This week on The CultCast: 2017 might bring the super-charged MacBook Pro you’ve been waiting for — yes, another update! Then, a former employee says Tim Cook’s making Apple boring. Is it true? Plus: We get more evidence Apple will be making TV shows and movies; and iPhone 8 may be packing friggin’ lasers and facial recognition.
Amazon’s Alexa devices were some of the most exciting tech products of 2016, and immediately there were rumors that Apple was planning to follow suit with a standalone Siri — possibly even with the addition of facial recognition tech.
A new report, however, claims that despite its popularity, Alexa has been a massive money drain on Amazon so far. In 2016 alone, it lost Amazon $330 million, and this figure is set to rise to $600 million-plus this year.
iOS 10.2 is preventing users from playing videos that they have ripped from DVDs and other sources and loaded into iTunes.
It’s unclear whether this is just a bug or a conscious move by Apple, but there is a trick that has allowed some users to get around the problem.
Apple seeded two new beta builds to developers today, bringing a host of bug fixes and improvements to iOS 10.2.1 and macOS 10.12.3.
The new builds come just three days after Apple dropped its first batch of betas for 2017. Registered developers can now download iOS 10.2.1 beta 4 and macOS 10.12.3 beta 4 from Apple’s developer portal to take advantage of all the new features.
Next time someone poses for a selfie with their fingers held up in a peace sign, maybe tell them to leave it at a smile.
An ordinary photo of the universal sign of goodwill might be enough for a thief to copy a fingerprint, thanks to the high quality of digital photos these days. And since Touch ID and similar technologies turn fingerprints into keys that unlock our devices and the data we keep in them, that’s cause for concern.
Today marks ten years since Steve Jobs first unveiled the original iPhone (check out our handy iPhone history here) and, according to Tim Cook, “the best is yet to come.”
Cook’s comment was made as part of a press release, put out by Apple to celebrate the event. “iPhone is an essential part of our customers’ lives, and today more than ever it is redefining the way we communicate, entertain, work and live,” he noted, adding that the iPhone has “set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade — and we are just getting started.”
2017 is off and running, and there’s already a strong crop of brand new deals that top the Cult of Mac Store. This week we’ve got a comprehensive disk utility, a comprehensive bundle of lessons in iOS development, a single place to charge and organize up to 5 devices, and a coin-sized module for turning your iOS device into a universal remote. Read on for more details:
Apple has revealed its latest App Store stats as of January, which show that iOS 10 has now been installed on 76 percent of devices.
The update made its public debut less than four months ago, bringing a revamped Messages experience, new 3D Touch features, a more open Siri, and lots more.
The iPhone and Instagram get credit for being the first shoot-and-share social network, but even Steve Jobs would say that’s wrong. The Polaroid camera introduced a social component to taking pictures in the late 1940s, the first instant photography with three steps — shoot, shake and share.
Polaroid brought disruptive innovation to the market and also became a casualty of it when it failed to change course in time to be part of the digital photography revolution.
But a new version of Polaroid is thriving and even stirring up some buzz this week at CES in Las Vegas with new products covering iPhone photography, consumer 3D printing, camera drones and fun cameras that produce an on-the-spot print.
Macs are ideal for many things, but gaming isn’t one of them. Apple just doesn’t have gamers in mind when designing its products. Fortunately, NVIDIA does, and its upcoming GeForce Now service will make almost any Mac fit for gaming.