News - page 1213

Despite being a brand targeted at creatives, along with Steve Jobs’ background as an acid-dropping hippie, Apple’s always been pretty resolutely anti-drug in its message. Perhaps that’s not such a surprise, really: When you become the most valuable publicly-traded company in history, it makes sense not to do things that could offend your investors.

Previously, Apple’s anti-drug ethos has meant that “Apps that encourage excessive consumption of alcohol or illegal substances, or encourage minors to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes, will be rejected.” Even when apps like the controversial cannabis-growing game Weed Firm do somehow slip through the cracks and make it to the top of the free iPhone games chart, Apple has booted them out as soon as it’s made aware of their existence.

But as marijuana laws change, so too does Apple.

Adobe’s Lightroom app for iOS is actually pretty good, but you have to pay for a Creative Cloud subscription to use it.

What if you could have the power of an editing suite like Lightroom without all of the extra fuss? You want just one app for editing pictures on the go, but it needs to be easy to use and full featured.

Enter Darkroom, the hottest new photography app for iPhone.

Apple is making iMessage and FaceTime harder to hack by turning on two-step verification for both services in an effort to tighten security for iOS and Mac users.

The extra security goes into effect today and gives users an extra layer of protection against hackers or anyone else trying to log in to your iMessage account to either impersonate you or steal data.

Along with doubling the max file size of apps, Apple introduced something else today for its third-party developer community.

TestFlight, the Apple-owned service devs use to beta test their apps before submitting them to the App Store, can now do controlled group testing.

Since the App Store’s debut in 2008, apps have never been able to be larger than 2GB. Today that changes.

Apple has notified third-party developers that they can now submit apps that are a max of 4GB in size. The change reflects the needs certain apps, namely games, have for larger file sizes as iOS becomes a more mature platform.

Apple Watch will borrow a lot of tech from the iPhone when it ships in April, but according to a new rumor from supply chain sources in China, Apple is planning to bring one of its wearable’s coolest features to the next iPhone.

The Economic Daily News has reported that Apple is considering adding ‘3D touch’ technology to the iPhone 6s, similar to Apple Watch’s Force Touch. According to the sources, Apple’s is planning to tap US-based Avago Tech as the main supplier for the iPhone 6S 3D touch technology.

When it comes to dying, who’s going to take over my Facebook account isn’t one of my biggest worries, but if you want to ensure that you’re killing it on social media from the grave, Facebook just rolled out a new feature that lets you give your account to someone when the Grim Reaper comes knocking.

Arganalth can look at an old floppy disk drive and see in it a second act.

The 23-year-old engineer from Lille, France, uses old computer hardware long overdue for the landfill to assemble an electronic orchestra that he conducts out of a suitcase for a growing audience tuned into his YouTube channel.

Arganalth — he prefers to use his YouTube name in interviews — creates strange but recognizable music with a network of hard and floppy disk drives powered by a Raspberry Pi.

It would have been hard to don a Xybernaut Poma wearable PC in 2002 without uttering the phrase, “Resistance is futile.”

What was arguably the first wearable computer had the look of a Borg, a cybernetic villain from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Borg’s design, a menacing mashup of species and technology, was badass, but Poma users just looked awkward. The computer’s processing unit was portable enough, fitting in a pocket or clipping to a belt. But once you added the keyboard to the forearm and a clunky-looking, head-mounted optical piece, your cool crashed like a bad hard drive.

Ever wanted to run Windows 98 on your iPad Air? Uh, chances are, probably not, and even if you did, it hasn’t been possible. At least not until now. Behold, Windows 98 running on an iPad Air 2!

I’ve always found the fetishistic quality of unboxing videos to be a bit strange, if I’m honest. Even weirder, though, are the quasi-sadomasochistic videos unleashed by “stress testers” like YouTube’s seemingly damaged Ukrainian tech lover hater TechRax, whose videos watch like an Apple ad directed by the Marquis de Sade.

Fifty Shades of Space Gray, amirite?

Anyway, TechRax’s latest video shows an innocent young iPhone 6 meeting its maker at the hands of some former soda cans heated into a hot liquid using a mini-furnace. If you’ve wondered whether it’s a good idea to store your beloved Apple handset in the same drawer as a puddle of molten metal, you’ll get your answer after the jump.

It’s not pretty.

Thanks to a groundbreaking deal between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, we’re finally about to see Spider-Man rejoin his Marvel brethren Captain America and Iron Man as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But having sat through a disappointingly botched reboot, how best should everyone’s favorite web-slinger be used? Forget about another tired origin story; 50 years of Spider-Man comics have given filmmakers plenty of great stories should they choose to adapt them–stories like the ones we’re about to suggest.

Without further ado, then, here are Cult of Mac’s picks for the Spider-Man comic arcs we’d love to see spun up on the big screen. Swing out past the jump for more details:

For those of us who have long been suffering under the tyrrany of iPhoto, Photos for Mac represents a beautiful new frontier of speedy and powerful photo-editing on the Mac. But if you’re an Aperture lover, Photos for Mac represents something more bitter: the total killing of Apple’s pro photo-editing suite in favor of a more consumer-oriented product.

If you’ve been hoping for a last minute reprieve, and for Tim Cook to step in and save Aperture, sorry, we’ve got bad news. Once Photos for Mac launches, you won’t even be able to buy Aperture on the App Store anymore.

Given Apple’s tendency to only do major redesigns for its iPhones every other year, we’re most likely not going to get a bold new iPhone form factor until late 2016.

With that said, however, Jony Ive’s design team don’t take too many days off — which means that there are constantly new ideas being churned out that may well radically change how we think of an iPhone looking. A new Apple patent application published today shows off an iPhone with a wraparound display, resembling something not a million miles away from a fourth- or fifth-generation iPod nano.

Until now, Apple’s been dead-set on making every iPhone thinner than the last, but the company’s proposed “wrap-around display” makes it seem like that strategy may no longer be on the cards.

Thanks to the wonder of drones, we’ve had a few airborne glimpses of Apple’s forthcoming Apple 2 campus in Cupertino. Until now, however, ground-level pictures have been in decidedly short supply.

That changed yesterday, when Apple gave reporters from San Francisco news outlet KQED an up-close-and-personal glimpse at its flying saucer-shaped headquarters, which will eventually house up to 15,000 employees.

Along with photos showing the development, the reporters also heard a few environmentally friendly factoids about the campus — such as the fact that it will use recycled water to flush toilets, solar arrays to meet the majority of energy needs, and that the older buildings Apple inherited when it bought the land were broken down and recycled for new building materials.

You can check out the images after the jump:

I’m not what you would consider a “gamer.” I dabble in mobile titles like Monument Valley and occasionally play Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart with friends, but few games manage to grab my attention for very long.

Yet there’s a new iPhone game I haven’t been able to put down for the past two weeks.

It’s called King of Thieves, and it’s from ZeptoLab, the maker of the hit App Store game Cut the Rope.

If you’re a Pinterest user with an eye on app discovery, Apple has the perfect deal for you. The companies have partnered to create “App Pins,” allowing users to install iOS apps without having to leave the Pinterest app.

App Pins work like regular pins on Pinterest’s virtual pinboard, only with the added functionality of an “Install” button next to the regular “Pin it,” alongside an extra “view this on the App Store” option. App Pins can be spotted by way of a small “App Store” badge that incorporates Apple’s logo.

“We can be a really powerful service for app discovery, which is a problem that still really hasn’t been solved,” Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp told The New York Times. “Our specialty is really connecting people to the things they want to do.”

Some U.S. carriers have historically been more lenient about unlocking phones than others, but starting today they are all mandated to provide unlocking once a customer’s contract is up.

Legislation put in place by the Federal Communications Commission back in 2013 takes full effect today, and carriers must comply with new policies on unlocking.

What if you had to pay a month’s wages up front just to get a job?

It’s a concept that’s largely foreign to Western culture, but bonded servitude is still rampant in other parts of the world, namely Asia. That also happens to be where much of Apple’s supply chain is located, and starting today the company is cracking down on the corrupt practice.

It’s hard to truly understand Apple’s astronomical size until you put things into context. With $178 billion in cash as of last quarter, you can start easily comparing the company to the gross domestic product (GDP) of large countries.

In fact, Apple would be the world’s 55th richest country right now, according to the latest data from World Bank.

Shares of Apple stock closed at an all-time high today of $124.88, bringing the company’s marketcap to a staggering 711.59 billion. Tim Cook couldn’t be happier with his company’s performance, but according to famous billionaire investor Carl Icahn, Apple’s stock should really be worth double.

In a letter posted to his Twitter followers, Carl Icahn said his firm has increased AAPL’s forecasted earnings per share in 2015 and believe the market should value Apple at $216. That’s not a price target. That’s what Ichan thinks they should be worth today.

According to Carl, the rest of the market still hasn’t caught on because they’re giving the company a significantly discounted multiple on its P/E ratio compared to the S&P 500.

What could possibly make the treacly, soft-focus trailer for the upcoming movie Fifty Shades of Grey any better than Steve Buscemi?

Nothing, that’s what. Unfortunately, even the googly-eyed, wacky-toothed character actor can’t save the awful trailer, as we can see here in this fan-made recut of the original Fifty Shades trailer.

Called “50 Shades of Buscemi,” even a shot of Buscemi waggling a big rubber dildo at someone off-camera (below) can’t make me want to see the film.

Google-owned robotics firm Boston Dynamics is no stranger to creating robotic beasts that can do freakish feats, but their latest robotic quadruped — a 160-pound doglike machine named Spot — takes the crazy factor to an all new level with a smaller, nimbler, more-kickable form factor.

To be perfectly honest, Spot scares the hell out of me. When Elon Musk warned about the possibility of humans becoming slaves to AI, this is what I imagined — legions of weird-looking robots that can go anywhere to hunt you down and put you in your place. Spot doesn’t feature any futuristic weapons to punish his human masters, but the cybernetic canine has some serious skills when it comes to exploring difficult terrain and balancing.

If you don’t think the robot threat is real, here are six GIFs of Spot in action that might change your mind:

We still don’t know the exact launch date of the Apple Watch, but if you just can’t wait to load up on accessories for your Apple wearable, the first Apple Watch dock is already available on Kickstarter.

ChronosDock, a “luxury” bedside dock, is the first Apple Watch accessory we’ve seen launch so far. Its makers, Kickshark, say it’s “the most indulgent, opulent piece of docking jewelry” they could imagine. It only costs $99, but they insist it’s “excessive in the extreme” to satisfy all you high-end fashionistas.

We think it looks kind of boring, but take a look for yourself:

Tim Cook made a big stand for climate change yesterday by announcing Apple’s plan to invest $850 million in a solar farm that will power the company’s Cupertino campus as well as all retail operations in California.

“We know at Apple that climate change is real,” Cook said yesterday. “Our view is that the time for talk is past and the time for action is now.”

Apple has already put its money where its mouth is by powering all data centers with renewable energy, but the Monterey solar farm is the biggest thing Apple’s ever done in renewable energy, and breaks the record as the biggest-ever solar procurement deal for a company that’s isn’t a utility.