The Mosquito Coast, the original cautionary fable about off-the-grid living, gets a shiny new update on Apple TV+ just as we’re all itching to get back out in the world after a year in quarantine.
Shepherded by director Rupert Wyatt and starring Justin Theroux, the show is an interesting addition to the ever-growing Apple TV+ lineup. It’s paranoid, fraught and full of personality.
Apple’s colorful new M1-powered iMacs, the new iPad Pros (also with M1 chips) and the faster Apple TV 4K go on sale Friday. If you want to ensure you get yours on launch day, you need to get ready to preorder the right way.
Check out our preorder tips before this new Apple gear goes on sale at 5 a.m. PDT on April 30.
We want to help you master Control Center, one of the most powerful and underutilized features on Apple devices. Cult of Mac’s Control Center Pro Tips series will show you how to make the most of this useful toolbox on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac.
Lost your Apple TV’s Siri Remote? Control your set-top box using Control Center on your iPhone or iPad instead. It’s super-simple to set up and you get all the buttons you need for complete control.
We’ll show you how to use it.
According to (generally) reliable Apple tipster Jon Prosser, Apple will release the new iPad Pros with M1 chips and the faster Apple TV 4K with redesigned Siri Remote on May 21. And a leak straight outta Cupertino indicates the new M1-powered iMacs will arrive that day as well.
Apple showed off the new devices during last week’s Spring Loaded event. However, at the time, Apple kept the launch date vague, saying only that they would be available sometime in the second half of May. The devices will be available for preorder starting Friday, April 30.
Rose Byrne’s dark comedy Physical just got a release date: June 18. And Apple TV+ also dropped a teaser trailer for the show set during the exercise craze of the 1980s.
Get your first taste of the comedy/drama now:
Apple came up short at Sunday night’s Oscars, losing its Best Animated Feature nomination (for the great animated movie Wolfwalkers) to Pixar’s Soul.
As brilliant as it was (and Cult of Mac‘s resident reviewer hailed it as the best animated flick of the year) Wolfwalkers was very much a long shot. This would have been Apple TV+’s first Oscar. Instead, it was scuppered by Pixar winning its 11th (!!) award in the Best Animated Feature category.
iMac … iPad Pro … Apple TV 4K … AirTag …
So much new Apple hardware, so little time!
And that’s not to mention the purple iPhone or the upgrades and updates coming to Apple Podcasts, Apple Card and more. Jump right into all our coverage of this week’s big “Spring Loaded” Apple event in Cult of Mac Magazine. (And if you’re already caught up on that, you’ll find plenty of other Apple news, reviews and how-tos.)
Our iOS mag is free and makes reading easy and fun, but you also can find the headlines below.
Music fans rejoice! 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything is an upcoming Apple TV+ documentary series exploring the musicians and soundtracks that shaped the culture and politics of 50 years ago.
It’ll premiere on Apple’s streaming video service on Friday, May 21.
Apple just added a brand-new feature to Apple TV that works with your iPhone to color calibrate your TV. It’s really simple to use and the results can be terrific. What’s more, you don’t need the newest Apple TV.
The new Color Balance tool is available on Apple TV models released in 2015 or later. Here’s how to use it.
The Russians have taken over the moon! The second season of Apple TV+ space soap For All Mankind ends with bloody faces, broken marriages, uncertain futures, and a whole boatload of moon crime.
If you’re wondering if any of it’s handled well, read on. But you know the score by now, don’t you?
The redesigned Siri Remote that comes with the next-gen Apple TV 4K won’t work with certain games available on tvOS.
Since it doesn’t come with an accelerometer or gyroscope sensor, it won’t be compatible with games that rely on spatial positioning data from the controller as an input.
Today is Earth Day and, to celebrate the occasion, Apple’s introduced a plethora of “Earth Day programming” across its various platforms, including the App Store, Apple TV+, and Apple Watch. For today, at least, no matter where you go for your Earth Day reminders, Apple’s got you covered.
Ninety-four-year-old David Attenborough is a beloved institution — and he may have helped Apple rack up one of its biggest viewership wins for Apple TV+ thus far.
According to Deadline, the Attenborough-narrated The Year Earth Changed documentary special is the most-viewed documentary currently on Apple TV+ in the United States. That’s ahead of high profile titles like Beastie Boys Story, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, and Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You.
Wow, that was the speediest, most jam-packed Apple event in recent memory.
It was so quick-moving, we all got whiplash. There was barely time to catch your breath between announcements: Here’s a new purple iPhone. Fuggedaboutit, here’s a new Apple TV, and new AirTags. Oh, and hers’s new iMacs — and iPads!!
In an hour, Tim Cook and Co. managed to introduce a raft of products with dozens of new features and technologies while dazzling us with some pretty jaw-dropping promo videos.
Once again, the prerecorded format worked well. The promo videos in Tuesday’s “Spring Loaded” event looked super. They hit us with a great mix of head-spinning effects and angles, humor and product placement.
Here are some thoughts and initial reactions to some of the major announcements:
It’s 4/20 and Apple’s big iMac and iPad Pro launch event was a total trip. The new Mac desktop comes in a rainbow of colors, and the M1 processor in the latest tablet will blow you away. And there’s AirTag too, at long last.
Grab some snacks and get ready to find out what the new products mean for Apple users and for the company’s future.
This week on For All Mankind, Russians are blockading the moon and Ed Baldwin’s going up to set ’em straight. Can old-fashioned American ingenuity prevent the reignition of the Cold War?
Be honest, are you even watching Apple TV+’s alt-history space race show?
Two of Apple TV’s big nature shows just returned back for their second seasons mere months after they debuted. Tiny World is the cuter of the two. Its micro look at a macro world remains charming, cute and sometimes despairing and gross, but never so much you couldn’t show it to kids.
Apple TV+ docuseries Earth at Night in Color delivers a fresh batch of majestic nighttime sights, cruel natural phenomena and fascinating perspectives in its second season, which premieres today. The show didn’t quite reinvent the nature documentary wheel, but it still offers a welcome retreat from the horrors of 2021.
A nature special and a cautionary tale, The Year Earth Changed delivers a whole mess of qualified good news that you’re going to wish didn’t come with so many strings attached to it. An engaging, largely drone-shot 45 minutes of TV, the new Apple TV+ documentary about the environmental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic won’t change your life. But it will make you feel slightly better about having just spent the last year indoors.
It’s a busy day for Apple TV+ — with plenty of new material to watch on the Apple streaming video service. In addition to a new episode of For All Mankind, there is a plethora of new nature documentaries, narrated by some big names, and more.
Here’s what Friday, April 16 has in store for subscribers.
Apple TV+ landed the rights to Fathom, a documentary about the quest to unravel the mystery of why humpback whales sing. And maybe even how we can communicate with them.
It’ll premiere on Apple’s streaming service this summer.
Apple and Skydance Animation teamed up to create Blush, a short film about a stranded astronaut. It’s written and directed by Joe Mateo, whose credits include Big Hero 6 and Prep & Landing.
The upcoming film is the first in a multiyear partnership to create animated movies and shows for Apple TV+.
Apple’s streaming service green lit Black & Blues: The Colorful Ballad of Louis Armstrong. The documentary film promises a “definitive” look at the musician’s life and legacy built on the filmmakers’ access to never-before-seen materials.
It’ll be the latest production of Ron Howard’s Imagine Documentaries, along with Apple Original Films.
The next Apple product-release event will happen April 20. Invites went out Tuesday morning for the virtual “Spring Loaded” event, just hours after Siri leaked the date.
Naturally, Apple didn’t announce what’s on the agenda. But rumors point to multiple new iPads, as well as the possibility of next-gen AirPods, a faster Apple TV and the long-awaited debut of AirTags item trackers.
Lisey’s Story, an Apple TV+ series based on a 2006 Stephen King novel, will debut on Apple TV+ on June 4. It’s about the widow of a famous author who discovered a passageway to a parallel dimension that inspired his work.
Unlike many screen adaptations of King’s work, the horror master himself wrote the scripts for Lisey’s Story. The eight-part series stars Julianne Moore and Clive Owen. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions produced the show.