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Legendary German camera maker Leica spent nearly 20 years patenting technology that would take focusing out of the hands of photographers. As with the 35 mm still camera the company created in 1925, Leica stood ready to once again revolutionize photography, this time with an autofocus system.

But after spending the last part of the 1970s working on prototypes, Leica dropped plans to bring autofocus to consumers. Leica figured its customers already knew how to focus their cameras.

“There’s an element of truth in that,” said Heinz Richter, who was a member of the Leica Historical Society of America when he held one of the first autofocus cameras at a meeting in Minneapolis in 1980. “Leica used to be an extremely conservative company. The autofocus mechanism as they were available then didn’t fit into the company’s ideal of precise focusing.”

The Internet has gone crazy for selfie sticks ever since a couple of Twitter users posted modified images of Hollywood’s toughest characters with their guns swapped out for the hated tech accessories.

The Photoshop swap really has a way of removing all the menace from a person — especially if their new phone has a ladybug case on it. You can see some examples below (as well as some we put together because we just couldn’t help ourselves).

It would be easy to think that Apple’s sapphire iPhone dreams went down the pan when GT Advanced Technologies went bust, but Apple’s nothing if not persistent.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple describing a new method for manufacturing sapphire displays by irradiating the sapphire crystal and then using a laser and “second gas medium” to slice it into the super-thin sheets Apple requires.

Does your Mac also boot into Windows? Mine does, and it’s a pretty great perk of owning a Mac since 2006. But modern Intel-based Macs aren’t the only ones that can dual boot operating systems.

Proof? This Amiga from the 1980s booting up Mac OS 6.0.1, the result of a particularly clever hack from the vintage computing archives.

Maybe you’re like me, and you’re interested in trying Apple Music. Maybe, though, you feel locked in to Rdio or Spotify, because over the years you’ve set up an extensive library of favorites and playlists. Favorites and playlists you count on.

Well, good news! Migrating your whole life to Apple Music is just $4.99 away.

Anyone who enjoyed last year’s smash hit Flappy Bird should take a minute to check out the excellently (if ironically) titled new iOS puzzler, Red Game Without a Great Name.

Putting you in control of a mechanical bird maneuvering its way through 60 levels of steampunk-inspired obstacles, the game takes a page from the Flappy Bird playbook, but tacks on the challenging addition of swipe-based teleportation for a genuinely original proposition.

Trust me, it’s a lot of fun!

Apparently, it isn’t enough that our phones, appliances, TVs, thermostats and light bulbs are getting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections so we can control them remotely and teach them our habits. No — some enterprising souls are looking at their stuff and just gasping at how dumb all of it is.

And so, things that we may never have thought of slapping the “smart” prefix on are getting all wired up and clever. Here are a few of the more interesting ones.

It is one thing to read about a madman. But what if you could feel like those were your hands around the victim’s throat, eyeballs bulging, his gasping breath brushing against your face?

Charles Dickens’ A Madman’s Manuscript feels all the more creepy when you experience the book in interactive form with the new iPhone and iPad app by iClassics.

If digital media is tearing us away from analog books, then the growing collection of illustrated works reimagined by iClassics ensures classic tails not only stay alive but get a new life with illustrations that move with the touch of your screen.

OnePlus this week announced its long-awaited OnePlus 2, and despite its sub-$400 price tag, it has all the features and specifications it needs to give the latest flagships some tough competition — including Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 810 processor, up to 4GB of RAM, and a much-improved camera.

But OnePlus smartphones are all about beating the latest flagships. Does the OnePlus 2 have what it needs to do that? Find out below.

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Motorola today announced two new additions to its flagship Moto X lineup in the Moto X Style and the Moto X Play. Both handsets deliver flagship specifications and high-end designs that are customizable through Moto Maker, and they cost a lot less than their rivals off-contract.

But how exactly do Motorola’s new devices stack up against those rivals? Find out in our handy comparison chart below.

CONTINUE READING »

I dropped everything to make apps for the Apple Watch. I’ve owned the Watch from day one and I admit it is has its shortcomings, but oh my does it have potential.

The device convinced my co-founders and me to start Tap Get to work exclusively on Apple Watch apps — early, while the rest of the world is still making up its mind about smartwatches and other wearables.

Drake showed himself to be smarter than many musicians (or at least to have better advisers) when he ducked out on the opportunity to be part of Jay Z’s Tidal debacle and instead went full-bore with representing Apple Music.

From posing with his Apple Watch Edition and rocking a sweet vintage Apple jacket at the Worldwide Developers Conference, to having his own show on Beats 1, Drake’s about as Cupertino as it gets these days. And according to the new track he dropped over the weekend, he’s more than happy about it — even if he’s still “got love” for the folks at Tidal.

Welcome to the new Cult of Mac! You probably noticed that we’ve freshened the place up a bit.

We have a new, minimalist design that we trust is easy to read and a pleasure to visit. We have new fonts, cleaner navigation, improved photo treatments and stories that are color-coded by category (news, reviews, how-tos and so on).

We also have a new, modern code base, which we hope will be a solid platform for lots more exciting things to come.

This is a heads up that Cult of Mac has a major site redesign coming Monday. We’re flipping the switch this weekend. If anything goes wrong, you’ll know why!

Here’s what we’ve got planned.

Everybody likes to get a good chuckle out of Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant. But we really have to call its brand neutrality into question.

Despite all of the doom and gloom we’ve been hearing since the Apple Watch launched in April, including the company’s own reluctance to let us know how well the device is selling, it looks like our favorite digital helper has decided that it’s a winner.

Asking Siri “What is your favorite watch?” or “What do you think of the Apple Watch?” will get you some enthusiastic endorsements of Apple’s latest gizmo. And this is our surprised face.

The first trailer for Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine, the controversial documentary by Sir Alex Gibney, debuted online today, giving us our first extended glimpse at a film that supposedly pulls no punches when it comes to the late Apple CEO’s life and legacy.

You can watch the first trailer for the film, which Gibney described as an “impressionistic” depiction of Jobs, below.

What are the artifacts that define America’s greatest moments? Two are the original Declaration of Independence and the Star-Spangled Banner that inspired the Francis Scott Key song.

If you see those in the top three, the third might be the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he stepped onto the moon’s surface.

While the suit was constructed to make it to the moon and back, it was not built to last forever. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is raising money for a major restoration project to get the Armstrong suit ready for public display on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 2019.

Every mobile platform now ships with its very own virtual assistant, and while they all offer a similar set of basic features, Google Now and Siri are way ahead of their rivals. Google Now knows what you want and when you want it, but Siri has sass and personality, and is about to get a whole lot better with the help of Proactive.

If you were to pit the two against each other in a virtual ring, which one would come out wearing the belt? Join us as we find out in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac!

Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.

 Michael Mainenti is in the developmental stages of a photography career, a point when he should be looking at the works of the established masters and saying, “Some day.”

Mainenti is faithful to this time-honored tradition except that some day is already happening. The 25-year-old college student is among the photographers whose work was selected by Apple for a global advertising campaign to show off the improved camera in the iPhone 6.

“It is a humbling feeling to see my work in the same advertising campaign with photographers I followed even before the launch of the ‘Shot on iPhone 6’ ads,” Mainenti told Cult of Mac. “It’s a boost of confidence and motivation to get better.”

This week: some pundits are fed up with Apple music, but you know what? We’re not. Plus: Apple’s Back To School promotion is finally unveiled; Apple Watch topples expectations, gets an insane satisfaction rating; iOS devices cross a major threshold; plus we answer your questions on an all-new #CultCastQnA.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode. Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Show notes ahead. Bon appétit.

What vaulted Apple from its humble Silicon Valley origins to the absolute top of the business world? From its first desktop computer in 1976 to today’s category-crushing Apple Watch, the company is intensely focused on creating technology that will delight the masses.

That vision is best exemplified by Apple’s five most important products, which I’ve rounded up in this week’s edition of Kahney’s Korner. Some made the list for reasons that might surprise you.

We hope that the designer of this cute Apple Watch stand doesn’t get an adorable little cease-and-desist letter in the mail.

The WatchMe stand bears an uncanny resemblance to the stars of some despicable memes scattered across the Internet like salt, but it isn’t a complete rip-off. They don’t have arms, after all. And luckily, the Apple Watch, which the stand wears like a monocle, isn’t round.

So it’s a toss-up, really.

If you have plans this weekend to saunter into your local Apple Store and pick up a Nest thermostat for your increasingly connected home, we have bad news for you: The company is no longer offering the device for sale in either its retail or online stores.

But could Apple interest you in an Ecobee?

The iPhone 6s is likely to be revealed within the next two months, which means the leaks are starting to flow out of the supply chain like toxic fumes pouring out of Foxconn factories. We got our first look at a purported iPhone 6s rear shell last week, and now a new set of pictures of an alleged iPhone 6s front panel have leaked online.

If you’ve been using iCloud to back up your iOS devices for a while like I have, chances are you’ve got a few older backup files crufting up your iCloud storage space.

If you want to maximize the space on your iCloud account, you might want to delete some of these older iCloud backups to make room for more.

Here’s how to do that.