While iCloud has been a trusty storage companion for photos and documents, Apple’s recently announced iCloud Drive upgrades what we already know and love about the service. In today’s video, we take a look at five ways iCloud Drive will upgrade your life when Apple rolls out the enhanced service alongside iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.
iOS 8 introduces many convenient features and enhancements designed to make your iPhone even easier to use. Among these is keyboard update QuickType and support for installing third-party keyboards on iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. In today’s video, we’ll show you exactly how third-party keyboards work — and how they will change your interactions with your device for the better.
Google’s keynote presentation at its I/O developer’s conference today offered a revealing picture of the company itself: meandering, unfocused, copycat and just a little bit evil.
The two-hours-plus keynote had a lot of everything, from a new version of Android to new phones, smartwatches, TVs, cars, Chromebooks and big data — but much of it was deja vu from Apple’s WWDC two weeks ago.
As anyone who watched Wednesday’s nearly three-hour livestream of the Google I/O kickoff, the answer to that question should be 90 minutes or less.
As the event dragged on, the tone on Twitter went from restrained interest about Google’s somewhat underwhelming announcements to reports of sleeping reporters and jabs at the ponderous presentation’s length. “Apple just launched a keynote shortener,” tweeted Dave Pell.
This year’s Worldwide Developers Conference was geekier, more welcoming and less locked-down than any in recent history. Apple also bid farewell to Katie Cotton — the much-feared queen of PR, whose frosty relations with journalists made her only slightly less terrifying than an angry Steve Jobs — with a call for a “friendlier, more approachable” public relations face to warm up the company’s relationship with the press.
“For the past few years it’s felt like Apple’s only goal was to put us in our place,” Panic’s Cabel Sasser recently tweeted. “Now it feels like they might want to be friends.”
These recent moves represent a major change in the way Apple does business, even as the company sits atop a $150 billion war chest amassed thanks to innovative products, ruthless leadership and heavy-handed policies that fostered a culture of secrecy and utter domination. But in a world where it’s drummed into our heads that nice guys finish last, does Apple’s approach risk killing the company with kindness?
With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple is finally showing us its idea of how we’ll compute in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, this pristine vision of our computing destiny — unveiled after years of secret, patient and painstaking development — aligns perfectly with how we currently use our computers and mobile devices.
The keynote at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month not only showed off a new way to think about computing, based on data not devices, but also silenced pretty much every criticism leveled at the company over the past few years.
Let’s take a look at Apple’s new way of doing things, which fulfills Steve Jobs’ post-PC plan by minimizing the importance of the Mac.
With so many emails to send in a day, having an application that meets all your requirements is critical. Though Apple’s native email client might not always have been the fastest means of delivering messages, iOS 8 aims to fix that. In today’s hands-on video, we’ll give you a look at the new and improved Mail application, which comes equipped with quick tricks to speed up common activities.
For instance, you can swipe across emails in the enhanced Mail app to quickly access functions or go back and forth between your inbox and drafts. See how it all works in the video above.
The code was written. The world (possibly) changed. The banners are gone and Apple is nowhere to be seen at Moscone West after a marathon week of coding and partying with the top software engineers in the world.
If you weren’t lucky enough to make it to this year’s WWDC you can still enjoy all the coding education that came with the show now that all 107 video sessions have been posted on Apple’s developer site. It’s a world class coding education that rivals anything you can pay for at university.
Here are some notable session to get you primed for iOS 8 and Yosemite:
SAN FRANCISCO — Victor Broido has an enviable lifestyle. He lives and works 200 yards from a sun-kissed beach. He often kitesurfs before work. Sometimes he surfs during work.
“It was my dream, as a kid, to surf for an hour before going to the office,” Broido said. “That’s my life. It’s happening right now.”
You might want to punch Broido in the face upon hearing this, but he’s the nicest, most self-deprecating guy. You can’t begrudge him anything. Plus, he worked to attain this way of life.
Broido and his colleagues run DigiDNA, an eight-person company based in Geneva, Switzerland, with a satellite office in Geraldton, a small city in remote Western Australia with a reputation for world-class water sports.
DigiDNA is one of thousands of small, independent software developers spawned by the mobile revolution. In 2013, Apple’s App Store revenues topped $10 billion, and a lot of that money flowed to small startups. There are small indies in every category, from games to databases. Lots of them flocked to San Francisco last week for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. DigiDNA was a gold sponsor of last week’s AltConf, the alternative conference that ran parallel to Apple’s event. (DigiDNA has also sponsored Cult of Mac’s Cultcast in the past.)
Wow! This year’s WWDC keynote was one of the most important in years, and on this week’s CultCast, we unpack all the new features announced for Yosemite and iOS 8, and tell you which ones we can’t believe we ever lived without. Plus, with so many new developer APIs and a whole new programming language, we think Apple in on the verge of something big, and if you thought they had cool products before… well, hold on to your butts.
Snicker your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.
And thanks to Lynda.com for supporting this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.
As months have passed since Apple’s last keynote revealing any official news to look forward to, this week they’ve broken their silence. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, and many other official representatives revealed details on upcoming software, in the forms of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. Take a look at the video to see a complete guide to of all of this week’s news and be sure to return next week for another.
Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
Apple has finally revealed the latest version of OS X, and it’s one of the biggest updates for the operating system in years. In today’s video, we take a quick look at OS X Yosemite in action and provide a quick overview what it has to offer.
An overwhelming sense of eagerness overtook me after Apple showed off OS X Yosemite at WWDC. The redesigned interface and accompanying features, like a spruced-up Spotlight and the ability to take phone calls on your Mac, made downloading the beta version too intriguing to pass up.
Little did I know that moments after finalizing the installation, I would encounter a massive problem that would send me on an emotional ride.
SAN FRANCISCO — At Apple’s WWDC developer conference, there are talks about interface design, writing code and fixing bugs.
Across the street at indie spinoff AltConf, the talks are concerned with spying on users and making choices between good and evil.
“We have had a hand in creating one of the most dystopian and undesirable societies imaginable,” said Andrew Stone, a veteran programmer who once worked with Steve Jobs, during a talk entitled “What Have We Built Here?”
It’s not the kind of stuff you’d expect to hear at a developer’s conference, but in an age of widespread government spying and cynicism about corporate slogans like “Don’t be evil,” AltConf highlights that programmers are often presented with moral choices. There’s a growing awareness in the coding community that although the activity of programming is benign, what’s created can be used for evil. Take Maciej Cegłowski’s talk last month in Germany, which has been widely discussed on the Web. Cegłowski argues — convincingly — that the utopian ideals of the early internet have been thoroughly corrupted, and the entire industry is “rotten.”
Apple and Google aren’t the good friends they used to be thanks to the rise of Android as the iPhone’s main competitor. Ever since Apple axed Google Maps in iOS 6, it has been clear that Google’s days in Apple’s software are numbered.
The hardest Google service for Apple to replace is undoubtedly search. Siri is slowly becoming its own search engine of sorts that draws from multiple services like Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia, but Google has remained the standard for traditional web search.
In iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Google is still set as Safari’s default search engine. But with the introduction of more search partners in Apple’s new software, it’s hard to believe that Google search will enjoy its prominence for much longer.
Apple’s WWDC keynote just days ago brought us many new iOS 8 features to look forward to downloading this Fall. Thanks to an immediate downloadable beta version open for developers, many have found even more useful features and changes not mentioned on Apple’s big stage. In today’s video your host Joshua Smith introduces eight of his top hidden iOS 8 features.
As Apple has finally announced the long-awaited iOS 8, it’s only natural for users to be curious how it will affect their daily routines. With all new features and enhancements for your iOS device, in today’s video see what’s coming this fall, and what we think about it.
We’re still busying digesting all the new stuff Tim Cook and Craig Federighi announced yesterday with iOS 8, and even though we’re ridiculously excited about major backend features like HomeKit, iCloud Photo Library and Metal, 24 hours of tinkering around with the OS has revealed a lot of hidden gems that went unmentioned.
Along with the host of new iOS 8 features, Jony Ive and the Human Interface team have been busy adding dozens of tiny tweaks to the UI as well as tossing in a few smaller features you probably didn’t notice.
Take a look at these 11 tweaks Apple sneaked into iOS 8 without telling anyone:
In the not-so-distant future, we’ll use smartphones to control nearly everything around our homes. We already have smart light bulbs, thermostats, locks and appliances, but we lack a central platform for all these devices.
That’s all going to change this fall when Apple releases iOS 8 with HomeKit, an important new protocol for developers. This will create the kind of universal platform that could revolutionize home automation.
Monday’s fantastic WWDC keynote was the most significant product introduction since Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPad in 2010. But this time, the revolutionary product wasn’t hardware — it was software.
The surprisingly well-executed event demonstrated two things:
1. Steve Jobs’ greatest product wasn’t the iPad or the Macintosh, but Apple itself. He created a company that can very clearly innovate without him.
2. Although there was no new hardware (for now), Apple’s trajectory is clear: It’s getting into some very big things.
Apple finally fixed photography on iOS. Or rather, it’s fixed organizing your photos, wherever they might be. The iPhone is already a great camera. The problem was everything that happened after you tapped the shutter.
Now, in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, you’ll never have to worry about organizing your photos again — they’ll be everywhere, all the time. And best of all? It looks like you’re never going to need iPhoto again, on the Mac or on your iPad.
When the Yosemite posters first went up in Moscone Center ahead of WWDC, a thought lodged in my brain that continued to tumble around all weekend: Apple drew inspiration for the name of the new OS from David Hockney.
It’s not as much of a stretch as it sounds. After all, Hockney recently had a major show at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, where he debuted a series of 12-foot-high tributes to Yosemite National Park made with an iPad. The big, bold, bright works with clear blues and greens were absolute show-stealers.