North Korea

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on North Korea:

North Korean elites sure love their Apple devices

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North Korea
North Korean citizens paying respect to the statues of Kim Jong-un's ancestors.
Photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikipedia CC

When Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un meet, they could always break the ice by talking about their favorite Apple devices.

While Trump has expressed his admiration for Apple in the past, it turns out that North Korea’s top officials are also quite the fans of the Cupertino tech giant. According to research firm Recorded Future, analysis of the devices being used by North Korea’s elite include numerous iPhones and a MacBook.

North Korea gets its own ‘iPad’ knockoff

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The Ryonghung iPad has more than 40 apps!
The Ryonghung iPad has more than 40 apps!
Photo: NK News

Recent rumors have promised exciting iPad launches this year, but none of them warned us about the Ryonghung iPad.

That could be because it wasn’t made by Apple. It’s a North Korean knockoff with an ugly design and terrible specifications, but it steals the iPad name in an effort to be more popular in a marker where Apple’s lawyers are unlikely to come knocking.

New game imagines a world in which Steve Jobs was North Korean

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Somewhere in a garage in... North Korea?
Photo: Homefront: The Revolution

From Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle to Mark Millar’s Superman comic Red Son, I’ve always been a massive fan of alternative history stories.

Now, upcoming first-person-shooter game Homefront: The Revolution asks a question as intriguing as any: What would have happened if a technological genius like Steve Jobs came out of North Korea instead of California?

The answer? A trillion-dollar company called APeX, apparently.

North Korea’s OS X clone is a dictator’s ‘wet dream’

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A North Korean operating system is seen in this screen shot taken in Seoul December 23, 2015.   REUTERS/James Pearson
You can't complain about North Korea's attention to detail. Especially if you live in the country.
Photo: James Pearson/Reuters

User privacy has been a massive focus for Tim Cook during his time as CEO at Apple, but it’s apparently not an area of much concern for North Korea’s OS X ripoff RedStar OS.

The operating system, which borrows Apple’s “look and feel” but little else, is basically the “wet dream of a surveillance state dictator,” according to security researchers who analyzed RedStar OS.

North Korea’s OS X clone is now available to the public

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North Korea's new operating system looks suspiciously familiar. Photo: North Korea Tech
North Korea's new operating system looks suspiciously familiar. Photo: North Korea Tech

 

The newest version of North Korea’s  state-controlled operating system was made available to the public for the first time ever this week. The last version (Red Star 2.0) was designed to look just like Windows, but for the sequel, Kim Jong Un’s minions have taken some inspiration from Apple and completely redesigned their Linux-based operating system to look just like OS X.

Red Star 3.0 was leaked via torrents a few days ago. We wouldn’t recommend installing it, but the folks at The Next Web took the plunge and discovered the painstaking details Pyongyang went through to replicate OS X.

Everything from the dock, menu bars, settings, and even the spinning beachball of doom, have been ported over to the operating system. A few remnants of the Windows copying days still linger, like the ability to run Windows 3.1 apps, but the rest of Red Star 3.0 is full OS X clone through and through.

Take a look at the similarities:

Why you should watch The Interview (even if it might suck)

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Bust terrorists in the balls by seeing The Interview. Photo © 2014 CTMG
Bust terrorists in the balls by seeing The Interview. Photo: Sony Pictures

Whether you head to a theater or stream it in the comfort of your home, you really ought to watch The Interview this weekend.

The action-comedy, about two journalists on a mission to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, has become the unlikely must-see movie of the Christmas break — and it’s your patriotic duty to see it, like it or not.

North Korea’s Official Operating System Rips Off OS X

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North Korea is a bizarre place, in which DPRK dictatorship denies its population any interaction with the West, even as the government’s elite drinks Cristal with Dennis Rodman. In such a regime, you might not be surprised to know that there’s not a lot of Mac users.

However, the North Korean government has released its own operating system, and the latest version looks decidedly familiar. It’s basically a Linux distro skinned to look like OS X!

The Micro Drone 2.0 With An Aerial Camera: Fly And Spy In The Sky [Deals]

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MicroDrone2

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flippin’ quadrocopter… with an aerial camera! It’s the Micro Drone 2.0 with an aerial cam so you can capture video from the sky.

This crazy maneuvering remote-controlled Micro Drone 2.0 can do it all! You can literally throw it into the air like a frisbee, upside down or at any angle, and its new self-righting algorithm and sensors will immediately stabilize it back to its horizontal flying position. And you can get it for just $69.99 – 45% off the regular price – thanks to this limited time offer from Cult of Mac Deals!

Is North Korea’s State-Run Tablet An iPad Beater?

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North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un might be an Apple user, but that doesn’t mean that North Korea’s state-run computer agency doesn’t see the value of launching a tablet of its own.

Costing around $250, the Korea Computer Center’s Samjiyon SA-70 has a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB internal memory, and a card slot equipped with an 8 GB micro SD memory card. There is also a 2 mega pixel camera, microphone, gyro sensor. Currently there’s no way to connect to the Internet, although there is an extendable antenna for receiving state television signals.

North Korea’s Dictator Is Using An Old iMac To Plan His Nuclear Attack On The U.S. [Image]

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kim-jong-un-attack-plan-us-1 (1)

 

Things are crazy in North Korea right now. After hanging out with Dennis Rodman for a bit, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has decided to step up his propaganda by threatening to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.

There’s no question that North Korea’s got nukes, but they might not be able to hit the U.S. for another few years. Plus, Kim Jong-un is running the show from an old 21-inch iMac that’s probably still running on OS X 10.5 Leopard, so we’re safe for now, right?

 

Source: BI