iFixit’s HomePod teardown reveals a veritable tank of a smart speaker that’s incredibly durable but virtually impossible to get inside. Unless you fancy using a heat gun and saw to open up your brand new Apple speaker, that is!
As one of Apple’s more elusive executives (when was the last time he spoke live at a keynote event?), it’s not every day that you get to hear chief design officer Jony Ive talk about what he does best.
If you live in Washington, D.C., however, you’ll get the chance later this month. Ive is speaking about the “future of design” at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum.
Best of all? The tickets are free.
Apple took a lot of heat for ditching the headphone jack with iPhone 7. Many labeled the omission a huge mistake, and some even went as far as to say it would leave sales in the gutter. But just over a year on, other big names are following suit.
It seems Cupertino was right again.
The latest rumors about the next-generation Apple Watch indicate it might come with LTE cellular data in a slick new design. But Apple Watch already offers data connectivity via iPhone, and Cupertino’s marketing tends to focus on benefits, not features. So how will Apple craft a new product story around built-in cellular?
My guess is it will all be about replacing the need for a very old technology: pockets. Apple Watch Series 3 will move all the contents of our pockets into the cloud.
Apple Park is a physical manifestation of Steve Jobs’ undying hubris, a monument to fussy perfectionism that’s as crazy as his NeXT Computer, the not-entirely-successful computer he launched after being booted from Apple in 1985.
That’s the premise of a new Bloomberg op-ed, which draws parallels between the new Apple campus and one of Jobs’ most notorious tech launches. It’s interesting, but ultimately wrong. Here’s why.
It’s hard to put into words the iPhone’s massive impact on society over the past decade. But we tried! In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, we’ve rounded up our best coverage (including stories from our collaboration with Wired UK) of the iPhone’s 10th anniversary.
We’ve got insider stories about the development of breakthrough iPhone features, ultra-rare iPhone prototypes and much more for your reading pleasure. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.
This week on The CultCast: You’d never know it from Steve Jobs’ effortless keynote introduction, but the original iPhone was plagued with huge design and production issues that almost made Apple call it quits — right up until the day it was released! To commemorate the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, we’ll recount some of the incredible stories behind iPhone’s beleaguered early days, and celebrate how Apple pulled off one of the greatest device launches in history.
Our thanks to Shutterstock for supporting this episode. Kickstart your next interactive project with video clips or music tracks from their collection, and save 20 percent for a limited time at shutterstock.com/cultcast.
Apple is famous for its iconic designs, but is the company slowly losing its way?
Products like the Apple Pencil and Smart Battery Case suggest that Apple’s design team might be missing a certain spark. Even the iPhone, once the prettiest smartphone by a long shot, is now being outshone by rivals from the likes of Samsung and LG.
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over whether Apple design has become lazy and boring. And be sure to have your say!
One day in early 2005, interface designer Bas Ording was sitting in a secret, windowless lab at Apple HQ when the phone rang. It was Steve Jobs.
The first thing Jobs says is that the conversation is super-secret, and must not be repeated to anyone. Ording promises not to.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah, Bas, we’re going to do a phone,'” Ording told Cult of Mac, recalling that momentous call from long ago. “‘It’s not going to have any buttons and things on it, it’s just a screen. Can you build a demo that you can scroll through a list of names, so you could choose someone to call?’ That was the assignment I got, like pretty much directly from Steve.”
The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.
The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.
This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.
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The iPhone packed a lot into its first astonishing decade. Not only has the device itself evolved significantly since its promising-but-by-no-means-perfect beginnings, but it’s transformed Apple’s business — and many of our very lives — in the process.
All this week, Cult of Mac’s “iPhone Turns 10” series will look at the innovative device’s massive impact on worldwide culture. The iPhone, which launched on June 29, 2007, truly changed the world.
What iPhone milestones have passed since Steve Jobs introduced this stunning hybrid device, which combined a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device? Check out our handy guide to 10 years of iPhone history.
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines have been the core of the company’s design philosophy ever since the Macintosh in 1978. Apple design evangelist Mike Stern gave an overview of the ever-evolving guidelines during a Wednesday session at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
The session, entitled “Essential Design Principles,” is one of my favorites, in large part because I’m a designer myself. I’ve distilled the essential Apple design principles he talked about in the sketchnotes above.
Apple Music subscribers on Android got some much-needed love from Apple today in the form of an update that brings a fresh UI to the streaming app.
It’s been nearly a year since Apple unveiled its Apple Music redesign as part of iOS 10 at WWDC 2016, but Android users are just now getting a taste of the interface’s bold, streamlined look.
Apple’s rumored plans to launch three different-size iPads this spring has fans a bit confused as to why creating a new 10.5-inch model is a good idea. But according to Dan Provost, the co-founder of Studio Neat, it actually wouldn’t be crazy for Apple to change the screen size when you look at the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Apple’s Mac team has “lost clout” with the company’s industrial design group and software team, claims a new report, arguing that Cupertino has “alienated Mac loyalists.”
The picture painted by the article is of a division with a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key employees, and technical challenges — all conspiring to make the Mac one of Apple’s forgotten divisions.
Could future Apple Watches ditch the rectangular form factor of current models and opt instead for a round watch design, similar to the Pebble Time Round?
A pair of patent applications filed today suggest this is something Apple is considering. Titled “Electronic device having display with curved edges,” the twin applications make no secret about what they contain.
The question is whether Apple will follow through with them.
This week on The CultCast: Is a secret Apple project stalling Mac updates? It wouldn’t be the first time. Plus: Apple teases Black Friday deals; AirPort routers are walking dead, and the Mac Pro might be next; the future of Time Machine; why iPad should be an iOS/OS X hybrid; and Jony Ive’s new role designing Apple itself.
Increasingly, some Apple fans think Jony Ive has lost it.
He’s killing ports and headphone jacks left and right. The latest MacBooks value form over function. He’s designing gold watches for the 1 percent.
And now his glossy new photo book, Designed by Apple in California, looks like a $300, linen-bound ego trip.
This week on The CultCast: Get out your pitchforks — we’ll tell you why a lot of folks are very unhappy with the new MacBook Pros. Plus, we compare the MacBook Pro’s performance to older models and similarly priced machines; Apple calls it quits on external displays; and the end of an era — one of Mac’s most iconic features gets retired.
Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. Casper’s American-made mattresses have just the right amount of memory foam and latex, and people everywhere love them. Learn why and save $50 off your order at casper.com/cultcast.
A new interview with Jony Ive sheds light on his team’s thought process as they created the new MacBook Pro and its innovative Touch Bar.
Ive addresses the history of the Touch Bar project, touches on his rationale for ruling out a touchscreen Mac, and explains why thinking different is easy — but doing so is only a small part of the innovation battle.
Apple faces a serious challenge when it rolls out the rumored OLED “Magic Toolbar” on new MacBook Pros tomorrow: It must convince the world that the new adaptive touchpad is more than a gimmick.
Offering customizable function keys that work in different ways depending on which apps are running, the Magic Toolbar could make the new MacBook Pro one of Apple’s most exciting laptops in years.
But to be more than a gimmick, the Magic Toolbar needs to improve the way we interact with our Macs, not simply add another confusing control element to the laptops. The Magic Toolbar needs to make it easier to perform tasks that we now do using keyboard shortcuts or on-screen toolbars. If it can’t do that, the Magic Toolbar will go down in the history books as a failure.
Luckily, there’s one simple step Apple can take to ensure that the Magic Toolbar becomes a success.
Xiaomi’s incredible new Mi Mix smartphone brings a jaw-dropping “edgeless” display, a ceramic design and groundbreaking new technologies.
Unveiled today, it isn’t just the prettiest smartphone of 2016; it’s the prettiest smartphone to date.
The Mi Mix is not an iPhone clone — something Xiaomi has become famous for — but it could tell us a lot about Apple’s next handset.
Apple’s second beta for iOS 10 is jam-packed with new features and changes to go along with the big batch of bug fixes.
More than 50 changes have been discovered by developers, affecting everything from Apple Music to widgets. A lot of the changes are very minor UI tweaks that would probably go unnoticed by many users, but Apple has also added some huge additions to the Home button, Messages, Notification Center and more.
Here’s what’s new in iOS 10 beta 2:
Sometimes affectionately called the “cheese grater,” the original Power Mac G5 first went on sale on June 23, 2003 — offering what was then Apple’s fastest-ever machine and the world’s first 64-bit personal computer.
Check out the video of Steve Jobs introducing the computer 13 years ago today.
iOS 10 brings much-needed design overhauls for the Apple Music and Apple News apps.
The big iOS update, which is currently in beta but should hit iPhones and iPads this fall, brings huge changes to the Apple Music UI as well as minor improvements to navigation in the music app. To see all the changes in action, watch the Cult of Mac video below.
