David Snow - page 32

Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed details about the company’s approach to artificial intelligence and defended its Vision Pro headset in an extensive interview Wednesday. In a now-familiar refrain, he discussed the company’s strategic entry into generative AI while addressing criticisms about Apple’s seemingly delayed response to the AI boom.

“We never talked about charging for it,” Cook said of Apple Intelligence. “We view it sort of like multitouch, which enabled the smartphone revolution and the modern tablet.”

Tesla is rolling out a significant holiday software update, headlined by the launch of its first Tesla Apple Watch app. The new app, long expected and finally available next week, will allow owners of Tesla electric cars and trucks to use their Apple Watch as a digital key to lock and unlock their vehicles. That eliminates the need to carry a smartphone (at least for that reason).

Users can also view battery charge levels, control climate settings, and remotely open the front trunk (“frunk”) directly from their wrist.

While I’ve focused on my own workstation just a few times in several years of handling Cult of Mac setups coverage, it’s hard to resist an opportunity to extoll the virtues of my favorite over-ear headphones while they’re deeply discounted for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I added the headphones to my workstation recently, and right now you can pick up Beats Studio Pro at Best Buy for $159.99. That’s about $10 less than the discount I nabbed on Amazon for the normally $350 cans (although you should not pay that full price because you usually don’t have to).

Update: This fantastic Black Friday deali s still in effect for Cyber Monday!

If you use a desktop computer like Mac mini or Mac Studio — or if you typically hunch over a MacBook or other laptop — it’s time to bring beautiful views to your computer setup with a big, bright external display. And with the holiday season upon us, you can monitor Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals with plenty of Amazon bargains on external displays with 4K or 5K resolution to choose from. That includes every iteration of Apple’s popular Studio Display at $300 off!

See below for the best Black Friday monitor deals we’ve seen. And don’t miss our roundup of the best Apple Black Friday deals.

Update: While most of the Studio Display options are sold out, plenty of other deals are still in effect for Cyber Monday. And some discounts are even better now.

When Apple unveiled M4 MacBook Pro models on October 30, I preordered an M4 Pro MacBook Pro for $1,999. And I lined up a $705 trade-in of my M1 Pro MacBook Pro to help ease the financial pain. Now I see Black Friday/Cyber Monday has set a new Amazon price on my exact model at $1,749 — $250 less than I paid. I really can’t recommend (or envy) the machine at that price enough. It’s a fantastic price tag on a power-packed laptop.

Update: This MacBook Pro deal remains in effect for Cyber Monday!

Black Friday and Cyber Monday HomePod deals aren’t as extensive as you might find on other products, but at least you can save a few bucks on Apple’s smart speakers. We found early Black Friday savings at B&H Photo on both HomePod 2 and HomePod mini, and we’ll update this post if sweeter bargains come along.

Currently, the prices are as cheap or cheaper than even major warehouse discounters like Costco and Sam’s Club (which admittedly offers the HomePod mini for a penny less than B&H). Plus, if you’re searching for a Black Friday deal on HomePods at Amazon and coming up blank, you’re not going crazy. The retailer doesn’t stock HomePods, possibly because it’s trying to sell so many of its competing Echo smart speakers.

If you’re looking for deals on other Apple gear, don’t miss our big roundup of Apple Black Friday deals.

Update: These deals are still in effect for Cyber Monday. 

Seems like the new Macs with M4 chips just got here — and you can already get great deals on them! Why? Well, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, of course. While it’s still a couple weeks away, that never stops deals from coming earlier and earlier every year, just like holiday decorations and pumpkin-spice-flavored everything. Check out early Black Friday Mac deals, below.

Update: The deals below saw updated on the runup to Black Friday and then again for Cyber Monday.

We don’t recall seeing low prices on standard iPads any lower than a couple you can find right now on Amazon for Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Those low price tags are on an iPad 10 (Wi-Fi only, 64GB) at $50 off as well as iPad 10 Wi-Fi + Cellular models for $50 off. Plus you can nab an iPad 9 model for up to a record $138 off, depending on which color you choose. Check the links below and gift yourself or someone else Apple’s entry-level tablet.

Update: Since we first called out the savings below on November 14, nearly every iPad Black Friday deal had gotten better. We also updated the post for Cyber Monday.

These days its seems a “national day” exists for every conceivable thing — and on Saturday, November 30, that includes unsubscribing. In other words, it’s time to unsubscribe from unwanted emails and manage paid subscriptions. For example, do you even open half the emails you get? Do you know how many subscriptions you pay for? Well, there are apps and other tools for cleaning up your subscription life so you can get on with your actual life.

The Black Friday sales period in late November can be a great time to stock up on practical items, whether they’re gifts or just items for yourself. Take chargers, power banks, USB-C hubs and data storage solutions, for example. Everybody can use them, and Ugreen Black Friday deals abound on Amazon for such items. Markdowns range from 15% to 35% off. Check out a selection of sale items below.

Ready for a cinematic experience that transports you to the heart of London during one of its darkest hours? Consider director Steve McQueen’s Blitz, a surprisingly moving period piece now streaming on Apple TV+. As you’ll see in our Blitz review, if you’ve got holiday downtime to spare, this makes a good diversion.

The gripping film offers a powerful glimpse into the resilience of the human spirit during World War II’s London Blitz. It was a relentless bombing campaign associated with Germany’s aggressive “blitzkrieg” strategy. Here are three reasons why you should watch Steve McQueen’s Blitz.

If you want a full iPad experience in a super-portable design that’s comfortable to hold and use anywhere, iPad mini is the answer. And for Black Friday, Amazon just posted a combination of discount and coupon savings equalling $99.01 off the base tablet in all four colors — blue, purple, space gray and starlight. And you can also save on models with more storage. Needless to say, iPad mini 7 makes a stellar gift for a special someone.

Apple said it will once again run its annual charitable giving campaign coinciding with World AIDS Day on December 1. And that gives holiday shoppers an opportunity to easily contribute to global health efforts while making their seasonal purchases. In addition, purchases from Apple’s Product (Red) collection contribute to the cause anytime.

In a big win for Apple TV+, the French-American-Japanese series Drops of God captured the prestigious International Emmy Award for Best Drama Series at a ceremony Monday night in New York, according to reports late Monday and Tuesday.

The win strengthens Apple TV+’s growing reputation for delivering compelling international content and marks another successful adaptation of popular manga for the streaming platform. Fans will be excited to know that Drops of God Season 2 is set to return, promising even more gripping storytelling.

Today’s M4 Mac mini user was once devoted to MacBook Pro. And he still owns two of the laptops, for work and personal use, but he recently added a new M4 Pro Mac mini, and he absolutely loves it. He’s into gaming, so he added cool gaming peripherals like a mechanical keyboard and microphone from HyperX and a light-and-speedy mouse from Corsair. Check them out, along with all the rest of the setup’s gear, below.

Normally season-two episodes of hit Apple TV+ sci-fi series Silo air on Fridays, but Apple TV+ said it plans to move upcoming episode three to Wednesday, November 27, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend celebrated in the United States. As in the past, the streamer apparently makes that move to try to maximize viewership while people are home recovering from Turkey Day food comas.

And as many Apple TV+ watchers know, the streamer often posts new episodes the evening before the air date. So you might be able to watch it as early as Tuesday night.

Lots of folks who do live video streaming or video calls opt for purpose-built webcams rather than what comes in laptops or displays. That’s because the standalone cameras usually feature better-quality images and video plus more features in general. Today’s M4 Mac mini user fixes an Obsbot webcam atop his external Lenovo display. We rarely if ever see it, but it packs a lot of interesting features.

Black Friday arrives on November 29, but many sales on tech gear kick off a week or more before that. Take Sonos, for example. You can find a range of great deals on headphones, speakers, soundbars and bundles of different products starting Thursday (November 21) in the Sonos Black Friday sale. Most of the bargains are at both Sonos and Amazon. Go to Sonos to see the whole sale on one page and grab the bundles. Follow links to either Amazon or Sonos below for various Labor Day deals on Sonos audio gear.

Apple Music named Billie Eilish Artist of the Year for 2024 on Thursday. That makes her the first artist to receive the honor twice. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter previously won the inaugural award in 2019.

“Since day one, Apple Music has supported my music and artistry, and I am both honored and humbled to receive this recognition as Artist of the Year this many years into my career,” Eilish said.

Keychron is pretty much synonymous with mechanical keyboards, having flooded the market with solid and affordable models for years. And when it comes to Black Friday mechanical keyboard deals, the maker is discounting keebs from its Keychron and Lemokey lines on Amazon, with 15% to 25% off deals on more than 100 keyboards. Below you’ll find a sampling of cool options.

And you can nab even better deals on Keychron mechanical keyboards at Amazon bargain site Woot! — up to 63% off — and more will be added Thanksgiving week, the company said.

A group of Philadelphia friends pose as DEA agents in a small-time grift only to find themselves risking life and limb as they accidentally uncover the biggest narcotics operation on the East Coast, Apple TV+ revealed Wednesday in a “first look” at a new crime drama. The upcoming series is Dope Thief, and the streamer included plenty of photos from the show to give you a taste, as they say.

The eight-episode season debuts with the first two episodes March 25 on Apple TV+. A new episode follows each Friday through April 25.

Recently, the phrase “Mac mini gaming” took on a whole new meaning. That’s because Apple released the M4 and M4 Pro Mac mini desktop computers in a much smaller form factor and with unprecedented performance. Today’s MacBook Air and MacBook Pro user is over the moon about what his new M4 Pro Mac mini can do with World of Warcraft and other games.

Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and other members of legendary British/American rock band Fleetwood Mac tell their story in their own words for the first time in an upcoming “definitive documentary,” Apple said Tuesday.

Five-time Academy Award nominee and Irving G. Thalberg winner Frank Marshall directs the Apple Original Film.

“I am fascinated by how this incredible story of enormous musical achievement came about,” said Marshall. “Fleetwood Mac somehow managed to merge their often chaotic and almost operatic personal lives into their own tale in real-time, which then became legend. This will be a film about the music and the people who created it.”

After testing Creative Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds, I’ve found them to be a fascinating glimpse into the future of portable audio technology — albeit with some growing pains at this early stage. The $149.99 buds — often discounted — represent one of the first consumer implementations of xMEMS solid-state driver technology. But the impressive audio quality doesn’t make these earbuds as great as they could be because of other shortcomings.

Aurvana Ace 2 came out about a year ago, but this marks my first time experiencing xMEMS Labs micro speakers I’ve written about several times, so I was happy to try them out.

In what could be a breakthrough for wearables and other electronics, xMEMS Labs unveiled Sycamore on Tuesday. It’s the world’s first full-range near-field MEMS micro speaker. Measuring just over one millimeter thick, the innovation promises to make some noise with compact gear you don’t put in your ears. Those would be items like open-fit earbuds, such as AirPods and sport earphones, smartwatches like Apple Watch, AR glasses and headsets like Vision Pro, and other consumer electronics.

Like other xMEMS micro speakers that bring solid-state sound to earbuds and headphones, the new technology uses a novel “sound from ultrasound” platform. It generates full-frequency audio from ultrasonic waves within a chip-sized form factor.

“With Sycamore, mobile electronics can now achieve thinner, more stylish form factors while maintaining big, rich sound,” said Mike Housholder, xMEMS VP of marketing and business development. “With better performance at both the low and high ends, Sycamore delivers powerful, full-range audio for smartwatches, smart glasses, and any other small, mobile form factor that engineers dream up.”