Look at how much fun it is to play. Just look. Photo: Roli
Roli is best known for its squishy, multitouch, pressure-sensitive music keyboards and controllers. Those are great. But the new Roli Lumi goes in a different direction. It’s a small portable keyboard with light-up keys. And not the kind of light-up keys you might see in a movie set during the 1970s disco scene: These light up keys help you learn to play the piano.
What can't the iPad do in iPadOS? Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Were you ever drawing a diagram in the Notes app, and then realized you needed to type a note? Did you then find yourself frustrated at having to drop the Apple Pencil and type on the huge, half-screen QWERTY keyboard?
With iPadOS 13, Apple has removed that frustration. You still can’t do Newton-style handwriting and have it turn into text. But you can shrink the keyboard to a tiny floating panel, and use the Apple Pencil to swipe-type on it.
watchOS is huge, and it's coming this fall. Photo: Apple
Apple just previewed one of its biggest ever upgrades to watchOS at WWDC 2019.
Just as expected watchOS 6 makes Apple Watch less dependent on the iPhone with its very own App Store. It also brings brand news faces and complications — and new apps like Audiobooks, Voice Memos, and Calculator.
The pocket-size AliveCor KardiaMobile 6L can take a six-lead ECG. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
AliveCor’s KardiaMobile 6L promises to be much more accurate than the heart monitor built into Apple Watch Series 4, and almost as easy to carry around. It’s the first personal ECG with three electrodes approved by the FDA to check the electrical activity of the heart.
We put this ultra-portable iPhone accessory to the test, as well as the more basic single-lead KardiaMobile, so don’t miss our reviews of each.
This could be an important development for an Apple Car. Photo: j3n53r/Flickr CC
As part of its Project Titan initiative, Apple has invented some smart tech for improving detection of road signs and other vehicles on the road in low visibility situations.
This could ramp up safety in situations such as an autonomous Apple Car driving in foggy, snowy, low light or otherwise hard-to-see situations.
Rewind lets you listen to a podcast from the very beginning. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
With a podcast like the CultCast, you can drop in and start listening at any time. News-based podcasts are meant to be listened to, and then discarded. Another one will be along soon. But what about more structured podcasts? Podcasts that work episodically, like a TV series? With those, you want to listen from episode one, and listen in order — episodes 2, 3, 4, etc.
But podcast apps don’t let you do this. They’re geared towards disposable, periodically-updated podcasts. They may show you a list of previous episodes, so you can tap to download them manually, but then it’s no longer a podcast.
What you need is a service that takes any podcast feed and rejigs it, serving you a new episode each week as if the series had just started.
Häns Swipe-Clean can handle your gross screens. Photo: David Pierini/Cult of Mac
We live on our screens. So do germs, bacteria and a buildup of skin oils.
I will spare you the details and, instead, recommend the Häns Swipe-Clean, a wet-dry tool that wipes away the gross microbial life thriving on your iPhone, iPad and Mac screens.
Dust off any old USB keyboard and get your Bluetooth back in action. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
You wake up or restart your Mac, and nothing is connected. Your Bluetooth keyboard does nothing. You wiggle your Bluetooth mouse or trackpad, and the on-screen pointer refuses to wiggle in response. The problem? Your Mac’s Bluetooth is switched off. But how do you switch it back on without a mouse? If you ever find yourself in this situation, here’s a simple guide onturn on Bluetooth Mac without mouse.
Today we’ll see how to activate Bluetooth on an iMac, Mac Pro or Mac mini 1 without having to touch a mouse or trackpad. All you need are a USB keyboard, Spotlight and one clever trick.
Photos app is usually pretty good at recognizing people. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Photos app’s Faces feature is fantastic. It does a pretty good job of gathering all the pictures of a person together, for both browsing and search. And it’s really easy to add new faces to the list. But what about managing those faces? What if the Photos app’s AI added some photos of a stranger into the photos of your husband?
It’s easy to tell your iPhone or iPad that a photo does not contain the person it thinks it does. Unfortunately, it’s a real pain to find the setting you need to tweak.
This won’t fool anybody. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
AirPods 2 have arrived. Faster, longer-lasting, and with extra Hey Siri action, they’re a solid upgrade to the (deservedly well-loved) originals.
The new AirPods work — for the most part — just like the old ones, with a few extra Siri options. And that means that all the best AirPod tricks, like eavesdropping with Live Listen, and customizing your double-taps, all still work. Check out our roundup of the best tips and tricks for AirPods 2.
Get your freshly-printed WhatsApps here. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Yes, this sounds like a joke about the olde worlde CEO who has his secretary print his emails, then transcribe his dictated replies. But printing message threads can be pretty useful. Lawyers, for example, may want a printed record, or a PDF, of a message thread. And even regular humans might appreciate a well-formatted archive of their messages that can be easily searched and marked up.
You still can’t do this on your iDevice. However, thanks to the amazing iMazing Mac app, you can quickly create PDFs of your messages, and even print them. Onto paper.
Make sure you use the right cable. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
However old your iPhone is, it records great audio. You can use it as a dictaphone, to make field recordings of ambient sounds, to “tape” music, and even sample everyday noises and make music from them. But how do you do it? How do you hook up, say, a portable keyboard or an MP3 player to your iPhone, and actually save a recording? Let’s see.
The Nubia Alpha looks even uglier in real life. Photo: Nubia
Bendable displays are all the rage at MWC 2019 and one company took the idea to the extreme with a new phone that wraps around your wrist.
Nubia revealed its Alpha Wearable Smartphone that blurs the line between smartphone and watch. Wearing a giant computer on your wrist seems like it’d be annoying and impractical. Nubia’s weird creation is an interesting idea but it looks more like the Infinity Gauntlet than a watch.
Make music videos from your own Live Photos. Photo: Cult of Mac
After messing around with the amazing Hyperspektiv app earlier this week, I thought it would be a great way to make music videos. Hyperspektiv glitches your videos and Live Photos, giving them incredible special effects. All you need to do is arrange the resulting clips, and add music.
You can do this in any video-editing app on your iPhone or iPad — iMovie for instance. But that requires lot of manual work to get the music synced up with the video clips. After a little searching, I found Quik, a video app from GoPro. It’s not ideal — it likes to upload your videos to its servers with little warning — but it also has one essential feature: Quik analyses any music you add, and automatically syncs the video clips to the beat.
There’s no reason to get Apple’s Lightning-to-USB-C cable when Anker’s is at least as good for less money. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Anker is taking pre-orders for a Lightning-to-USB-C cable that costs much less than Apple’s version. We tested this new accessory to see how quickly it can charge an iPhone to be sure it’s a reasonable copy and not just a cheap knockoff.
Read on to see how well the Anker Powerline II USB-C cable stood up to our tests.
You can probably find this photo using Google's advanced image search. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Last week we saw how to use Google’s search operators to narrow a search and get exactly what you want, just by adding a few words to your search string. Today we’ll check out the Google’s Advanced Image Search, which is just as handy, only for pictures
Quit wasting time and learn something with Brilliant. Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac
Whether you’re addicted to Twitter, obsessed with Fortnite or wasting the day away on Netflix, you can kill hours on your iPhone without ever doing anything useful or productive.
Instead of mindlessly killing time, Brilliant gives you a way to expand your mind and learn something new every day.
Imagine this, only more dynamic. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Dynamic Desktop is a great macOS Mojave feature. It changes the desktop image throughout the day, so your wallpaper always matches the time of day — nighttime images at night, shadowless glare at noon, and so on. Today we’ll see how to switch it on, and where to find new Dynamic Desktop images to add to the defaults.
A slew of new HomeKit-compatible devices are headed our way. From locks and TVs to blinds and video doorbells, they promise to make smart homes more exciting in the very near future.
Get real work done on your iPad Pro. Photo: Satechi
Is the iPad Pro a laptop replacement? Despite what you might think, and what many reviewers will tell you, it can be for a lot of professionals. But not by itself.
If you’re going to use your iPad to get real work done, and to be as productive as possible, you’ll need some things to go with it. In this roundup, we’ve listed affordable accessories that turn iPad Pro into a productivity powerhouse.
Strapa makes gorgeous leather Apple Watch Series 4 straps that combine craftsmanship with high-quality materials. Photo: Strapa
So, someone who obviously likes you very much gifted you an Apple Watch Series 4 this holiday season. Now you’d like to add some personal style with an out-of-the-ordinary Apple Watch band. You should consider those made by Strapa, a company based in The Netherlands that produces some of the best leather Apple Watch bands we’ve seen.
Shopping for an Apple fan? Start here! Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac
Buying for an Apple fan who already has the latest products and accessories doesn’t have to be difficult. There are a ton of great gifts out there, like beautiful books showcasing Apple design, cool cushions that carry familiar Apple logos and slogans, and more.
In this gift guide, we’ve hand-picked a bunch of awesome products that would make any Apple fan insanely happy this holiday season. They’re products we’ve used, reviewed, and would recommend ourselves — and there’s something to suit every budget.