Breaking news: Steve Jobs was kind of a perfectionist when it came to design.
OK, so that’s not exactly the world’s best-kept secret. But a new story about the creation of Pixar’s headquarters highlights Jobs’ obsessive attention to detail. For anyone who remembers hearing about the creation of Apple Park, it will sound eerily familiar…
When the casing or another component for an unreleased iPhone leaks before the official unveiling, it’s often because someone at an assembly plant in China snuck it out. Apple always does its best to track down the culprit and the punishment is … generally not much.
And there’s a good reason why.
iFixit just got its hands on Apple’s newest 13-inch MacBook Pro, which can only mean one thing: It’s time to take a look at what’s inside its svelte aluminum shell.
The new model ships with a Touch Bar, Touch ID, and the Apple T2 Security Chip as standard. It also boasts newer Intel chips that promise up to 83% faster multi-core performance.
But that’s not all you get for your money. There’s a bigger battery inside it, too — plus some other surprising tweaks. And not every change is a good one.
There’s something weirdly off-putting about the eye-contact problem with video calling services like FaceTime and Skype.
It happens because users must choose either to look directly at the camera lens, and miss what’s happening on screen, or look at the screen and appear to be staring at the listener’s neck.
That’s not ideal for a tool that’s meant to make it seem like you’re having a face-to-face conversation. Fortunately, Apple fixes this shortcoming in iOS 13.
News of Jony Ive’s departure from Apple may have come as a shock to some, but to many others, it has been a long time coming. A new report claims Ive has been slowly reducing his responsibilities since the launch of Apple Watch.
Sources close to Apple have revealed that Ive has been visiting the company’s new headquarters as little as twice a week. “This has been a long time in the making,” one said.
One of the new health features baked into watchOS 6 is a Noise app that will tell you when the environment around you is too loud. But just how accurately can a wearable device with a tiny microphone measure noise?
You’ll be surprised. A comparison with an actual decibel meter proves Apple Watch does an unbelievably good job.
The iPhone 11’s grand unveiling is probably just over three months away but that’s not stopping one concept designer from dreaming big with a few last minute additions.
The WWDC 2019 keynote came packed with exciting announcements. As in past years, I ended up with four pages of drawings in my notebook. I sketched out the biggest new features coming to tvOS 13, iOS 13, macOS Catalina and watchOS 6. And then there’s the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR.
As seen in my first sketchnote, above, tvOS 13 adds multi-user support and support for Xbox One and PlayStation DualShock 4 game controllers for Apple Arcade. Meanwhile, watchOS 6 will bring an App Store directly to the Apple Watch, a new Noise app, and a new Cycle tracking app for women.
For a quick visual recap of the highlights of the WWDC 2019 keynote, check out the rest of my sketchnotes below.
The iPod touch exists to be used by waiters, warehouse staff, delivery persons, and anyone else whose employer wants them to use an iOS device as a handheld on-the-job computer. That’s why it just got an update, and it’s probably why it hasn’t — and never will — change size or shape. It is a utility computer. Making it an all-screen, buttonless iPhone-lite is pointless. Adding Touch ID is equally useless when it is used by multiple people.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t also a great device for everyone else. If you need a utility iOS computer, then you should buy it. Musicians are one great example of potential users. Let’s see why the iPod Touch is still great.
Apple’s marketing for the recently-announced 2019 MacBook Pro emphasizes how much faster it than last year’s model, and now a benchmark score may confirm that this macOS laptop is almost 30 percent speedier.
Apple’s work on iOS 12 isn’t quite done just yet.
Even though WWDC 2019 and the debut of iOS 13 is less than a month away, Apple is out with its first beta of iOS 12.4 today. The new beta comes less than a week after Apple released iOS 12.3 to the public, bringing the new Apple TV app to the masses along with tons of bug fixes and performance improvements for iPhone and iPad.
A new documentary called Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa promises to tell the story of one of Apple’s most important flops.
Directed by computer historian (and Apple collector) David Greelish, the movie will feature interviews with key players in the machine’s development. It also will place the Lisa in its proper context — as one of the most influential computers of all time.
Taking a close look at Apple’s financial results during the first three months of this year in hard numbers shows how the company is changing. Services are getting more important to its bottom line, and so are iPads. While iPhone is still a big part of Apple’s business, it’s not as significant as it used to be.
Check out these charts that demonstrate with a glance how the changes play out.
The grand unveiling of watchOS 6 is a little more than a month away. Leaked details on watchOS 6 have been pretty scarce in the lead up to WWDC 2019, but that hasn’t stopped concept designer Jake Sworski from coming up with a plethora of feature ideas that will take Apple Watch to the next level.
In his latest watchOS 6 concept, Sworski and his friends have dreamed up tons of big and little features that would add more information to Apple Watch. New watch faces, sleep tracking, activity ring advancements and more are all there. If Apple puts even half of these features in watchOS 6 we’ll be totally blown away.
Take a look at all these great ideas:
At first glance, the decade-old OP-1 synthesizer from Swedish musical instrument makers Teenage Engineering looks about as standalone as it gets.
The tiny device couples a short, piano-style keyboard with a screen. And it contains a drum machine, several synthesizers, a sampler, a handful of sequencers, a virtual four-track tape recorder and even an FM radio. You can create entire tracks on it with no other gear, or you can hook it up to electric guitars and microphones and bring the outside world in.
But it also pairs surprisingly well with an iPad. You can record audio back and forth, but things go much deeper than that. You also can use the OP-1’s hardware keyboard to play instruments on the iPad, and use iPad MIDI apps to control the synthesizers on the OP-1.
If you own both pieces of gear already, hopefully this how-to will give you some new ideas about making music with an iPad. But if you only own an iPad, this in-depth article will provide tips for using your tablet with other music gear.
And if you know nothing about the OP-1, or about Teenage Engineering’s work in general, you’ll learn why the company is kind of the Apple of the synth world. Teenage Engineering is known for its incredible interface design — and for having a quirky personality similar to 1984-era Apple, when the brand-new Mac was making waves.
This post was going to be part of my new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, but was cut for length or continuity. Over the next week or so, we will be publishing several more sections that were cut, focusing mostly on Apple’s manufacturing operations.
This is Part 2 of a two-part section on Apple’s misadventures in manufacturing. Part I is here.
Steve Jobs carried his dream of end-to-end control over manufacturing to NeXT, the company that Jobs founded after being booted out of Apple in 1985. It was here that he learned a tough lesson about manufacturing: that sometimes it’s more trouble than it is worth. Or, perhaps more kindly, that great manufacturing capabilities mean nothing if you don’t have a product people want to buy.
Let me be among the first to thank Apple for killing the wireless charging pad known as AirPower.
While tech commentators try to rank this failure against other doomed Apple products, I feel grateful that Cupertino pulled the plug. AirPower, an ambitious attempt to use multiple coils to charge an iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods, was a public health hazard.
Apple has unveiled Apple Arcade, a new subscription game which will allow iOS and Mac gamers to access a plethora of games in an “all-you-can-eat” subscription service.
“We want to make gaming even better,” said Tim Cook. Based on what Apple showed today, they may well have succeeded.
Apple is undoubtedly going to throw its hat into the streaming TV markets during a big press event on Monday, where its service will have to compete against dozens of rivals, some household names.
Although the announcement is still a few days away, we already know quite a bit about how Apple will try to make its offering stand out.
Apple’s iPad lineup is about to get more crowded and confusing than ever in 2019.
With the company’s big March 25 event looming on the horizon, a new rumor claims Apple is planning to release not one but two iPads with a 10-inch screen this year that won’t fall under the “iPad Pro” brand.
iPhone sales are down, especially in emerging markets. The reason is simple: Apple’s devices cost too darn much. And the solution is equally simple: Apple must make a new budget model. In short, it needs a successor to the iPhone SE to ensure short-term profits as well as long-term viability.
This device has to have a low, low price. Even if that means a phone so bare-bones that most Americans turn up their noses at it.
Before you read the rest of this article about how to find your iPhone, check down the back of the sofa. No? OK, what about the pocket in the jacket you wore today? Still no? OK. Read on.
It might sound crazy to write about how to find your iPhone. After all, everyone knows about Find My iPhone, right? Well, perhaps. You know that it can be used to track a stolen iPhone on a map, if the perp hasn’t switched it off (which they almost certainly have).
But at least one writer here at Cult of Mac didn’t know that Find My iPhone is also great for finding your iPhone in your own home. That writer — let’s call him Luke Dormehl to avoid embarrassment — spent more than an hour trying to track down his muted iPhone before resorting to Apple’s tracking app.
Samsung put Apple and the rest of the tech industry on notice today during its massive Unpacked event.
During the biggest tech event of 2019 so far, Samsung unveiled a slew of new smartphones, wearables, earbuds and more. Even though Samsung has a rep for copying Apple — and there was certainly a lot of that at Unpacked — the company is setting the tone for the rest of the industry. Samsung even leapfrogged Apple’s products in some ways.
Here are six things Apple should take note of.
Apple has added a shortcut to the latest versions of iOS 12 to make managing app subscriptions easier. Previously, you had to dig deep into your Apple ID settings to find the control panel for your subs. Now, it’s just a couple of taps away. On the surface, this looks like a simple tweak to make things easier for the user, but it’s more than that.
By making subscriptions easier for the user to cancel, it’s also making it more likely that people will sign up for them in the first place. That’s good for users, for developers, and for quality apps in general.
The 2018 MacBook Pro might be the most disappointing laptop Apple has come out with in years.
Despite being one of the lightest and most powerful Macs ever, The CultCast host Erfon Elijah finds the 2018 MacBook Pro fraught with problems. In his latest video, he goes through all the reasons — from the lack of ports to the crappy keyboard — why he thinks the new machine is far from perfect.
Let him count the ways the new MacBook Pro falls short.
