It’s come a long way from its disastrous early days (although there is still the occasional tendency to direct someone the wrong way up an airport taxiway), but Apple Maps may finally be taking the lead over its competitors — if you’re inclined to believe Apple’s latest patent.
The patent — recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office — was filed May 31 this year, and applies to an “Interactive Map” application, which would display multiple layers of information regarding local landmarks.
The new Mac Pro finally went on sale this morning with initial orders shipping by December 30th. After only a few hours of being on sale, shipping estimates slipped to February for all configurations.
Now Apple is saying that it will be awhile before it can catch up with demand.
When Apple announced a completely redesigned Mac Pro this past summer, the biggest question mark was the price tag. As a company that’s known for selling quality hardware at a premium, would Apple price the Mac Pro ultra-competitively or stick to its infamous ‘Apple tax’?
Well, the most expensive Mac Pro you can buy costs nearly 10K by itself. For normal people, that’s a hard price to swallow. But with two base configurations and plenty of build-to-order options, the real pros have no trouble dropping cash on Apple’s new powerhouse.
Coinciding with the launch of its new Mac Pro, Apple has released an update to Final Cut Pro X — adding new Mac Pro-optimized features to the video editing suite.
The update comes as no surprise, since Apple let us know it would be happening during the WWDC back in June. What wasn’t revealed at that stage, however, was the list of new features carried by the software.
Apple’s personal virtual assistant Siri is a smart cookie, but she’s veered towards the apocalyptic and apocryphal this morning, predicting the opening of the gates of hell on July 27th.
Apple’s “fastest Mac ever” is now available to order from the Apple online store, with prices starting at $2,999. The high-end desktop, which is assembled in the United States in Austin, Texas, is currently shipping before the end of the year.
You can also pick one up today from your local Apple retail store, or from an Apple authorized reseller.
In the world of minimalist text editors that do geeky things like support Markdown, iA Writer is one of the best. Made by Information Architects in Tokyo, the app has sold over 1,000,000 copies in the App Store since its release in 2010.
The followup to iA Writer has been released today on Mac and iOS. It’s a jaw-dropper. Talk about the perfect balance of a lightweight interface and awesome feature set.
When your Mac’s iSight camera is running, a tiny green light lets you know that it’s turned on. Or at least it’s supposed to. New research from Johns Hopkins University shows how hackers can remotely control the iSight camera in certain Macs without turning on the accompanying LED indicator light.
Apple’s latest Mac Pro, the high-end desktop built in the U.S. that you’ve been anticipating for years, will finally go on sale tomorrow. Announced at WWDC back in June, the new machine sports a brand new design and cutting-edge hardware throughout, and it will start at $2,999.
As crazy as it may seem, this year marks Nintendo's 125th anniversary, from its origins as a playing card company back in September 1889, to its status as a gaming powerhouse today.
As much as we love Nintendo, however, it has been pretty reticent about embracing the world of mobile gaming; refusing to port any of its core titles to iOS and forcing the takedown of emulators that have tried to provide this (slightly illegal) service. True gamers that we are, though, we hold out hope that one day Nintendo may see the light. With that in mind, here's our list of the 8 Nintendo titles we'd love to see on our iPhone screens.
Scroll through our gallery to see which ones made the cut.
Once the king of mobile gaming, over the past few years, Nintendo has found itself caught flatfooted by the rise of smartphones. Although the company’s 3DS portable game console can’t be said to be a total flop, it’s certainly not selling in gangbuster units compared to previous consoles, like the DS or Gameboy. The reason why is simple: most people have a perfectly good gaming device in their pockets all the time now in the form of their smartphone, and don’t want to have to carry around (let alone buy) an entirely separate device dedicated to gaming.
Many critics have suggested that it’s time for Nintendo to give up and just start releasing games based on its prize characters such as Mario or Link as iOS apps. Such advice is short-sighted, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t be better leveraging Apple’s iOS platform… which is exactly what the Big N seems to have in mind.
Apple has announced that developers must ensure that all app submissions are optimized for iOS 7 by February 1, 2014, according to a new posting on its developer portal.
This includes both new apps and updates to existing ones. In order to optimize apps for the new OS, they must be built with the latest version of Xcode 5 — which includes 64-bit support, and access to features such as backgrounding APIs.
Customers in China aren't lining up for the iPhone like they once were. Photo: Apple
The iPhone has already been named Yahoo’s top ranked search in tech for the year, and now Google has released its top 10 searches for 2013. It’s no surprise that the iPhone was part of the list, coming in at third under Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. The poor Samsung Galaxy S4 snagged the number 8 spot.
Here’s the full list of Google’s “global trending searches” for the year:
Lollipod by Lollipod Category: Tripods Works With:iPhone, cameras Price: $50
The Lollipod is a lightweight lighting stand masquerading as a camera and iPhone tripod. And this is – in almost every way – a good thing. A light stand isn’t nearly as sturdy as a camera tripod, but it is a lot lighter, a lot more likely to be in your bag when you need it, and is roughly 1,000% better than no tripod at all, aka a sharp rock propping up your delicate iPhone.
After Apple released the iPhone 5s with the A7, the world’s first 64-bit chip, ARM competitor Qualcomm made quite the fool of themselves about it. First, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called a 64-bit ARM chip a “gimmick.” Then they ate their words, soft fired Chandrasekher, and announced their own 64-bit chip to ship in 2014.
If that seems like a disorganized, chaotic response, you’re right. But there’s a reason for that. According to a new report, Apple’s unveiling of the 64-bit A7 chip took the entire semiconductor industry with their pants down… and everyone’s now scrambling to catch up.
Apple has lost its third appeal for ownership of the term App Store in Oz. Photo: Apple
Okay, so December’s generally a fairly quiet news month, but that does mean that we get to look back and remember the year which preceded it.
Well, it seems Apple is getting similarly misty-eyed about the year that was 2013 (either that, or they want to gloat about the phenomenal success of the App Store this year) since the company has just released its annual “Best Of” list — revealing the top iPhone and iPad apps according to the numbers.
Apple fanboys dream of getting inside the locked gates of heaven Apple HQ in Cupertino but if you’d rather not brave blitzing past the security guards to see all the toys inside Jony’s design studio, you can now get a complete Minecraft tour of Apple’s cubed campus from your computer.
Over the last two years Michael Steeber has meticulously recreated every detail of Apple’s headquarters this mind blowing Minecraft map. Not only did The Steeb nail the entryway and the major buildings, but you also get a look at the avenues, cafes, basketball & volleyball courts, atrium, parking lots, even the BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse across the street.
Take a full tour of the campus in the video below:
Beyonce surprised us last Friday by exclusively releasing her fifth album, BEYONCÉ, on iTunes without even a whisper of a warning that it was coming out. The sneak attack was aimed at stopping pirates from siphoning off Queen B’s honey and it looks like it was a wild success.
Apple announced today that BEYONCÉ has become the fast selling album ever on iTunes with an ungodly 828,773 albums sold on the first three days alone. Who says you can’t sell a million records in a week anymore?
I drive a 10-year-old Nissan Xterra. When I see new vehicles with technology like Ford Sync and Siri Eyes Free, I get jealous of the ability to send texts and answer phone calls without touching my iPhone. The most advanced thing my car can do is play audio from my iPhone through a stereo jack in the radio console.
Combine the lack of cool tech in my whip and my obsession with the latest gadgets and I was immediately intrigued back in March when I heard about Automatic, a hardware/software startup based in San Francisco that’s pitched as a smart driving assistant. Unlike an expensive add-on that has to be installed by a dealer, the Automatic Link is a $100 dongle (Amazon link) that can plug into the car’s data port found somewhere under the steering wheel. It communicates over low-energy Bluetooth to an iPhone app that records your driving, analyzes your mileage, reads your check engine light, helps you find your parked car and more.
The feature that sold me was the ability to see what was causing my engine light to come on—a problem that has ruthlessly followed me with every vehicle I’ve owned so far. I immediately preordered and my Automatic arrived mid-October.
After using Automatic for about a month now, it’s real usefulness is starting to show. There are features about it I love, and it’s shown me how everyday technology, like an iPhone, can enhance the car experience. The Jetsons-like future of transportation isn’t here yet, but Automatic is a precursor of what’s to come. It gets me excited about how our personal computers will interface with cars in 10 years.
That should not be a surprise. We predicted it would take a full six months to jailbreak the iPhone 5s back in February, and it looks like we might not be far off. But what is happening with the iOS 7 jailbreak?
Well, a lot of intrigue. But don’t worry, things are still moving forward.
When you’re the most-watched tech company in existence, there’s nothing quite like taking people by surprise.
And although Apple’s “12 Days of Gifts” app — this year available to U.S. customers for the first time — was due to kick off on December 26, Apple has decided to give downloaders a taste of what it is to come by offering Lorde’s new single “No Better” as a pre-Christmas gift.
Car makers next year will begin selling vehicles that support Apple’s new system for connecting iPhones to the in-car entertainment systems built into the dash.
Nice, but it doesn’t go far enough. Here’s why Apple should start building the in-car entertainment systems themselves.
While accepting a lifetime achievement award from Auburn University, his alma mater, Apple CEO Tim Cook told of how The Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy shaped his passion for human rights and equality. “Growing up in Alabama in the 1960s, I saw the devastating impacts of discrimination,” Cook said in New York on December 10th. “Remarkable people were denied opportunities and treated without basic human dignity solely because of the color of their skin.”
He recalled childhood memories of watching crosses burn on neighbors’ lawns in Alabama. “This image was permanently imprinted in my brain and it would change my life forever,” Cook said. “For me the cross burning was a symbol of ignorance, of hatred, and a fear of anyone different than the majority. I could never understand it, and I knew then that America’s and Alabama’s history would always be scarred by the hatred that it represented.”
It’s the time of the year for lists: naughty, nice, best of, trends, Thirteen Surprising Bathroom Habits Of Tech Innovators. Stuff like that.
All those listicles can make your eyes water, even though you can’t stop yourself from clicking through to Ten Loudest Grunters in Women’s Tennis, I know I can’t.
But it was with great pleasure that I spotted Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive made it into the venerable Wall Street Journal’s Books of the Year section.
We’re all supposed to be better people around the holidays. Unless we happen to be a hackathon dude who fires off a Facebook rant about how San Francisco is filled with human trash.
And, sure, you can delete that stupid stuff. But that same technology that enabled you to quickly air your most callous, thoughtless opinion won’t take it back that easily. His subsequent apology did little to smother the flames about how tech needs better PR to convince the world we aren’t the philosophical disciples of Charles Montgomery Burns.
That’s why Facebook is considering a compassion button – so in this case you could sympathize with your hackathon pal for his complete lack of empathy for the homeless? – for example.
This week, Cult of Mac reports from the front line of digital companies and nonprofits with heart and soul from Stanford’s inaugural Technology and Compassion Conference. The idea behind it is to bring things like mood trackers and compassion training to our iPhones, so we act like jerks a little less. And the world will thus becomes a better place…
We also bring you the best new books, music and movies in iTunes and apps in the store as well as the inside scoop from the behind the counter with our Ask a Genius Column. ‘Cause we’re generous like that.
The iPhone 5s introduced us to Touch ID. Photo: Apple
Apple seeded the second beta of iOS 7.1 to developers nearly a month after 7.1 beta 1 was released. Once again, Apple’s beta doesn’t contain any major new features but there are a couple useful tweaks that you’ll enjoy hidden among all the bug fixes, performance improvements and speedier animations.
Here are the five biggest changes Apple made to iOS 7.1 today:
