Hot Wheels cars are smarter than ever with the launch of Mattel’s new Smart Track Kit, Race Portal, and “id” vehicles. And you can buy them all exclusively from the Apple Store starting today.
The awesome new toys work alongside an iPhone or iPad to track speed, count laps, and more. And they’re Mattel’s fastest Hot Wheels cars to date.
The world’s largest tech company used it’s power to make people sell its other products. Photo: Apple
Comcast and Charter made some potentially high risk deals with Apple in order to secure rights to sell the iPhone on their struggling networks.
Even though they are the two largest cable companies in the US, Apple was able to strong-arm Comcast and Charter into selling large numbers of other Apple products. In some cases they had to agree to sell them at a discount and eat the subsidized cost.
Hook up any and all USB storage devices to your iPad. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
External storage support is one of the best new features in iPadOS 13. Even if you opted for the maximum iPad Pro storage capacity, you may often want to grab some movies from a hard drive, or save some songs and photos to a thumb drive to hand to a friend.
But how exactly does external storage work in iOS? Can you drag files between connected volumes? Can you even mount more than one drive at once? What about FAT32? Or HFS Plus? And do you have to eject them? Let’s find out.
What can't the iPad do in iPadOS? Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Were you ever drawing a diagram in the Notes app, and then realized you needed to type a note? Did you then find yourself frustrated at having to drop the Apple Pencil and type on the huge, half-screen QWERTY keyboard?
With iPadOS 13, Apple has removed that frustration. You still can’t do Newton-style handwriting and have it turn into text. But you can shrink the keyboard to a tiny floating panel, and use the Apple Pencil to swipe-type on it.
Dead Cells, the brutal 2D action-platformer that has been a huge success on consoles and PC, is now available to preorder on iOS.
It’s not a free-to-play game like most of the titles you’ll see in 2019, but it’s well worth its price tag. And if you get your order in early ahead of its launch next month, you’ll save yourself a cool $2.
iMovie just got some major updates. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple is out with a huge update for the iMovie app on iOS that makes it easy to use your own green and blue screen effects.
Using the new green screen tool, iPhone and iPad users can now swap out a background for something new. This allows you to insert logos, photos or background videos into your videos.
This speaker could become a trigger to play your favorite podcast. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The iOS 13 Shortcuts app brings plenty of radical changes — automatic scheduled and location-based shortcuts, for example — but one super-neat new feature will make a world of difference. Now, if you have a compatible iPhone, you can combine NFC tags with Shortcuts. That is, you can run any shortcut just by tapping your iPhone onto an NFC sticker.
Seriously. Pretty wild, right? You could tap your iPhone onto a sticker atop a speaker in your kitchen, and it would start playing the radio, for instance. Let’s check out how NFC shortcuts will work.
iOS 12.3.2 will bring depth back to your Portrait photos. Screenshot: Apple
Apple will roll out a new software update today to fix a Portrait mode bug on the iPhone 8 Plus.
iOS 12.3.2, which comes just two weeks after the release of iOS 12.3.1, is another minor update for most iPhone and iPad users. For those with an iPhone 8 Plus, however, it will bring depth back to Portrait photos.
It beats using a trackpad. Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
The updated Preview app in macOS Catalina will let you sign documents using your iPhone or iPad. The process takes just a few clicks and works with any device running iOS 13 or iPadOS.
New gestures in iPadOS give you something to do with your hands. Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac
After an action packed WWDC, we’ve finally had a few days to see what Apple has in the works for iOS in 2019. One of the big surprises for us was the introduction of iPadOS – an iPad specific fork of iOS 13.
With the addition of iPadOS, Apple has started to formalized the differences between iPhone and iPad as it comes to interacting with the OS. One of the big differences is in gestures and multitasking. Many of the gestures on iPad are remaining mostly the same, but there are a few news ones to take note of.
Craig Federighi suggested that Apple will consider making change in the future. Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac
Craig Federighi, Apple’s VP of software, has suggested to a customer that Apple could correct an irritating UI element for Siri on iPad.
Apple user Juliano Rossi wrote Federighi about the way that the Siri interface takes up the entire iPad screen. This contrasts with Siri on the Mac, where Siri appears in a small popup window.
While Federighi doesn’t confirm that things will change, he does say that Apple will take the point into consideration.
You’ll be able to record with front- and rear-facing cameras for the first time. Photo: Apple
iOS 13 and iPadOS will give recent iPhone and iPad users the ability to capture images and videos with their front- and rear-facing cameras simultaneously.
Apple says it is also possible to take advantage of multiple microphones to “shape” the sound that is captured. It encourages developers to leverage the new capabilities to bring picture-in-picture and spacial audio to their apps.
Safari is getting a huge upgrade on iPad with the release of iPadOS, but there are some improvements that iPhone users can also enjoy in iOS 13. One of those is a new feature that saves you from forgotten tab chaos.
You won’t have to worry about closing dozens of tabs you forgot all about anymore.
Some might see the MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar as a gimmick, but Apple isn’t giving up on it yet. Its new Sidecar feature in macOS Catalina brings the same function to other compatible Macs with the help of iPad.
Apple will finally bring mouse support to iPad (and iPhone) when it rolls out major software updates this fall — and that’s awesome. Finally, you will gain full control over your device without needing to lift a finger.
But I think Apple takes the wrong attitude when it comes to mouse support on iOS.
Its current approach could hold back development of the feature later on, and could negatively impact people who really need it. It also goes against Apple’s mission to make the iPad a laptop replacement.
Third-party solutions are far from dead. Photo: Astro HQ
Not many Apple computers will be left out in the cold when its big macOS Catalina upgrade rolls out this fall. But even if your Mac is compatible, it might not be able to take advantage of every feature.
Sidecar, which lets you use an iPad as a second screen, will only support a limited number of machines. If your Mac is getting a little long in the tooth, you’re probably going to be out of luck.
iOS 13 is bringing some huge improvements to Safari, including a desktop-class version for iPadOS that is nearly as good as Safari on Mac.
One of my favorite new Safari features didn’t get any stage time during the WWDC 2019 keynote, but it completely changes the way screenshots in Safari are handled. You’re going to love it.
Not everyone should use a mouse. Especially not this kind. Photo: Apple/Cult of Mac
You might think it would be pretty simple for Apple to add mouse support to its mobile operating systems. But that’s not so. The company reportedly spent years developing its newest accessibility feature.
Apple is also keen to stress that mouse support in iOS 13 and iPadOS is for certain users — those who cannot easily use touch. It was not added to replace touch for the average iPhone and iPad user.
Trackpads -- not just for the Mac any more. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The iPadOS beta is out, and it has one killer feature — mouse support. Not only can you use any Bluetooth mouse or trackpad to control the text-selection cursor on the iPad, you can use the mouse just like you would on a Mac — clicking buttons anywhere in the entire iPad user interface.
The feature is not on by default. It’s not even a regular checkbox. To enable mouse and trackpad support on your iPad, you have to dig into the Accessibility settings.
The iPad is now almost as capable as the Mac. Almost. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
At first look, iPadOS — Apple’s new operating system designed specifically for the iPad — doesn’t seem to have added so much. If you discount the iOS 13 features that the iPad shares with the iPhone, the iPadOS extras look rather pedestrian. But these small changes show a big change of direction for the iPad. Apple is turning it into a new kind of mobile computer, instead of a big iPhone.
Imagine that you saw somebody roll a rock a few feet away from another rock. Maybe it crests a small bump in the grass. But then, when you take a step away, you see that the rock is now perched on the edge of a canyon. To mix metaphors, iPadOS is like Wile E. Coyote floating over the big drop. Only the drop goes up instead of down, or something.
Apple wants to take on Tile. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
References in iOS 13 all but corroborate earlier reports that Apple is working on its own item-tracking accessories.
It is thought Apple plans to compete with Tile by offering “tags” that can be attached to bags, keys, and other valuables. You will then be able to track them using the new Find My app coming this fall.
Tim Cook had a lot of news to share at WWDC 2019. Photo: Apple
Apple unleashed a mountain of software updates (and even some smokin’ new hardware) Monday, during what was arguably one of the best WWDC keynotes we’ve ever seen.
The entire event ran for more than two hours but it felt like there was hardly enough time to get to all the new stuff. iOS 13 got the most attention, for good reason, but Apple also surprised us with better gaming features on Apple TV, the ability to completely control your Mac with your voice, a new Mac Pro and so much more.
If you didn’t have time to watch the entire WWDC 2019 keynote, we’ve rounded up the highlights so you don’t miss a thing.
Wow, iOS 13 is quite something. We got most of what we wanted, and a lot more. Proper USB support, an improved Files app, plus a radical new UI paradigm for the iPad. And what about that mouse support!
Let’s take a look at the main points. And over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be going extremely deep on everything that’s new in iOS 13.