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iPhone - page 46

How to allow a guest to control your HomeKit devices

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Add a guest to the Home app
The safe and easy way to share HomeKit control.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

If you’re going away this summer and leaving your home in the hands of someone else, you might want to give them control of your HomeKit devices. And it’s really easy to do that inside the Home app.

Here’s how to invite anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Mac to control your smart home gadgets as a guest.

Save up to 32% on Amazon charging accessories and USB-C hubs

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Save on Amazon accessories and hubs
Prices start at just $6.31!
Photo: Amazon

Keep your iPhone, iPad, Mac and more topped up and connected with generous discounts on Amazon Basics charging cables and USB-C hubs.

Prices start at just $6.31 for a three-foot fast charging cable, while a 30W USB-C charger with GaN technology can be yours for $17.29. Amazon’s 3-in-1 USB-C hub is down to just $25.49.

The discounts are good for a limited time only, so enjoy them while you can.

Man fishes dropped iPhone from canal using its MagSafe connector

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MagSafe charger for iPhone
Handy for charging. Handier for retrieving your dropped iPhone from a canal in Germany.
Photo: Apple

What do you do when you drop your iPhone 12 Pro in a canal and can’t find it? Simple: You take advantage of one of its neat new features to fish it out of the murky depths.

That’s what Twitter user and developer Frederik Riedel recently did — crafting a fishing rod with magnet that allowed him to latch on to the MagSafe charging magnets on the back of the device. Impressively, it worked. As did the iPhone continue to do.

Mugger used stolen iPhone to record himself hours after theft

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Handcuffs
This is just creating evidence against yourself.
Photo: Bill Oxford/Unsplash CC

Question: When is the front-facing FaceTime camera on an iPhone more trouble than it’s worth? Answer: When you’re a thief who has just stolen an iPhone and, by using it, you’re recording video evidence against yourself.

This is one of the presumably many mistakes made by 21-year-old Kairo Theophilus-Reid. Theophilus-Reid recently appeared in the UK’s Swindon Crown Court, charged with a 2019 mugging of a younger teen’s iPhone 7.

He was arrested alongside fellow mugger Charlie Graham, and was found to have used the iPhone to record video of the pair in a restaurant hours after the incident.

McDonald’s restaurant offers free iPhone to employees who stay 6 months

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McDonald's
Stick with your job and get an iPhone doesn't sound like a bad deal.
Photo: A Befendo/Flickr CC

The fast food industry doesn’t just produce on-demand fries and burgers quickly, it’s also classically had a rapid turnover of employees. That’s a headache during normal times, but with the current post-COVID staffing shortage, it’s proving to be more of a migraine.

One McDonald’s restaurant in Altamont, Illinois, has a bright idea to get staff to hang around, though: Offer free iPhones for those who stay in the job for at least six months.

How to share your Apple Card with others and add a co-owner

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How to share Apple Card
Give others the ability to use your Apple Card.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

Apple Card now gives users the ability to add a co-owner from their Family Sharing group. Co-owners share the same credit line and have the ability to add the card to Apple Pay, view their own spending activity, and more.

It’s also possible to share Apple Card with other members of your family (aged 13 years or older) and give them their own spending limit. Here’s how to start sharing yours on iPhone and iPad.

TSMC begins production on Apple’s next-gen A15 chip for iPhone 13

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Apple A15 concept
How do you follow up a monster like the A14 chip? With the A15, of course!
Concept: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, has reportedly commenced production on the next-gen A15 chip for the iPhone 13.

It seems that Apple’s expecting to have a big hit on its hands, too. Digitimes reported Wednesday that “demand for the chip surpass that for its predecessor last year in scale, according to industry sources.”

How to enable and use Reachability on iPhone in iOS 14

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How to enable Reachability
Reachability makes even the largest iPhone models easy to use one-handed.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

Reachability remains alive and well in iOS 14 — even if you have an iPhone without a Home button. The feature, which makes even the largest iPhone models easier to operate with one hand, is super-simple to use with just a quick flick of the thumb.

However, Reachability is disabled by default, so you’ll need to turn it on. Here’s how to enable and use Reachability in the latest iPhone firmware.

How to download the Opera GX browser beta on iPhone and iPad

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How to download Opera GX beta on iPhone and iPad
Start testing Opera GX today.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Gaming-focused web browser Opera GX is on its way to iPhone and iPad, almost two years after its initial debut. It comes with a customizable interface, the ability to sync with Opera GX on desktop, and ad blocking.

The browser also offers a number of unique features aimed at gamers, like GX Corner, which highlights gaming news and deals. Anyone can download and try out the Opera GX beta today. We’ll show you how.

How to put a missing AirTag into Lost Mode

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How to enable Lost Mode for AirTag
Putting an AirTag into Lost Mode means others know how to contact you if they find it.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

AirTag’s diminutive size and lack of ability to attach to anything out of the box means that it’s ironically easy to lose. Locating one that goes missing shouldn’t be too difficult, but if yours is proving hard to find, you might want to put it into Lost Mode.

If your AirTag is found by someone else, it will be possible for them to contact you and return your device — and anything it might be attached to — if it’s in Lost Mode. We’ll show you how to use it.

How to block ads in Microsoft Edge for iPhone and iPad

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How to block ads in Microsoft Edge
For cleaner, more responsive browsing.
Image: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Microsoft Edge has some nice advantages over Safari on iPhone and iPad — especially if you typically use Windows on your desktop. But just like other third-party browsers, it can’t play nicely with content blockers.

However, Edge does have a built-in ad blocker on iOS and iPadOS. And in this guide, we’ll show you how to enable it.

50% smaller Face ID sensor could shrink iPhone 13 notch

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This concept image shows how the iPhone 13 notch might shrink.
Are you fed up with the iPhone notch?
Artists concept: Cult of Mac

Apple could shrink this year’s iPhone “notch” thanks to a 40% to 50% smaller VCSEL chip in the Face ID sensor, Digitimes reported Friday. According to the report, the smaller die size could show up as soon as the “new iPhone and iPad devices to be rolled out later in 2021.”

Return of Touch ID is the most-anticipated feature for iPhone 13

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Touch ID might be back in the iPhone 13
People sure like their fingerprint sensing.
Concept image: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple customers are seemingly always on the lookout for the next big thing when it comes to new products. That may not be quite true for the iPhone 13, though.

According to a survey by SellCell.com, the feature most Apple customers look forward to is actually the return of Touch ID, the fingerprint sensor Apple has been phasing out in favor of Face ID.

This leather iPhone 12 Pro Max case won’t leave you feeling blue [Review]

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Woolnut iPhone 12 Pro Max leather case review: Blue to the max!
Woolnut's leather iPhone 12 case takes blue to the max.
Photo: Lewis Wallace/Cult of Mac

Woolnut’s slim leather cases look fantastic enough that you might not mourn covering up your beautiful iPhone. And when I put a blue one on my ridiculously huge iPhone 12 Pro Max, it did more than provide an acceptably luxurious layer of protection.

It actually made my phone feel better.

Prevent downloaded music from taking up too much storage on iPhone

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Optimize music storage iPhone
Don't let songs take up all your space.
Image: Apple/Cult of Mac

If you like to store music locally on your iPhone so you don’t need a data connection to listen to your favorite tracks while you’re on the go, you may find that, over time, your music takes up too much space.

You can prevent that from happening by optimizing music storage on your device so the songs you don’t listen to anymore are automatically deleted to make room for other content. We’ll show you how.

Full-body Animoji? Smart tech uses iPhone camera to track body motion

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Animoji
The future of Animoji?
Photo: Carnegie Mellon

Forget only animated avatar faces: a team at Carnegie Mellon University wants to bring the world full-body Animojis. As the director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Chris Harrison‘s job is to help create the computer features of tomorrow.

In a newly published demo, shown off this week, Harrison’s team has come up with a way to let regular iPhones do full body tracking using only the front-facing camera — by estimating what the rest of your body is doing.

It works surprisingly well.

iPhone faces production problems in India as COVID cases soar

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iPhone 12 Pro series include cameras tat support ProRAW
India has been hit hard by coronavirus pandemic.
Photo: Apple

Production on iPhones made in India has hit a major hurdle as coronavirus cases have surged in the country. More than 50% of one Foxconn factory’s production capacity has reportedly been cut.

India has seen its number of coronavirus cases ramping up significantly in April. To date, there have been 22.9 million confirmed cases of COVID in India, while 249,992 people have reportedly died. However, the actual numbers are thought to be even higher.