Spotify users who aren’t paying $9.99 a month for a Premium subscription could be prevented from listening to the hottest tracks.
A new report claims the Swedish music streaming company is nearing new deals with major music labels, which stipulate that top releases will initially be available only to paying users.
Three senior Apple executives are in talks with Hollywood’s “most successful” TV and movie producers over original content for Apple TV, according to a new report.
Each member of the trio, which includes Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, is so desperate to secure the first deal that they supposedly are fighting against each other.
This week on The CultCast: It’s been five years of CultCasts! We’ll regale you with some of our favorite stories from past shows. Plus: Our hardware expectations from Apple’s rumored March event; why iPhone 8’s wireless charging will probably be lame; Apple has five teams working on next-generation charging tech; why iPhone 8’s camera could pump out industrial-grade slow motion; and Steve Jobs gets a beautiful new home on Apple’s new spaceship campus.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace.com website. Enter offer code “CultCast” at checkout to get 10 percent off any hosting plan.
Future iPhones may be set to get a huge video upgrade, thanks to a new smartphone camera sensor created by Apple’s longtime supplier.
Sony has reportedly developed a new image sensor that is capable of shooting video at 960fps. That’s 720 frames more than the iPhone’s current slo-mo feature.
Apple’s stalling autonomous car project caused the company to shift its attention to augmented reality, according to analyst Ming Chi Kuo, who says the company is racing ahead of the competition when it comes to AR.
In a new note to investors, the KGI Securities analyst says Apple’s decision to develop a self-driving platform instead of an entire electric car makes sense. The company will use augmented reality to provide an incredible experience, he predicts.
Big-name brands are acting especially generous this week — we found deals on Panasonic, Sony and even KitchenAid products. eBay is back at it again with a new-and-improved PlayStation 4 bundle. Amazon’s cutting the price on its Echo smart home package. And Walmart is joining the fray with a major deal on a Panasonic 50-inch HD TV.
Read on for all the juicy details.
AT&T is getting into the television streaming game.
The company revealed today that it is launching a new streaming service called DirecTV Now in November and not only will it come with over 100 channels. It also won’t count against your mobile data.
The internet is going bananas with deals this week, with huge savings on Apple Watch Sport, one of Samsung’s flagship 4K HD TVs, and much more. We’ve scoured the web to find some of the best deals on things you might need, as well as some things you just might really want.
Nintendo finally gave in and started developing games for mobile devices last year, and now Sony is following suit.
The Japanese electronics giant today confirmed it will bring more than five PlayStation games to Android and iOS before March 2018.
Now that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are official, you’re probably wondering whether you should make one of them your next smartphone.
Before making your decision, find out how they stack up against the hottest Androids — such as the Galaxy S7, and Galaxy Note 7, the new LG V20, and the affordable OnePlus 3 — right here.
Want to own a bunch of Steve Jobs’ old crap from the ’80s and ’90s?
Some of the Apple co-founder’s personal items have just hit the auction block, giving some Jobs-obsessed nerd the first opportunity ever to drape his or her naked body in the same bathrobe as the dude that invented the iPhone.
Apple is planning to adopt a new tap-to-pay standard that will be integrated into future iPhones specifically for customers in Japan, according to a new report. The FeliCa standard, originally developed by Sony, will allow users to store public bus and train passes in Apple Wallet.
Negotiations between music streaming service Spotify and all three major record labels have hit a snag lately and Apple Music is a big reason why.
Spotify’s licensing agreements with Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have reportedly been on a rolling month-by-month basis for much of 2016, yet the companies haven’t been able to hammer out long-term deals yet because Spotify isn’t willing to share as much revenue as Apple Music.
Weak demand for the iPhone is causing earnings to fall for a number of suppliers in Asia, and few of them are hopeful that the situation is going to change.
Foxconn, the biggest assembly partner for the iPhone, saw its profit fall 9.2 percent last quarter, while Pegatron’s nosedived a whopping 35.1 percent.
The recent earthquakes which struck Japan may have affected the iPhone 7 supply chain — particularly related to the next-gen handset’s camera module.
Sony is giving PlayStation 4 owners the ability to play their favorite games on Mac and PC. Its latest firmware update for the PS4, which will roll out to all tomorrow, introduces Remote Play for desktops for the first time — plus other new features.
Die-hard Android fans probably had little interest in Apple’s keynote Monday, but believe it or not, plenty will be interested in the new iPhone SE.
With high-end specifications and a 4-inch display, it’s a compact smartphone for those who want the latest features without a supersized screen — and there’s nothing like it on Android.
Countless YouTube videos and reviews have demonstrated just how impressive Samsung’s new smartphone camera is in Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, but just how good is it compared to the rest of them?
According to the experts at DxOMark, it’s the best you can get right now.
The first images of what could be the iPhone 7’s dual-lens camera leaked online today, giving fans a possible sneak peek at the future of iPhotography.
Apple is rumored to be including a dual-lens camera sensor on at least the iPhone 7 Plus. If the leaked sensor shown below is the real deal, it appears that one lens will be wider than the other to provide optical zooming.
Check it out:
Apple’s favorite camera sensor maker may have just dropped a big hint that a dual-lens camera is coming to the iPhone 7 later this year.
Sony CFO Kenichiro Yoshida revealed yesterday during the company’s Q3 FY15 earnings call that its dual-lens camera platform will be featured in a range of products from “major smartphone players” over the next year.
Could he possibly be talking about the iPhone?
LAS VEGAS — For all Sony’s talk about high-definition audio and video during its CES press conference, the company’s most intriguing new product is a weird glass speaker with LED lights that looks something like a tubular hurricane lamp.
Called the Glass Sound Speaker, it’s a refreshing twist on the ordinary Bluetooth speaker that is certain to add a unique ambiance to any room. I’m not sure how it sounds, but its soothing, candle-like glow practically screams sophistication.
2016 is here and that can only mean one thing: It’s time for CES.
The world’s biggest consumer electronics show, CES 2016, is getting underway this week in Las Vegas, which means nerds and all the companies that make the gadgets they love are instinctively flocking to the desert oasis like the salmon of Capistrano.
This year’s show promises to be bigger than ever, with all the latest tech trends on full display. Cult of Mac will be on the scene all week long bring hands-on looks at the coolest and weirdest gadgets CES has to offer.
Here’s what we expect to see at the show:
Apple might need to play catch-up on virtual reality in the coming year. Oculus, Samsung and Sony are already promoting their own brand of VR headsets and technologies.
Virtual reality is the next big thing. As such, we undoubtedly will see a ton of it at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show. But one analyst already jumped in with his predictions about Cupertino’s chances for another hit product in the VR space.
It’s been a terrific year for gaming. The next-generation consoles now offer a library of spectacular games that somehow keep getting better and better, while PC gaming just gets greater every year.
2015 brought exciting and long-awaited entries to wonderful franchises like Fallout and The Legend of Zelda, surprising indie smash hits like Rocket League, and must-play platform exclusives like Blooborne and Super Mario Maker.
Here are the best games that we couldn’t put down this year.
We were too busy taking our own pictures in 2015 to notice that something about photography had changed.
This was the year the photo moved. It shed its flat, two-dimensional constraints and showed a life once left to the imagination.
The movement could be slight, as in Apple’s Live Photos, a new feature on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus camera that records a snippet of video before and after the frozen moment to add an extra dimension.