D. Griffin Jones - page 16

 Apple Vision Pro is controlled by just five simple gestures you do with your hands. The Vision Pro gestures even work in the dark!

If you’re going to try on someone’s Vision Pro, or you’re lucky enough to buy one yourself, here’s how to use what Apple calls “the most advanced personal electronics device ever.”

While Vision Pro takes a physical form resembling ski goggles, the whole idea is that, unlike with a MacBook or iPhone, you don’t have a screen, keyboard, mouse or trackpad to interact with. It’s an invisible computer. Apple has a bunch of breakthrough gestures to make it work — here’s how to use them.

Can you get real work done inside a Vision Pro? Yes — although it comes with many asterisks.

It’s closely correlated to how much work you can do entirely on the web without specialized apps, although the virtual Mac display can smooth that down a bit. Surprisingly, typing in Vision Pro is great.

Working on Vision Pro has its annoyances, quirks and limitations, but I think Apple has built a very solid foundation here for a version-one product.

Check out our video or keep reading below.

Spatial photos and videos look incredibly lifelike in full 3D while wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset. But how do you take photos with Vision Pro? It might be confusing at first since there’s no Camera app in the headset. Instead, Vision Pro uses a new Capture app.

But don’t worry. Any photos or videos you take with Vision Pro will sync to your Photos library. And they’re fully compatible with your other Apple devices, although you’ll only see them there in a boring two dimensions, like it’s still 2023. Yawn.

Screen sharing from your Mac to Vision Pro is a great way to work inside the headset while using your Mac’s keyboard and trackpad. You can enlarge your Mac’s screen to enormous size, and surround it with apps that work inside Vision Pro.

It’s called Mac Virtual Display. Unfortunately, it’s limited to only one Mac screen. But set up right, it can be the ultimate big screen setup — without the actual big screens.

Here’s how to use your Mac with Vision Pro.

The Vision Pro Persona is a 3D representation of yourself that will appear to others in FaceTime calls. It also fuels the EyeSight feature, which shows a ghostly 3D version of your eyes on the outside of the headset to make the device seem less isolating. 

Many people criticize the Personas for looking unnatural, so the feature very much deserves its beta label. However, there are some things you can do to create a better one. If you didn’t create a Vision Pro Persona while setting up your headset, or want to redo it to make yours look a little less uncanny, I’ll show you how to do it at any time.

How do you force restart Apple Vision Pro? All computers lock up from time to time — even spatial computers you wear on your face. You don’t want to keep it on if it’s locking up; that could lead to a nasty head injury!

Here’s how to reboot or restart Vision Pro.

iOS developer Riley Testut, the brains behind AltStore (the original alternative App Store), has a great take on Apple’s plans to open up the App Store in the European Union

This is “everything I’ve been wanting for the past few years,” he said after Apple laid out its plans last week. “Even reading the announcement I was tearing up.”

Testut, who lives in Texas, has a vested interest in Apple loosening its grip on the App Store to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. He’s the co-creator of AltStore, a hacky skunkworks project that enables sideloading of iPhone and iPad apps. Now he’s working to transition AltStore into an officially sanctioned app marketplace that complies with Apple’s new rules.

In an exclusive interview with Cult of Mac, Testut talks about the hidden upside for iPhone owners around the world; the downsides of Apple’s strict new framework and fees; and the joys of making AltStore one of the first legit third-party app marketplaces in the EU.

Testut’s take on Apple’s plans for opening up iOS is perhaps the best to date, and well worth a read.

You can also watch the full interview on YouTube.

The 40-year history of Macintosh computers is a roller coaster of ages golden and dark.

Anything that lasts so long in the forefront of technology has to change to stay relevant. This once-plucky computer that began as an antithesis to the IBM PC, which dominated the world in 1984, is now itself a dominating force, ever pushing the needle in the world of technology.

How did this all happen? Let’s walk through 40 years of Macintosh.

Back in the early 1980s, Alfred DiBlasi made his bones selling tons of Apple computers on Long Island, New York. A diehard Mac fan and an undeniably colorful character, DiBlasi has decades of wild Apple stories to tell.

Like the time he met the two Steves — Jobs and Wozniak at a meeting in Manhattan. (Spoiler alert: While the prickly Jobs refused a handshake, Woz gave DiBlasi a big hug.)

These days, DiBlasi — one of the few people on the planet who uses a much-maligned “Trashcan” Mac Pro as a daily driver — posts things like incredibly detailed walkthroughs of the Apple Lisa and the NeXTCube on his YouTube channel.

Prior to the Mac’s 40th anniversary, DiBlasi talked with Cult of Mac about everything Apple, from the clunky computers that preceded the Macintosh 128K to how the machine evolved over time.

You can watch the full conversation on our YouTube channel, or read up on the highlights below. (We recommend you watch the video — DiBlasi’s a hoot.)

The SwitchEasy EasySelfie is a fantastically clever combination of three products — a selfie stick, a portable tripod and a camera remote — and it pulls off all three pretty well.

It’s cleverly designed and really well-made, and makes for a great mount for using Continuity Camera, among other things. If you’re looking for a portable and versatile way to mount your camera for all kinds of different things, the EasySelfie has you covered. Currently on sale with 20% off, making this $35.99 for a limited time.

2024 is going to be a big year for Apple products. The iPhone is due for a second year in a row of big changes. And the entire iPad lineup is getting refreshed. The rest of the Macs are being updated to M3 chips. The Apple Watch Series X may receive a radical design. And fourth-gen AirPods will bring pro noise cancellation features to the cheaper buds.

We have a new video that summarizes everything we know about Apple’s top products coming next year.

The iKier K1 Pro Max is a top-of-the-line laser engraver that will etch your creations into wood to make beautiful pieces of precision physical art. After extensive testing, I was impressed by the hardware and the pieces I was able to make.

Unfortunately, the machine is complicated to set up and the software let me down at every single step in the process. I never got it working with my everyday Mac, I couldn’t use the machine’s built-in software and the included third-party software (only offered with a 30-day free trial) is a convoluted mess of labyrinthian dialog boxes spawned from user interface hell.

Maccy is a fantastic macOS copy-paste manager that supercharges your clipboard history. It allows you to copy … and copy … and copy again, and still paste the first thing you copied. Of course, it works with cut-and-paste too. It’s super well-designed and very easy to use. With a simple keyboard shortcut, you can bring up a small menu to instantly paste something you cut or copied hours ago.

It’s a fantastic utility that will quickly become a must-have on every Mac you use. You can buy Maccy for just $9.99 on the Mac App Store, or build it from its open-source code yourself.

iOS 17 brought dozens of great features and changes, but the latest 17.2 update adds even more.

The headline feature is the new Journal app — other new tweaks come to iMessage stickers, NameDrop and Apple Music. If you have a new iPhone 15 Pro, you can record Spatial Videos and use the Translate app directly from the Action button. You can also customize more notification sounds and StandBy.

Here are the ten best features in 17.2.

Backup Status is a simple app that puts a Time Machine widget on your Mac desktop (or stows it away in your Notification Center). If you don’t want the Time Machine icon cluttering up your menu bar, this is a straightforward alternative.

Time Machine, of course, is Apple’s software that makes continuous backups of your files to a separate part of your disk, an external hard drive or network-attached storage. Everyone should use Time Machine.

And, after you set it up, you should try Backup Status, the fun little app that lets you easily monitor your Time Machine backups.

In iOS 17, many of the default sounds for notifications, alarms and timers have been changed — but how do you get back the old sounds if you don’t like the new ones?

A lot of people get deeply attached to the sound effects. If you want the old noises back, you can change (most of them) back manually. I’ll show you how.

Update: The new iOS 17.2 makes a nice change to alerts in third-party apps. Read on for more details.

You’re running out of time to buy the Apple gifts your loved ones want for the holidays. If you need to buy an iPhone, iPad or AirPods, you need to make a well-informed decision quickly — but how do you know which model to get?

We have a helpful new video that will explain the differences between various iPhone, iPad and AirPods models. Plus, we published detailed written buying guides for your convenience.

In Stray, you play as a cat wandering through a cyberpunk version of the Kowloon Walled City, the most densely populated city in the world (and a fascinating footnote of history). In this future, though, the city teems with robots who dream of visiting the outside world.

It’s been out for PC, Xbox and PlayStation for a while, but the Mac version is out now on the Mac App Store.

Stray is a gripping game in an exquisitely designed and immersive world that proves gaming on the Mac is on the rise once again.

AfterShip Package Tracker is a free app that does exactly what it says in the name: It tracks your packages. You can see all your orders in one place, when they will arrive, and how close they are geographically to you. Push notifications are fast and alert you when your items are on their way.

Plus, unlike just about every other package-tracking app for iOS, AfterShip Package Tracker is totally free, with no in-app purchases.

Google plans to purge old accounts starting in December. However, you can keep your Google account active and prevent it from being deleted. You have until the first day of December to save any inactive Google accounts.

What’s being cleaned out? Any Google account that’s been inactive for two years. If you received an email about a dormant account, you know for sure that you need to take action. However, that’s not foolproof. If your dormant account doesn’t have a recovery email set up, you’d never be notified in the first place.

If you have a bunch of alternate, backup Google accounts — as many do — here’s what you need to do.

In a tedious and awkward 10-minute video released Thursday, buzzy startup Humane gave a more thorough introduction of its Ai Pin. The video all but confirms my feelings that we are seeing the next hilarious Silicon Valley failure play out in real time.

Since co-founder Imran Chaudhri’s TED Talk earlier this year, where we got a vague introduction to the supposed iPhone-killer’s features, there remained a slim chance — one in a hundred — that the then-unnamed device wasn’t a total waste.

Any ounce of doubt has been washed away as this new video doubles down on the Ai Pin’s flaws and walks back its only positives. In fact, the introductory video clearly demonstrates why the device will fail: The AI gave completely wrong answers and provided no way to check their accuracy. It’s absolutely untrustworthy. This highlights the broader concerns surrounding Humane AI and its ability to provide reliable and accurate assistance.

Some lucky first-day owners of the new M3 MacBook Pro unboxed their machines Tuesday to discover a reversal of fortune: Their new Macs arrived with a broken version of macOS that can’t install software updates.

Some MacBook Pros shipped to customers with an unreleased (well, more like unintentionally released) build of macOS Ventura 13.5. This version can’t be updated to macOS Sonoma through the standard Software Update feature in System Preferences.

Here’s how to fix the admittedly rare problem.

The Kuxiu X36 Boom Mic Arm is a solid metal piece of gear for mounting a microphone to your desk. It has a clean, logo-free design that blends in with any setup.

Unlike other boom arms, the Kuxiu X36 isn’t free-floating and adjustable with a single finger — it’s a firm stand that will hold its position. It’s split into three segments, not just two, so it’s nonetheless highly adjustable.

After some months of testing, I was surprised to find a much better use for it than mounting my microphone. Read on to see what it’s best for.

Apple introduced the next generation of MacBook Pro and iMac, each powered by the next generation of its in-house silicon: M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. The Macs run faster than ever before thanks to smaller transistors and additional cores packed into each processor.

The products are already available to order — so is it time for you to upgrade? That all depends on which devices you have, so I’ve put together a buying guide with sharable images and a video to help you decide.

Yesterday’s “Scary Fast” Apple event, debuting the MacBook Pro and iMac with the M3 family of chips, was a short affair at just 30 minutes. But what if you only have, say, a minute and a half?

Here are the announcements from last night cut down to a 90 second video.