Thanks to iOS 14’s new widgets, seemingly everyone is redesigning their iPhone Home screens right now. Some of these look amazing. Others evoke the eyeball-abusing tragedy of late-stage MySpace, serving as painful reminders of why most of us didn’t become professional graphic designers.
Here are some of the better iOS 14 custom Home screens we’ve seen. (Want to make your own? We’ve got a guide for you: How to give your iPhone Home screen a new look with custom icons).
Ever wanted to make your brand-new iPhone look like it’s running Windows 95? That’s the outrageously novel idea that sprang into the mind of Ashley, an 18-year-old from Indiana who wants to work as a graphic designer, after she upgraded to iOS 14 last week.
Taking advantage of iOS 14’s new Home screen widgets feature, and a clunky workaround that employs the built-in Shortcuts app, she gave her iPhone 11 a vintage Microsoft-style makeover that screams retro cool and picked up 4.4 million views and 664,000 likes on TikTok.
“As someone who wasn’t even alive in the ’90s, other operating systems, such as Windows XP, are more nostalgic to me, but I went with Windows 95 because it furthered the contrast between old and new,” Ashley, who did not want her last name revealed, told Cult of Mac.
Poké-hit Pokémon Café Mix just got an update that will let you join other players to form teams, as well as get your hands (virtually, that is) on a range of items, including a Snorlax costume Pikachu.
The team feature lets you to share an ID with a buddy to hook up for special events. The teams you form can be both public and private. The feature promises to add a new dynamic to the popular food-serving game.
Apple Pay’s latest promotion offers customers at sandwich chain Jimmy John’s a free drink when they spend at least $10 on an order. The promotion is available through September 27.
In order to be eligible for the promotion, you have to be a Freaky Fast Rewards member, and pay for your order with Apple Pay — either in-store, through the iOS app or via the Jimmy John’s website.
Update: Apple opened the new online store today. You can check it out here.
Apple will officially launch its Apple Online Store in India on September 23, finally bringing Apple’s online delivery experience to the world’s second most populous nation.
Everyone knows that the iPhone 12 is on the way, but — having been MIA at September’s “Time Flies” event — it’s not clearly exactly when. A leaked video from U.K. mobile network EE and BT could have answers, suggesting that the world’s first 5G iPhones are coming very, very soon.
In a leaked marketing video produced for interval use, EE and BT boss Marc Allera said that, “We are just days away from Apple’s next major launch, a 5G iPhone, which will be a huge boost for 5G.”
Apple fans love to complain every so often, but overall they remain pretty darn satisfied when it comes to the company’s personal computer offerings.
That’s according to data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which reports that Apple ranks No. 1 in user satisfaction for personal computers with a score of ACSI score of 82. This ranking covers iMacs, MacBooks and iPads.
Chinese LED chipmaker San’an Optoelectronics is reportedly making “better-than-expected” progress developing Mini LED technology it hopes will be used in Apple’s future Mini LED iPad and MacBook devices, a Tuesday report by Digitimes claims.
If all goes according to plan, San’an Optoelectronics will join Taiwanese LED chipmaker Epistar in producing the screen tech for Apple. It is expected to enter trial production by the end of this year and receive orders from Apple in 2022. Apple’s first Mini LED devices likely will debut in 2021.
Tim Cook is reportedly impressed by how well employees have managed to work remotely, and says that some of these new work habits will endure after COVID-19.
In an interview with the The Atlantic Festival on Monday, Apple’s CEO said he does not think the company will “return to the way we were because we’ve found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.”
The European Commission has yet to appeal its loss to Apple in the landmark multi-billion dollar tax bill case. And it may not do so at all.
The EC lost lost its court case about Apple’s $14.8 billion tax bill in July. At the time, it was widely assumed that the EC would appeal the case. However, with the deadline looming on Friday it has yet to do so.
For the first time ever, Apple will adopt its “mini” branding for the iPhone, claims Apple leaker L0vetodream. According to the tipster, Apple will use the name “iPhone 12 mini” for the smallest of four models coming this year.
The other ones would be called “iPhone 12,” “iPhone 12 Pro” and “iPhone 12 Pro Max.”
President Trump has given his blessing for TikTok to remain in the U.S. after approving a deal involving Walmart and Oracle taking a financial stake in the company.
However, CNBC reports that Trump’s claims that TikTok’s North American operations have “nothing to do with China” are incorrect. In fact, a new report claims that Beijing-based ByteDance retains an 80% stake in the company.
Apple has lost more than $500 billion in market cap since the start of this month, CNBC reported over the weekend.
To put that figure in perspective, it’s slightly more than the market cap it took Apple its first 36 years of existence to climb to. (Apple only passed $500 billion in 2012, the year after Tim Cook took over as CEO.)
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show took home one Emmy award at Sunday night’s 72nd Emmys. Actor Billy Crudup won the category of “best supporting actor in a drama series” for his performance as eccentric network executive Cory Ellison.
Crudup saw off competition from Succession, Better Call Saul, The Handmaid’s Tale, Westworld and, err, The Morning Show (fellow actor Mark Duplass, who plays Charlie Black). This is Apple TV+’s first Primetime Emmy Award.
Apple Pay may wind up being just one of several mobile payments services available on the iPhone if the European Union gets its way, Bloomberg reported Friday.
The report claims that the EU is weighing up new rules that would compel companies like Apple to open up the NFC (Near Field Communication) tech in its smartphones and watches to rival players. That could mean that Apple Pay isn’t the only option for customers who want to pay for products with their Apple device.
Unless a last-minute deal is agreed, President Trump is going to ban ultra-popular Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat from the U.S. starting Sunday, the Department of Commerce announced Friday.
TikTok is consistently the most downloaded non-gaming app in the world. In the U.S., it currently has around 100 million monthly users. WeChat, while nowhere near as big in the U.S., is China’s most important app and widely used by many Chinese-Americans to communicate with friends and family back home.
Apple’s division of its supply chain into one part aimed at the China market and the other aimed at the rest of the world continues apace. The goal? Helping Apple get around rumbling trade tensions between the United States and China.
According to a Friday report from Digitimes, Apple is giving more orders to Chinese firms Luxshare Precision and BYD for the Apple Watch Series 6 and Wi-Fi iPad series, respectively.
The Jason Mamoa-starring Apple TV+ post-apocalyptic drama series See will resume shooting its second season next month, according to a report from Deadline.
Season two of the show will reportedly resume filing on October 14 in Toronto. Filming will continue (unless there’s another COVID-prompted shutdown) through March 2021.
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel across South and Central America on electric Harley-Davidson motorcycles in new Apple TV+ series Long Way Up.
Apple debuted the first three episodes of the road-tripping series Friday, with subsequent episodes being released every Friday.
Ahead of the new Apple Watch units finding their way onto users’ wrists, the initial “first impressions” reviews have hit the internet. While they’re not deep dives into the Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE (users got to try them out for 24 hours), they still provide a sense of how they’re being received.
So what do the lucky individuals Apple sent an early review unit to have to say about them? Read on to find out.
Buyers won’t need to wait to use Apple Watch Series 6’s marquee feature: a blood oxygen sensor. The Blood Oxygen app should be available from day one in the United States and many other countries, according to Apple’s list of watchOS 7 features.
That stands in stark contrast to the delay for Apple Watch Series 4’s big health-related feature. People who bought it had to wait quite a few months before the smartwatch’s new ECG feature went live. It switched on in the United States three months after the device shipped, and users elsewhere had to wait even longer.
The Apple One subscription bundle service promises to make your monthly Apple subs easier by rolling them into a simple, one-off payment. But what if your existing subscriptions, such as Apple Music and iCloud accounts, are tied to different Apple IDs?
Fortunately, Apple’s longest-serving employee, Chris Espinosa, says that poses no problem. “It manages that,” he wrote in response to a question on Twitter. “I just double-checked.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a low-key shot at Apple’s AR plans in a new interview with The Verge, saying that he’s not enthusiastic about “putting an Apple Watch on [his] face.”
While Zuck was talking more broadly about augmented reality glasses, the fact that he called out Apple Watch (and the fact that Apple is the highest profile company reportedly working on AR glasses) makes it pretty clear which direction he’s throwing his shade.
Apple Watch can help you get fit and live a healthier lifestyle. However, most of us have to pay for the honor. Things work a bit differently in Singapore, thanks to a new deal between Apple and the Singaporean government.
The program will hand out up to $280 in rewards for those who complete tasks on a dedicated app. Because, while good health is its own reward, who’s going to turn down some extra goodies?
Apple One, which bundles several of the company’s vaunted services together, is a genius move. At best, it saves you money. At worst, it looks like it does.
I think it’s going to be a massive hit for Apple, and will provide a much-needed boost for struggling services like Apple News+ and Apple Arcade. However, it might cause some big headaches in Cupertino, too.
