As Arnie would say, "Do it now!" Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Renderings of a supposed Spigen case for the iPhone SE indicate that the upcoming model will take most, if not all, of its design cues from Apple’s older iPhone 5s.
The iPhone SE reportedly has the same general shape as the iPhone 5s, with round volume buttons, a power button at the top and an ovoid or pill-shaped cutout for the flash, all of which sound nothing like an iPhone 6.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of MacPrepare for even better browsing on mobile. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Android
Google’s mobile Chrome web browser gets a new update today, which — according to the Chrome team — has “more than a barge full of performance and stability fixes.”
We’re not sure how many software fixes a barge would hold, but we feel confident in saying it’s a whole lot.
Your iPhone will always need to be recharged everyday. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Every year Apple introduces a new iPhone, and every year I get my hopes up that this will finally be the model that can go two or three days without needing to be recharged. But according to a lithium-ion battery expert, the odds of Apple adding a power source capable of boosting iPhone battery life like that are practically zero.
Dee Strand, chief scientific officer at battery research firm Wildcat Discovery Technology, says the throughput on smartphone batteries is rapidly improving every year. The problem is, new features are bogging them down.
The Microsoft Surface Book is a tablet and laptop in one. Photo: Microsoft.
Microsoft is taking a page out of Apple’s marketing playbook for its newest ads promoting the Surface Book, and the company threw in a few digs at the Mac while they were at it.
Rather than just focusing on the product, Microsoft’s new ads add a human touch by focusing on how the device has changed some professionals’ workflow. First up is photography Tim Flach, who uses a Surface Book and Surface Pen to precisely edit his incredible animal photography. If owning a Surface Book gave me killer shots just like Flach, I’d ditch my Mac too.
“Being able to use a pen like this on the screen directly with the image gives me a different relationship to it,” says Flach. “And I just can’t do that on my Mac.”
Split-screen finally comes to stock Android. Photo: GoogleSplit-screen finally comes to stock Android. Photo: Google
Google I/O doesn’t kick off for another two months, but Google won’t wait that long to drop its next-generation Android N upgrade.
Its first developer preview is out today for Nexus devices, and it comes packing a number of features swiped from iPad Pro and iOS, including split-screen multitasking, picture-in-picture mode, and bundled app notifications.
You'll be able to disable all notifications for Live Video on Facebook soon. Photo: Thomas Ulrich/Pixabay
Live Videos might be a boon to content creators who want to capture the attention of more of Facebook’s teeming throngs of users, but getting a ton of notifications from all the sources you’ve previously liked can be a serious pain in the pants.
Luckily, Facebook plans to release a new update that will let you turn off Notifications for Live Videos altogether, which should please most of the people complaining about it on Twitter.
It turns out that Tim Cook’s old high school in Robertsdale, Alabama, isn’t quite as fond of the MacBook is he is.
Robertsdale High, from which Apple’s CEO graduated in 1978, has swapped the company’s notebooks it was giving to every student for significantly more affordable Chromebooks built by Lenovo.
The iPhone 7 is already shimmering on the horizon. Photo: Eric Huismann
Manufacturers are gearing up for the iPhone 7, which means we’ll be getting our first blurry glimpses of what could potentially be Apple’s next-gen smartphone — courtesy of “leaked” iPhone 7 case pictures doing the rounds online.
No stereo? No problem. AmpMe app creates a sound system with all the phones at a party. Photo: AmpMe
AmpMe, the magical app that syncs multiple phones together to create one giant speaker, is getting a much needed update today that lets you take the party anywhere, even if you don’t have internet.
The Montreal-based startup revealed today that it has added a new ‘Offline Mode’ that will let users sync an unlimited number of phones together regardless of whether or not you have a data connection. And to make it easier to get the party started, the app has add a new ‘Auto-Join’ mode that makes it easier than ever to get the music listening party started.
Encryption is fast becoming the year's biggest tech story. Photo: Apple
As if the United Nation’s support wasn’t enough to show the tide is turning in Apple’s favor in its encryption standoff with the FBI, a newly-published poll suggests that registered U.S. voters are now evenly split over the year’s biggest tech story.
Parodies of Jony Ive and Apple’s rarefied advertising are nothing new, but you rarely get to watch a spoof featuring a comedian as talented as Sacha Baron Cohen.
To promote his new movie The Brothers Grimsby, the creator of Ali G, Bruno and Borat recorded a spot-on Apple parody, which shows that — despite the many who have aped it in the past — there’s still mileage in poking some good-natured fun at Apple’s way of selling us on its latest revolutionary products.
The government is lying to us? Color me surprised! Photo: Laura Poitras / Praxis Films
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden made a (virtual) appearance at yesterday’s “Blueprint for Democracy,” during which he threw some shade on the FBI’s claims that only Apple has the power to help it unlock the iPhone at the heart of the San Bernardino shooting case.
“The FBI says Apple has the ‘exclusive technical means’ to unlock the phone,” Snowden told the audience. “Respectfully, that’s bullsh*t.”
This is presumably before they break into the big tap-dancing number. Photo: AllThingsD
If you’ve long dreamed of seeing the epic tech rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates staged as a Broadway musical, written by two of the writers from Cartoon Network’s Robot Chicken (and who hasn’t?), well, I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a bit longer.
That’s because the somewhat unflatteringly-titled Nerds has seen its Broadway opening — originally scheduled for April — cancelled after one of the sources of funding pulled out of the project.
The Internet has exploded recently over reports claiming that evildoers can trick Siri, Apple’s digital assistant, into giving them access to your iPhone without entering your passcode. But our own testing confirms that these claims aren’t just exaggerated; they’re hilariously mistaken and wrong.
Posts warn against the “terrifying new way” that teh haxxorz can get into all of your secret data, but the people reporting on and testing the supposed methods are really just taking a really long path to unlocking their own phones normally.
Are you ready for The Woz in wax? Photo: Madame Tussauds
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is well on his way to becoming a life-sized action figure.
Not really, but we’re nerds, and that’s how we prefer to think of the prospect of Madame Tussauds’ waxperts immortalizing a person. Woz’s statue is set for an unveiling later this month, and the museum has published some great footage and pictures of the subject’s sitting, which included a lot of photographs and measurements as well as a healthy dose of green gloop.
Apple TV is the home of March Madness. Photo: Cult of Mac
When the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship tips off on March 15th hoops fans will have an all-new way to get their fix using Apple TV.
The new March Madness Live streaming app will contain an exclusive Apple TV feature that lets users watch two games side-by-side, but you’ll need to be a paying TV subscriber to use it.
A young man in China was found guilty of selling his 18-day old daughter in exchange for enough money to buy himself a new motorcycle and iPhone.
The 19 year-old man identified as ‘A Duan’ by local Chinese media reportedly found a buyer for his newborn through the popular messaging app QQ and negotiated the entire deal without the consent of the child’s biological mother.
Yup, water-resistance is one of them! Photo: SamsungYup, water-resistance is one of them. Photo: Samsung
As the iPhone’s biggest rivals, Samsung’s latest Galaxy smartphones have to be good enough to convince consumers that they’re a better buy. None do that better than the new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.
According to the overwhelmingly positive reviews published today, the duo have a number of big advantages over the iPhone 6s. Here are 7 of them.
Wonder how Facebook users will react to this new software. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Spend some time around any teenager and you’ll probably hear some new slang that you don’t understand. If you do get it, and you’re not a teenager or young adult yourself, chances are it’s already gone the way of the dodo in the minds and twisted hearts of said youngsters.
Facebook is hoping to combat this with a new software patent that would detect and gather new lingo as it appears on the social network, making it available to everyone.
Does the iPhone really need to get bigger? Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
If the iPhone 6s Plus seems just a little bit too small in your monstrous hands, fret not dear giant friends: Apple may be planning to go even bigger with a super-sized iPhone 7s Pro.
Apple is looking to add a 5.8-inch OLED display to the iPhone in 2017 or 2018, according to a new rumor that claims Samsung is already on board to supply the screens.
Paying at the pump is about to get a lot easier. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Filling up your car with gasoline is about to get a lot quicker, now that the world’s biggest oil company is finally adding Apple Pay to its pumps.
Starting today, ExxonMobil is activating Apple Pay at more than 6,000 gas stations across the U.S., allowing customers to buy gas or a car wash without having to bust out their wallets.
Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs movie bombed hard at the box office and failed to win anything at the Oscars, but the MTV Movie Awards are apparently a bit kinder than the Academy and the movie-going public. The Jobs semi-biopic just got nominated for the movie awards show’s Best True Story prize.
Clinton had no-so strong words for followers of the current privacy debate. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Other than a lasting love of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton’s poll-driven opinions on hot-button issues change as often as most people change their underwear.
But saying whatever the popular opinion is poses a problem when, as with Apple’s current privacy vs. “national security” standoff with the government, people voters are undecided on the issue. What do you do when someone asks you about it on the campaign trail, then?
If you’re the possible future POTUS, you take the bull by the horns and, well, offer an opinion that’s about as inoffensively middle-of-the-road as a Coldplay song in a wallpaper commercial.
The government would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling iKids. Photo: Olly Browning/Pixabay
The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to overturn a ruling protecting Apple from unlocking the iPhone at the center of a New York drug case. The recent ruling from a New York magistrate judge stated that the government can’t compel Apple to unlock an iPhone involved in a criminal investigation, using the All Writs Act.