iPhone - page 32

Add your COVID-19 vaccine card to Apple Wallet on your iPhone, and you can leave your physical card safe at home. Some places may require proof of vaccination to enter, like international airports, concert venues and cruise ships.

If your health care provider can share data with the Apple Health app, and if digital cards are considered valid proof of vaccination where you’re going, and if the stars are in the right place, too, you just might be able to go all-in on Apple Wallet. Let me show you how.

3D CAD renders of the 2023 iPhone 15 have leaked online, revealing all the design changes Apple is planning. This includes bringing the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island to the non-Pro iPhones this year.

Like the iPhone 15 Pro, the non-Pro variants will switch to USB-C for charging and data transfer. Thanks to an EU mandate, the iPhone maker seems set on retiring the Lightning connector this year.

Remember Car Key digital car keys? Possibly not. Because ever since Apple announced the feature — which would let users unlock and start their cars with iPhone or Apple Watch — in 2020, it’s gone essentially nowhere. But a new Car Keys Tests application seems to indicate that the company wants to make its virtual car key system more widely available.

For that, it needs the help of automakers. The new app is part of that drive.

Monday — aka Presidents’ Day — is your day to grab great deals on refurbished iPhones and Apple Watches at Woot, Amazon’s bargain site.

The scratch-and-dent sale’s selection includes iPhone 13 and Apple Watch 7, plus a slew of older models. If you want one, you’d better hurry, though. The sale ends at 10 p.m. PST Monday.

If you only brought $50,000 to an auction for an original 2007 iPhone then you didn’t bring enough money. It’s an unusually valuable object because the handset is still sealed in the original packaging, and the item went for quite a bit above the auction estimate.

The winning bidder ended up paying $63,356 for the factory-sealed iPhone.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The upcoming 15.5-inch MacBook Air might be the perfect laptop for many people. In fact, Erfon plans to buy one almost immediately. And he might get his chance in as little as six weeks! How can he contain his excitement?

Also on The CultCast:

• What’s next for iPhone 15?
• “Periscope lens” is a strange term, and one of these things is likely coming in the next iPhone Pro Max. Let’s discuss!
• The MagSafe cable gets a … software upgrade. Welcome to 2023. 🤣
• Sir Jony Ive designs a logo fit for a king. Literally.

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, along with this week’s CultCast show notes.

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Unconfirmed reports about design changes coming in the iPhone 15 Pro took concrete form as CAD drawings of Apple’s next handset supposedly leaked from a Chinese accessory maker.

These help confirm rumored features like USB-C and the somewhat curvier design.

We can be sure Apple isn’t ignoring the folding phone market, even though the company is showing no direct signs of making an iPhone Fold. There’s plenty of indirect evidence, including patent filings that show handsets with foldable screens.

Apple received a new patent approval that shows it’s still thinking about a folding iPhone.

Apple issued an important software update recently — and we’re not talking for iPhone, Mac, iPad or Apple Watch. It’s 2023, so it’s for something way more esoteric: a power cable.

Yes, the USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable comes with a tiny computer inside of it that needs software updates, for some inscrutable reason.

Qualcomm, the chipmaker that supplies the 5G modems in all iPhones, on Wednesday unveiled the X75, its next-generation modem that will be the first to support 5G Advanced. This emerging cellular-wireless standard will give a speed boost to cellular-wireless networks and make mobile VR/AR more practical.

The X75 probably will be used in the iPhone 16 when it launches in 2024.

Cult of Mac has reported on how Apple will replace iPhone’s Lightning connector with USB-C soon enough — but what if Cupertino decided to go with both ports on future iPhones, like the 15 series?

One engineer appeared to explore the option, modding an iPhone 12 mini by adding a fully functional USB-C port next to the existing Lightning port.

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Consumers have to put down $1099 for an iPhone 14 Pro Max, but the hardware components for Apple’s top-of-the line smartphone cost less than half the selling price.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking the rest is pure profit.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Apple’s squinty supreme leader Tim Cook sees room to push the high end of the iPhone market, and you know what that means … iPhone Ultra incoming! We know at least one feature this thing will pack — a big, fat titanium price tag.

Also on The CultCast:

• A cool mockup shows what that rumored iPhone Ultra might look like.
• We could get reverse wireless charging on iPhones after all.
• Insiders explain the messy breakup between Apple and Intel (and reveal the best time to buy a Mac … sorta).

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.

Our sponsors: Lectric eBikes and CultCloth

• The Lectric XP 3.0 electric bike will take you up to 45 miles — and up to 28 miles per hour! Get out there and find adventure with Lectric eBikes!
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iPhone battery dying faster than you’d like? You can see exactly what’s using up your iPhone battery in the Settings app. It will show you which apps use more power than others, what services run in the background, and what drains your battery most over the course of the week.

If you suspect your phone doesn’t last as long as it used to, or notice that it’s charging very slowly, this will help you diagnose the problem.

Keep reading to find out whether you should quit all your iPhone apps when you’re done using them (you shouldn’t) and how you can keep apps and email from running in the background.

A skilled concept artist created a video with a wish list of new features for iOS 17, including displaying two applications at once and directly installing applications outside of the App Store. Plus quite a few more additions.

It’s a demonstration that, as good as iPhone is, there’s plenty room for improvement.

Users have complained about the limitations of the Siri “intelligent” assistant for years, but now that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is showing the world that artificial intelligence can do amazing things, it’s never been more obvious that Apple’s version is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

Not only does this make Apple look bad, it makes HomePod less useful. Really, it makes all the company’s products less useful than they could be.

Apple needs to step up its AI game or it risks being left out of an important new wave of computing.

Benchmarks for the Galaxy S23 Ultra show that Samsung’s new flagship handset offers substantially slower performance than the top-of-the-line iPhone 14 Pro.

This continues a long string of high-end Androids that can not match the performance of the latest iPhone.

A lot of healthcare providers have terrible websites. Apple’s Health app, on the other hand, is very well organized and intuitive to use. You can add your medical records to the Apple Health app for easy access to all your health history, medications, test results and data. If your healthcare provider supports this feature, it’s incredibly convenient having all your information in one place. Once it’s in the Health app, you can easily add medication reminders and share your information with doctors, close family members and friends.

I’ve juggled between a few healthcare providers and I’ve never found one with a comprehensible, user-friendly website. If you have the right healthcare provider, and the stars are in the right place too, you should be able to connect them.

Apple Pay Later reportedly has entered beta testing among Apple’s retail store employees, signaling that the “buy now, pay later” service is nearing public release.

The move comes months after Apple announced the financing option at its Worldwide Developers Conference last June.

You can instantly translate text anywhere on your iPhone and Mac. You don’t need to futz around retyping or copying text into a Google Translate tab — you can select text and get translations from 11 languages wherever you are.

It’s extremely fast and it works everywhere: not just text on the web, in email and in apps; but also inside pictures, videos and directly from the camera, too. Let me show you how it works.

How do you use BeReal, one of the top new social media apps? It’s simple: You and your friends get one (and only one) opportunity to post a picture a day, all at the same time. You can see what everyone’s up to in this small slice of the day.

It’s a social media app like no other. Let me walk you through what it’s like to create an account and use BeReal.

Apple is reportedly working on an “iPhone Ultra,” an even-more-premium iPhone that sits above the Pro series. A designer wondered if that might mean an iPhone Pro mixed with an Apple Watch Ultra, and dreamed up a concept device that merges the two.

The result is fun and gorgeous, if not anything Apple is likely to ever make.

Apple is reportedly working on an iPhone “Ultra” that could debut in 2024. The company is internally discussing adding an even-more-premium iPhone that sits above the Pro series.

Apple apparently does not want to replace the iPhone Pro Max with an Ultra model. Instead, the iPhone Ultra would be an entirely new addition to the company’s smartphone lineup.

Apple was hit with a sharp decline in iPhone shipments in the December quarter, but the news isn’t all bad — it’s once again the world’s largest maker of smartphones by a wider margin than ever before, according to market analysts.

Even better, Apple is pulling in almost half the revenue of the entire global market, and a very large share of the profit.

You can grow your collection of classic Apple gear with an original iPhone from 2007… if your pockets are deep enough. A first-generation iOS handset doesn’t usually go for that much, but this one is still sealed in the original packaging.

Typically, an iPhone 1 sells for a few hundreds dollars. This one might hit $50,000.