This refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook Pro from 2018 boasts a Touch Bar, and the laptop’s on sale for just $399.99. Whether you love or hate the Touch Bar, there’s no denying its potential to speed up your workflow with quick access to tools, shortcuts and app-specific controls.
Plus, it’s cool and fun … and discontinued!
You can set notifications from specific apps to stick to the top of your iPhone screen. With persistent notifications in iOS, when your phone is unlocked and an important alert comes in, it will stay visible at the top of the screen until you act upon it. It’s an easy way to make sure you don’t miss (or forget about) critical notifications on your iPhone.
This proves super-handy for things like medication reminders. It also works wonders if you’re the sort of person that ignores notifications once they disappear from your iPhone screen. I’ll show you how to make your notifications sticky.
When it comers to satisfaction, Apple sits at the top of the heap among computer makers. It beats HP, Samsung and others, according to the latest survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
And satisfaction with tablets improved to the point they’re essentially on par with desktops and laptops.
macOS Sequoia is a pretty comprehensive update with some fantastic new features, like iPhone mirroring, window tiling, and text message formatting. Although Apple Intelligence — the AI features coming to Mac, iPhone, and iPad — will continue grabbing headlines for the next year, it won’t arrive until later in the fall. Plus, only Macs with Apple silicon will support Apple Intelligence. Additionally, users can look forward to a new shaking head emoji, expanding the ways people can express disagreement or disapproval in messages.
Still, macOS Sequoia brings some game-changing new features — and it’s out right now. Find it in System Settings > General > Software Update. It’s compatible with most of the same Macs as macOS Sonoma, dropping support for the 2018 and 2019 MacBook Air.
After you update, here’s the big list of things you can check out.
Mac Hot Corners are shortcuts for your mouse. Just throw your mouse cursor to the corner of the screen (the easiest place to hit) to perform quick actions. You can instantly lock the screen, start a screensaver, show the desktop, show all windows and more.
If you use your Mac with a standard two-button PC mouse instead of Apple’s Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse, Hot Corners can replace the multitouch gestures that you miss out on. The Mac’s built-in Hot Corners feature gives you a really quick and easy way to navigate your computer, and I recommend you turn them on and use them.
Some people achieve and maintain zero unread emails; some let that red badge climb into the thousands. It’s never too late — you can become one of those clean inbox people like me. What can help you along the way to Inbox Zero are these six tips in Apple’s own Mail app for iPhone and Mac that you might not have known about.
Well, beyond the obvious Tip Number 0: You should always hit the Unsubscribe button at the bottom of every unsolicited promotional email as soon as you get the first one. After you kill all those unwanted subscriptions, these six lesser-known features of the Apple Mail app will make you a true pro at managing your email.
Apple could go all-in on USB-C with its upcoming M4 Mac mini. As a part of the machine’s major design revamp, the company might ditch USB-A ports for good.
The Cupertino company should unveil the M4 Mac mini later this year.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: We finally know exactly when Apple’s iPhone 16 event will happen. It’s “Glowtime” on September 9 … and now it’s time to talk about what’s in store.
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.
You can adjust the Portrait mode photo blur on iPhone and Mac — even after you’ve taken the picture. Your iPhone stores the depth data that it uses to create the blur effect along with the photo. So, if you took picture with a recent iPhone, you can adjust how blurry or clear the background looks. It’s super easy to get just the right amount of bokeh.
Why would you want to tweak the background blur on your iPhone photo? A blurrier background, under the right conditions, can make for a very dramatic picture. It can effectively emphasize the subject of your shot. Or, you might want to turn up the blur to intentionally hide details behind you. On the other hand, if you’re in a photogenic location, you might want to decrease the blur so you can see more of the gorgeous background scenery.
Either way, I’ll show you how to edit Portrait mode’s background blur in photos on iPhone and Mac.
Guess what percentage of Mac buyers choose the Mac mini. Whatever your estimate is, the real number is probably lower. Much lower.
Despite selling so very few of them, it seems likely Apple keeps making and updating the tiny macOS desktop because many of them go to young buyers just starting on a lifetime of buying Apple products.
Looks like now’s a good time to grab yourself a very cool and quite powerful laptop you can take anywhere. That’s because Amazon invites you to select from various models and take $250 off 15-inch M3 MacBook Air. That includes any model with the specs to suit your needs. For example, you might want to go for the recommended 16GB of unified memory to help ensure the laptop keeps handling tough tasks for a while — like all that Apple Intelligence stuff gearing up to change people’s lives.
Nothing illustrates the power of Apple’s ecosystem like the Continuity features that help your Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch work seamlessly together. Thanks to Continuity, your iPhone can serve as your Mac’s webcam. You can start an email on one device and instantly pick it up on another. You can use the same keyboard and mouse with a Mac and iPad, copy and paste across devices and more.
These features flex the power of Apple’s hardware and software — and they would never be possible on a PC. Unfortunately, that means a lot of people don’t learn about these features because they don’t expect so much from their computers.
In this post (and the accompanying video), I will show you some of the time-saving, annoyance-busting Continuity features you can enjoy when you go all-in on the Apple ecosystem.
Apple is reportedly testing multiple M4-powered Macs for launch later this year. More importantly, a new report says all the Macs ship with 16GB or 32GB of system memory.
This signals that Apple might finally bid farewell to the paltry 8GB RAM for Mac base models.
The macOS Sequoia release date could arrive alongside iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 next month. Apple typically releases a major new iOS and iPadOS update in September alongside new iPhones. And while the next version of the Mac operating system usually follows in October or November, that could change this year.
Apple has supposedly hit a major setback and significantly delayed the mass production of its MacBook with a super-size, folding screen. The company has run into technical issues with the display and other mechanicals.
Apparently, these problems will force Apple to delay mass production until as late as the end of 2027 or 2028.
If you work on a Mac, these six useful apps can help you get that work done faster. And you don’t need to take time to download them or figure out if they’re worth the price — you already have these apps on your computer.
These come with every Mac, and you can locate them in the Applications and Utilities folders. If you’re in the Finder, just hit Shift-Command-A (⇧⌘A) or Shift-Command-U (⇧⌘U) to find them.
I’ll walk you through a few of the more useful Mac apps hiding there that you probably haven’t heard of.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: It sounds like a whole bunch of Macs powered by Apple’s M4 chip — including a Mac mini that will be surprisingly small — will arrive in the not-so-distant future. We discuss the latest M4 Mac rumors (and can’t help getting more than a little excited).
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.
Apple is going to shrink the next Mac mini when it adds an M4 processor, according to an often-reliable source of insider information. The desktop could be the size of an Apple TV.
So, Mac micro?
As if Siri’s unhelpful answers were not irritating enough when you actually want them, Siri often interrupts a conversation, meeting or TV show when you haven’t asked for anything at all. The good news is you make it stop — if you know how to deactivate Siri on your Apple devices.
keep reading or watch our video.
Although the Mac offers fantastic support for opening and editing PDFs in the built-in Preview app, the simple act of copying and pasting text from a PDF can still be a nightmare. For instance, selecting text on a two- or three-column document often selects across the whole width of the page, which is totally useless. Luckily, there’s a better way to copy text from a PDF on a Mac using Apple’s Live Text feature.
Taking a quick screenshot and using Live Text often yields better results when you need to copy text from a PDF or an image. (It also works with photos and old document scans as well as PDFs. Here’s how to do it.)
The Mac offers many options for taking screenshots without installing third-party apps. You can take a Mac screenshot that shows the entire screen, get a clean image of a specific window, or select specific areas to capture. There’s also a built-in way to take a video of your Mac screen (and even record a voiceover for your screen recording using your microphone, headset or AirPods.)
We’ll show you various ways to take a Mac screenshot so you can decide what’s best for your needs.
No PC maker is growing faster than Apple. Mac shipments increased 20.8% year over year in Q2, according to market analysts. That’s a growth rate that dwarfs larger rivals.
It’s the second quarter in a row of double-digit growth for Apple.
You can make a GIF on your iPhone or Mac out of any Live Photo or video you have in your photo library or saved to your computer. You don’t need to download any apps — simply add a shortcut, and you can do it directly from the share sheet.
Of course, not all looping animated images are GIFs. A faster way to animate your Live Photos is with the iPhone’s built-in Loop effect. In the Photos app, just tap on the “Live” tag in the upper left and select “Loop.” This will produce higher-quality results, but might not be compatible with third-party apps like Snapchat or Discord.
If you need an actual GIF file, there’s still a pretty easy way to make them on your phone or Mac. I’ll show you how.
Apple only shows off its finished products, which makes the company’s secret prototypes and early concepts all the more fascinating. Details of these first-draft designs usually don’t come out until years after Apple dreams them up and discards them. Even if you’re well-versed in Apple history, these alternate-history unreleased Apple products will intrigue and confuse.
The wild and crazy ideas go back more than 40 years. If anything, it proves that Apple continuously skates toward the next hit. The quest for innovation continues, no matter whether the company is in dire straits or cruising on success. Keep reading or watch our video to see the wildest Apple products that might have been.
If you’re trying to listen to podcasts or music on your phone, it can be annoying when your AirPods keep switching to other devices, like your Mac or iPad.
Personally, I don’t mind this behavior. If I’m sitting at my Mac, I want to use the Music and the Podcasts apps on the Mac. But a lot of people consider their phone to be their primary device and always want to play audio from their phone, no matter which other device they’re using.
If you want your iPhone to keep supreme control over your ears, here’s how to disable AirPods auto-switching.