Not everybody needs, wants or can afford an Apple display. Luckily, many good options abound for use with a Mac, including the 34-inch BenQ Ultrawide Creator Monitor featured in today’s exceptionally nice M3 Pro MacBook Pro setup. And it’s ideally situated on a handsome Oakywood dual-monitor stand.
★★★★☆
Sometimes people take car chargers for granted as merely functional necessities. But Pitaka challenges that with its new MagEZ Car Mount Pro 2 Qi2, a sleek and innovative device that fast-charges your iPhone or other smartphone and streamlines your in-car experience. It takes up little space as it brings your handset’s screen in sight.
As as a Qi2 device, it gives everyone MagSafe-level charging. And the company also makes a MagSafe edition, of course. It’s a great accessory to keep in the car, especially if the car lacks CarPlay on its infotainment screen.
The Apple Design Awards recognized 14 “best-in-class” apps and games, the iPhone giant said Thursday. It will hand out the awards, which celebrate excellence in design and outstanding technical achievement, to winners at WWDC24 on Monday.
“It’s inspiring to see how developers are using our technology to create exceptional apps and games that enhance the lives of users,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “This year’s winners have demonstrated how apps can create powerful and moving experiences — and we’re excited to celebrate their hard work and ingenuity at WWDC this year.”
And this year the awards added a new spatial computing category.
Creative Technology’s new Creative Zen Hybrid SXFI over-hear headphones and Creative Zen Air SXFI true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds offer an immersive, three-dimensional soundscape through Super X-Fi technology, the company said.
That’s another way of saying “spatial audio.” And both noise-canceling devices are affordable. Now available for preorder, the cans list for $99.99 and the buds go for $79.99.
In a surprising incident at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, an Apple Watch played a pivotal role in helping a determined passenger track down her stolen luggage when Spirit Airlines couldn’t.
You expect this sort of thing from AirTag, a dedicated tracker. But this time, an Apple Watch and the Find My network came to the rescue.
Some people are happy typing away on quiet membrane keyboards like Apple’s Magic Keyboard. Others are obsessed with pimping out their clickity-clackety mechanical keebs with the exact key caps, switches and design flourishes they prefer. Today’s M3 Pro MacBook Pro setup goes for the latter style with a Keychron Q2 custom mechanical keyboard.
It’s an excellent, moderately affordable option in a crowded market.
Last chance: Save a whopping 40% on SwitchEasy’s great Skin Silicone Magnetic Apple Watch Band. For just $17.99 (regularly $29.99), you can get a great-looking magnetic band that’s super comfortable and great for the office or the gym. But hurry: The sale ends soon.
The Skin Silicone band is a great example of a comfortable, stylish, durable and easy-to-adjust band. We gave it four-and-a-half stars in our hands-on review. The magnetic closure keeps it secure on your wrist, while getting it on or off is a snap. And the soft silicone feels great.
It’s a hot seller, and we have it on sale exclusively for Cult of Mac readers.
Audio brands and manufacturers can now buy cutting-edge reference designs for solid-state, all-silicon micro speakers online to bring new generations of true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds and in-ear monitors (IEMs) to market faster, xMEMS Labs said Tuesday.
This is another step toward realizing the “ultrasonic revolution” I wrote about in-depth in November 2023. In it, old-school speaker technology still used even in tiny earbuds may give way to new solid-state tech providing the full sonic range digitally compressed audio has compromised.
“Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl,” classic rocker and noted audiophile Neil Young once said. He was getting at all the sonic detail lost to digital compression in forms like MP3 files.
HomePod (2nd generation) is a great smart speaker, but the $300 price tag holds some folks back. That’s $600 for a pair. But now you can get a great deal on HomePod 2 for a price of $175 for one, or two for $350, thanks to a sale at Verizon.
Sorry, not the white one, just the midnight option. But still!
Qualcomm tried a new spoof of a legendary Apple ad campaign Sunday, coming in 14 years late and more than a few dollars short. The new ad for Arm-powered PCs stars “I’m a Mac” actor Justin Long pretending that notifications would drive him away from his MacBook.
The ad appeared at the end of Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon Computex 2024 Keynote: The PC Reborn.” You can see it and Long’s other work for Apple and competitors below.
Some computer setups just seem to have it all. Today’s featured workstation sports a new M3 Pro MacBook Pro with hefty amounts of memory and storage, plus a speedy Thunderbolt 4 dock connected to a well-curated selection of peripherals. Even the gear stands and furniture are especially nice.
Apple will overhaul its Settings app across iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 when it unveils the updates at WWDC24, according to a report Friday. In other words, not everything at the big developers conference will be about AI.
Update: Control Center, which provides easy access to frequently used features on iPhones (as well as Macs and iPads), should see changes, too. Apple will upgrade it “with a new music widget and improvements to how it operates smart home appliances,” Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman wrote over the weekend in his PowerOn newsletter.
For years Keychron made its bones on good mechanical keyboards. Now it’s jumping into the scissor-switch game with a pair of Keychron ultra-slim keyboards that are direct Magic Keyboard competitors.
They looks the part, include solid features and beat Apple on price by a mile.
Some people don’t amp up the sound in their computer setups simply because they lack room for the speakers. So they just use their computer or monitor speakers. But what if somebody made tiny but powerful speakers that could fit almost anywhere? Somebody did — Gallo Acoustics Micro Speakers. And today’s Mac Studio setup uses them for rich sound.
People love Sonos audio gear for good reason. But they rarely find it on sale. For Father’s Day, however, it has launched a bonafide Sonos speaker sale, offering up to 25% off an array of speakers and audio sets like home-theater rigs.
In one case of a premium immersive audio set for your home theater, you save $520 (see below). With that one, your living room entertainment center will be the envy of the neighborhood.
Attention Beagle Scouts: Get ready for summer camp with the Camp Snoopy series trailer Apple TV+ dropped Wednesday. The Peanuts gang heads off to the woods soon. Kids and parents alike might get a kick out of it.
The series debuts on Apple TV+ June 14.
The new Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station with DisplayLink uses DisplayLink software to enable Mac users to connect with up to four external monitors, in addition to accessing 96W power delivery for a MacBook and realizing blazing-fast Thunderbolt 4 data transfer speeds, the company said Thursday. If you’re looking for a versatile port hub to expand your Mac’s connectivity, check out this 6-port hub from Zagg.
With Apple’s massive annual software confab known as WWDC24 coming up fast on June 10, the iPhone giant decided it’s time to rock out with a special WWDC24 Apple Music playlist. The WWDC24 Hello list of tunes features music by Billie Eilish, Good Neighbours, Glass Animals and other artists.
Check it out below! This probably won’t be as controversial as the streamer’s top 100 albums list and its surprising No. 1 pick.
Who says you have to shell out big bucks for something like Adobe Acrobat to get a great PDF editor? The much more affordable PDF Editor, PDF Book Reader stands out as a comprehensive, user-friendly app designed to transform how you interact with PDF documents. Available for iPhone and iPad, this advanced PDF editor offers a seamless blend of robust features tailored to meet the needs of professionals and casual users alike.
People have relied on the app for years, and it’s constantly updated to keep working well with iPhone, iPad, Mac, iMessage and Apple Vision Pro.
The latest major update to the popular and snarky Carrot Weather app brings a delightful array of new features and improvements. It adds a dynamic “garden that grows over time” as part of a redesigned interface, along with line charts for hourly and daily forecasts, integrated weather news from around the world and more.
But of course it will still call you a “meatbag” and act surprised you’re still alive if you haven’t opened it lately. New Carrot Weather 6.0 is now available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision Pro.
In a sign Apple TV+ may yet arrive for Android users — meaning hell must be entirely coated in ice — Cupertino is looking to hire a senior engineer to build a TV and sports app for the smartphone platform, according to a new report.
The Apple News+ service is growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, according to a new report.
Hey, when you sell the hardware, you have an advantage in attracting users’ eyeballs to content, too, right?
Popular tech influencer Marques Brownlee shared a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday from his visit to Apple labs that do durability testing like iPhone water testing. You’ve probably never seen iPhones this wet. And you’ve probably never subjected yours to such punishment.
Along the way, he fit in an interesting video chat with Apple hardware honcho John Ternus about product reliability versus repairability, below.
AirPods are great earphones, but did you know they can also be crime fighters? In Florida, a dislodged AirPod tracked an alleged hit-and-run driver after a bike-riding teen’s head went through his passenger window and the earbud popped out and got stuck under a floormat.
Location tracking on that little earbud led straight to an arrest on felony charges.
When one commenter saw today’s Mac Studio workstation, they said “Setup so clean it looks AI generated. I like it.” Well, we also like the Mac Studio and custom PC setup, especially for its innovative use of a portable display alongside its main external display, which is a killer gaming monitor we’ve never seen before.