David Snow - page 124

In the tradition of media personalities helming book clubs — Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon — Apple Books welcomes a new book club with a new host. The Canadian is not exactly a household name in the U.S., but he has a track record with Apple. It’s Apple Music Hits live radio host George “Strombo” Stroumboulopoulos, who said in a tweet on Tuesday he’s going literary.

The new club is called Strombo’s Lit. Bookworms in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia can check it out now on the Apple Books app.

If you’d like a change from plastic or silicone cases for your iPad Pro, you have a new option. Accessories maker Nomad rolled out two new premium leather products Wednesday, the Modern Leather Case and the Modern Leather Folio. Depending on how you feel about leather, you may find they offer a touch of class without much bulk.

Both products feature full-grain leather. Their slim design offers protection mainly because of specs like a raised TPE bumper and a polycarbonate layer.

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When you spend loads of time at a desk, it’s natural to wonder how you might remain chained to it but still somehow get exercise. That’s why under-desk treadmills exist, of course. But can you really get things done while walking in place?

Today’s featured M1 MacBook Pro setup answers the question and offers up a couple of other tantalizing tidbits, like a killer iPad stand and affordable bookshelf speakers with isolation pads.

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Nothing, the audio brand from OnePlus founder Carl Pei, just updated its Ear 1 true wireless earbuds to include Siri voice support. That makes the inexpensive earbuds a little more competitive with competitors like AirPods and AirPods Pro. After all, the Ear 1 buds already have a lot of premium features.

CalDigit said Tuesday its newly released Thunderbolt Station 4 dock for MacBook Pro sports 18 ports — the most ever on a Thunderbolt 4 dock. The company said it’s also the only TB4 dock with 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet as well as 98W of charging power.

Dell said it has started shipping two new monitors that are the first on the market using LG’s new IPS Black Technology, rolled out at CES in January. IPS Black promises 35% deeper blacks than typical 4K displays, which tend to have poor contrast in favor of other benefits (mainly brighter colors). That’s effectively doubles the usual contrast ratio to 2000:1.

If you depend on your display for the best possible image — say, like a designer does — the new monitors could offer the great color IPS displays are known for, but with solid contrast, too.

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Apple TV+ set a premiere date of April 29 and put out an initial trailer for the Apple Original horror-thriller series Shining Girls on Friday. And it’s seriously spooky. What with all the blurred reality and scary-shapeshifting-killer vibes, the trailer makes the show look both disturbing and disorienting.

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When Apple demonstrated its new Universal Control feature during its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote back in June 2021, it made Apple fans drool. Too bad Cupertino made everyone wait longer than expected to get their hands on it.

But now, Universal Control is finally in beta testing ahead of its public release, and the anticipatory drool is once again flowing — especially among those who get to test it out.

The owner of today’s iMac Pro-based featured setup, a game developer and blogger, is no exception.

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Since Apple Music launched in 2015, it has offered first-time subscribers a three-month free trial — a very tempting proposition in a competitive streaming market. But now the service has cut the free trail for first-timers to one month, starting this week.

Apple Music continues to offer a six-month free trial to those who buy eligible audio devices.

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In a first look at season 2 of the political thriller Tehran, Apple TV+ put out a photograph showing the series’ new cast member, Emmy Award-winner Glenn Close. And the streaming service said the first episode will premiere on May 6.

Anyone with a curious cat knows the desktop can be one of their favorite spots. Sometimes it’s like they’re trying to ensure you can’t work, as they sit or stretch out right on top of the keyboard or in front of the screen. And that’s just when you’re sitting there. Who knows what they do when you’re away. Other than dreaming up other ways to hasten your unemployment.

Lucky for you, today’s featured computer setup shows a simple method for protecting peripherals like input devices — keyboard, mouse, perhaps a trackpad — from pushy pets. And if you’ve got canines, take heart. It also works for dog slobber.

Apple users do the darnedest things with old gear. Recently a guy stuck a USB-C port in an iPhone X and got $86,000 for it on eBay. We profiled a Romanian developer who designs games for souped-up vintage Macs. Then there was the guy who merged an M1 Mac mini with an iMac G4.

And now we find a clever TikTok user crafting a retro-cool iPad case with an Apple Watch charger out of a classic iBook G3 laptop.

A new Apple TV+ trailer for the Apple Original documentary series Lincoln’s Dilemma shows Honest Abe in a new light, as historians reflect upon what he was really about and how the changing country challenged the president who never asked to be “The Great Emancipator.”

The four-part series hits Apple TV+ all at once, not one episode at a time, on February 18.

Bacteria is everywhere. Health experts say a lot of it is actually beneficial rather than harmful, but it can still give you the “icks.” If you’re a person who wipes down gadgets a lot because you know your hands and fingers are basically Petri dishes gone wild, Targus rolled out a new active stylus for iPad on Thursday that might suit you.

It’s the new Targus Antimicrobial Active Stylus for iPad, designed to remain 99.9% free of bacterial growth for the life of the product.

Philips Hue unleashed a dozen new lighting scenes in the Hue app on Monday. So now you can dress up your HomeKit-connected lighting with delightful colorations like Amber Bloom, Painted Sky, Orange Fields and Blue Planet — among many others.

The release comes soon after the company put out a trio of cool vintage-vibe lights for outdoor use.

The rumored Apple Car may not be on the verge of rolling off the assembly line, but someday a version of it may have sunroof glass that you can darken or lighten with the touch of a button or with a Siri command.

That’s according to a patent the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted Apple this week for a sunroof with variable-opacity glass. That means a driver could adjust its transparency.

It’s that time of year again. No, not the dead of winter. Well, yes, actually — for many it’s the dead of winter. But it’s not only that. Valentine’s Day comes along on February 14, as it does every year, obliging many to buy gifts for their significant others.

But, lucky for you, this year the  Cult of Mac Store has a nice discount on what could be just the thing: the Goldenerre Red Heart Healthy Set for the Apple Watch. And 10% of sales goes to charity! See below for more information.

Who doesn’t love good optical illusions? And they’re especially cool when they result from an unexpected action that works as well as the expected action. Today’s featured computer setup surprised us with a floating display.

Thing is, though, the screen is not mounted on the wall. And it’s not levitating, either.

Apple TV+ released a tantalizing first look in photographic form at the highly anticipated second season of Foundation. The epic series is based on Isaac Asimov’s award-winning stories. And the streaming service revealed 10 new cast members set to join Emmy Award nominees Jared Harris and Lee Pace in the new season.

The much-lauded and often-pirated adaptation chronicles the stories of four individuals transcending space and time. They overcome deadly crises, shifting loyalties and complicated relationships that will ultimately determine the fate of humanity.

The award-winning app Carrot Weather, known for a touch of the snark in its forecasts, rolled out a series of major updates in version 5.5 Wednesday. Set to launch at 7 a.m. PT, they include rebuilt weather maps and some firsts for a general-purpose weather app, creator Brian Mueller told Cult of Mac.

“The maps have been completely rebuilt from the ground up to make them more readable and faster to load,” he said. “I also added a ton of major new features, some of which have never appeared in a general-purpose weather app like Carrot before.”

Known for its flexible tripods and mobile lighting, Joby is now covering the content creator market for audio recording like a blanket. It rolled out five new microphones in its Wavo lineup to take on rivals like Rode, Shure and Sennheiser at several different price points.

The new mics mean more options for vloggers and audio streamers of all stripes. Four of the mics are available now and one, the Wavo Pro DS, comes out in March.

Joby’s deeper embrace of the microphone market doesn’t come as a complete surprise. After all, its parent company, Vitic, recently bought two microphone brands — Rycote in 2018 and Audix in January.

Following up on its popular and pricey Mojo portable digital-to-analog (DAC) converter and headphone amp, Chord Electronics now claims a world-first “lossless DSP” (digital signal processor) with zero sound-quality degradation in its new Mojo 2.

If you really want your wired headphones or speakers to sound amazing when paired with a digital audio source like an iPhone or MacBook, you might even pay the new gadget’s hefty $725 price.

Apple is no stranger to aggressive legal actions meant to protect the company’s image. In its latest move, the company filed a lawsuit against Ukrainian indie film director Vasyl Moskalenko, who wrote a comedy film titled Apple-Man.

And no, the film, currently in production, does not talk about the Cupertino tech giant or its products. It’s a superhero satire about a guy who can levitate apples. You see, in a bit of classic superhero movie plotting, his DNA got blended with DNA from the fruit.

The new iMac Pro with a mini-LED display rumored to launch this-coming spring might not come along so soon. It now looks more likely to show up sometime during the summer, display analyst Ross Young said Monday.

In recognition of Heart Month, aka February, Apple is rolling out a series of new activity challenge and heart-health resources to support users’ efforts to stay healthy.

Also toward that end, the company hopes you’ll learn a thing or two from preliminary trends shown in the Apple Heart and Movement Study.