Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt shaking hands at the original iPhone launch event. Photo: Apple
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is the anti-Apple. He’s square where Apple is cool, he’s a sputtering doofus where Apple is collected, and he’s prone to hyperbole whereas Apple tends to undersell its products. For example, Schmidt said in 2013 that Android was more secure than the iPhone (LOL).
Given all that, who do you think Schmidt’s personal hero is? Boutros Boutros-Ghali? Shocker! Wrong. It’s Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, naturally. Not that many of those lessons have rubbed off on him, mind you.
There’s no doubt that technology like iOS 8’s Continuity feature make it easier to transfer work between your Mac and your iPhone or iPad. However, nothing about Apple’s creation comes close to matching the sheer, unadulterated excellence that is Pushbullet.
Coming freshly off a $1.5 million dose of venture financing, the Pushbullet app is now freely available for Mac, iOS and Safari — providing a better way of transferring files between your devices with a simplicity we could only previously dream of.
All you have to do is install the app on both your mobile and desktop device, link the two together, and — hey presto! — you’ll never have to email yourself attachments again.
Everything you wanted to know about the Steve Jobs movie (but were too afraid to ask.) Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC
Recently I wondered here on Cult of Mac how much of the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic, penned by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin, was going to take place in flashback.
For those who haven’t been keeping track, until now everything we’d heard suggested that the movie would be divided into three acts, with each one taking place backstage at a major Jobs product unveiling. The first part will take place before the original Macintosh launch, the second will deal with NeXT Computer, and the third will be Jobs’ introduction of the iMac (not the iPod, as previously suggested) upon Jobs’ return to Apple.
While that all sounds well and good, recently we’ve heard about scenes for the movie taking place at Jobs’ childhood home (modified to look as it would have in 1976) and a cafeteria at U.C. Berkeley, circa 1983 — neither one fitting with the entirely backstage narrative we’d been sold on.
Apparently these suspicions were correct, as a new report suggests that the movie will also contain flashbacks to several other points in Jobs’ life. Find out what they are after the jump:
Your Mac's calculator has some tricks up its sleeve. Photo: Rob LeFebvre
As the world gets smaller and smaller thanks to the global marketplace called the internet, you may sometimes need to know exactly how much your dollar will get you in the wider world. Is that £15 widget really worth it? You’ll only know if you convert it to some form of currency that you understand better.
Your Mac has at least three ways to do this sort of calculation: with a Dashboard widget, the built-in Calculator app, and even with Spotlight. Here’s how to convert currencies into something that makes more sense, right from your handy Mac computer.
The iPad is one of Apple's greatest inventions, but at launch, people couldn't stop complaining. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.”
Half a decade and multiple iterations on, the iPad is an established part of Apple’s ecosystem. While it’s had its ups and downs, nobody’s flooding Apple’s inbox with iPad-related hate mail anymore.
So what were people complaining about? We hopped in our time machine to take a look at the original criticisms — and what, if anything, Apple’s done about them in the years since.
Five years ago today, on January 27 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — giving the world its first glimpse of the so-called “Jesus tablet.”
Although not Apple’s first venture into the tablet market (that would be 1993’s Newton MessagePad 100), the iPad was the first tablet Apple had released while Jobs was running the show. And, boy, was it great!
When looking at the iPad, at first the temptation was to think of it as a giant iPhone. That’s not the case, however. In reality, Apple began work on its tablet before its now-iconic smartphone. For Jobs, the idea went back to 2002 and a conversation he had with a boastful Microsoft engineer, who bragged about a stylus-based tablet computer. A patent application from Apple followed in March 2004, with Jobs and Jony Ive as two of the inventors named.
Things have come a long way since then, but it’s worth re-watching Jobs’ original iPad introduction — just for a reminder of how much Apple’s revolutionary device has meant in the half-decade since.
The biggest snowstorm to ever hit New York City is pounding the Northeast today, and it doesn’t look like the blizzard is going to let up any time soon.
More than 2 feet of snow are expected to hit the area. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has already canceled school for tomorrow and the state announced all highways will be closed by midnight tonight. But before you hole up with your loved ones for the next few days, make sure to download these eight apps that will help you make it out alive.
Over the weekend, we showed you sexy new renders that showed the rumored new 12-inch MacBook Air and iPad Pro side-by-side. Designed by render artist extraordinaire Martin Hajek, it gave us our best look yet at what Apple’s next big products could look like.
But in the renders we saw, Hajek’s iPad Pro was missing at least one critical ingredient: the plus-size tablet’s rumored stylus accessory. Now Hajek’s back, giving us his notion of what a Jony Ive-designed stylus could look like.
If you want Minesweeper in your Notification Center, better grab it fast. Screenshot: Cult of Mac
Although it’s a Windows game, I’ve never met anyone without a sweet spot for Minesweeper, the addictive little puzzle game that Microsoft debuted in Windows 3.1. Sadly, though, it never came to the Mac.
But if you love a good game of Minesweeper, we’ve got some great news. You can now play it right within Notification Center. Better act on it soon, though: Apple has a tendency to pull interesting iOS 8 widgets like this one.
