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Apple makes targeted ads possible on iTunes Radio

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Apple is beefing up its iAd network for iTunes Radio by making it easy for advertisers to target certain customers. Like iAds for apps, advertisers can also buy their own audio ads without having to go through Apple’s sales team.

The change seems geared towards making advertising on iTunes Radio a more attractive opportunity, especially now that brands can use Customer Match, Apple’s ad-targeting system.

Apple is diving into music streaming at the right time

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Vinyl may be hot among hipsters, but it's clear that streaming music is the mass market trend. Photo: Jim Merithew/ Cult of Mac

Apple is preparing a complete revamp of Beats Music that will directly integrate the streaming service into all of its products. The timing could not be more perfect, because streaming subscriptions like Spotify have finally overtaken CD sales.

Safari plugin adds Beats Music to your browser, minus the Flash

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Apple has big ambitions for its new music streaming service.
Beats needs a native Mac app, bad. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Beats Music is due for a big redesign come WWDC. Hopefully that means a native Mac app is on the way, as well as a web player that doesn’t use Flash.

While we’re waiting for Apple to trash its use of the web plugin Steve Jobs loathed, Chris Aljoudi has solved the problem with a brilliant Safari extension that brings Beats Music playback to your browser using HTML5.

Take a peek inside Apple Watch’s companion iOS app

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Photo: Cult of Mac
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple placed another app that can’t be deleted on everyone’s iPhones with the release of iOS 8.2. For now, the Apple Watch companion app is just a useless tease if you don’t have an Apple Watch yet, but iOS developer Hamza Sood has cracked it open and given us a preview of what the app will look like once you get your watch.

Sood tweeted some interesting tidbits about the app, revealing its beautiful dark theme along with details about the settings, how to add friends, mute notifications, and other interesting features.

Take a peek inside the app below:

Apple Watch keynote is reimagined as a smooth pop music video

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Cook has Apple's momentum rocketing along. Photo: Apple
Tim Cook wouldn't be the first Apple CEO to rock out to one of Jonathan Mann's Apple songs. Photo: Apple

One of the highlights of any Apple keynote is that it inevitably means another catchy jingle from YouTube songsmith and longtime Mac-fan, Jonathan Mann: a musician whose Apple-centric songs once made even Steve Jobs dance.

Frankly, it’s amazing that nothing short of amazing that Mann is able to create such entire songs, complete with music videos, so quickly after an Apple keynote is off the air, but somehow he does. Choosing a smooth jazz-synth sound and the vaguely-inappropriate title “It’s Not Just With You, It’s In You… I Mean On You,” Mann lovingly lampoons Apple’s “most personal device” with an earworm that, all things being equal, should tide you over until WWDC.

Check out the music video (and its lyrics) after the jump. You might even want to sing along…

The 7 biggest shockers from Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ event

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Only the sticker shock mattered. Photo: Apple
Only the sticker shock mattered. Photo: Apple

The biggest surprise about today’s big Apple Watch event? That Cupertino’s upcoming wearable didn’t really steal the show.

We got a few new details about the smartwatch, but Tim Cook and crew really blew our minds with several other big announcements. Here are the most important revelations from the show at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

What’s inside Apple’s mystery tent?

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Apple's tiny white tent nestles between buildings at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Photo: Jim Merithew/ Cult of Mac
Apple's tiny white tent nestles between buildings at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

SAN FRANCISCO — Another Apple event, another mysterious building sprouting up seemingly overnight. They pop up to shield Apple’s prep work from prying eyes, but they also fuel the imaginations of anybody who’s interested in Cupertino’s next move.

The latest such structure — this time with solid white walls and a tented, tarp-like roof — isn’t nearly as elaborate as the gigantic building erected before last fall’s Apple Watch event, but the mysteries concealed could be gigantic.

The big reveal comes at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts next Monday, when we will almost assuredly learn more about the Apple Watch (among other things). Until then, all we can do is wait and wonder: What could be hidden inside Apple’s mystery tent?

What to expect from Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ Watch event

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Apple is taking over the Yerba Buena Center in San Fransisco. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is taking over the Yerba Buena Center in San Fransisco. Photo:Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple’s March 9 “Spring Forward” event is just around the corner, and its tagline can only mean one thing: Apple Watch news galore.

Scheduled for the day after daylight saving time kicks in, we expect Apple to shower us with details about the upcoming wearable, including pricing and availability. Select Apple Watch apps from App Store developers will likely be shown off as well to whet our appetites for what’s to come.

While there’s a chance some new Mac hardware could share the stage Monday, we expect the event to focus mostly on all the unanswered questions surrounding the Apple Watch.

What are those questions? Glad you asked:

Siri speaks 7 new languages in iOS 8.3

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Siri speaks even more languages in iOS 8.3. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Siri speaks even more languages in iOS 8.3. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple’s second iOS 8.3 beta, which was pushed out to registered developers on Monday ahead of a public release later this year, enables Siri to speak seven new languages, testers have found. It also brings more performance improvements for older iOS devices like the iPhone 4s.

Doom maker’s weapon of choice for teaching coding? Apple IIc

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Starting with the BASICs. Photo: John Carmack
Starting with the BASICs. Photo: John Carmack

When you’re one of the closest things the programming world has to a rock star, you might assume that — when the time comes to pass your godly coding powers onto the next generation — you’d hand your offspring a brand new iPad and a crash course in the likes of Swift: the insanely popular state-of-the-art iOS language unveiled at last year’s WWDC.

Try telling that to John Carmack! The legendary coder behind the smash hit games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake (today working at Oculus VR) recently shared a picture of his young son’s home computer lessons. Carmack’s choice for suitable hardware and software? BASIC on the 1984-era Apple IIc.

He’s kicking it old-school!