Until September, 2014 was a pretty quiet year for new Apple products. But the drought is over.

After announcing new iPhones and the Apple Watch last month, another media event is being held October 16th at Apple’s Town Hall auditorium on its Cupertino campus. “It’s been way too long,” joked Apple in its invitation to select members of the press. For those itching to see new iPad and Mac hardware, indeed.

While Town Hall is only a fraction of The Flint Center’s size, October 16th’s event shouldn’t be viewed as any less important. iPad sales are stagnant, and Apple’s desktop displays have been needing an upgrade for years. Apple Pay, an entirely new venture for the company, is expected to come out any day now. And then there’s always the chance that Apple still has at least one surprise up its sleeve.

Steve Jobs wasn’t in the habit of dancing at Apple events. But in 2010, prior to a press conference where he addressed concerns about the new iPhone’s antenna, a song lampooning the controversy got Jobs dancing in the wings before he faced off with journalists.

The song in question, which played on a big screen to kick off the event, was the work of YouTube musician and Apple fan Jonathan Mann, who has spent the past five years composing a new song each day and posting it online.

“I heard later on from an Apple PR person that Steve Jobs was bopping along in the wings as the song was playing” at the Antennagate press conference, says Mann, speaking with Cult of Mac. “It was a surreal moment in my life.”

Antennagate went away, but Mann became the go-to guy for jingles about all things Cupertino. To date he has written 38 songs about Apple, touching  on everything from Craig Federighi’s WWDC performance to the unveiling of the Apple Watch. His clever ideas and quick turnaround times have turned him into YouTube’s premier Apple songsmith.

I’ve always liked Jonathan Mann, the YouTube artist who became popular for writing and uploading a brand new song each and every day. Mann’s a big Apple fan, too, and over the years has put together numerous songs concerning everything from the iPhone 4’s Antennagate (which Steve Jobs actually danced to,) to duets with Siri, to a recap of the Apple Watch unveiling.

In his latest song (number 2,110!) he uses iOS 8’s new autocomplete function to compose a nonsensical song that — how do I put this delicately? — is still more entertaining and listenable than a large percentage of the music on the radio.

I won’t reproduce the lyrics here, since they’re essentially meaningless, but it’s a fun exercise nonetheless that may just be able to displace Mann’s WWDC song, which is still kicking around my head months later.

Via: The Loop

1Password has been hovering near the top of the App Store’s charts since it went freemium alongside the launch of iOS 8. Developed by Canadian company AgileBits, the popular password manager has been on the forefront of app development for Apple’s latest OS since WWDC in June.

After releasing an iOS 8-compatible version with iCloud Drive sync, Touch ID integration, and an adaptive layout, 1Password 5.1 is out today with more refinements.

Apple has looked within its own ranks to find who will lead its “friendlier” PR approach, at least for now. Despite looking at outside candidates like former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, the company has settled on one of its own veterans as interim PR boss.

Like a person with a new gym membership, Apple’s been on a health kick all year.

First we had the announcement of HealthKit at WWDC, then a fitness-oriented iPhone 5s ad in June, followed by Apple’s entry into the fitness-tracking market with the Apple Watch unveiling, and now the App Store’s been updated with a new “Apps for Health” section.

This section continues Apple’s trend for using human curation in the App Store by highlighting 14 apps which take advantage of iOS 8’s Health app by bringing health and fitness data into one centralized apps for access by users.

Apple added a new feature to iOS 8 that makes it harder for retailers to track your location by snooping info broadcast over WiFi, but after digging into the MAC randomization feature, a security researcher has found some bad news: it only works if you’ve got cellular data turned off.

The Mac randomization feature which debuted at WWDC, promises to limit retailers’ abilities to track your iPhone when you go to the mall, by sending a random MAC address, instead of the code can be used to grab your iPhone’s unique device ID and location, but users will have to turn off their cellular data connection to start broadcasting random MAC addresses.

New figures released by app analytics firm App Annie show that mobile users are more likely than ever to pay for music services by way of in-app purchases.

Looking at figures from August, streaming music offerings from Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music were among the top earning apps in terms of revenue.

Photos on iOS 8 are so good that you will be able to ditch a whole home-screen folder’s worth of editing and organizing apps. That’s not an exaggeration: Apple’s new mobile OS packs in so many great new features that – even without the extending abilities of iOS 8’s new plug-ins – you can do pretty much any edit right there in the photos app.

The camera, too, has gotten an upgrade, and – maybe the most important for some – so has the iCloud Photo Stream, which will now give access to all your photos, from any device, whenever you want.

Sounds pretty good huh?

iOS 8 is about to be unleash on the world today after debuting earlier this summer at WWDC. Tim Cook is calling it the biggest iOS update ever and for good reason, as the new OS has been packed with hundreds of new tools for developers, as well as new features that make iOS devices, quicker, more productive, and more seamlessly integrated with Mac than ever before.

You won’t see huge visual changes like Apple made with iOS 7 last year, but there’s plenty of features for everyone to be excited about in iOS 8, whether its the new messaging tools, improved camera features, family sharing, Hand-off, or the sleek new Spotlight.

Before you jump headfirst into the biggest iOS release ever, get acquainted with the most important new features in this Cult of Mac guide to iOS 8: