Since its introduction with iOS 7, Activation Lock has gotten stronger and stronger. But every so often, researchers stumble across a bug that allows it to be cracked. The latest is found in iOS 10.1.1, and it makes it surprisingly easy to get into a locked iPhone or iPad.
Beloved Tiny Wings takes to the skies on Apple TV
Tiny Wings, one of the most addictive games you’ll ever play on iOS, is now available on the fourth-generation Apple TV. It costs just $2.99, and it comes with a new two-player game mode that lets you battle it out with a friend for the first time.
iCloud hacker gets 18 months in jail for stealing nudes
One of the iCloud hackers behind 2014’s “Celebgate” scandal has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. Ryan Collins helped break into celebrity iCloud accounts and steal private photos, which were later published online.
Liveblog: Apple reveals its (relatively) meager Q4 2016 earnings
Apple is set to report its Q4 2016 earnings today, only instead of it being a time for celebration, the company is expected to announce its first annual revenue decline in 15 years.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri warned Wall Street that this quarter wouldn’t smash any records, but with the iPhone 7 doing better than expected, could relief be on the way?
Investors and analysts will grill Apple about how well the company expects to perform next quarter during today’s earnings call. And Cult of Mac will be right here, liveblogging the whole shebang when it starts at 2 p.m. Pacific.
Come join the fun — it’s livestreaming on Apple’s investor site.
Apple’s spaceship campus will hold even more employees than previously thought
The epic scale of Apple’s Campus 2 “spaceship” awed many people when it was first announced — with impressive stats like the fact that it is wider than the Empire State Building is tall, and that it will house 13,000 Apple employees — or the equivalent of 35 fully-stocked Boeing 747 jetliners’ worth of people.
But according to a new report, Apple’s new HQ will now house considerably more than that number of staffers, as Apple aims to bring as many teams under one roof in the name of collaboration.
Apple adds another AI startup to its machine learning team
Apple has bought another machine learning startup as part of its effort to boost its AI prowesses for features like intelligent search and Siri.
The company that was acquired this time is India/US-based Tuplejump. The startup’s old website has already been taken down, but it appears that it specialized in big-data technologies for businesses.
Apple adds real-time collaboration to iWork apps for Mac
Apple’s iWork productivity software received a huge update today alongside the launch of macOS Sierra.
Pages, Keynote and Numbers all got upgraded with the new real-time collaboration Apple gave us a glimpse of at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The new feature is still in beta, but it makes the apps more powerful than ever in the workplace by allowing teams to edit documents simultaneously.
How to back up your data and hand off an old iOS device
If you’re planning to get hold of a new iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus in the coming weeks, you’re probably planning to get rid of your old handset — either by selling it or handing it over to a friend or family member.
Before you do that, however, make sure you follow our handy guide so you know exactly what to do to safely hand off an old iOS device.
Google Photos ad capitalizes on iPhone’s biggest weakness
Google has decided to attack Apple directly in a funny new ad that rips the iPhone for its paltry 16GB of storage on entry models.
The new ad has been played heavily during NBC’s Rio Olympics coverage and promotes Google Photos “free up space” feature the upload an unlimited number of pictures to the cloud so users have more storage for apps, videos, music and other content. Apple has a similar feature with iCloud, but you have to pay for it.
Watch the hilarious ad below:
Apple is ready to pay hackers a big bounty for bugs
Apple’s head of security and engineering architecture, Ivan Kritic, revealed yesterday that the iPhone maker is finally creating a bug bounty program that will offer rewards of up to $200,000 to security researchers who find vulnerabilities on the company’s various software platforms.
The news came during a keynote at the annual Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas where Kritic also gave attendees a behind-the-scenes look at iOS 10 security as part of Apple’s effort to become more open about its architecture in hopes of improving it.
Former Apple engineers build app to take on iCloud
Apple’s iCloud platform is getting fresh competition this week from some of its former engineers who want to completely change the way content is stored on your iPhone.
Co-founded by Bertrand Serlet, former senior VP of software engineering at Apple, the new startup called Upthere is launching its first iOS app that allows users to store digital photos in Upthere’s cloud that was custom made to be screaming fast.
Apple Music finally gets audio fingerprints from iTunes Match
Apple Music’s matching software has a terrible history of replacing artists’ live songs with a studio version, but that will finally be a thing of the past, thanks the addition of audio fingerprints from iTunes Match.
A quiet rollout of the iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscriber is currently underway, fixing the less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match that was currently used on Apple Music.
‘Celebgate’ hacker pleads guilty to cracking iCloud accounts
A hacker who broke into more than 30 iCloud accounts has pleaded guilty for his role in the “Celebgate” leak of 2014. Edward Majerczyk faces up to five years in prison for illegally obtaining private celebrity photos.
Apple reveals why its Irish data center is so important
Concerns about the effect Apple’s massive Irish data center will have on badger and bat populations may have momentarily suspended the company’s plans, but Apple representatives have assured locals the $950 million project will be largely invisible.
Robert Sharpe, Apple’s senior director of global data center services appeared at a hearing in Galway County this week to address concerns about the 500 acre data center and revealed why it’s so important to Apple’s expansion plans in Europe.
Apple confirms iCloud Mail and Notes are down for some users
Apple’s service status page confirms an issue with iCloud Mail and Notes that is rendering the services unavailable for some users. The outage has been ongoing for two hours now, and there’s currently no word on when we should expect it to be fixed.
iPhone owners plagued by another iCloud phishing scam
iPhone owners in the U.K. have complained about being targeted with a phishing scam trying to trick them into revealing personal information by claiming that there is a problem with their iCloud account.
The scam message appears to come from an official Apple account called “iSupport,” and says that specific iCloud accounts have been deactivated and that users should head to an external website to confirm their user details and “reactivate [their] account.”
Apple adds Box veteran to boost enterprise efforts
Apple’s push to become a great company for large companies as well as consumers is getting a big boost this week with the hiring of former Box employee Karen Appleton who has joined the company in an enterprise-focused role.
Appleton revealed last week that she was leaving Box after working with the company since 2007 as employee number 8, but she hasn’t said what exactly she will be doing for Apple.
Siri meets its demise in Apple’s Earth Day ad
Apple is going hard on Earth Day. Company stores changed their Apple logos green. The App Store has a week-long green app promotion. And today the company has released not one, but two ads.
The second Earth Day video from Apple features Siri and Liam hanging out talking about kale smoothies until Apple’s digital assistant meets its demise.
Watch the new ad below:
Circle with Disney is a near-flawless parental control system [Reviews]
I recall at WWDC 2011 when Steve Jobs introduced iCloud he talked about how up until that point, managing and syncing content across devices was driving everybody nuts. You’d take one photo on one device and would have to plug it in and sync it to another device, which would then offer up some of its own photos and meanwhile none of them are even on the third device yet. It truly was an insane world. But in 2016, the new Circle with Disney aims to solve a surprisingly similar problem.
Managing content across devices has gotten much easier, yet managing the people who use those devices has not. Circle is a brand-new product from Disney that wants to unify your family’s entire online experience. It allows you to set time limits for individual family members, block websites based on your child’s age, and even pause Internet access entirely when it’s time to log off.
Apple rumored to be proceeding with plans to bring iCloud in-house
Apple is working with China-based server vendor Inspur as part of its ongoing plan to bring its iCloud data services in-house, according to a new report.
Apple’s cloud deal with Google could be worth $600 million
Apple may be hopping into bed with long-time tech giant frenemy Google, migrating part of its iCloud business over from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google’s Cloud Platform.
Apple will reportedly pay Google between $400 and $600 million as part of the deal, which could be around twice the estimated amount Google’s cloud business did in total revenue last year.
iCloud hacker behind ‘The Fappening’ faces up to five years in prison
Almost 19 months after the mass leaking of naked celeb photos known as “The Fappening,” a man has been arrested for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — and faces up to five years in prison as a result.
Apple thinks this house is the Bermuda Triangle of lost iPhones
Find my iPhone is a fantastic way to recover your iPhone when it is lost or stolen. Most of the time. If you’re Christina Lee and Michael Saba, though, you hate Find my iPhone, because it has ruined your life.
For some reason, Apple constantly reports stolen or lost iPhones as coming from Saba and Lee’s small suburban Atlanta house… even though they are nowhere near by.
iPad Pro looks awesome, but is Surface Pro 4 even better?
Whether you like it or not, 2-in-1 tablets that turn into laptops are a thing. Microsoft’s Surface was one of the first to kick off this trend, and with the Surface Pro 4 that was announced this week, it is making the 2-in-1 an even more compelling device.
For the same price as an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, you can get a Surface Pro 4 with powerful notebook internals that runs desktop-class software when you need it. So, why wouldn’t you?
What makes the iPad Pro a better option? And did Apple miss a trick by not making the iPad Pro the ultimate 2-in-1 for iOS and OS X users?
Join us as we battle it out over these questions and more in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!
Apple boosts price of AppleCare+, slashes iCloud storage fees
Adding AppleCare+ coverage to your iPhone 6s is going to cost you a little more extra this year. Apple didn’t announce any pricing changes on stage at yesterday’s event, but the company did update its website to reflect the higher prices, and not only will iPhone 6s owners have to pay more to buy AppleCare+, they’ll also be charged more for service fees.