Apple CEO Tim Cook is the most powerful (openly) gay man in America, and also the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. As such, he’s done a lot for gay rights during his interim at Apple, and now he’s doing even more, making a sizable personal donation to a gay rights campaign in his home state of Alabama, as well as Arkansas and Mississippi.
Can you truly find yourself in a video game? Canadian filmmaker and professor Ramona Pringle thinks so. After her mother got sick and she broke up with her New York boyfriend, she spent a year playing World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
During that time, she found many pearls of wisdom, which she’s condensed into 10 “avatar secrets,” which inform her app-based documentary film of the same name.
Video games are an unlikely place to find wisdom, yet, within them, we can find camaraderie, experience the sting of defeat, and help each other become our best selves. Rather than simple time-wasters, social video games like World of Warcraft and Second Life mirror the human condition.
While Pringle doesn’t log in to WoW much these days, the game had an undeniable impact. “This project very much changed my life, my career and my perspective,” she said during a telephone call with Cult of Mac.
2014 has been an intriguing 12 months for movies. With no obvious breakout Oscar winners (a la 12 Years a Slave) or billion-dollar box office smashes (like The Avengers), it’s easy to think it’s been a forgettable year.
But that’s not really true. Peer beneath the surface and it has, in fact, been a very strong year for movie fans — from emotional masterpieces like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and returns-to-form like Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street to action-packed blockbusters such as Guardians of the Galaxy, there’s truly been something for everyone.
So what are our picks for the 10 “must see” movies of 2014? Keep reading to find out.
Huawei today announced its new Honor 6 Plus smartphone at an event in Beijing, and the device is already getting a lot of attention for having almost exactly the same name as Apple’s latest flagship.
Despite what you may think, however, this isn’t just another iPhone clone. Instead, it’s a flagship Android phablet with some impressive specifications, including an integrated coprocessor for fitness tracking, a massive battery, and two 8-megapixel rear-facing cameras that promise sharper images and some incredible features.
Apple’s got some great things planned for 2015, but before we get there we need to look back at the year that was 2014.
With that in mind, today marks the release of the company’s annual iTunes Store awards — highlighting the best music, movies, books, podcasts, apps and games from one of Apple”s most eventful years in history.
If you’re looking for the best possible recommendations for enjoyably passing the time this holiday season (at least until Cult of Mac announce our own “best of 2014” lists), you can find out Apple’s list of winners after the jump:
This week: warm up the telly—Woz is getting a tech-tastic reality TV show; we divulge our favorite new iPhone and Mac apps; we answer some ridiculous listener questions in an all-new Get To know Your Cultist; and finally, Steve Jobs denies Leander Kahney’s attempted handshake not once, but TWICE. Leander recounts the tale. We die laughing.
Quietly chuckle 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 chuckles begin.
Our thanks to Boom 2 for supporting this episode. Ever needed to turn up your Mac’s volume louder than it could go? Boom 2 can bolster your Mac’s puny volume to righteous levels your ears probably can’t handle. Try it out free for 7 days and save 20% off any a license with code CultCast at checkout.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is about to become a reality TV star. If you’re curious to see what watching The Woz might be like when it airs, Starwood Hotels just shot a quick video of Woz demonstrating their SPG app to magically unlock his hotel room at the W in Hollywood.
The SPG app seeks makes hotel keys obsolete by giving visitors a Bluetooth key upon checkin within the app, allowing you to skip the front desk altogether and unlock your room with the iPhone 6’s new NFC chip. The new SPG keyless entry system has only been around for a month, but Woz says its so easy to use, you don’t even need someone to teach you what to do.
Watch Woz demo the keyless entry app in the video below:
Let’s face it – not all of us want every purchase we complete via the iTunes or App stores available to anyone who uses our iPhone, iPad, or Macbook. Some things just need to remain, well, private.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to hide the evidence from unauthorized users via a quick trip to the iTunes app on your Mac or PC.
For a flagship device, Samsung’s Galaxy S5 doesn’t exactly sound like it’s flying high. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Samsung dramatically overestimated how many people were hankering after its new handset, with the result being that unsold units are now “piling up in warehouses.”
Although the S5 has sold around 12 million units in its first three months, that is substantially less than the numbers of the previous generation Galaxy S4, which sold around 4 million more in that same time frame. This would be bad news at any time, but Samsung was reportedly so gung-ho about the S5’s sales prospects that it actually increased production by 20%.
Shopping for the gamer in your life can be more difficult than beating your way to the end of Battletoads or collecting all 121 stars in Super Mario Galaxy.
To make the holiday shopping season a little simpler, Cult of Mac searched far and wide for the best gaming gear, trying out all the major platforms and accessories.
What follows is our roundup of the finest gamer gifts, from consoles and handhelds to peripherals. And we’ve even tossed in a few must-play game recommendations.