Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss a consumer lawsuit that alleges the Cupertino company maintains a monopoly on iPhone apps because it does not allow them to be purchased elsewhere, Bloomberg reports. Attorneys who filed the suit back in 2011 also ague that Apple’s 30% cut of developer revenue is increasing the prices of iOS apps.
For the past several months it’s been rumored that Apple is working on an iTunes music subscription service to compete with the likes of Spotify and Rdio. Google is reportedly also looking into some sort of music streaming service involving YouTube.
According to a new report, Apple executives recently met with a high-profile music industry executive to discuss business economics and the mysterious “Project Daisy.”
Shipping times for the new 21.5- and 27-inch iMacs has fallen again for the second time in under a week. You can now expect the popular all-in-one to be dispatched “within 24 hours” if you live in the United States or Canada, which is a huge improvement over the six-week delay that customers were facing just one month ago.
Unlike some bozos we could mention, KGI Securities Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo gets it right more often than not. He got the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and new iPod touch right.
Now he’s making another prediction: that Apple will unveil a new iPhone 5S with a better camera and color-shifting flash, as well as iOS 7, at WWDC in June for a July release. Also? A colorful iPhone 5 will become Apple’s new $99 iPhone.
We’ve heard very little about the next-gen iPhone 5S, other than that the device is expected to feature a better camera. Some have speculated that the successor to the iPhone 5 will also come in more than two colors and maybe even have a fingerprint sensor. An iPhone 5S would assumedly ship sometime around the fall if Apple sticks to its track record.
Even less has been revealed about the fifth-gen iPad, apart from some unverified case leaks. Apple has always announced new iPads around the spring, but the iPad mini was released last fall.
Now a new report has claimed that the iPhone 5S is on track for an August release. The iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 are expected to arrive around April.
We had a lot of fun earlier today coming up with our “vision” for the next Mac operating system, OS X Lion-O.
It got us thinking. What do you think the perfect mascot for the next version of OS X would be?
So we’re having a Photoshop contest! Come up with a concept for the next version of OS X using a whole new mascot and we’ll give the top five winners a free copy of Photoshop Touch for the iPhone or iPad (your choice!).
And the grand prize winner? In addition to Photoshop Touch, the person who makes the best Photoshop will receive a copy of the real next version of OS X (when it comes out, that is!).
Here’s how to enter the contest!
Some of you may not know that The Simpsons creator Matt Groening was hired by Apple to produce a number of brochures and posters back in the late ’80s. One of those brochures, entitled Who Needs A Computer Anyway?, has been making its way around the web since 2011. But some of Groening’s posters aren’t so familiar.
Networking in Hell, which is based around Groening’s Life in Hell characters, is one of them — along with Bongo’s Dream Dorm. Check them out below.
Following Bloomberg’s report that the iWatch is a project Apple wants to deliver this year, the Verge has an interesting report saying that the iWatch project is being lead by Jony Ive himself, and that it will run a full version of iOS.
Over the weekend, a fascinating little post over on the Panic weblog revealed that the Lightning AV adapter meant to send video out from a connected iPhone or iPad over HDMI had an interesting little secret to it: it’s not a converter so much as it is a tiny ARM-based computer with a tiny SoC and 2GB of RAM!
The guys at Panic had a theory that this meant that the Lightning AV Adapter booted a miniature version of iOS every time it was connected, and that it was using a bizarre, hardwired version of the AirPlay protocol to do its streaming. That’s not actually the case, but an anonymous Apple engineer has now given the backstory behind this fascinating little bit of engineering.
Bloomberg recently revealed that Apple has a team of 100 people working on its new iWatch, and according to its latest report, the Cupertino company is hoping to launch the device this year. The smart wristwatch, which could make calls, provide maps, and offer a pedometer, is expected to become more profitable than Apple’s much-anticipated television set.
Apple treats podcasting like an unwanted stepchild.
I think this is a huge missed opportunity for Apple — and for audio and video content creators.
Here’s what Apple is doing wrong, and how they could do it right.
Have any of your Instagram photos ever gotten over 20,000 likes? Yeah, mine either… But Cory Staudacher’s images do all the time. WithHearts is his name on that popular social service, and by posting one beautifully captured image each day, every day — all taken with only an iPhone — he’s become one of Instagram’s most popular users, now with just a hair under 206,000 followers.
Want to learn how he does it? Join us on this week’s CultCast as WithHearts reveals the photo apps he loves, workflows he lives by, and editing tricks he uses to create some of the most captivating iPhone photographs on the internet. He even surprises us with a few tools we never once considered using.
Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes to download our newest episode, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Show notes coming up next.
Apple has a long history of naming its new versions of the OS X operating system after successively larger cats, but after eleven years of this, Cupertino’s got a problem on their hands: they’ve pretty much run out of big Earth cats.
Far beyond the Oort cloud, however, there are even bigger and more ferocious cats on the loose. Feel the magic and hear the roar of OS X Lion-O, Third Earth’s most popular operating system.
Featuring Snarf, your Mac’s cowering new digital sidekick, revolutionary Sight Beyond iSight technology, and i of Thundera compatibility, OS X Lion-O is the best Mac operating system yet.
Think you’ve got a better idea for the next version of OS X? Join our contest for a chance to win a copy of Photoshop Touch and the next version of OS X when it comes out!
The promise of the Wahoo RFLKT is of a tiny, ultralight box with an LCD readout which displays information from an iPhone cycling app on the handlebars of your bike. You get the advantage of using your favorite tracking app, and also of having an easy to read and control HUD, instead of having to buy an expensive GPS-enabled bike computer.
The reality comes somewhat short.
After saying that the highly anticipated racing game would launch in 2012, EA and Firemonkeys have finally released Real Racing 3 in the U.S. App Store. The Real Racing franchise has been a staple part of the App Store since 2009, and the third installment was demoed onstage at Apple’s iPhone 5 event last September.
Real Racing 3 is perhaps the most visually stunning iOS game ever, and it’s free to download. However, there is one catch…
Throughout the churn of ever-changing priorities and products at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, or at any trade show for that matter, there is one constant: slogans. To be more specific: big banners printed with meaningless corporate gibberish.
This is where the world’s surplus of words like “enabling,” “future,” “innovating,” and “together” go to die, like orange-skinned retirees to Florida.
The iBookstore might not be the most profitable leg of Apple’s empire, but it is said that Apple doesn’t get into a business if it can’t make a billion dollars off of it… so no surprise that the iBookstore is a billion dollar business, even if it’s not much more than that.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS – This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was pretty disappointing from a gadget-lovers point of view. Samsung was there, but didn’t announce anything new. Microsoft didn’t even have a stand, and even the once-great App Planet section is little but a business-service wasteland (albeit with the best tea, coffee and beer in the show).
Still, even a pile of crap has variations in its texture, and so we bring you the “Best” of Mobile World Congress 2013.
The new year is well underway, and we’ve got a bundle lined up for you here at Cult of Mac Deals that will help you make the most of your Mac over the months to come. And the best part is that you’ll get all 8 of these time-savings apps for free as part of The Mac Freebie Bundle.
Apple’s always looking to miniaturize its gadgets down to the slimmest, smallest form factor possible, which is why the venerable iOS home button is such a conspicuous space waster: although the button grounds users in the iOS operating system, it’s also a fairly big and bulky element of the front of the device.
According to Peter Zigich in his new concepts for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 mini and iPhone 6 Maxi, Apple should just eliminate it from the front of the device to make way for a nearly bezel-less screen. Bizarrely, though, he thinks it should be shifted to the lower left hand side of the device, in a lower location on each side.
Last week we asked you guys to show us just how amazing you can make your iPhone look with tweaks and hacks for the homescreen and lockscreen, and boy were we impressed. We received over 100 entries in the jailbreaking contest and pretty much all of them were spectacular.
To celebrate the launch of our new Flickr and Instagram groups, we’re giving the 10 best jailbreak screens a free copy of Kuvva Wallpapers. After some serious deliberation, we think we’ve got some drool-worthy winners.
Here are the 10 most amazing jailbreak screens:
Too cheap to actually buy Tweetbot, Tapbot’s awesome Twitter app for iPhone, iPad and Mac? Are you pirating it despite the fact that it only costs a couple bucks, and Tweetbot has a limited number of tokens that it can distribute before Twitter says they can’t sell their client anymore?
Well, Tweetbot’s not going to force you to do anything, but they have started autofilling the Tweet box in its iOS app to publically broadcast that they are no-good, dirty pirates.
It’s understood that iOS cameras are insanely high-quality given their size. The only real knock about them is the fixed lens. Today’s Cult of Mac Deals offer aims to “fix” that – pun totally intended – with this compact lens kit. It includes 3 versatile options that fit snugly over your iOS lens with a tech-friendly magnet – and you can get this kit for only $25 for a limited time!
(Please note: This offer – which includes free shipping – is only available to customers in the United States and Canada.)
Apple continues to add new capabilities to Siri, but there are still a lot of things the digital assistant can’t do. You can’t use Siri to control third-part music apps like Spotify, toggle settings, or search the App Store.
A jailbreak tweak called AssistantEnhancer takes Siri to the next level by doing all these things and more. It’s the new crown jewel of Siri tweaks, and it contains a ton of useful features that make Siri a more valuable tool.