Now we’re hearing that Apple is planning on updating the MacBook Air later this month. But don’t get too excited. This is not the MacBook Air you’re waiting for.
Jony Ive's jealousy over Yahoo weather app yielded a startling imitation. Photo: AddictiveTips
One of the first projects Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer oversaw as CEO was the Yahoo Weather app. The app was so well received that it even ended up receiving a coveted Apple Design Award in 2013.
Apple also redesigned its stock Weather app to look just like it in iOS 7.
It turns out that it wasn’t a coincidence the two apps looked so similar. Jony Ive was “tormented” with jealously of Yahoo Weather’s design.
It's on many devices, but we still don't know what kind of devices. Photo: Microsoft
Microsoft just unveiled the future of Windows 10 today in Redmond. Along with some crazy holographic goggles that take on Google Glass and Oculus, company executives revealed the ambitious plan to make the next generation of Windows the first truly universal platform for desktop PCs, laptops, smartphones and more.
The 2.5 hour keynote was packed with new features coming to Windows 10 devices and the Xbox, but eagle-eyed Apple fanboys have already noticed a few ways Microsoft was influenced by some of Apple’s best features.
Here are 5 plays Microsoft stole from Apple’s playbook:
If you love Dropbox, you'd better upgrade your Mac. Photo: Dropbox
If you’re a Dropbox user (and you should be!) you might want to take a look at your ‘About this Mac’ info box: the popular cloud syncing app will drop support for OS X Leopard and earlier on May 15th.
Wall of Philips remotes. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo:
The year is 2018. After a long day at work, you pull into your driveway, whip out your iPhone 10 Plus and say, “Siri, I’m home.”
Your garage door opens silently, beckoning you to enter the ultra-connected smart home of the future.
As you walk in, your lights turn on. The wife used to get on you about leaving the lights on, but her nagging feels like a distant memory now. Your thermostat cools everything down to a comfortable 69 degrees. Knowing that you pulled into the driveway two minutes ago, your oven has started preheating itself. You usually fix dinner for yourself on Thursdays, so it’s time for frozen pizza.
Developers are loving Apple's new programming language. Photo: Cult of Mac
Apple surprised developers with its new programming language, Swift, at WWDC 2014 but it hasn’t taken long for the developer community to get behind what will soon be the replacement for Objective-C.
In the latest programming language popularity rankings from RedMonk, Swift has shot up from the 68th ranked language in Q3 2014, to the 22nd most popular language going into 2015. To put that growth into perspective, Google released its new language Go in 2009, but it just barely cracked the top 20 in this quarter’s rankings.
iOS 9 is now in the oven. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac Photo: Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
It will be many months before developers see Apple’s first iOS 9 beta, but the Cupertino company has already begun testing the update internally ahead of this fall’s release. The software has starting appearing in analytics data for a number of sites in recent months, including our own.
While Korean electronics giants like Samsung will dominate the show floor, Apple is laying the future path for the entire tech industry.
In the coming year, the tech industry’s big battlegrounds will be your body, your home and your car. At CES, thousands of companies will showing off new and prototype products to do battle in these arenas. But Apple is the company to beat. With the upcoming Apple Watch, in addition to HealthKit, HomeKit and CarPlay, Apple is setting the agenda for the entire tech industry, and it’s not even there.
Apple announced the ability for third-party apps to share files at WWDC in June. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/ The Next Web
Apple’s new interpretation of a particular iOS 8 feature could severely cripple countless third-party apps like Dropbox and Evernote.
The new interpretation came to light after Panic, a very respected indie developer, was told to remove the ability to send files to iCloud Drive in its file transfer app Transmit. And because of the way iOS 8 is designed, the app can no longer send files to any other storage provider.
What’s worse is that Apple provided little to no explanation for why it was implementing the policy change, and there’s no telling which app will forced to comply next.
App icons float on the Apple Watch's tiny homescreen. Photo: Roberto Baldwin/The Next Web
Despite never having laid their hands upon an Apple Watch, developers are feverishly crafting apps for the long-awaited wearable.
To do this, they face considerable challenges: The size of the device is unlike anything most of them have ever contemplated, and they must design for an entirely different kind of user experience. To make matters worse, the Apple Watch’s functionality will be severely limited, at least at first.
Still, the independent developers that Cult of Mac spoke with are unabashedly delighted to take on the design challenge as they seek to colonize the next frontier of computing: your wrist.