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How to look up anything with one tap on Mac

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dictionary look up macos
Look up!
Photo: Caleb Roenigk/Flickr CC

On the Mac, you have long been able to tap on any word or phrase to look up a dictionary definition. Just click on the word using a three-finger tap on your trackpad, and the dictionary panel appears. But have you tried this recently? Today, in this simple popover panel, you can get full access to not just dictionary definitions, but news, Siri Knowledge, movie details, App Store listings, and lots more depending on what you’re looking up.

Let’s take a look.

Tweetbot 3 for Mac brings night mode and video previews

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tweetbot 3 for mac
The Tweetbot you love, only better.
Photo: Tapbots

Tweetbot has long been our favorite third-party Twitter client for a whole bunch of awesome reasons — and now there’s even more. Tweetbot 3 today landed on macOS, bringing night mode, GIF and video previews, timeline filters, and more.

What’s more, developer Tapbots promises that Tweetbot will continue to work even if Twitter rolls out its controversial clampdown on unofficial apps.

iOS 11.4 inches closer to launch with fifth beta

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iPhone boot up
iOS 11.4 is nearly ready.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 11.4 looks like it’s on track for a public release sometime around WWDC 2018.

Apple just released a big batch of betas for developers this morning, including the fifth build of iOS 11.4 which brings a number of new features and improvements to the iPhone and iPad.

Steam Link lets you play PC games on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV

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Steam Link iPhone iPad Apple TV
Steam Link’s first big update is great for controller users.
Photo: Valve

You can now play your PC game library anywhere around your home without being weighed down by a chunky gaming laptop. The official Steam Link app lets you enjoy your favorite Steam games on your iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV.

You’ll be able to play with a Steam Controller, MFi controller, or a range of other gamepads supported by Steam.

Razer’s new mouse is built for budget gaming

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Razer-Abyssus-Essential
The Abyssus Essential won’t break the bank.
Photo: Razer

If you do a lot of gaming on your Mac or PC, a $10 mouse from Walmart isn’t going to cut it. But that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank on something super-fancy, either.

The Abyssus Essential, Razer’s newest mouse, has everything the average gamer needs — and it’s ideal for buyers on a budget.

How to master Split View on the Mac

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Split View on the Mac
This is how they did Split View on the olden days.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Split view on the iPad is amazing. Two apps, side-by-side, open up all kinds of neat shortcuts. You can drag text, links, and pictures from Safari into notes apps, emails, Pages documents and so on. The Mac is less in need of such a mode, because screens are bigger, and you can already place two windows side-by-side, but on a little MacBook, where every 1/64th inch counts, Split View is a great feature. Here’s how to use it.

Google Pay makes its way to Mac and iOS

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Google Pay browser
Can’t use Apple Pay? Use Google Pay instead.
Photo: Google

Google Pay is gearing up to do battle with Apple Pay in its own backyard.

The payments service has started rolling out on Mac and iOS, and you don’t need a dedicated app to use it.

Steam adds support for the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller

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Switch Pro Controller Steam
Use your Pro Controller to play your favorite Mac and PC games.
Photo: Valve

Steam has added official support for the Switch Pro Controller in its latest client beta.

Players no longer have to use fiddly third-party workarounds to enjoy Nintendo’s best controller in their favorite games. All of its buttons and even its motion controls are now fully supported.

Here’s how to find which apps are about to stop working on your Mac

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drill bits
Imagine 64 of these drill bits all working together.
Photo: Steven Depolo/Flickr CC

Sometime, probably quite soon, your Mac will stop running 32-bit apps. All new Macs have 64-bit processors, and Apple wants to phase out older 32-bit apps in order to ā€œenable faster system performanceā€ for your Mac as a whole. What this means is that, in an as-yet-unspecified future version on macOS, 32-bit apps will stop running altogether.

If you’re running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, then you may already have seen a warning pop up onto the screen when you launch older apps. Today we’ll see how to view a list of all the 32-bit apps on your Mac, so you can either harass the developer to update them, look for a better-supported alternative, or just delete them.

Intel speeds up chips by offloading virus scans

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Intel-Kaby-Lake
Intel will task GPUs with antivirus scanning.
Photo: Intel

Intel plans to offload virus scanning to improve the performance of its processors.

It will allow antivirus programs to use its integrated graphics chipsets when scanning for attacks, which will reduce processor and power consumption on some machines. It could mean that you’ll get more use out of your MacBook in between charges.

Pro Tip: Pin Safari’s tabs so you can find them faster

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pin safari tabs
Apple seemingly has a new relationship with Tencent.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugEver lost a tab in Safari? You have like a million of the things open, and you end up scrubbing a two-finger trackpad swirl over the entire tab bar, shifting those things around so that you can read their labels, and you still can’t track down the Cult of Mac website in there. Well here’s good news: you can just pin that tab to the edge of the tab bar, so you’ll never lose it again.

The next Mac Pro won’t arrive until 2019

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The Mac Pro is being
Turn your dusty old Mac into a fat stack of cash.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Professional Mac users holding out for the next Mac Pro are going to have to wait at least another year.

After revealing in 2017 that it was completely redesigning the Mac Pro, some fans held out hope that the new Mac Pro would come out by 2018. That’s not going to happen though. In a series of interviews, Apple executives revealed that the new Mac Pro will be a 2019 product.

Apple plans to ditch Intel processors on the Mac

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intel
Intel and Apple have formalized a deal that has the iPhone maker producing its own smartphone modem.
Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr

The next Mac you buy may not have Intel inside.

Apple is pushing forward with plans to ditch Intel’s processors in favor of its own chips, according to a new report that claims the transition away from Intel CPUs will likely take multiple steps.

Jony Ive is so design obsessed he sleeps on iPhone factory floors

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Apple Industrial Design Book
Apple’s chief design officer says secrecy is critical to creating great products.
Photo: YouTube

Jony Ive designs all iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and he says in a new interview that he’s a hands-on part of the creation process all the way through, not just a guy who makes sketches. Apple’s top designer also talks about his relationship with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

macOS 10.13.4 lands with eGPU support and business chat in iMessage

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iMac
A new update is out for the Mac.
Photo: Apple

Mac owners can finally use an external GPU to boost their computing power now that Apple has released macOS 10.13.4 to the public.

The software update has been in beta testing with developers for months and is now available to everyone for the first time. macOS 10.13.4 brings a number of improvements to the Mac, including some updates to iMessages, Safari and more.

Stylish poster shows the evolution of Apple computers over the years

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Moonimal
Wouldn't this look awesome in your study?
Photo: Moonimal

So you’ve got your iMac, iPad and iPhone at the ready. Your bookshelves are heaving under the weight of all the Steve Jobs biographies, and you’ve got a cabinet containing various rare vintage Apple products, like the ill-fated Pippin games console and that weird vertical Mac display from back in the day.

Now all you’re searching for is a little Apple-themed something for the wall to say to visitors ā€œI’m a little bit too into this Cupertino-based tech company.ā€ Well, look no further — because we’ve got the poster for you!

Apple’s new ā€˜Families’ page puts parental controls in one place

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parental controls
Apple is responding to concerns from investors and the general public.
Photo: Apple

Responding to concerns about smartphone addiction among younger users, Apple rolled out a new ā€œFamiliesā€ page to describe the parental controls and safety features currently available on the company’s devices.

The page reveals how parents can track their kids’ location, monitor purchases, and filter what their children can see on their devices. It also reviews Apple’s privacy and health-related features, along with sharing among family members, and Apple’s focus on education.

How to get the iPad’s keyboard shortcut cheat sheet on Mac

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CheatSheet
Press and hold…
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

One of the iPad’s handiest features is its keyboard-shortcut cheatsheet. Whenever you have a USB or Bluetooth keyboard attached to your iPad, just hold down the Command key and wait for a second. An overlay will pop up showing you all the keyboard shortcuts available for the current app.

Did you ever wish you could do the same with the Mac? After all, you always have a keyboard connected the Mac, so a cheatsheet overlay should be even more useful. Then you need CheatSheet, an app that does exactly that.

Bidding for rare Mac prototype starts at 99 cents

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Hap Plain
This early backlit Mac laptop sold on eBay for more than $16,000.
Photo: Hap Plain

A rare Macintosh prototype that was once rescued from the trash recently sold for more than $10,000 on eBay.

But the winning bidder backed out and now, the clear-plastic Macintosh Portable M5126 laptop is back on the auction site. Bidding started at 99 cents with no reserve.

How to use iCloud Drive to free up storage on your Mac

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clouds
Clouds. Perfect for the storage of information.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Is your Mac stuffed fit to burst? Do you look at the Finder’s Status Bar, see ā€œ1GB available,ā€ and then give up what you were doing and go check Twitter instead? What if I told you that you could offload much of the junk/important data on your Mac to iCloud, just like you do with your iCloud Photo Library? Well, you can, and it’s easy. It’s called Optimized Storage.

A stunning 2/3 of Apple devices ever sold remain in use

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Apple Customer Satisfaction
Customers keep using Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple’s devices don’t end up in the rubbish bin very often. In fact, an analyst determined that about 64 percent of iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watches ever sold remain in active use.

This might be the most accurate way of measuring just how satisfied people are with Apple’s products. Far better than customer surveys!

Vintage computer museum on sale with 80 classic Macs

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Benj Edwards Computer Collection
This is about half of Benj Edwardsā€˜ computer collection
Photo: Benj Edwards

Many people can’t bear to part with their old computers, and slowly build a collection of aging models in their basement. Benj Edwards took that impulse to the next level: He owns at least 228 unique devices, many of them classic Apple products going back to the 1980s.

Now he’s put them all up for sale. Ready to start your own computer museum?

How to stream Xbox One games to your Mac

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OneCast Xbox One for Mac
OneCast in action on macOS.
Photo: OneCast

Microsoft lets Windows 10 users stream Xbox One games to their PC, but it doesn’t support Mac. Now there’s a third-party solution that lets Apple fans get in on the action.

Here’s how to stream Xbox One games to your Mac using OneCast.

20 HomePod tips you need to know

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The HomePod is a lot smarter than you might think. Just take a look at these tips!
The HomePod is a smarter speaker than you might think.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The HomePod takes a lot of flak for being the dumbest smart speaker around, but it can do more than you might think. In today’s video, I’ll show you 20 HomePod tips you need to know.

(Just a quick heads-up: I’m going to be saying ā€œHey Siriā€ a few times in this video.)