but do you remember it in the same way you remember the company’s “1984” commercial for the original Macintosh, or its wonderful “Think Different” campaign? It’s been a while since we saw anything quite as iconic.
Apple still creates great commercials we can’t help but talk about, but many fans would say those ads aren’t as good as they once were. Has Apple lost its marketing magic, or is it just too difficult to create truly iconic ads in the digital age?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over these questions and more!
If you really wanted, you could stage your own Apple keynote address in Lego form. Photo: FamousBrick
A company that specializes in making Lego-ized versions of tech-world giants is offering minifigures based on Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, current CEO Tim Cook, and some people who work for other companies, if you want to be all diverse about it.
The figures won’t even set you back that much, really. Depending on how much you value plastic that looks like people.
Apple's not ready to go down the Microsoft route just yet. Photo: Microsoft
The new Magic Trackpad 2 introduced Force Touch to the iMac, but Apple’s not ready to embrace the concept of a Mac touchscreen — and according to Phil Schiller, it’s unlikely to do so anytime soon.
We’ll take that as a “no” for anyone dreaming of an iOS/OS X hybrid.
What was it really like to work for Steve Jobs? Photo: Jigsaw Productions
Today is the fourth anniversary of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ passing, and as has become tradition on October 4, some of his closest co-workers are sharing their fondest memories of what it was like working alongside him.
Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Eddy Cue, Andrea Jung and Bud Tribble all shared short essays with Apple employees this morning on the company’s intranet. To commemorate Jobs’ legacy, Tim Cook told employees in an email to stop older executives today and ask what Jobs was really like.
With controversial movie Steve Jobs set for release later this month, Jobs’ co-workers’ essays provide a look at aspects of the visionary Apple CEO’s personality that those who only knew him through the public eye probably missed.
Here’s what Jobs’ friends had to say about working with him:
All Apple's saying is that the iPhone 6s will be the most amazing, dynamic, life-changing thing you've ever seen. Photo: Apple
We get that yesterday’s Apple event was a marketing thing, which is why every presentation began with whoever was onstage telling us how “thrilled,” “excited” or “really happy” they were to be there. And the exaggeration just continued from those intros.
Here are some of the most outlandish and enthusiastically subjective lines that came from the stage at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. We’ve organized them by speaker so you can see who “won” this verbal arms race of canned excitement.
Force Touch was only the beginning. 3D Touch was incredibly difficult to engineer. Photo: Apple
Making an iPhone is complex, for sure. Creating the hardware and software that rules our daily lives has been an ongoing, iterative process since 2007, when Steve Jobs revealed the first one.
Since then and on up to the newly announced iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the iPhone itself has improved bit by bit while still wowing consumers as better enough to upgrade to.
“You can’t just say, ‘Here it is. It does the same thing 5 percent better than last year,’ says senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller in an interview over at Bloomberg. “Nobody cares.”
In a device that’s the essence of complexity, refined, the new 3D Touch was super tricky to make, as the in-depth interview explains.
They probably shouldn't have stopped at one. Photo: Apple
Apple’s two-hours-plus keynote at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this week was packed with new and exciting information about the future of software for its current major hardware. But we couldn’t help but notice some things that were missing.
Here are some of the ways Apple’s presentation left us hanging this year.