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Happy 60th birthday, Steve Jobs

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Had he lived in the U.K., Jobs would have been eligible for a free bus pass today.

Had he lived, today would have marked the 60th birthday of Steve Jobs, who was born February 24, 1955.

While most of the tributes to Jobs will no doubt highlight later events in his life — the unveiling of the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad — I instead wanted to mark the occasion with one of the lesser-known Jobs videos: his first television interview, recorded around the time the Apple II was making waves.

If you never thought you’d see the day when Jobs would geek out over seeing himself on a television screen, check out the video after the jump.

How to kill Facebook’s annoying app sounds on your iPhone

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Tired of the new bleeps already? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

You may have noticed recently that the Facebook app makes sounds. Like a post? Chirp. Refresh the news feed? Swoosh. It’s like your iPhone got suddenly chatty and wants you to know that you’re tapping on the screen with every blip and bloop.

Surely you’d like to turn these things off. You could just mute your whole iPhone with the sound toggle button, but if you want to have other audio come through, like video, music, or (gasp) phone calls, you can dip into your Facebook app settings and soon experience the bliss of a blip-free Facebook browsing experience.

Here’s how.

Doom maker’s weapon of choice for teaching coding? Apple IIc

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Starting with the BASICs. Photo: John Carmack
Starting with the BASICs. Photo: John Carmack

When you’re one of the closest things the programming world has to a rock star, you might assume that — when the time comes to pass your godly coding powers onto the next generation — you’d hand your offspring a brand new iPad and a crash course in the likes of Swift: the insanely popular state-of-the-art iOS language unveiled at last year’s WWDC.

Try telling that to John Carmack! The legendary coder behind the smash hit games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake (today working at Oculus VR) recently shared a picture of his young son’s home computer lessons. Carmack’s choice for suitable hardware and software? BASIC on the 1984-era Apple IIc.

He’s kicking it old-school!

What Apple’s patents tell us about a possible iCar

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One possible challenge with a vehicle packed full of connected components is what happens when you're out of range of the Internet. That problem could be partially solved by technology described in a 2003 patent (the oldest on this list, although it was only published in 2012). The patent describes a mesh network capable of keeping a car running in such a scenario.Apple has since explored mesh networks beginning with iOS 7, becoming one of the first mainstream consumer tech companies to do so.

One possible challenge with a vehicle packed full of connected components is what happens when you're out of range of the Internet. That problem could be partially solved by technology described in a 2003 patent (the oldest on this list, although it was only published in 2012). The patent describes a mesh network capable of keeping a car running in such a scenario.

Apple has since explored mesh networks beginning with iOS 7, becoming one of the first mainstream consumer tech companies to do so.


Photo:

Astropad and other awesome apps you might have missed this week

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It’s the weekend, and Cult of Mac is here to bring you a roundup of all the app goodness you might have missed over the last seven days.

Apps for turning your iPad into a sketch board for your Mac, keeping records of all your stuff, and yes, even Microsoft Office made it into the roundup this time around. It’s a stellar lineup, so be sure to stay till the end.

Without further ado, here are this week’s awesome apps!


Awesome Apps

Unheard 1998 interview reveals Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Apple and higher ed

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Steve
Steve Jobs gives his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. Photo: Stanford University
Photo: Stanford University

Right from the start, Apple has had one foot firmly in the education market. Today the conversation tends to be about getting iPads into schools around the world, but as far back as the 1980s Apple was cultivating relationships in the higher-education market — where it picked up some of its most loyal evangelists.

A newly published interview Steve Jobs gave to the Chronicle of Higher Education back in 1998 offers some pretty intriguing tidbits about Jobs’ approach to learning and his plans for Apple going into the new millennium.

If you’re interested in Jobs interviews (and what Apple fan isn’t?), this was recorded at an interesting time — shortly after Jobs returned to Apple, before it had released the iMac, aka the product that helped start turning the company around. It’s definitely worth a listen.

Apple starts free repair program for glitchy MacBook Pros

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It's too late to take advantage of a free repair.
If you're MacBook looks like this, you may be in luck. Photo: Change.org
Photo: Change.org

Does your MacBook Pro freak out with distorted graphics or randomly restart? Then you’ll want to take advantage of Apple’s new repair program.

After deeming that a “small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts,” Apple will start fixing parts for free on select MacBook Pro models.

IFTTT’s new ‘Do’ apps simplify everything — including its ridiculous name

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IFTTT is now a multi-app company. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac
IFTTT is now a multi-app company. Photo: Buster Hein/Cult of Mac

IFTTT is ready to become more than just a standalone service in 2015. Hoping to transition to a company with multiple products, IFTTT revealed today that it has created three entirely new ‘Do’ apps — Do Button, Do Camera, and Do Note — that let you personalize and execute your favorite IFTTT recipes with one tap.

To go along with the new apps that make it simply to automate your most common Internet tasks, IFTTT has rebranded its original app to just IF. The three new apps are kind of a mixture between Yo and Workflow, giving you a new level of control for favorite services and applications.

Here’s a quick look at each new app.

How Alto’s Adventure became your next favorite iPhone game

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Photo: Snowman
Photo: Snowman

One of Ryan Cash’s favorite games growing up was GoldenEye on the N64. “One thing I remember so clearly is that the game was hard,” he recalled. “You couldn’t just beat the game on its toughest setting if you weren’t amazing.”

Luckily for Cash, his friend Bruno was a master at GoldenEye, and he would come over to unlock cheats. “He was the guy,” Cash remembered.

Most of us probably had a Bruno growing up. Back when you couldn’t pay $1.99 with Touch ID to unlock more gems or coins. Back when games were just as fun as mobile games are now, but also challenging and dependent on skill.

With Alto’s Adventure, out today in the App Store for $1.99, Cash and the rest of his team drew from the games they love to make something unique. They’ve created a game that’s not only really fun to play, but beautiful to behold. And unlike GoldenEye, there are no cheat codes to help you get ahead.

Filmmaker has mixed feelings about his iPhone masterpiece

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Tangerine was filmed with the iPhone 5s but it's cinematic feel comes from an app, a lens adaptor and several hours of post production. Photo: Sean Baker
Tangerine was filmed with the iPhone 5s, but its cinematic feel comes from an app, a lens adapter and several hours of post-production work. Photo: Sean Baker

There was the buzz going into Sundance and the applause of satisfied audiences at the end of the movie’s screening. But there was also a collective gasp as the last line of the credits rolled past.

Shot on the iPhone 5s.

Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the story of two transgender sex workers in Hollywood, was a break-out hit at the renowned film festival in January. The Hollywood Reporter said the film stands out as “crisp and vigorously cinematic.”

Oft-praised for the rich fringe characters in his independent films, Baker did not set out to change the filmmaking landscape by shooting with a cellphone. Like most indie filmmakers, he had no money.

Here’s how much gold you get in the 18-karat Apple Watch Edition

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Photo: Apple
Come April, there's going to be a new gold rush. Photo: Greg Koenig

Apple hasn’t yet announced prices for its 18-karat-gold Apple Watch Edition timepieces, but if you think the top-of-the-range wearable is going to cost anything under $5,000, you’ve got another thing coming.

Greg Koenig, co-founder of Luma Labs, recently performed a calculation to find out an approximate figure for the gold content of the forthcoming 42mm gold Apple Watch. While Koenig notes that his guess is a “very rough estimate,” it still makes for interesting eye-watering (iWatering?) reading.

His guess? 29.16 grams — which translates to $853.82 at today’s gold prices. And that’s without even taking the electronics into account.

New lawsuit offers another clue that Apple is building an electric car

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iPhone
Your Apple Car is running out of battery charge. Please plug it into a Lightning charger as soon as possible. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Given that Apple can’t make an iPhone with a battery life of more than (best case scenario) a couple of days, how would it ever manage with a far more power-intensive technology like, say, an electric car?

It seems that this is exactly the question being asked in Cupertino — and the attempt to answer it has landed Apple with a new lawsuit, filed earlier this month in Massachusetts federal court.

As per the complaint, back in June last year, Apple reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers from the electric car battery maker A123 Systems. The engineers were responsible for performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries.

Samsung tries to buy its way onto Apple Pay’s turf with LoopPay

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loop-pay
Photo: LoopPay

Samsung has bought its own Apple Pay competitor with LoopPay, a U.S. startup that makes cases and accessories for wirelessly transmitting card data with a magnetic signal.

First rumored back in December, Samsung will allegedly integrate LoopPay’s technology into its upcoming phones in an effort to ride the growing mobile payments trend created by Apple Pay.

Stir’s M1 is the smartest standing desk yet

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m1black01
A standing desk Jony Ive would love? Photo: Stir Works

Sitting is bad for you. A quick Google search shows tons of research on how standing throughout the day will make you significantly healthier and possibly even extend your life.

Thanks to the scientific community’s heightened focus on sitting’s negative side effects in recent years, there’s no shortage of standing desks to choose from for just about any situation.

We’ve reviewed our fair share at Cult of Mac, like the NextDesk Terra, the NewHeights, and the Ergotron WorkFit-A. But the new M1 from Stir Kinetic Desk is not only as elegant and high-quality as anything we’ve seen, it’s way smarter.

How a 25-year-old dev made 600 apps without being able to code

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There's money to be made in them there App Stores. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
There's money to be made in them there App Stores. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

John Hayward-Mayhew is one of the most prolific iOS developers ever to peddle a blackjack game. Over the past four years, the 25-year-old entrepreneur flooded the App Store with an astonishing 600 separate apps — everything from endless runners such as Dangerous Caveman Bum Runner to dentistry games like Emergency Dentist Race — raking in close to $1 million in the process.

The most miraculous part of all? He can’t even code.

But by taking advantage of one of the App Store’s great weaknesses, and borrowing a game plan from one of Hollywood’s most unusual impresarios, he’s built a one-man gaming empire.

Automotive old guard doesn’t like the sound of Apple Car

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The former boss of GM may not be lining up to buy an Apple Car. Photo: Commonwealth Club/Flickr CC
The former boss of GM may not be lining up to buy an Apple Car. Photo: Commonwealth Club/Flickr CC

While most people are excited about the possibility that Apple might build a car to take on Tesla, former CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, has some warning words for Tim Cook: namely that Apple should steer clear of getting into the automotive industry.

“If I were an Apple shareholder, I wouldn’t be very happy,” Akerson told Bloomberg. “I would be highly suspect of the long-term prospect of getting into a low-margin, heavy-manufacturing.”

Well, if anyone would know, it’s the ex-head of beleaguered GM.

Touch ID might be coming soon to MacBooks, Magic Mice and trackpads

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Touch ID
Touch ID is ready for an upgrade. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Touch ID has completely changed security on the iPhone, and now Apple’s fingerprint-scanning technology could soon be coming to the Mac.

Apple is planning to bring Touch ID to the upcoming 12-inch MacBook Air, according to sources at Taiwanese Apple blog Apple.Club.tw. In the past, the site successfully leaked the iPad Air 2 logic board, the Touch ID sensor and the iPhone 6 Lightning port, so it has a track record for accuracy. The site claims Apple has big plans for Touch ID in 2015 and wants to put it in everything from MacBook Pros to Magic Mice.

Apple Watch won’t be the digital doctor it could have been

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Digital Crown
Apple ditched some advanced features because they didn't work. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

The Apple Watch might have been four years in the making and the most Jony Ive-centric Apple product yet — but the company didn’t get everything it was wishing for from the device.

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple originally wanted its smartwatch to focus far more prominently on health-related innovations, only to be forced to go in another direction midway through the project.

If Apple had had its way, the Apple Watch would have boasted smart sensors capable of tracking blood pressure, heart rate and even stress levels — but despite hiring top people from the biosensor industry, the technology didn’t work quite as well as had been hoped.

Apple experimented with a VR headset before settling on a watch

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Virtual reality was one of the first iPhone accessories Apple considered. Photo: USPTO/Apple
Virtual reality was one of the first iPhone accessories Apple considered. Photo: USPTO/Apple

The recent New Yorker profile of Jony Ive revealed how he was the driving force behind the Apple Watch, and how he felt the “the obvious and right place” for wearable tech was the wrist — and not the face, as Google tried with its Google Glass project.

In the same story, Tim Cook offered his dim appraisal of Glass, saying that, “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.”

While the two disses may read like potshots at an Apple rival, a patent published today reveals that — yes — Apple has indeed tried virtual reality goggles, roughly three years before settling on the Apple Watch form factor. Here’s what it came up with.

It’s time to rewrite Apple history — with more Jony Ive

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It's time for Jony Ive to get the credit he deserves. Photo: Portfolio/Penguin
Photo: Portfolio

People are calling The New Yorker profile of Jony Ive the most important thing written about Apple in quite a while, and I’d have to concur.

Not only is it full of fascinating details, it puts Ive at the center of Apple, where he belongs. As the piece’s author, Ian Parker, writes: “More than ever, Ive is the company.”

This is something that’s been true for a couple decades, but still isn’t apparent to most people — even veteran Apple watchers. Such is the company’s secrecy, and the tendency of the public to equate everything Apple does with Steve Jobs, that the true story has yet to be told. Ive has not gotten the credit he deserves.

Apple Watch is totally a Jony Ive production

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Photo:
This is the device they'll remember Jony Ive for. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

If there’s one thing today’s New Yorker profile of Jony Ive hammers home, it’s how important the Apple Watch is to Apple’s design guru. The 16,000-word story reveals how Ive pushed the Apple Watch as a project, shortly after Steve Jobs’ death, when Apple was under pressure to come up with its next insanely great idea.

Here’s all the ways

Apple car could add a cool $50 billion onto Apple’s revenues

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Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple could be sitting on a goldmine with its own Apple-branded car. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

As rumors of an Apple car start to gain speed, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has run the figures to find out what kind of business proposition automobiles could be for a company that tends to steer clear of small or low-margin markets.

His verdict? If Apple cars were even a “moderate success,” Tim Cook and pals could be looking at an extra $50 billion per year in revenues. To put that figure in context, it would be an increase of 23 percent on top of the already impressive cash-generating machine that was Apple in 2015.

Remind us to remortgage our homes to buy AAPL stock!

12 things we learned from the New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive

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The world's most famous designer, Jony Ive. Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

In what may be the longest magazine feature yet dedicated to Apple’s industrial design guru, the New Yorker has just published a sprawling 16,000 word profile of Jony Ive — taking readers from his early meetings with Steve Jobs up to the present day.

It’s jam-packed with fascinating tidbits about Ive, his secretive design studio, and Apple’s past and future. While I’d thoroughly recommend reading the whole article, here are the details that really leaped out:

Case makers are already prepared for the 12-inch iPad Pro

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The iPad Pro could make your current iPad Air 2 look like an old iPhone, by comparison. Photo: Nowhereelse.fr
The iPad Pro (left) could make your current iPad Air 2 (right) look like an old iPhone, by comparison. Photo: Nowhereelse.fr

Everyone might be tripping over themselves to talk about the possible Apple Car, but there’s a much-more imminent Apple device rumored to be on the way: the 12-inch+ “iPad Pro” tablet.

Over the weekend, French Apple-watching website Nowhereelse.fr shared a handful of new pictures of the mythical plus-sized iPad, claiming to be photos of a third-party case for the device.

The photos give some indication of just how big the iPad Pro would look alongside today’s iPad Air 2. As with existing current iPad cases, the iPad Pro case features cutout sections for a Lightning connector, microphone, volume rocker, mute switch, rear-facing camera, and power button. It’s not clear from the picture whether the tablet will boast a 12.2-inch screen or a 12.9-inch one: both of which have been rumored so far.

Check out another picture — and additional information — after the jump.