| Cult of Mac

Apple squeezes Blackberry to build carOS

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Ford CarPlay
CarPlay has a new podcasts player.
Photo: Ford

The rotting corpse of Blackberry Ltd. may provide the extra juice needed to get Apple’s car project rolling.

Apple has reportedly poached key engineers from BlackBerry’s QNX team in Canada to help develop the operating system for its self-driving car. And the iPhone-maker has set up shop just five-minutes away from the QNX offices.

5 tech trends you don’t want to miss at CES 2016

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Tech is taking over Vegas for the week.
Tech is taking over Vegas for the week.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Cult of Mac CES 2016 full coverage 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 car? Cupertino’s got the design talent to transform another industry

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One of the designers in Apple's Industrial Design Group helped create this shape-shifting fabric-covered car for BMW. Photo: BMW

As rumors that Apple is making a self-driving car rev up, a peek under the hood of the company’s famed Industrial Design studio reveals a crew of talented automobile designers.

An interest in futuristic cars is embedded deep within the DNA of Apple’s vaunted design team. Working under Jony Ive, Apple employs designers who worked on several fantastic concept cars, including a fabric-covered BMW that shifts shape depending on speed.

Ive has long been obsessed by cars. (He has quite a stable.) As a teenager, Ive wanted to be a car designer. He visited a U.K. design school that specialized in automotives with a view to studying there, but he found the other students too weird. They were making “vroom vroom” noises as they sketched. Instead, he went to Newcastle Polytechnic (which has since been renamed Northumbria University).

A look at other key members of Apple’s design team, and at a super-secret research-and-development facility planned for the company’s new campus, offers a few clues about how Cupertino might go about producing innovative and unconventional cars.

Audi’s driverless supercar films passengers’ delight and terror

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The manufacturer built its Piloted Driving prototype into an RS7 model. Photo: Audi
Audi built its Piloted Driving prototype into an RS 7 model. Photo: Audi

Are you eagerly awaiting the arrival of the self-driving car so it can save you from the stress and possible injury caused by people who swerve around in the streets like maniacs? Or do you hate the idea of a driverless auto because it won’t let you weave around all those slow a-holes who won’t get out of your way?

Regardless of how you feel about vehicles that don’t need your help to manage your commute, they’re coming, and change is often scary. especially if the free-wheeling roadster in question is a superfast Audi RS 7. And if you’re wondering what you look like when you’re sitting in a hunk of metal traveling at over 135 miles per hour with no control over the steering or brakes, Audi has you covered.

Audi Gets New Augmented-Reality App That Shows You Exactly Where To Add Oil

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One of the most hopeful promises of augmented reality is that it will eventually help us understand the world immediately around us. I’ve always thought one of the best uses of AR technology in this respect was its application to cars: Pan your phone or tablet across an engine bay, for instance, and an AR app will tell you where to put oil or coolant, or which bolts to remove in order to access the battery.

Audi brought us a little closer to this (augmented) reality today with the release of an AR companion app, using technology from German-based AR powerhouse Metaio, for its entry-level A3 that explains features in the cabin and engine bay.

DSP-Quattro 4: The All-In-One Audio Mastering Software For Your Mac [Deals]

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CoM - DSP-Quattro-4

Are you looking to up your audio editing game? Then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is definitely going to sound good to you!

DSP-Quattro is the do-it-all audio editing program for Mac. Simple yet powerful, this program is great for novices and professional musicians alike. This most recent version – DSP-Quattro Version 4 – is the best yet. It can handle everything from standard audio editing and recording to more advanced audio mastering. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for a limited time for just $39.99!

Most audio software is either too difficult to use or too weak to enhance the music, but DSP-Quattro is easy to master and yet still packs a powerful punch. It’s the perfect combination of power and ease rolled up in an audio editor.

Watch Old Spock (Nimoy) Battle New Spock (Quinto) In 3D iPad Chess In Awesome Star Trek Audi Commercial [Video]

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https://youtu.be/WPkByAkAdZs

This great new Audi commercial featuring two generations of Spocks — Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto — smack talking, swearing, racing and singing “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” is awesome for a lot of ways, but for iPad enthusiasts, the cream on top is at the very beginning, when Old Spock and New Spock play 3D Chess against each other on their iPads.

Sadly, the app itself doesn’t actually seem to exist. How have you overlooked doing a proper 3D Chess app, devs?