A smartphone giant just came out with its first car. No, Apple hasn’t about-faced on its plans to scrap its decade-long Project Titan car program. Instead, Chinese tech behemoth Xiaomi unveiled a sporty electric vehicle Thursday it hopes will rival those made by Porsche and Tesla. It’s the Xiaomi SU7 EV series.
Beautiful workstation serves up double the fun with dual everything [Setups]
A New York City-based magazine editor showed off a beautiful computer setup that serves up twice the fun because it boasts two of everything. Well, not everything.
But it doubles up on a lot of the main gear — two M3 MacBooks Pro, two Studio Displays, two sets of Philips Hue smart lights, a pair of Yamaha speakers on stands and, believe it or not, two Magic Trackpads and a Magic Mouse.
Read more about the setup’s whys and wherefores below, and check out that gear list of links at the bottom of the article.
Dual curved displays set at crazy angles for sane reason [Setups]
If you’re considering going with two external displays in your computer setup, you might find some inspiration in today’s featured MacBook Pro workstation with two slick gaming displays.
The laptop drives two stacked, ultra-wide, curved displays that are mounted — and even carefully angled — for the best ergonomics, resulting no eye or neck strain.
Behind-desk lighting takes MacBook Pro rig to ‘next level’ [Setups]
A humble light strip can have a huge impact on a computer setup and even the room it’s in, providing functional lighting as well as setting a mood with white or colored lights at different temperatures (cool, warm, etc.). Today’s featured MacBook Pro setup uses nothing but a Nanoleaf Essentials light strip behind the desk and a Xiaomi monitor lamp to light its way. And they do so to great effect.
Read more about the lighting below, plus the setup’s use of a Sonos Bluetooth speaker for audio and an iPhone with Continuity Camera for effective videoconferencing.
M1 MacBook Air knows how to have fun [Setups]
Some setups are no-nonsense, just the facts, ma’am — strictly utilitarian. Others are fanciful and full of toys. Today’s featured setup leans toward the latter, with its burgeoning population of Transformer figures crowding the shelf above the display and even related wall art.
And there’s plenty of gaming going on there, too, via a custom gaming PC and Nintendo Switch OLED in addition to an M1 MacBook Air and 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Oh, and it has one of the coolest speaker systems ever made, too.
MacBook Pro rig employs gaming and portable monitors, rare keyboard and mouse [Setups]
We love it when a computer setup we’ve looked at before gets a facelift, or some sort of significant update. Today’s featured MacBook Pro setup stuck with the laptop, an interesting usage of a portable display and a highly unusual mechanical keyboard. But it added a beautiful gaming monitor, a rarely seen vertical mouse and some other details.
And of course it kept its beloved Lego Wall-E. And it even found a practical use for extra Lego bricks.
iPhone shipments grow while smartphone market shrinks
iPhone shipments grew 3.3% year over year during the second quarter of 2022, according to a market-research firm. That’s in contrast to the global smartphone market, which declined 7%.
Apple made up 16% of the total market, its highest second-quarter performance in more than a decade.
Smaller brands chip away at Apple’s earbuds market share
Apple continues to dominate the global market for true wireless earbuds with its AirPods and AirPods Pro. But a proliferation of competitors in China and elsewhere with cheaper options claims increasing market share.
iPhone pulls in double the revenue of any rival
Everyone knows that Android outsells iPhone, but that’s not the whole picture. Apple takes in a lot more revenue than any rival smartphone-maker. It’s more than double Samsung’s, and no other company gets even that close.
And in the quarter before that, iPhone pulled in more revenue than all its rivals combined.
Telling a marvelous Mac mini workstation story in pictures [Setups]
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. So today’s M1 Mac mini-driven computer setup, with eight smashing photos, must be roughly equivalent to 8,000 words. But instead of burying you in a horrible cascade of text, we’ll let the pictures tell most of the elegant rig’s story.
The newly updated setup has some exceedingly nice touches. Each of the photos below includes a little commentary.
Graphic designer runs racy dual-monitor MacBook Pro rig [Setups]
Ever show off your painstakingly constructed computer setup only to have everybody race past the gear just to ogle what’s showing on the screen(s)? The desktop wallpaper.
It’s kind of like that with today’s featured setup, the brainchild of a graphic designer.
He put together the dual-monitor setup around a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro with a lineup of nice touches. And he also made the neato race-car wallpaper that got most of the attention.
Xiaomi wants to beat iPhone by matching its ‘product and experience’
Xiaomi is in “a war of life and death” with iPhone, according to the company’s CEO, and the only way it’s going to regain its position as the top smartphone-maker in China is by matching Apple’s “product and experience.”
The Chinese company was once famous for taking a little too much inspiration from Apple and rolling out copycat products. It has (mostly) moved away from that in recent years, and it hasn’t helped its market share.
iPhone leads the pack in 5G smartphone share and profits
iPhone is the biggest, most profitable 5G smartphone in the world, according to the latest data from one research firm. As 5G adoption skyrockets, Apple continues to hold a lead over Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, and other vendors.
That’s despite an increase in demand for foldable devices and more affordable 5G handsets from brands like Honor.
When your workstation is so clean it ‘looks like a render’ [Setups]
A lot of computer setups we run across online look staged. They’re so perfectly, well, you know — set up. They boast impressive equipment. Some exhibit a spare beauty one would almost hate to disturb. Others scream hardcore productivity like the fate of all the companies in the Fortune 500 company rest solely upon them.
New house with Tesla, new home office with Tesla toys [Setups]
Redditor StevenJ95 recently moved from an apartment to a house, allowing him to have a new home office. For the first time. He’s got room enough in there for his MacBook Pro, his Samsung curved ultrawide monitor and even his Tesla Model S, Cybertruck and Supercharger.
OK, those last three are two diecast model cars and a cute little desktop Tesla charger for phones and such. But he does have a real Tesla Model 3 — which he sensibly parks elsewhere — as well as a lot of enthusiasm for the brand, judging by how he decorates his setup.
Designer dazzles with MacBook Pro MX1 concept [Setups]
Designer and concept artist Antonio De Rosa came out with a drop-dead gorgeous rendering of a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an MX1 chip earlier this week that Cult of Mac reported on as a look at something possibly close to the real thing, based on recent leaks and rumors.
A substantially modified 16-inch MBP could be announced as soon as the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 7.
As for the designer of the speculative Apple concept, we decided to chat him up, much like we did recently with another render-master we know.
Wait, couples setups aren’t a thing, are they? [Setups]
OK, maybe it’s a tad premature to freak out over couples’ setups being some sort of thing now. After all, the sample size here is just one, and we have no intention of carrying out any kind of exhaustive and exhausting survey or study on the matter.
Redditor thateconomistguy presents a “couples study space” where he and his girlfriend pore over economics research side by side under the frames in which they plan to display their upcoming master’s degree diplomas.
Mood-lit musician isn’t grooving to M1 Mac mini’s sound [Setups]
Redditor skylar_schutz makes music on keyboard and guitar, but their Mac mini M1’s sound quality doesn’t do it for them. That’s not a huge shock. Many mini owners, past and present — if they’re even close to identifying as audiophiles — use AirPlay 2, Bluetooth or USB-wired speakers with their setups.
“The sound coming out from the M1 mac mini is just so-so … wouldn’t recommend it if you aim to enjoy listening to music from it, more so if you intend to do music production,” skylar_schutz wrote in reply to a question.
Oops! Xiaomi founder backtracks after being caught using an iPhone
Xiaomi CEO and co-founder Lei Jun has been caught posting a message using his trusty iPhone rather than one of his company’s smartphones.
In a recent post on Weibo, which is China’s answer to Twitter, the Xiaomi exec recommended a series of books to his followers. But he also inadvertently advertised Apple — since the post reveals it was made with an iPhone.
That iPhone notch? It’s probably not going away anytime soon
Apple’s 2020 flagship iPhone is rumored to have a pristine screen free of that dreaded notch.
But a social media post from a Xiaomi vice president claims the “entire industry” is far from solving the light transmission problems caused by placing front-facing cameras behind the screen.
Samsung’s AirDrop clone will debut with Galaxy S20 next month
Samsung is developing its own AirDrop competitor that will make its debut alongside the Galaxy S20 next month, according to a new report.
Leaked Quick Share screenshots reveal the feature will let users “share instantly with people nearby.” This is separate from the AirDrop rival Google is reportedly planning for all Android devices.
iPhone 11 Pro eliminated in first round of blind camera test
iPhone 11 packs Apple’s most impressive cameras to date. They’re some of the best available in any phone today. So you might be surprised to find they were just eliminated in round one of a blind camera test.
A photo taken on iPhone 11 Pro secured just 30% of the votes when up against a snap from the OnePlus 7T Pro — a handset that costs $400 less.
iPhone 11 Pro scores highest in 2019 for video camera
Apple has seen the rise of competitors launching smartphones with cameras declared by reviewers and consumer labs as surpassing the iPhone.
But the iPhone 11 Pro dismissed some creeping doubts when it launched this fall and it will end 2019 at the top of several recap and best-of lists.
Among the first with its 2019 review is independent lab DxOMark, which tested 31 new smartphones this year and ranked the 11 Pro as its favorite for video.
iPhone 11 Pro camera beat by Huawei and Xiaomi’s new phones
The camera on the iPhone 11 Pro Max received high marks for performance from the independent testing lab DxOMark. It is one of the best smartphones for photo and video.
It’s just not the very best smartphone camera.
Xiaomi’s new phone packs an insane 108MP camera
Notorious Apple copycat Xiaomi is ready to up the ante on the iPhone 11 Pro Max with its newest phone that packs not three, not four, but five camera lenses on the back.
The CC9 Pro from Xiaomi isn’t the first smartphone to pack five lenses but it is the first Xiaomi phone to and it’s also armed with a 108MP sensor that churns out high resolution photos the latest iPhones can’t match (in size).