For the iWatch, many expect Apple to unveil the next big thing, the true successor to the iPhone in the wearable age. But a new report citing “limited by direct knowledge of Apple’s plans for the iWatch” claims that Apple’s wristband will be a much simpler affair, more akin to a Nike Fuelband or a FitBit than the standalone “holy grail” device previous reports have indicated.
The Flappy Bird saga will not die thanks to one question still on the minds of Flappy Bird fans – how did Flappy Bird’s wild success ruin creator Dong Nguyen’s life?
Nguyen removed the game from the App Store and Google Play on Sunday despite making $50,000 a day off it, saying the game is a success, but it also ruins his simple life.
I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014
Theories are boiling as to how the game ruined Dong’s life. Did Nintendo complain? No. Did he sell it? Nope.
Perhap his pockets are simply running out of room for those fat stacks, but a new theory emerged this morning, maybe Dong Nguyen cheated the App Store with bots.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine
I was almost out of gas. I was also almost out of cash. I needed to find the cheapest source of fuel for my beat-up ride so I could get downtown to meet a friend for coffee. I pulled up GasBuddy, and within one tap I found the closest, cheapest gas station near me.
Once I gassed up, I hit a sweet parking spot just a few blocks away from the coffee shop. I launched Honk, swiped across the top to set the time on the meter, and took a photo of my car to make sure I could get back to it.
Sure, fine, it’s not a flying car, but this is as close to the future as this old beater is going to get, and it’s all thanks to my iPhone and a suite of apps.
Following his comments that he would be pulling his wildly popular, $50,000-a-day game Flappy Bird from the App Store, developer Dong Nguyen has actually gone through with it, removing the game from both the App Store and Google Play Store.
We’ve seen concepts of the iPhone Air before, but I can’t think of one I like more — or that I think looks more plausible — than Joseph Farahi’s 5.1-inch iPhone 6 concept. This actually looks like a device Jony Ive could design.
The other day, our Google-loving friends over at Cult of Android breathlessly hopped on a story suggesting that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wanted Apple to make an Android smartphone.
It was always a bizarre story — what could Apple possibly have to gain from that, when it is already has the best-selling smartphone in the world — but it certainly made for a good headline. The only problem? Woz says he never meant it.
Evidence that Apple is going big with sapphire is overwhelming. But the reasons for Apple’s sapphire obsession range from scratch-resistant screens to solar-charging screens.
I have another theory: Apple wants to eliminate both the need and the desire for an iPhone case, cover or sleeve. There’s a lot more to this idea than simple scratch resistance.
Here’s my case for Apple’s case against cases.
This week, Cult of Mac Magazine is all about the Olympics.
Whether you’re a cord cutter or just like to slack off at work, our ever-resourceful reviews editor Charlie Sorrel has compiled all the tips you need to watch without a traditional TV – from streaming services to apps and, like any good British expat, he’s also given a thought to beverages – so you can get more Sochi action across all your Apple devices.
The 2014 Winter Olympics may also be the first quantified games in history. Sure, coaches have been standing by with stopwatches and clipboards since, well, some dude sprinted down dusty roads in sandals, probably. But now, there’s an app for that. To find out more about what the teams are using (and how you can improve your form on the slopes) we talked to the people behind some those performance apps.
We’re also featuring the winners of our epic Selfie Olympics contest. But just so you know: you’re all winners in our book!
No one but actual, honest-to-God bicycle messengers had the authority to wield a Timbuk2 messenger bag. If you were an iron-assed hard case living life on a bike, you’d probably earned the right; though you might still have found yourself the target of diluted messenger disgust.
That was the pervading vibe 15 years ago when I bought my first Timbuk2 bag, a Bolo (back then, each size had a name; the Bolo was the large version). Make no mistake, these were Messenger Bags: simple, voluminous, virtually indestructible black holes, able to swallow an inordinate amount of awkwardly dimensioned deliverables, specially stabilized for use on the bike exclusively. The only grudging nods to civility were a couple of pockets sown onto the outside of the bag and an optional padded shoulder strap.
And apart from a few minor changes, it’s stayed that way. Like the coelacanth, the Classic Messenger has remained a living fossil, unchanged, while other Timbuk2 species have evolved and developed around it. Until now.
Even though it feels like the iPhone 5s just came out, the rumor mill is already churning out little bits on the iPhone 6: a supercharged camera, a bigger display and a ton of sapphire crystal glass.
A number of designers have presented both wacky and plausible mockups for what the iPhone 6 might look like, but our concept designer friend Federico Ciccarese just sent us his rendition of what the iPhone 6 might look like. While it doesn’t have any wild design changes, it still has my pockets lusting after a 4.7-inch iPhone 6.
Check it out:
Tim Cook has acknowledged that Apple has bought back $14 billion of its own shares over the past two weeks — reacting to an 8 percent decline in shares following the recent financial quarter results.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Cook admitted that he was “surprised” by Wall Street’s reaction to Apple’s last quarter, in which the company broke records by selling 77 million iOS devices over the holiday season.
Apple’s recent share repurchase is the largest of its kind for a company of Apple’s size over a similar timespan. During the past 12 months, Apple has bought back $40 billion of its own shares — part of a plan to repurchase a total of $60 billion. In the past two weeks Cook says that Apple bought $12 billion of its shares through an “accelerated” repurchase program, and a further $2 billion on the open market. Apple plans to disclose updates to its buyback program either next month or in April.
Remember the report from yesterday that said that Sochi Olympics sponsor Samsung was asking athletes to cover up their iPhone logos? Not something athletes need to worry about, according to the International Olympic Committee. But that doesn’t mean Samsung didn’t ask.
We’ve all likely done it: you’re sending a text message — only to find out after hitting the “send” button that your carefully crafted comments have fallen victim to some embarrassing autocorrect abomination.
Clearly someone at Apple has had the same experience, since a new Apple patent suggests that future iPhones may include an option for correcting messages after the user has instructed the device to send, but before the transmittal of the message has taken place.
From quadrocopter deliveries to rumors of a 3D Kindle smartphone coming in 2014, Amazon has been on the cutting edge of tech for quite some time now. The company’s latest update for its iOS app, however, might be among the most fun new developments we’ve seen.
Along with the ubiquitous bug fixes seen in practically every iOS app update, version 3.2.1 of Amazon’s retail app includes a feature called “Flow” which lets users quickly and easily search for products using their iOS camera.
We said it wouldn’t be too long until a jailbreak was available for iOS 7.0.5, and thankfully the good folks at Evad3rs haven’t let us down — since Evasi0n has just released its untethered iOS 7.0.5 jailbreak.
U.S. iPhone users won’t get a whole lot from the iOS 7.0.5 update, since its changes mainly deal with minor bug fixes to network errors on Chinese carriers — but for those looking for assurance that their unlocked iPhone can be used internationally without problem, it may be worth a download.
Samsung is an official sponsor of the Sochi 2014 Olympics, and the Korean company has been giving athletes Galaxy Note 3 phones to use during the games. In exchange for the gifts, Samsung has reportedly asked the athletes to specifically cover the Apple logos on their personal iPhones.
What happens if athletes don’t respect the rule remains unclear. Logos were also asked to be covered by Samsung when it was a sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics, so this isn’t a new tactic. However, it does illustrate Samsung’s corporate contempt for Apple.
The Winter Olympics are just three days away so of course we’re working on a special edition of Cult of Mac Magazine all about the intersection of the winter games and Apple.
99.997% of us aren’t talented enough to get an invite to Sochi, but we can all take a damn good selfie. So with the spirit of competition upon us, we’re introducing the Cult of Mac Selfie Olympics – a competition to see which of our readers can take the absolute best selfie before the real athletes battle it out in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
There was a time when the most luxurious laptops around weren’t MacBooks. They were Sony Vaios, and up[on his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs so admired the design and engineering of the Vaio line-up that he wanted to make an exception and license OS X to Sony for use on their laptops. And it almost happened.
A new Apple patent describes an invention that may one day replace the Mac’s Finder.
Referring to a method for classifying documents in such a way as to allow for a multi-dimensional graphical representation of their contents, the patent would move away from the way information is currently structured toward a “graphical multidimensional file management system and method” that would be far more intuitive than the system used today.
President Obama used an iPad for an impromptu interview during a recent appearance at a Maryland middle school.
The President — who has previously claimed that he spends hours using the iPad each day — seemed perfectly at home as he used the device to carry out an interview with the classroom teacher, before turning the iPad to record the pupils, assembled press members, and “Mike, my secret service agent” who he claims “never smiles.”
Apple is the fourth greenest tech/telecoms company — generating 85 percent of its power through green power sources — according to a new list published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The recently published report compares the amount of power used by America’s top technology and telecom firms with the percentage that comes from renewable “green” resources, such as wind, solar, bio-gas and other options.
To save time, here’s my advice: If you have an iPad or iPhone, a guitar and $300 to spend, then spend it on the iLoud. It’s a small, portable Bluetooth speaker that is way louder than any other Bluetooth speaker, and it lets you plug in your guitar and use your iPhone – wirelessly – to add effects using an app like IK Multimedias’s AmpliTube.
More importantly, the iLoud rocks.
I’m traveling to Russia to cover the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. It’s going to be a thrilling, crazy experience. You’ll see some of my work here at Cult of Mac, among other places.
Here’s the gear I’ll be taking with me overseas:
Oof.
Dell has, of course, “borrowed” a few inspirations from Apple over the last few years, but in a recent marketing video uploaded to the Texas-based PC maker’s YouTube channel a month ago — and since hastily removed — Dell showed an XPS 15 laptop that seemingly dual-booted between Wind0ws 8 and OS X.
Batteries are potentially volatile things, stuffed with electrochemical cells practically humming with electolytes. Every once and a while, then, they’re sure to break down, and companies like Apple do literally everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Here’s why. An iPhone 5c that exploded in the pocket of a 13-year-old girl resulted in a fire so severe that she was
rushed to the hospital with second-degree burns.