Amazon is reported to be in discussions with music labels to launch a streaming music service for its Amazon Prime subscription members. Will it be more like Spotify, or iTunes Radio, though?
The men and women who ensure the safety of Apple employees will stand against the Cupertino company to demand better pay. With some of them forced to rely on public assistance and for housing and food due to the low quality jobs provided by companies like Security Industry Specialists (SIS), they want Apple to secure a better contract for them.
As another in a long line of rallies and protests, it may be difficult to get the attention of the Cupertino-based company’s shareholders, but the security officers and their community supporters hope to make enough noise to point out that while they work for the most profitable tech company in the world, the security officers are usually hired on part-time as on-call employees.
Apple has been named Fortune’s most admired company for the seventh year in a row. Amazon ranked second and Google came in at third. Samsung and Microsoft didn’t make the top ten.
While the iOS 7 software update has brought along a total design revamp, with it has also come irritating wallpaper settings. Not being able to scale your photo to the sizes you’d like and more have been just some of the newly associated issues. The new application Wallpaper Fix claims to be the perfect fix for all of your wallpaper problems. Is Wallpaper Fix the app that will help you get your wallpapers the way you want?
Take a look at Wallpaper Fix and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application Wallpaper Fix brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Today, Apple designer Jony Ive turns 47. One of the threads of his incredible career has been a passion for hot wheels. Before going on to become one of the world’s most famous designers, Jony Ive went to London’s Central Saint Martins Art School fueled by an early passion to design cars. Eventually, though, he took a detour that led him to revolutionize design in personal technology.
Apple hasn’t gotten around to making an iCar yet, but Jony’s passion for automobiles is still revved up and cruising for thrills. The famed designer hasn’t been afraid to fork over some fat stacks for a nice car on a whim – even if one of his brutal beauties almost cost him his life – and has gathered a nice little collection of luxury cars over the years.
Here’s a look at some of the fabulous cars that have puttered their way into Jony’s garage, with insider information about each one pulled from the pages of Leander Kahney’s new book, “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.”
Nearly one third of all games released in the App Store in a 24-hour period are Flappy Bird clones.
That’s according to the Guardian newspaper’s Stuart Dredge, who used an RSS feed of the Appshopper site to get his hands on a list of every game released in the 24-hour period, ending 5am on February 27.
Of the 293 new iOS games, he discovered that 95 (just over 32%) were clones of the recently deceased Flappy Bird.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the themes were – as we expected – waterproof phones, smart-watches and NFC (again). Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 was a high-profile example of the waterproof trend, and the company also showed its new Galaxy Gear watch, which looks pretty neat for a giant wrist-screen. And NFC is in every Android handset these days.
But how do these themes relate to the iPhone and iPad? Let’s think about that.
Apple may have only released iOS 7.0.6 one week ago, but it’s already showing impressive adoption rates.
According to a study by Chitika Insights, just 48 hours after the update went live, 13.3% of all iOS traffic was driven by the latest update.
Here’s a hard to believe story: one of Apple’s executives behind the original iPhone has gone so far as to apologize to anyone who bought one during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
Why? According to ex-Apple senior director of product marketing for the original iPhone Bob Borchers: “If you had the original iPhone, I apologize; it was not a great phone, it was an OK phone.”
Unbelievably, he may have a point.
While movie streaming applications like Netflix and Hulu Plus remain popular for what they have to offer, Disney has just released their own take on the genre. Disney Movies Anywhere is Disney’s latest application, giving users the ability to access an extensive library of Disney movies on the go. With plenty of great options and features available will Disney Movies Anywhere find its way on your devices.
Take a look at Disney Movies Anywhere and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the application “Disney Movies Anywhere” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Oscar-nominated director David Fincher is in talks to direct Sony’s upcoming biopic about Steve Jobs, according to Variety. If Fincher did direct, it would team him up yet again with writer Aaron Sorkin. The last time the two worked together was on The Social Network.
Fincher is currently finishing up post-production on his latest movie, Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck. He directed the first two episodes of House of Cards and is an executive producer for the show. The last project he directed for Sony was 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Aaron Sorkin finished his script for the Jobs biopic earlier this year. He has said in the past that the story will be divided into three distinct acts, and each act will take place backstage at an Apple keynote. No rumors on casting yet.
Source: Variety
The tale of Flappy Bird is almost unbelievable. A frustratingly simple iPhone game from an indie game dev in Vietnam with no prior notoriety becomes an overnight success. It dominates the App Store charts and starts making $50,000 per day in ad revenue. Then, out of the blue, the dev decides to pull it from the App Store at the height of its popularity.
It was a story too good to be true. Except that it was true.
In the wake of Flappy Birds’s removal, countless knockoffs have tried to fill the gap. “Flappy Bird being taken off the App Store has created this vacuum,” says Jeremy Olson, founder of the award-winning app studio Tapity. In an effort to make a worthy successor to Flappy Bird, Olson and his small team have created Buffalo Wings.
Instead of a bird, you guide a flying buffalo over and under walls by tapping the iPhone’s screen. Hit a wall at any point and you have to start over. The gameplay mechanics may be the same, but Tapity is hoping that Buffalo Wings has what it takes to capture lightning in a bottle twice.
With the tech world still buzzing over Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp acquisition, business insurance provider Simply Business has put together a fascinating infographic.
Showing 15 years of acquisitions by Apple, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, the chart lays out in visual terms when tech giants were at their purchasing busiest, as well as how much they typically spend on deals — with the size of individual dots representing the price paid for each startup.
This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.
Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself.
Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. Killian has given up and gone home already, so maybe I’ll get a chance to actually check out some gadgets today (Killian is a terrible influence).
If you want me to check something out, Tweet me @mistercharlie.
Now, let’s get on with Day three, the final proper day (Thursday is for the suits and the cleaners).
Apple was responsible for 15% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and as much as 56% of all the profit. Sony, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.8% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and is barely ekeing out a profit company-wide.
Despite all of this, Sony mobile chief and European president Pierre Perron told The Inquirer that Apple is “missing out” by only releasing yearly iPhone freshes, instead of flooding the market with incremental updates every few months.
Apple has released an new update for Mavericks that fixes the goto fail SSL vulnerability that was patched up on iOS last week with the iOS 7.0.6 update.
Along with fixing SSL/TLS vulnerability, the update brings in a couple of new features such as FaceTime audio calls, call waiting for FaceTime, the ability to block incoming iMessages, not to mention numerous bug fixes.
The update is available by going to Apple menu () > Software Update to check for the latest Apple software using the Mac App Store.
Here are the release notes:
Retro arcade gaming meets today’s latest hits in the application Hoppy Frog. Enjoy reminiscing the days of Frogger with the memories of Flappy Bird, as you progress your way up the high score charts. Will Hoppy Frog become your latest gaming addiction?
Take a look at Hoppy Frog and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the application “Hoppy Frog” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
In a new blogpost, New Zealand security consultant Aldo Cortesi notes that it took him less than one day to develop a proof of concept for the critical OS X SSL/TLS bug, known as “goto fail”.
By doing this Cortesi has confirmed in practice what people were already worried about in theory: that thanks to the bug — thought to be the result of a line of erroneous code — almost all encrypted traffic, including usernames, passwords, and even Apple app updates can potentially be captured.
With yesterday being Steve Jobs’ birthday, Apple fans chose to mark the occasion in different ways. Marketing agency Easy Explain Video celebrated the life of Apple’s late CEO by creating an animated version of Jobs’ iconic iPhone introduction at the 2007 Macworld San Francisco.
Speaking with Cult of Mac, Easy Explain Video emphasized the enormous impact Apple has had on creatives.
This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.
Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself.
Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. And if you want us to check something out, Tweet us @mistercharlie or @killianbell.
Now, let’s get on with Day Two.
When you buy a 16GB iPhone 5c, you get 12.60GB of storage space left over after taking into account iOS 7’s default install size. Comparatively, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was the worst bang for the buck, storage-wise, in smartphones: a paltry 8.56GB of internal space was available to the user to store apps and media upon.
Even the S4, though, was roomy compared to the newly announced Galaxy S5. A 16GB Galaxy S5 comes with less than eight gigabytes of usable memory.
Like some totem out of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser series, a bizarre and grotesque statuary tribute to the late Steve Jobs was unveiled in Belgrade, Serbia today. Even more bizarrely, Apple may have liked it enough to put it on display in one of its Cupertino offices.
Tim Cook may happen to be the leader of the most successful technology company in the world right now, but before Apple’s CEO reigned supreme he was just another pimple-faced high schooler from a small town in Alabama.
Cook likes to keep a low-profile but thanks to some high school yearbook photos we now have a glimpse of what Robertsdale High School’s salutatorian of 1978 was like when he wasn’t busy playing the trombone and yearbooking.
Checkout these pictures from Tim Cook’s senior yearbook:
Keeping themselves in the news, Mark Zuckerberg and the people of Facebook have just recently acquired the hit messaging app WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars. With over 450 million people already using the app each month, they hope to build upon this success. Similar to their purchasing of Instagram in 2012, will you start using WhatsApp for all of your conversations?
Take a look at WhatsApp app and see what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application “WhatsApp” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Today marks the 59th birthday of Steve Jobs, who was born February 24, 1955.
To mark the occasion, here’s a video tribute created by several Apple employees for Jobs to mark his thirtieth birthday in 1985: