This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest rumors about the iPhone 16 Pro’s camera make it sound better than ever. That’s no surprise, considering Apple makes a big deal out of the iPhone camera every year. But we couldn’t be happier to have even finer photographic tools at our disposal.

Also on The CultCast:

• A new retro game emulator for iPhone called Delta is a … game changer! And this is just the start of a revolution brewing in the App Store.
• Griffin knows some Mac settings you should change for a better experience.
• There’s lots of big Apple TV+ news, from a new show from the writer behind Slow Horses and extensions of popular series including Silo and For All Mankind.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

If your Mac is running slow, there are a few things you can do to speed it up and better understand what’s slowing it down.

It’s not just that your Mac is old — although that is an important factor. It could be that you don’t have enough memory, especially if you like to use Google Chrome. You may have a bunch of apps running in the background. There also might be dust in the vents, keeping your Mac from running nice and cool.

Check out our latest video or keep reading to learn why your Mac is slow and how to speed it up.

April 18, 1996: Apple unveils a massive $15 million promotional tie-in for the Mission: Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise.

Designed to promote the PowerBook, which Cruise uses in the spy flick, the marketing campaign comes at a particularly bad time. Attempting to climb back into the black after reporting its largest quarterly loss ever, Apple is in the middle of trying to perform its very own impossible mission. And that’s just the start of the problems.

An audio interface serves as a bridge between your Mac and external audio sources like microphones and musical instruments. The hardware is essential for great sound reproduction, whether you’re a professional producer or a beginner. So finding the best audio interface for your Mac can significantly enhance your recording and mixing experience.

In this guide, we’ll explore top audio interfaces available for Mac, including several affordable options. We’ll discuss their features, performance, compatibility and price points to help you make an informed decision.

April 14, 1986: The “low-cost” Macintosh 512Ke brings hardware upgrades — and a bit of confusion — to the low end of the Mac lineup.

The Mac 512Ke is an “enhanced” (hence the “e”) model of the Mac 512K. The upgrade addresses complaints that the original Mac lacked enough memory. The 512Ke adds a double-density 800KB floppy drive and a 128KB ROM to the Mac 512K formula.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: A surprise leak about Apple M4 chips says they’ll come sooner than almost anybody suspected. But nobody’s shocked to hear that they will focus on bringing AI capabilities to Macs.

Plus, there’s news of Ferret-UI, a new Apple project designed to help AI understand how humans use iPhones. Apple’s definitely tin a rush to cash in on tech’s biggest buzzword!

Also on The CultCast:

• With Project Titan abandoned and hopes of an Apple car destroyed, Cupertino goes on a desperate search for its “next big thing” to boost revenue.
• The new Humane Ai Pin, previously lauded as a potential iPhone killer, is DOA. The first reviews are shockingly bad.
• And we wrap up with an all-new edition of What We’re Into! Spoiler alert: It’s all sci-fi this time around.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

Setting up a new Mac is an experience in itself. But once you finish your initial setup, you should change these Mac system settings for a better experience. These five easy tweaks to default Mac system preferences will speed up your workflow and save you time.

Irrespective of whether you are a new or long-time Mac user, below are five settings to change on your Mac. Keep reading or watch our latest video.

Mac users won’t need to wait until 2025 for the Apple M4 processor, according to a reputable Apple tipster. The replacement for the current M3 will emphasize AI — and will start appearing in Macs this autumn.

A previous report said improvements in the upcoming Apple A18 iPhone processor, also launching this fall, will focus on artificial intelligence, too.

Progress is reportedly going well at Apple’s chipmaker TSMC on development of the 2nm and later 1.4nm processors to power the 2025 through 2027 Mac and iPhone models.

Getting these chips into production is a critical part of keeping Apple at the forefront of technology.

The Mac pointer (also called the cursor) is black with a white outline by default, but you can change the pointer color if you want to make it more prominent. Plus, you can even change the Mac pointer size. 

You might lose track of the small cursor if you have low vision — or just a really big monitor. Making the pointer larger can make it easier to see. 

Changing the pointer color to, for instance, bright red can make it easier to see, too. You can choose any color, like light purple or green, to fit the aesthetic of your setup. (This is especially cool if you have a matching colorful iMac.)

Here’s how to change your Mac pointer size and color.

If you are in the market for a slim laptop, there are few options better than the 15-inch MacBook Air. But if you look beyond Apple’s ecosystem, there’s the Dell XPS 15. It packs a slim and lightweight design and offers more value for money than the MacBook. So, which 15-inch laptop wins the MacBook Air vs. Dell XPS 15 smackdown?

Find out in this buying guide, which compares the two laptops on their designs, displays, performance, ports, battery lives and prices.

April 7, 1997: Apple’s System 7 operating system receives its last update with the shipping of Mac OS 7.6.1.

The update brings a few bug fixes and support for Apple’s new PCI Power Macs and the PowerBook 3400. Most importantly, it marks the end of the System 7 era, which dawned way back in 1991.

After Apple’s thunderous launch of the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips a few months ago, these chips likely will roll out as spec bumps in the MacStudio, Mac Pro and Mac mini later this year.

An M4 MacBook Pro remains a possibility for this fall. (I suspect M4 will be the first “must-have” Mac upgrade for anyone still on an M1-series chip.)

April 5, 2006: Apple introduces the public beta of Boot Camp, software that allows users with an Intel-based Mac to run Windows XP on their machines.

Boot Camp will officially arrive in Mac OS X Leopard, which debuts at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference a few months later.

Apple’s upcoming M3 Ultra chip won’t consist of two M3 Max processors merged together, according to information leaking out of Cupertino. The change from its predecessors would free up designers to make the next-gen Apple silicon even more powerful.

It even raises the possibility of an M3 Extreme, a workstation-level processor that would give the Mac Pro a reason to exist.

If you stumble across a webpage or a link in a different language, you can instantly translate the website to English directly from Safari. Unlike Google Chrome, Safari even translates the text inside images using Live Text.

And, if you accidentally change the language of a website to one you don’t speak, you can turn this feature on to help you change it back. At Cult of Mac, we use the feature to translate rumors or blog posts often written in Chinese, Korean or Japanese, like this.

You don’t need to select the words paragraph by paragraph and copy them into Google Translate (or even Apple’s own Translate app). Get the entire page in English at the tap of a button. Here’s how to make the most out of this handy Safari feature.

March 23, 1992: The “headless” Macintosh LC II arrives, wooing value-oriented customers with a beguiling mix of updated internals and budget pricing.

Designed to take up minimal space underneath a monitor (sold separately), the Mac LC II is destined to become a hit. In retrospect, the entry-level machine is roughly analogous to today’s Mac mini.

Should your next Mac be a portable or a desktop? More than 90% of Macs sold are laptops, and it’s easy to see why — MacBooks are light while offering best-in-class performance and battery life. Still, the “iMac vs. MacBook” quandary remains.

In fact, there are some compelling reasons to stick to the iMac (or other desktop Macs like the Mac mini or Mac Studio). You save money and also wind up with a more reliable machine.

Check out our latest video or keep reading below to help you decide.

Security researchers have found a serious exploit in all Apple M-series processors. The hard-wired flaw could potentially could be used by hackers to get user credit card information or read encrypted messages.

The flaw exposes precious encryption keys, and it’s baked into the hardware — so it can’t easily be patched without a performance penalty. Here’s what you need to know.

Apple’s Safari web browser packs loads of privacy features that will keep your online activity hidden from ad networks, user tracking and data farms. But are you sure you have everything turned on? Some of Apple’s most important privacy-protecting features don’t come enabled by default.

In light of Google baking ever-more invasive user tracking into Chrome, there are even more reasons to use Safari instead. If you want to make the most out of the best and most secure mainstream browser, here’s how.

The recently launched MacBook Air with the Apple M3 processor performance slows down significantly if pushed too hard when in clamshell mode (with the lid closed). Thermal throttling is the culprit.

That said, the problem mostly shows up when using Apple’s consumer-grade notebook for tasks it’s not designed to handle.

March 19, 1990: The ultra-fast Macintosh IIfx makes its debut, sporting a hefty price tag appropriate for such a speedy machine.

The fastest Macintosh of its day, it boasts a CPU running at a “wicked fast” 40 MHz. It gains an additional speed bump from a pair of Apple-designed, application-specific integrated circuits. Prices start at $9,870 and run up to $12,000 — the equivalent of $23,434 to $28,492 in 2024 money!

Privacy-preserving URL protection and beefed-up password protection are coming to Google Safe Browsing for the popular Chrome browser for macOS and iOS, Google said Thursday. The Chrome security update comes to Macs, iPhones and iPads first. Android devices will see them later in March.

Apple’s M3 MacBook Pro packs the best bits of its more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max siblings at a lower price point. At $1,599, the laptop is also $400 cheaper than its siblings.

Amazon’s latest deal drops the price of the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro by $199. The discount means you can get the machine for as low as $1,399.

Apple fixed the slow storage speed that plagued M2 Macs on the M3 MacBook Air. Early testing indicates the entry-level M3 MacBook Air delivers significantly faster read/write speeds than its predecessor.

The slow SSD transfer speed only affected entry-level M2 Macs due to them using a single-chip NAND.