As WWDC23 inches closer to its scheduled date, more leaks about iOS 17 are surfacing online. A new rumor details all the Lock Screen changes Apple plans to debut in the next iOS release.
The tweaks include changing the Lock Screen font size, sharing custom Lock Screen designs with other iPhone users, and more.
Taking a moment to add an extra passcode to your iCloud account might save your skin if your iPhone is ever stolen by a shady character who’s eyeing you like a hawk. By default, your iPhone passcode is all someone needs to lock you out of your devices and wreak financial havoc on your life. And it’s not that difficult to capture your passcode if you tap into your phone in a public place.
In fact, a recent spate of coordinated scams have played out like this: A spy watches for anyone entering their iPhone passcode in a bar or other public place. Then, the device is yoinked out of the victim’s hands. And before they can do anything, they find themselves locked out of their own iCloud account. Soon, the criminals who stole the iPhone proceed to make unauthorized purchases, empty bank accounts and generally wreak havoc on the victim’s finances and personal life.
Luckily, setting up a second passcode just for iCloud can protect you from this type of criminal operation. I’ll show you how to keep these thieves at bay — and offer some additional advice for keeping your account secure.
A trio of hikers in Utah got trapped at the bottom of a deep canyon, and their situation could have been dire except they were able to call for help via the Emergency SOS via satellite service built into the iPhone 14 series.
It’s a new feature anyone going where they’ll out of range of cellular network coverage should know how to use.
It might not be apparent at first, but Apple’s Photos app gives you plenty of ways to manage your photo library and tweak the images in it.
If you have tens of thousands of photos like I do, your photo library is probably a big mess. You could spend hundreds of hours meticulously sorting images into albums, and tweaking settings to get everything just right. Or you can use some of the features Apple offers to make things easy.
I’ve already covered my top tips for taking photos. Here are my top five tips for managing and manipulating the great photos you took, using tools in Apple’s Photos app.
A first-generation iPhone with a “Lucky You” sticker recently sold at auction for $40,320 because it was still in the original packaging. It was purchased by Marques Brownlee — known to many as MKBHD — who then made a YouTube video of unboxing the handset.
Watch as Brownlee reduces the value of the device to nearly nothing just for the shock value of it.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest iPhone 15 rumors provide a fuller picture of what to expect this year. Sounds like big changes are coming in iOS 17. But a last-minute reversal means a hardware feature we were counting on probably won’t happen.
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Lectric eBikes: With top-tier build quality, a range of up to 42 miles and speeds up to 28 mph, the Lectric XP 3.0 is one of the best values in e-bikes. Check out the XP 3.0 and Lectric’s other great bikes at lectricebikes.com.
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For this week’s giveaway, we teamed up with Pitaka to offer four people the chance to win a limited-edition iPhone case worth $89.99.
The lucky winners will get their hands on Pitaka’s Sunset Moment case for iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max. (Be sure to enter the proper giveaway to match your iPhone model).
Pitaka made only 1,500 of these cases, which were inspired by Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation novel On the Road. This tribute to Route 66 and the classic American road trip is nearly sold out. With a unique product number on the camera ring, the Sunset Moment case you get will be uniquely yours.
As the old saying goes, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch — there’s usually a trick. And the same goes for phone charging sustains in airports. These can be used to hack your device, according to a recent warning from the FBI about “juice jacking.”
Here are six ways to safely charge up your iPhone when you’re on the go.
Apple may not ship the iPhone 15 Pro series with the rumored unified solid-state capacitive buttons. TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple abandoned the plan due to “unresolved technical issues.”
Previously, multiple rumors indicated Apple would replace the physical buttons on the iPhone 15 Pro with capacitive keys. The design also would have added two new Taptic Engines to simulate the feeling of pressing physical buttons.
Testing shows that the recently released iOS 16.4.1 does not fix an iPhone battery problem introduced by its predecessor.
This wasn’t the usual small change in battery life that’s usual with updates. Many iPhone models saw significant drops with iOS 16.4. And the latest version isn’t a fix.
USB-C is finally coming to the iPhone, but there are rumors and speculation that only Apple-approved cables will be able to charge the device. Realistically, though, there’s no way Apple would be allowed to get away with that.
The European Union is forcing Apple to drop the Lightning port, and would surely squash attempts to make USB-C into anything but a universal standard. That’s if Apple is even trying to do that, which is questionable.
A sketchy rumor claims Apple will drop support for iPhone X and iPhone 8 series with iOS 17. The next iPadOS release also reportedly will be incompatible with first-generation iPad Pros and iPad 5.
With iOS 16 last year, Apple stopped supporting several older devices, including the iPhone 6s and iPhone 7 series.
A week after the release of iOS 16.4, tests show that the new version significantly reduces the battery lives of a wide variety of iPhone models.
This has happened in the past for iOS releases and later updates have fixed the battery drain.
A whopping 87% of U.S. teens own an iPhone, according to a recent survey. This continues a long trend of iPhone reigning supreme in high schools.
The survey also shows that Apple Watch and Apple Pay prove quite popular with teens.
Last week we asked if you were lucky enough to have about $65,000 to spend on an iPhone that can’t connect to anything. Now we know you didn’t need that much money after all.
The original, sealed iPhone (1st generation) that went up for auction Thursday sported a rare “Lucky you” sticker on the box. But that wasn’t enough to vault the handset into the record books ($63,356). Bidding started at $32,000.
Update: And … bidding ended at $40,320, the low end of the projected range of $40,000 – $60,000. Too many old iPhones up for auction lately? Maybe.
Some of the best features of iPhone 14 Pro screens won’t trickle down to future non-Pro versions until the iPhone 17 series, according to a reliable source for Apple information.
If correct, the prediction means we shouldn’t expect the iPhone 14 Plus or basic iPhone 14 to come with a 120Hz ProMotion display or an always-on screen. Apple will reserve these features for iPhone Pro models until 2025.
There’s much more to iCloud Keychain than meets the eye. Apple’s password-management system suggests strong passwords, autofills them whenever you need to sign in later, and syncs across all your devices. But you also can use iCloud Keychain to keep two-factor authentication codes (instead of relying on Google Authenticator) and access your passwords on Windows.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how Apple should make a standalone Passwords app. That’s because a lot of the more advanced features in iCloud Keychain are pretty hard to find. You have to dig into Settings to locate them.
There’s a workaround: I have a Shortcut that will add a convenient Passwords icon to your iPhone’s Home Screen. Using iCloud Keychain becomes a lot easier.
Maybe your eyes aren’t as good as they used be. You can increase the text size on your iPhone or iPad so don’t have to put on reading glasses.
The process is easy. And a new video from Apple walks users through the process of enabling even larger text size on these devices.
Backing up your iPhone to iCloud is the best way to keep its data safe and secure. You can always be at peace knowing your data is always recoverable, even if something happens to your phone.
What better day than World Backup Day to set up and enable iCloud backups for your iPhone then? Read our guide to see what iCloud backups entail and how to get started.
The Voice Isolation feature that’s been making FaceTime and Zoom video chats better for over a year is finally available for regular iPhone voice calls. With it, the people you’re on a phone call with can’t hear noises going on around you.
Here’s how to activate one of the best new features of iOS 16.4.
Magic Eraser — Google’s AI-powered tool for removing unwanted objects from photos, which once was reserved for Pixel phones — now works on iPhones and other Android devices. With just a tap or two, Magic Eraser lets you quickly and easily remove photobombers and other annoyances from your images.
You can find plenty of powerful photo editing apps for iPhone on the App Store, many of which offer similar object-removal functionality. However, it is hard to beat Magic Eraser’s ease of use, as it makes it simple to remove (or mask) unwanted objects in your photos.
Apple released iOS 16.4 on Monday, bringing significant changes and new features to its iPhone operating system.
Once you install iOS 16.4, the biggest point release of iOS 16 so far, check out these 15 features to try right away — including the new “high five emoji” combo.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: iPhone rumors are flying, and some of them sound fantastic! But then there’s the one about a potentially troublesome mute button…
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
5 Movies, likely the first iPhone app generated almost entirely by ChatGPT, was approved by Apple and published on the App Store late Thursday night.
Morten Just, an independent developer of Mac apps who’s based in Switzerland, guided ChatGPT through the creation of the movie-recommendation app. Just said he told the AI what he wanted, then pasted its output into an Xcode project, writing only an estimated 2% to 5% of the code himself. The chatbot even fixed bugs as Just pasted in error messages.
“What matters to me is creating software that is useful and solves real problems,” Just told Cult of Mac after his 5 Movies app went live. “If I can do that faster with AI, I will.”
COVID-19 lockdowns in China didn’t just mess up iPhone production, they inspired the invention of a bizarre new machine with fake lips you can use with your smartphone to “kiss” someone far away.
Chinese startup Siweifushe launched the MUA — named after kissing sounds — a couple of weeks ago, selling more than 3,000 of them and receiving orders for 20,000 more, a new report said.