It’s a fun game for a Friday: Find the Mac mini in today’s featured setup photo, above. Or maybe it’s not so fun, because you’re doomed to failure. It’s not visible because the user mounted it on the back of his 5K Samsung ViewFinity S9 external monitor (which just happens to look just like its ultimate foe, Apple’s 5K Studio Display).
“It’s interesting to see how minimalist every Mac user seems to go with their setups,” noted a commenter. So our user quipped, “Apple store energy, hehe.”
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 5 recap, the maddeningly mysterious show delivers a somber and tense episode called “Trojan’s Horse.” It picks up the pieces after last week’s not-so-shocking revelation that Helena Eagan had been masquerading as innie Helly R., and Irving B. paid with his innie life to reveal it.
Last week’s episode 4 brought us into a wintry wilderness for the world’s weirdest team-building glamping trip. It turned a spotlight on Irving B. for the first time, but it also showed his likely demise as an innie as he took an uncharacteristically bold stand in the woods. Now he gets a Lumon-style funeral.
Sennheiser is a legendary name in audio. And right now you can get the German company’s acclaimed Momentum 4 Wireless Headphones — one of AirPods Max’s many excellent competitors — for $130 off, at $249.95 in all five colors, on Amazon. The regular price is $379.95.
In a face-off like wireless earbuds vs. wired earbuds and headphones, most self-described audiophiles will insist wired wins. But Bluetooth headphones and earbuds have come a long way in recent years in terms of solid audio quality and reliable connectivity. That’s a big part of the reason why today’s featured MacBook Pro setup user chooses AirPods Pro 2 almost all of the time, despite owning excellent wired headphones and in-ear monitors. It really just comes down to convenience.
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Apple’s comprehensive new health study, its largest yet, investigates how its mobile devices and other technology can improve users’ physical and mental well-being, the iPhone giant said Wednesday. The Apple Health Study, now available through the just-updated Research app, comes in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate.
“We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of how technology can improve our understanding of human health,” said cardiologist and Harvard Medical School professor Calum MacRae, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator. “We are excited to be part of the Apple Health Study, as it will continue to explore connections across different areas of health using technology that so many people carry with them every day.”
The redesigned Powerbeats Pro 2 unveiled Tuesday are Apple’s first earbuds to feature built-in heart rate monitoring. The fitness-oriented wireless earbuds feature ear hooks for a secure fit during workouts. Plus, they come with Apple’s H2 chip and bring adaptive EQ, Spatial Audio and improved active noise cancellation with Transparency Mode.
Apple calls the new Powerbeats Pro 2 “the most advanced product we’ve ever developed.”
Everybody loves a big, beautiful external display in a computer setup — and this LG OLED TV monitor is a great way to go. Today’s setup is built around a 42-inch LG OLED TV plugged into a MacBook Pro.
Also: See if you can guess what the cool-looking desktop wallpaper showing on the display pictures. Answer below.
Even folks who don’t pay for access to TV channels can stream the Super Bowl live — and for free — on any Apple device or on the web. For Super Bowl LIX this Sunday, Fox Sports plans to stage a “takeover” of the Tubi streaming app. The free live Super Bowl stream will include a pregame run-up and the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar. And it requires no viewer sign-in.
So now what’s your excuse to blow off the year’s biggest sporting event? Oh, you probably hate football, not to mention all the commercialist hoopla that comes with America’s modern-day gladiatorial bloodsport. Oh well. For tens of millions of others, Super Bowl Sunday is like a national holiday.
If you don’t have big bucks to spend on high-end, audiophile-worthy speakers and headphones to use in your computer setup, you can’t really go wrong with uber-affordable Edifier audio gear. Today’s featured M2 MacBook Pro setup — an exotic entry from Nepal, no less — keeps the tunes flowing through a nice set of Edifier bookshelf speakers and a comfortable pair of over-ear noise-canceling headphones. They simply get the job done well — without breaking the bank.
Sonos has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, but that doesn’t mean its audio gear isn’t great. Sonos Ace headphones made a big splash when they came out as an AirPods Max rival, and right now you can grab Ace headphones for $100 off on Amazon. That’s a great deal on great cans.
★★★★☆
In our Severance season 2 episode 4 recap, we follow our friends from Lumon Industries’ Macradata Refinement (MDR) department into a wintry wilderness central to Kier Eagan’s lore. In the most bizarre corporate team-building event ever, two of them find forbidden love and one may never return. And it’s the first episode to take place completely outside of Lumon’s halls without visiting outies’ lives.
Last week’s episode 3 went further down innie rabbit holes in amusingly confounding ways. Ultimately, an improved-yet-still-dangerous outlaw reintegration procedure seemed like it might be outie Mark S’s path to returning to his beginnings at Lumon, cracking the sinister company’s mysteries and finding his wife. It made likely plot trajectories a little more clear. But episode 4 actually unravels some mysteries, and gives Irving B. (John Turturro) center stage for the first time.
Everybody loves Pixar’s beloved toy-lamp mascot, Luxo Jr., right? Apple just made a new lamp-like robot prototype that looks super similar. The iPhone giant’s machine learning research team developed an expressively social robotic prototype in desk-lamp form, according to a recent paper, blog post and video.
The new robot could figure into rumored plans for a robotic home hub — and it could reshape how we interact with smart home devices.
Two killer portable power station deals just came online at Amazon for your recreational charging needs and beyond — Anker Solix C1000 Portable Power Station and a version of it that comes with a 200-watt solar panel to keep the juice flowing. You can get them both on Amazon at up to 57% off.
So we know beloved hit Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso will return for a fourth season. Though sources now say its production start will hit a delay of a few months. But perhaps more interesting than that: When it comes together, it will center on the formation of the AFC Richmond women’s soccer team. That departure from the show’s previous focus on the men’s squad is a major Ted Lasso season 4 shift.
Rumors have noted Coach Lasso himself (Jason Sudeikis) may be less involved this season, if at all. Maybe that’s reflected in the plot pivot. The fictional Premier League team AFC Richmond tapped a low-level American college football coach to manage the club — a ludicrously unrealistic premise, yet a charming and funny show — but for the new women’s squad he’ll merely consult, perhaps, and maybe only by SMS.
While plenty of people find Apple’s Studio Display a bit too expensive, many owners of Mac setups love it. Today’s MacBook Pro user justifies the expense because they use Studio Display for photo editing. But others disagreed that the $1,600 monitor is all that great a display for photo editing, with one person calling it “less than ideal” and backing that up with several technical points, below. They might not worry casual users much, but could be worth considering for pros like graphic designers.
These days celebrity chefs have their own TV shows. They shill their product lines and cookbooks all over the place. But if you go back far enough, you can find the very first superstar cook who started it all, and in a very different time. That’s what Apple TV+ did with Carême, it’s upcoming French-language drama series. Like the book it’s based on, it chronicles the fascinating life of Antonin Carême, “the world’s first celebrity chef who secretly served as a spy in Napoleon’s Europe,” as the streamer put it.
The series, premiering April 30, stars César Award winner Benjamin Voisin as Carême. Apple TV+ offered several appetizing photographs Wednesday as a first look at the show.
Severance costars Patricia Arquette and Adam Scott faced off in a funny, face-melting hot chicken wing-eating contest Tuesday in a new video from the show Hot Ones Versus.
In the words of the show, “today, these co-stars will have two choices: Tell the truth, or suffer the wrath of the Last Dab. Whoever eats the most wings, loses!”
The wings are spicy enough for the show to call them “Wings of Death,” and their spicy pain showed in the actors’ suffering as well as the teeny, tiny little bites they took when they missed a question.
The new Opera Air web browser brings meditation and mindfulness features directly to users, the Norway-based browser developer said Tuesday. The new browser’s approach to surfing the web combines Opera’s established browser technology with wellness tools typically found in dedicated meditation apps. Perhaps more traditional browsers like Safari and Chrome will follow suit.
“The web is beautiful but it can be chaotic and overwhelming,” said Mohamed Salah, Opera’s senior director of product. “We decided to look at science-backed ways to help our users navigate it in a way that makes them feel and function better.”
Apple TV+ trots out the word “gritty” in press materials that go with its gripping new trailer for Berlin ER, the upcoming German-language hospital drama formerly known as Krank Berlin. And for the first time, PR for the show seems to actually live up to that description.
The trailer makes the new series look raw, with a visceral realism about the harsh realities of an inner-city hospital that makes me want to watch it, even if I have to use subtitles (or maybe, ugh, dubbed English). The eight-episode series starts streaming on Apple TV+ February 26.
In Surface season 2, amnesiac Sophie enters a whole new world in London on her search for lost memories. But she ends up embroiled in a British aristocratic scandal, tangling with people far more dangerous than they seem on the, er, surface, according the new trailer Apple TV+ dropped Monday.
The psychological thriller returns for its eight-episode second season on Apple TV+ Friday, February 21.
With high-profile data breaches on the rise, the digital landscape becomes increasingly treacherous for both individuals and organizations. Fortunately, tools like Surfshark Alert’s free Data Leak Checker can protect your precious personal information.
Surfshark products offer advanced levels of protection against growing online threats. And right now, you can lock in security for less with a great deal on Surfshark One+, a top-of-the-line package that adds an easy-to-use tool for removing your compromised data from the internet.
What do you think, does today’s featured setup photograph, above, look the product of artificial intelligence? Something too neat and maybe a little off about it? Lots of people thought so. But the user insists only the desktop wallpaper showing on the Thunderbolt monitor is AI-generated. And the MacBook Pro user finds BetterDisplay sharpens text on his external display, a 32-inch BenQ 4K screen.
With hip-hop icon Kendrick Lamar taking center stage at the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show on February 9 at New Orleans, Apple kicked off the artist’s Road to Halftime festivities Monday.
“Throughout his career, Kendrick Lamar hasn’t met the cultural moment so much as he’s defined it,” said Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s global head of content and editorial. “He is an artist’s artist — authentic to his core. We couldn’t be more thrilled to watch him headline the third Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, in what’s sure to be another moment we’ll all be talking about for decades.”
In a significant shift in its augmented reality strategy, Apple suddenly discontinued development of its lightweight AR glasses project this week, according to a new report Friday. This marks another adjustment in the company’s pursuit of mainstream wearable technology. The project, known internally as N107, aimed to create normal-looking glasses with built-in displays that would connect to Mac computers.