Apple launched its new 8GB iPhone 5c in Europe this morning, but the cheaper handset is yet to reach the U.S. online store. That’s because it isn’t going to. The Cupertino company has confirmed that the device will only be available in a select few countries, and the U.S. isn’t one of them.
We’re pleased to bring you the finalists in the 6 About to Break contest that SF New Tech and Macworld held to find the next big thing in Apple-related tech.
The finalists demonstrate just how the Cupertino company inspires people to think different, spanning the gamut from wearables and facial recognition software to the well-entertained pet.
Cult of Mac is chuffed to be a media partner; our own Leander Kahney will be on the panel of judges when the demos battle it out at Macworld/iWorld’s Second Stage on March 27 from 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm. You’ll be able to see and test them all out, too.
Want to come? We’ve got passes to give away – stayed tuned to Twitter and Facebook for more…
It’s well known that Apple can be very controlling about what makes it into the App Store — cracking down on everything from Flappy Bird clones to games which feature the word “enemy” in recent times.
But Apple’s latest target might surprise you a bit more: Steve Jobs apps.
The duo who discovered this were sibling developers John and Grant Gill. They created an app called Quoth Steve, which offered daily quotes from Apple’s late CEO on everything from business and design, to love and regrets. The pair submitted the app late in December, hoping to launch it January 1.
Production of the iPhone 6 is set to begin next quarter.
According to a report in the Commercial Times, Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp — which assembles the iPhone and iPad — is opening up new factory space and recruiting new workers in China to meet the orders it has received from Apple for the iPhone 6.
It is not known how many units would be manufactured by Pegatron, although it is suggested that fellow Taiwanese contract assembler Foxconn will be the iPhone 6’s other primary manufacturer.
Apple has re-introduced its fourth-generation iPad, this time with only a 16GB capacity.
The revived model replaces the aging iPad 2 — originally released in early 2011 — in Apple’s lineup. Like the iPad mini with Retina Display, it is priced at $399, making it $100 than the iPad Air. A cellular model is also available for $529.
Just as expected, Apple has today added a cheaper 8GB model to its iPhone 5c lineup. The handset is available to order now from a number of European carriers, and via European Apple Online Stores, where it can be purchased for £429 ($714) off-contract.
Officially, the new trash can Mac Pro only supports up to 64GB of RAM. That’s a lot, but not necessarily enough for the performance-obsessed graphics pros and video editors that Mac Pro is aimed at.
For those that absolutely need 128GB of RAM in their Mac Pro, the memory maestros at Transcend have figured out a way to double the supposed “maximum” amount of memory in a top of the line Mac Pro.
But as with almost everything with the Mac Pro, don’t expect it to be cheap: it will cost you $2,480 to juice your Mac Pro up to that crazy extent.
Source: Transcend
Allison Johnson served as Apple’s VP of worldwide marketing from 2005 to 2011. During that time she helped coordinate the launch of huge products like the original iPhone and iPad. She left Apple to co-found West, a creative agency in San Francisco with clients like Anki Drive and Jawbone.
During a recent interview at Behance’s 99U conference, Johnson talked about what it was like to report directly to Steve Jobs.
Now that the month of March is finally upon us college basketball fans have more to cheer about. The app NCAA March Madness Live gives fans the ability to watch tournament games live, see stats, create brackets and so much more. Will NCAA March Madness Live become your go-to app during the big tournament?
Take a look at NCAA March Madness Live and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application NCAA March Madness Live brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Apple is expected to give potential iPhone 5c customers a cheaper option tomorrow with the launch of a new 8GB model. Leaked documents from O2 Germany have confirmed the existence of the device and its launch date, while two carriers in the U.K. have reportedly already received their first deliveries.
Asphalt 8: Airborne for iOS has become the first mobile title to adopt Twitch in-game streaming. The feature allows players to beam their gameplay to Twitch viewers all over the world, and all that’s required is an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.
To celebrate the update, developer Gameloft is live-streaming the game for 24 hours.
The iPhone 5c flopped in the U.S. — and now figures released by Umeng, China’s largest app analytics platform, suggest that things aren’t much different in China.
In the fourth month since its launch in China, the colorful iPhone 5c accounted for slightly less than 2% of all active iOS devices on Umeng’s app analytics network.
By comparison, the iPhone 5s represented 12% of the market — while the iPhone 5 remains a consistent seller.
The UK’s Sunday Times has a long interview with Apple’s head designer Jony Ive in its Sunday Magazine (warning: paywall).
It claims to be the first in-depth interview Ive has given in twenty years at Apple, but breaks absolutely no ground whatsoever. Irritatingly, I can see the fingerprints of my Jony Ive biography all over the piece, but there’s no mention of the book.
The strangest thing is that Ive recycles the same quotes he’s used in the past. Believe me, I’ve read them all. He says that Steve Jobs’ ideas sometimes sucked the air from the room (previously uttered in his tribute to Jobs) and that he wanted to be a car designer, but other students made weird “vroom vroom” noises while they worked (from an Observer interview). There’s absolutely nothing new in the entire piece including the obligatory hint of an amazing new product, which of course, he can’t talk about.
The best part is 10 random-ish questions lobbed at him, which are:
The new iOS 7.1, which Apple launched this week, contained massively improved iBeacon functionality.
Among these improvements is that Apple has cancelled an element of user permission. Once you’ve installed a store’s app — say, for example, Apple’s own Apple store app — that store can put messages on your lock screen even if the app isn’t running!
I think it’s a real improvement. But I’m surprised privacy fans aren’t freaking out.
This week Cult of Mac Magazine looks at vice in the iTunes store.
Reporter Luke Dormehl talks to the devs who are making a living — if not a fortune — skirting the Apple censors, in a store that’s intended to be squeaky clean and suitable for minors.
He also looks into why, despite the Cupertino company’s rigid guidelines and “boob ban” of years past, there are plenty of questionable apps available to all. Sex, drugs and drinking games are the available in app form by the dozens, some of them rated suitable for ages 4+. This cat-and-mouse game to keep the store family-friendly yet appeal to developers with a gold-rush mentality has also given rise to a cottage industry of consultants who help app makers get into the store with more adult content than Apple intends to allow.
If you’ve got some of that content on your device and want to hide it, we take a look into Apple’s methods to put that stuff under a virtual mattress and apps that let you “vault” material you don’t want prying eyes to see. We also look into some of the outrageous apps Apple has banned over the years after they slipped into the store as well as the risqué ones that are still available today.
As always, send your comments, feedback or any troubles you may have with the app to me via email or using the “send” button top right from our site.
Mobile publishing and monetization platform Onswipe have created an infographic comparing iOS 7 adoption with that of the recently launched iOS 7.1.
Both iOS versions are tracked for the first 4.5 days of their respective releases. As the chart makes clear, while iOS 7 represented 45.90% of iOS traffic after that time, the incremental improvement iOS 7.1 showed a respectable 28.27% adoption rate for active devices.
Apple stuck to its guns when it came to expanding into China: refusing to compromise its brand equity by selling lower cost iPhones to compete with low-end smartphone manufacturers.
That decision seems to be paying off, since a new study in China by app and mobile advertising analytics firm Umeng shwes that Apple’s targeting of affluent users has already seen it capture more than 80% of the Chinese smartphone market, who spend upwards of $500 on their phones.
Curved smartphones the likes of the LG Flex have been widely panned by reviewers as shoddy pieces of junk, yet display experts like Dr. Raymond Soneira of Displaymate tell us that we shouldn’t write them off yet: they actually increase screen readability in ambient light by improving image contrast, color accuracy, and more.
It’s not impossible, then, that Apple will one day choose to embrace curved glass in its smartphones, and if it does, the iPhone 6 would probably end up looking a lot like this gorgeous concept by designer Arthur Reis. It looks really slick, and pretty much indistinguishable from the display of current iPhones until you get up close.
Check it out after the jump. What do you think?
Applications are downloaded all over the world, giving developers the ability to share their work with everyone. Amongst them is Japanese developer Ayumu Kinoshita, who has recently found his app Don’t Step the White Tile on top of the charts. A game where players must think fast and react, players everywhere are quickly becoming addicted. Will Don’t Step The White Tile become your new favorite game?
Take a look at Don’t Step the White Tile and find out what you think.
This is a Cult of Mac video review of the multi-platform application Don’t Step The White Tile brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
There have been many wearables and quantified-health applications over the past few years, but most have steered clear of proclaiming themselves medical devices. Some of the rumors about the iWatch (such as the fact that it will be able to listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict heart attacks) may sound a bit too good to be true. But the number of biosensor and biomedical engineers Apple has snapped up recently makes us think the iWatch could be a device that crosses over firmly into the "medical monitoring" category.
According to one recent report, a reason for the long delay before launch is that Apple is awaiting certification from the Food and Drug Administration to get the iWatch approved as medical equipment. Given Apple's recent announcement of the Health app for iOS 8 to collect and show data on calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels and more, plus the conspicuous absence of a health-tracking fitness band in Apple's last iPhone 5s ad, the idea that the iWatch will be geared toward health seems as close to a foregone conclusion as you get for a device that hasn't even been officially announced yet.
Apple dropped another heavy hint about its interest in the iWatch on Thursday, as it published a patent application relating to a smart watch-mounted pedometer.
The Wrist Pedometer Step Detection patent application is another example of Apple’s interest in health-tracking technology for future devices. The application describes a method for optimally detecting steps, which uses advanced algorithms to filter out much of the “noise” that might lead lead to it missing or inaccurately recording steps.
Rolling out in April, United Airlines will offer a special personal device entertainment system on-board select aircraft for people using the iPhone and iPad, running iOS 7.
Customers will be able to choose from more than 150 movies, and close to 200 TV shows, which they can access free of charge.
“My phone just erased everything it had in it and rebooted,” NBA superstar LeBron James tweeted earlier today. “One of the sickest feelings I’ve ever had in my life!!!”
Hey, that does sound frustrating. Who can blame him for tweeting his frustration with his Galaxy Note phablet?
There was only one problem.
Although 4K Monitors are starting to become affordable, OS X hasn’t up until now supported them with the same sophistication it does a Retina Display. Even under Mavericks, the only readable resolution was 3840 x 2160, with no support for OS X’s Retina scaling options.
According to Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, though, this has all changed, with the latest developer build of OS X 10.9.3 supporting the full range of Retina scaling modes for 4K monitors, allowing you to use those extra pixels to make things crisper instead of just smaller.
That’s good news… and probably a hint that whenever Apple releases the Retina iMac, it’ll boast a 3840 x 2160 display, and not the crazy 5120 x 2880 pixel display that would be called for if Apple just doubled the resolution of the 27-inch, as it has with other Retina Macs.
Source: Anandtech
Tons of photos are posted daily onto social networks like Facebook’s “Instagram”. While many may feel like they’ve taken the perfect picture, the app makes them compromise by not being able to post the whole photo in view. The app InstaSize is an application made to aid this common problem. Scale your photos down and do so much more thanks to tons of awesome features. Will InstaSize become your go-to editing app?
Take a look at InstaSize and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application InstaSize brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
iOS 7.1 was only released on Monday, but already it looks as though it may be installed on close to 12% of iOS devices.
The figures come from mobile publishing and monetization platform Onswipe, who analyzed the data from approximately 3 million devices.