iMacs are an investment, but when year after year newer, more powerful iMacs are released it can make you feel a little disheartened. In this quick and simple Sunday Tips video, Ste Smith will show you how upgrade your iMac’s (2009-2011) ram so it’s faster and more powerful than the day you brought it home.
Think Apple is free from Samsung after defeating it yet again in court for flat out copying the iPhone infringing on several Apple patents? Think again!
In fact, when it comes to the iPad Apple is more reliant on Samsung than ever, according to a new report which suggests that the South Korean tech giant became the largest supplier of iPad displays in the first quarter of 2014.
Since the release of the Apple TV back in 2007, it’s evolved into an essential gadget for all media streamers, and with that, Apple has invented some competition with the likes of Amazon Fire and the Roku. This week Cult of Mac puts the $99 Apple TV against the entry-level $49 Roku 1.
With yet another week in the past your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest news features. Touch iD coming to the iPad, Apple to buy Beats by Dre and more iPhone 6 rumors are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown. Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another.
Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
Both Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will take senior positions at Apple as part of the Beats Electronics deal, according to people close to the matter.
While neither would move to Cupertino, they would reportedly commute to Silicon Valley (or wherever is needed) from Los Angeles. Although it’s currently unknown what role Iovine and Dre would fulfill at Apple, it is thought that Iovine might become a “special adviser” to Tim Cook on creative projects. Dre was recently seen celebrating becoming “the first billionaire in hip-hop.”
So who are these two possible new members of the Apple brain trust, and what would they bring to the table?
From ax player Jack White's new high-tech vinyl album to a high-tech wood-chopping ax from Finland, here is everything you missed in product announcements this week.
This week our inboxes filled up faster than a tummy at an all-you-can-eat crab leg buffet.
The theme that emerged from this week’s plethora of product press releases was “everything old is new again.” From the stunning leather-and-canvas bike bag from the talented folks at Tanner Goods to the retro speaker from Veho, it seems our fascination with yesteryear and retro continues unabated.
May your thoughts of relaxing in a cushy easy chair, whittling away with your new table knife while listening to Jack White’s new Ultra LP, helps you get through the weekend.
Here's how to turn your inbox into a problem solver. Photo: Charlie Sorrell/Cult of Mac
They say your email inbox is a terrible place to manage tasks. I’d disagree. I think it’s the perfect place. After all, most of my tasks come in via email, and any app that can share information can share it via email. Why bother dickering with an extra app, keeping all that important stuff in two places, when it can all be easily managed in one spot?
I’ve been doing exactly this ever since I ditched OmniFocus, which is so long ago I can’t remember how long ago it was. With a little bit of setup in your everyday news and browsing apps, you can turn your inbox into a proper universal task list. Here’s how.
If Apple enters the wearables market, the biggest challenge will be persuading people to wear the technology. Attracting the right early adopters will be key to Apple's success.
If the rumors are true, Apple’s forthcoming purchase of Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion is all about one thing — making wearable technology fashionable.
Apple is poised to introduce a line of wearables that likely goes beyond the long-rumored iWatch. While the technology Tim Cook’s team is cooking up might be amazing, getting people to wear it — especially cracking the crucial mass market — will be one of the biggest challenges Cupertino has ever faced.
Injecting style into wearable tech notoriously difficult. Even Nike got flustered and discontinued its FuelBand fitness tracker. So far, no company has really cracked the code and turned gear into a fashion statement for the cool kids, with one giant exception: Beats, a phenomenally successful wearable technology brand that dwarfs the rest of the industry because it’s pulled off the hardest trick in the book.
Angry Birds is coming to a big screen near you. Rovio Entertainment is taking the epic battle of birds-versus-pigs from your iPhone to the cinema, in 3-D, and launching it into the wide, wide world in July 2016.
We’re aflutter with anticipation: Can they actually make a movie based on a video game worth watching? It’s happened time and time again that our favorite living room brain-cell killer was transported to the land of plush seats and buttery popcorn only to disappoint.
Most video games turn into celluloid duds even though we stupidly paid to see them; Rotten Tomatoes gives Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within only a 44 percent approval rating. The rest go down from there.
In the gallery above, you’ll find a brutal rundown of the best of the worst video game-cum-movies that Rovio should watch — as a reminder of what not to do.
Notorious vegetarian Steve Jobs had few weakness. Black turtlenecks were one. The other was an extreme love of sushi.
Some of the West Coast’s best sushi places dotted Steve’s backyard, but Kaygetsu, a small sushi spot in Menlo Park, held the key to Steve’s heart stomach so tightly that Silicon Valley’s most impatient CEO could be spotted waiting up to 30 minutes like a normal pauper just to get his tongue on some hamachi.
Jobs loved the place so much he had a surprise birthday party for his wife there and even crammed Apple’s board of directors into the tiny restaurant for board meetings.
Apple's home to some pretty big players these days.
Reports of Apple’s pending Beats Electronics acquisition has left the vast majority of us scratching our heads, but if you thought this was just another spurious claim from anonymous supply chain blabbermouths, you can think again. Not only did the story come from reputable sources, but it has been all but confirmed by Dr. Dre himself.
In the short video below, a drunk Dre proclaims himself “the first billionaire in hip-hop” as he celebrates with friends.
Nokia’s incredible PureView camera technology is one of the reasons why so many Android users were desperate to see the Finnish firm ditch Windows Phone and bring Google’s platform to its flagship smartphones instead — and you could soon see the same technology in future iPhones.
Apple has used Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset business as an opportunity to poach executives who are seeking new challenges, and the Cupertino company has just hired Lumia engineer and PureView camera expert Ari Partinen.
If you’re counting down the seconds until you can lovingly hold the iPhone 6 in your sweaty palms, you may have less time to wait than you thought, according to sources within Apple’s supply chain.
As per Taiwanese media reports, Apple might be set to drop the first incarnation of its next generation iPhone in August instead of the expected September.
If true, this would likely be 4.7 inch version of the iPhone 6, while the reported 5.5 inch model would follow in September.
Jimmy Iovine was good friends with Steve Jobs. But would Jobs have hired him?
Beats Electronics boss and music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine is in talks to join Apple as a “special adviser” to Tim Cook on creative matters, according to sources.
Along with his role as co-creator of Beats with business partner Dr. Dre, Iovine is also chairman of Universal Music Group’s Interscope, Geffen and A&M labels, which is home to artists including Lady Gaga and Eminem.
Apple is reportedly gearing up to buy Beats Electronics, the headphone manufacturer co-founded by Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy Iovine that has also spun off a streaming-music service.
The deal could cost $3.2 billion, according to The Financial Times, and would give Apple full control of the brand that’s made gigantic flashy headphones the trendiest thing to hit kids’ heads since backward baseball caps.
Does this mean Dr. Dre is about to become the newest Apple employee?
Oh, you wacky Samsung-ites — will you never learn?
Samsung was somehow recently granted a design trademark for a “display screen with icon” and, wouldn’t you know it, it looks almost exactly like the icon Apple currently uses for Siri.
"I would get fired if people came to one of our parties and they didn't have fun," says Mario Estrada, Hipstamatic's Director of Fun. Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
SAN FRANCISCO — Even in a town populated by ninjas, gurus and rockstars, Mario Estrada may have the coolest job around.
“Most people don’t believe that’s my job, but a lot of thought went into the title,” he says, enjoying the sun from the rooftop lounge of the startup’s SOMA headquarters. “Someone asked once why I wasn’t the VP of fun, but that implies there’s someone more fun than I am. And you can’t be the president of fun, because, actually, being president is never fun.”
Despite all efforts to the contrary, email is still the default way to shift files, photos and – yes – mail around the internet. Even when you share a file using Dropbox, the link goes via old-fashioned email. And yet email clients are still awful. They’ve gotten a lot better in the last couple of years, on both iOS and the Mac, but we’re still stuck without a proper task manager that integrates with the native iOS/OS X Calendar and Reminders.
When photojournalist Scott Strazzante planned a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., with his daughter Betsy in 2011, he was intent on leaving his cameras at home.
They were visiting colleges and he wanted it to be a “daddy-daughter” weekend. But the prolific, award-winning photographer gets anxious when he is not creating, so there was a point in the trip when he commandeered her iPhone, downloaded Hipstamatic and started making pictures.
As soon as he returned home, he purchased his own iPhone and it wasn’t long before the news photographer began making pictures for the first time that were truly about him.
His Instagram feed, a body of street photography images that grows larger by the day, has more than 19,000 followers. He loves how Instagram allows him to send pictures directly to people waiting and wanting to see them.
For many users, the quality and accessibility of the iPhone camera means that it is the only camera we need on a regular basis. It may be about to get a whole lot better, too, according to a patent application published by Apple on Thursday — describing a new “super-resolution” mode.
What makes the patent interesting (apart from that it promises higher quality images) is that it suggests that picture resolution could be ramped up without needing more megapixels.
After the retirement of Katie Cotton, the PR who helped craft Apple’s air of mystique, Apple has announced another departure: that of Zane Rowe, who served as the head of North America sales.
The reason for the departure isn’t yet known, but it comes weeks after former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts took over as the new head of retail and online stores. Rowe joined Apple in 2012 from United Continental, where he had been the chief financial officer.
He will be replaced by Doug Beck, who has been key in growing oversees sales in Japan and Korea.
The blissful stupidity of Derek Zoolander and Hansel still gets us stoked for Orange Mocha Frappuccinos and gas station fuel-pump fights, but the male model duo took tech problems to all new heights in Zoolander as they struggled to open the iMac G3 carrying the files to stop Mugatu.
Hollywood loves Apple almost as much as it loves itself.
The passionate affair burned for decades before Samsung came snapping celebrity selfies with Ellen at the Oscars and dishing out enough paid endorsements to finance the next Star Wars trilogy.
Apple plans to fight back with its own buzz marketer in New York to keep its products in the hands of the elite and glamorous. But Cupertino has never had a problem getting its products on the big screen and into the coolest TV shows — even though Apple swears it doesn’t pay a dime for product placements. Here are 18 of the most iconic Apple cameos to hit the screen.
When the iPhone 5s was announced as featuring Touch ID, you could have been forgiven for assuming that the iPad Air and iPad mini would naturally follow suit. Like original thinking from Samsung, however, it never quite materialized — and to this date Apple’s flagship iPhone is the only Apple device to incorporate the technology.
That may be set to change with the arrival of the next generation iPad Air and iPad mini, though.
This business card, created from an actual iPhone screen, was made for an Apple engineer (whose name has been removed by request). Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Every year at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, a million and one business cards get handed out. Most end up in a desk drawer or, worse, the circular file. But last year one card stood out.
This glass business card is made from an actual iPhone screen, sourced from Foxconn’s factories in China. The lettering is laser-etched into the hardened Gorilla Glass — a very complex process.
The card belongs to an Apple engineer, who hung it on a lanyard around his neck. Everywhere he went, people pawed at it.
“Everyone was grabbing it asking him, ‘How the heck did you do that?'” said the card’s creator, who made a batch of 10 for the engineer.
The first question we had when we got our hands on one was, where do we put in our order? Unfortunately, that ain’t gonna happen.