“What you don’t know won’t hurt you” is a common phrase that unfortunately does not apply to the apps on your phone. It turns out that thousands of apps on Android and iOS secretly have ads in them that you can’t see, and they very well might be what’s causing a number of problems that plague smartphones today.
Despite launching a few months ago, the new MacBook hasn’t gotten a tremendous amount of love from accessory makers so far. Above the Fray, a company based in Thailand, noticed a glaring omission for a 12-inch MacBook cable manager so the team took it upon themselves to create one.
Amid continuing rumors that it might be building an electric car, Apple revealed that is has boosted its research-and-development spending by $1.5 billion this year.
While Apple is dumping more money into R&D, it’s been able to trim costs in other areas. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filing for the fiscal quarter that ended June 27, Apple lowered its capital-spending projections for the year by 8 percent, which could amount to $1 billion in savings.
John Spinello stuck a safety pin in a light socket. He was 3 and never forgot how the shock “flipped me over backwards.”
As an adult, he turned that moment of mischievous curiosity into a board game that shaped the lives of millions of kids around the world.
Any “dopey doctor” who has played Operation knows the loud buzzing sound when you’ve botched your attempt at removing the patient’s funny bone. It first went off 50 years ago this year. Kids today play the game, adults still hear the buzzer from their childhood and some actually credit it with their pursuit of a career in medicine.
Remember when Google announced, probably from within a heavily fortified and Skynet-proof bunker, that its artificial neural networks were “dreaming”? And then we saw the above picture of a squirrel ravaged by a computer’s best and most terrifying guesses at what things look like, and we all peed a little?
Well, the company has released that code to the public, and now some Scarecrow-esque villain has provided us with Dreamscope, a way to turn your beloved pictures into extensions of a neurotic computer’s twisted psyche.
When it comes to smartwatch mind share, Apple Watch is killing the competition.
That’s just one of several key takeaways from an interesting new study that digs into the public’s perception of smartwatches in general and Apple’s wearable in particular.
Video game streaming juggernaut Twitch.tv is stepping up its HTML5 game today with a move to get rid of buggy and overly-patched Flash in Twitch’s website.
The move today is only for the player part of the equation, but a full HTML5 solution should be forthcoming.
“Today’s redesign moves half of the video player – specifically the controls – from Flash to HTML5 and Javascript,” Twitch writes on its blog page. “The video itself is still in Flash underneath the controls. However, this is an important step to releasing the much-anticipated full HTML5 player.”
We aren’t going to find out what the next iPhone looks like until Apple shows us (probably in September), but that isn’t stopping designers from dreaming up some concepts.
Here’s a pretty bold one that imagines the next Apple smartphone as a mix between a Samsung Galaxy Edge and a Club Cracker. You can check it out in the video below.
We didn’t get Apple Watch numbers, but Tim Cook and Luca Maestri delivered plenty of good news about Apple’s current financials and future prospects during Tuesday’s earnings call. Amid all the canned statements and bewildering biz speak, they dropped some tantalizing tidbits.
Cook and Maestri teased us with plenty of bullishness — and a little debunking — about impressive Apple Watch sales and consumer responses to the new device. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Apple hit record numbers again this quarter, with massive sales of both iPhone 6 and Macs across the globe.
Here are the highlights from today’s third-quarter 2015 Apple earnings call.
Apple’s stock is taking a hit after today’s Q3 2015 earnings call. At the time of writing, AAPL is down 6.72 percent in after-hours trading to 121.97. Yikes.
iOS 9 beta 4 is out for developers two weeks after beta 3’s release as expected. It’s time for the usual roundup of new goodies in the latest beta and beta 4 doesn’t shy away from the tradition. It’s not nearly as big of a release as last time with Apple Music and Apple News both making their debut, but beta 4 still brings some nice improvements and tweaked features. Let’s get right into it.
Apple didn’t officially announce any Apple Watch sales numbers during today’s earnings call, but according to Tim Cook, the company has already beat its own internal expectations.
While the official number of units sold remains a secret, the Apple exec said the number of Apple Watches sold in the first nine weeks was greater than the number of iPhones or iPads the company sold in the same period after they launched.
Apple is set to report its financial results from Q3 2015 to investors this afternoon and, as usual, Cult of Mac will be here to liveblog all the action, from the numbers down to the analysts’ questions.
Apple Watch sales have been looming large in the minds of investors and analysts now that the device has been available for a full quarter. We don’t expect CEO Tim Cook or CFO Luca Maestri to announce the Watch sales as their own category, but there’s sure to be plenty of speculation as to whether the new wearable has met sales expectations.
Today’s earning’s call is set to kick off at 2 p.m. Pacific, but we’ll be kicking off the liveblogging party early with a breakdown of all the numbers. Bookmark this page and join us for the Apple earnings bonanza.
You can’t stop staring at the new 12-inch MacBook, especially the gold one. It’s lighter and smaller and while it has all the computing power of your suddenly-bulkier model, you’re not sure about life with a single USB-C port.
A Miami startup, led by an electrical engineer, has designed adapters that will allow you to plug in all your peripherals and then gradually cut back as you move to a more wireless future.
The Cusby Building Blocks plug into a USB-C port with each offering a more traditional plug-in, like the current standard USB-A port, another with an HDMI video-audio port or another with an extra USB-C port.
We are one step closer to the end of Touch ID as we know it.
Following on from Apple’s recent patent filing concerning “finger biometric sensing pixels” for future iPhones, tech R&D company Sonovation has announced that it’s discovered a way of putting ultrasonic biometric sensors under Gorilla Glass — by bonding the sensors directly onto the display panel. Better yet, it works accurately even when fingers are wet, dirty, or oily.
The Apple Watch has been out for a few months now, and it’s given us plenty of time to decide what we do and don’t want from the wearable. It’s a versatile device, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that we expect it to do everything for us. In fact, a lot of the apps that we use all the time on our iPhones and iPads would be ill-suited, if not impossible for that plucky little screen.
Here are some Apple Watch apps that wouldn’t break our hearts if nobody ever got around to making them.
Websites these days have another tool to engage you: the desktop notification. Many sites, this one included, allow you to opt in to a system of popup notices that encourage you to click through and see new content.
Of course, not all content is created equal, and you might someday wish to stop being notified of new cat photos from that feline-friendly website.
Here’s how to manage web notifications using two of the Mac’s most popular web browsers, Safari and Chrome.
SAN FRANCISCO — Teddy Winthrop is forgetful, a trait he inherited from his dad.
His father implored him to get a Day-Timer, an executive planner that was wildly popular in the ’80s. But the young entrepreneur dismissed the idea — his personal organizer was his iPhone. And that’s when it hit him: The world needed a Day-Timer for the iPhone.
So he started a company, Edward Field, selling beautifully made leather iPhone wallet cases. It’s going well so far, thanks partly to experience he gained working for his brother, the brains behind American Giant, manufacturer of the “world’s greatest hoodie.”
When you run with Apple Watch, swiping to the right in the Workout app reveals your heart rate. Does the device display this data just for curiosity value, or can Apple Watch heart rate information actually improve your running?
Apple Pay rolled out in the U.K. this week, letting a bunch more people start paying for snacks, clothes, and commutes with their late-model Apple gear. It’s all very neat and exciting, but our friends should get ready for some unexpected side effects of living in the high-tech future time.
For example:
You can’t choose between Android and iOS without taking Google Play and the App Store into account. They’re the largest mobile marketplaces on the planet, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses — especially when it comes to control.
Apple has strict App Store guidelines, and every title is tested by a human before being approved. In comparison, Google is happy to let most things fly — so long as it’s not offensive or harmful — which gives us access to things like emulators and file downloaders that aren’t available on other platforms.
But is “open” really better, and could Apple benefit from loosening its grip on the App Store?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over that very question.
Ahead of a probable announcement in September, it looks like we can already get a sneak peak at the iPhone 6s Plus – or at least the back of it. The rear housing leaked and there are plenty of photos to gaze at and of course scrutinize for months to come. Some very small differences in the casing have already garnered some attention.
It’s festival season and there’s a festival for everything – even one for Apple II users.
It’s called KansasFest and it has been going since 1989. It’s one of the longest-running computer festivals out there and the amazing thing is the Apple II was discontinued in 1992.
The endurance of this machine is the subject of this week’s Kahney’s Korner.
Cult of Mac’s Photo Famous series introduces you to the groundbreaking photographers featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” ad campaign.
The thick Icelandic fog lifted and Austin Mann saw an otherworldly glacier emerge. Photography is a way for Mann, a Christian and a professional travel photographer, to worship god, and this was the kind of scene that spoke to him.
But to get the shot, he would have to leave his camera gear in the car for a climb on all fours down a rocky cliff. Mann put his new iPhone 6 Plus in his pocket and scrambled down to make the picture.
The shot, taken using the iPhone’s panorama mode, was among the most prominent photos featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone 6” marketing campaign, a promotional blitz that began in the spring with billboards, giant banners stretched across the sides of buildings, and advertising on television and in magazines.
Apple has launched a new promotion, entitled “Amazing Apps & Games,” offering 24 different apps from a variety of different genres for just 99 cents each.
Ranging from games such as Goat Simulator, Blek and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to productivity tools like Scanner Pro 6 and Clone Camera Pro, and even throwing in educational apps like the STEM-related Simple Machines, it’s a great chance to pick up some excellent apps at some low, low prices.