Data Protection is better than 10 padlocks for your iPhone. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
There’s a security setting in iOS that will erase everything on your iPhone, resetting it back to a blank, factory-state slate if you tap in the wrong passcode 10 times. It’s called Data Protection, and I never wrote a how to on this because I figured everyone would have it switched on. After all, who wouldn’t want that kind of excellent security if ever they lost their iPhone?
That's the Seaboard sat on a 12-inch iPad. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Imagine a piano keyboard that is also a multitouch surface, like the screen on an iPad. Now imagine that this is a tactile silicone surface with bumps and dips so you can feel the keys, just like a piano. Hold that image in your mind — you are currently imagining the Roli Seaboard Block, backpack-sized Bluetooth MIDI keyboard that will change the way you play music.
Wear your Apple Watch in a unique way with the Silver Horn Charm Necklace by Bucardo. Photo: Bucardo
Today only, take 25 percent off Bucardo’s stunning Charm Necklaces for Apple Watch.
Real turquoise and Swarovski crystals adorn several of these lovely charms, and all necklaces are crafted from either gold or silver plated stainless steel. In wearing these beautiful Apple Watch charm necklaces, the watch is still clearly visible, incorporating itself into a hot piece of jewelry. It’s unique yet timeless — just like mom. Save 25 percent through Mother’s Day in our Watch Store.
The adjustable length Button-Stud Apple Watch band fits virtually all wrist sizes — from the fleshiest to thinnest! Photo: Courtesy of Form Function Form
Best List: Button-Stud Apple Watch Band by Form Function Form
Making Apple’s “most personal device ever” personal to you is super-serious business for one Florida purveyor of handmade leather goods.
Echoing the individuality of Apple Watch, Form Function Form takes customization to new levels in the design of its one-of-a-kind Button-Stud Apple Watch Band. This ingenious leather strap has 21 different size options, one of which is sure to fit even the thinnest or fleshiest of wrists. If it doesn’t, the company provides free size adjustments for the entirety of your life.
We’ve added seven new leather colors to the Watch Store lineup! Read on for my review:
A clock is an easy, if lazy, metaphor for memories. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Memories is one of the best features of the Photos app. It gathers together pictures into albums that are surprisingly smart. It picks you best pictures, adds music, and uses things like facial recognitions to focus on the important people in the pictures. The whole thing is presented as a slideshow.
But did you know that you can edit those memories? You can change the title, the duration, the music, and more. Let’s take a quick look how to tweak our memories to make them perfect.
Create stunning long exposure style photos in seconds on your iPhone. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
They say the best camera is the one you have with you. And when isn’t the iPhone with you? iPhone photography has created a whole new generation of amateur photographers. While you may be looking for the next great app to help produce some stunning photos, did you know you can easily recreate a long exposure style image right within the camera app?
Check out our latest Quick Tips video below to see how.
Don't leave your Apple Pencil in the jar. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
You have a new iPad, and you have a new Apple Pencil. Time to learn how to draw, right? Not necessarily. Just like a regular pen or pencil, there are ton of other things you can do with an Apple Pencil. You can write, of course, but you can also play games, compose musical scores, do coloring in books, edit photos, and even play the Apple Pencil like a musical instrument.
Let’s take a look at the best non-drawing apps for Apple Pencil.
The Microblog app looks pretty great on iPhone. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Facebook tracks your every move and sells the information to people who try to fix elections. Twitter is destroying the fabric of democracy, and doesn’t care. And even if you leave Facebook, it owns Instagram and WhatsApp, two of the biggest social networks outside of itself and Twitter. And now Facebook is promising to let anyone delete their posts, which means that you’ll never really know what’s been happening. IT’s time to leave Facebook and move on, but where?
After all, a social network is pointless if you have no friends on it. Happily, there’s a social network out there already that’s bigger than Facebook, and completely uncontrolled by any single company. It’s the web.
Today we’re going to see how to post your photos, messages, and other rants onto your own microblog, just like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The best part is, you own everything, anyone can read it, and it’s as easy to use as sending a tweet.
Image galleries are easy to add, and look great. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The new Apple Pencil-friendly version of Pages for iPad also has a couple of other big new features. One of these is iBook creation, which we’ll look at in another post. Today we’re going to see how to add an Image Gallery to a regular Pages document. This is handy if you need to include lots of pictures into a document, but don’t want to use pages and pages to do so.
You could, for instance, include galleries of vacation photos in a newsletter for family and friends, with images stacked into daily galleries, or organized by event. Or you could pile a bunch of diagrams into one Image Gallery, allowing you to include a lot more information without cluttering the document. Better still, you can export your Pages document as an eBook, and the galleries become fully interactive.
The Iconfactory’s Linea Sketch drawing app for iPad just got updated to version 2.0, and it’s a winner. Somehow, the developers have managed to keep the app’s signature simplicity and ease of use, while adding in some essential new features.
Without Wi-Fi assist, your iPhone might end up as useless as this piece of junk. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Using your iPhone on a poor, weak, or spotty Wi-Fi is not only frustrating. It could also have a detrimental effect on battery life. But there’s a fix, for flaky Wi-Fi at least. You can tell your iPhone to use cellular data to make up the shortfall, giving you smooth internet access, at the expense of some cellular data use. It’s called Wi-Fi Assist, and it could be the answer to all of life’s problems.
No wonder this little chap is so happy... Photo: Cult of Mac
The Finder has been with the Mac since day one, way back in 1984. But just because it’s old, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some new tricks. Did you know, for instance, that you can add a path bar to the bottom of the window to show the path of the current folder on your Mac? Or that you can add a status bar in the same spot so you always know how full your drive is? Or that you can add a permanent preview pane over on the right side of a Finder window, even in icon and list views?
With a couple of taps, you can convert any audio or video file to MP3 Photo: Cult of Mac
Converting an audio track to MP3 on the Mac is dead easy. Just open it with iTunes, and choose the File > Convert option from the menu bar. On iOS, though, there’s no native way to do this. There are lots of shonky-looking apps in the App Store that offer to create MP3s for you, but it’s likely that you already have the answer installed on your iPhone or iPad.
That’s right. Apple’s own WorkFlow app can quickly and easily convert any audio (or video) file to MP3.
Would you wear Apple Glasses like this? Photo: Taeyeon Kim
Apple is reportedly interested in building augmented reality glasses that work with its ARKit framework. Although such technology is likely a few years away, designer Taeyeon Kim has created a design concept for what such Apple Glasses may look like.
The Lofree Poison is a modern Bluetooth speaker with a retro 1950s style. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
These days, everything old is new again. Pop culture is bursting with reboots, references, and a general nostalgia for the comfortable looks and feels of the past. Escapism aside, classic styles are classic for a reason, and they make a great look for modern technology.
Live Photos are great. They can capture special moments in a way that some pictures just can’t. The little movie clips that play when you force-touch a Live Photo can show the joy or wonder of the image. But therein lies the problem. They’re basically video clips embedded into photos, which makes sharing them to non-iOS users a nightmare.
A plethora of apps can convert Live Photos into GIFs or a standard video clip, but iOS 11 makes it even easier. Check out our video below to see how to quickly convert a Live Photo into a GIF.
If you misspell your markups, you can even go back and edit them before sending. Photo: Charlie Sorrel / Cult of Mac
If you’re explaining something to another human in person, you’ll often reach for a pencil and paper to make it easier. Perhaps you’re drawing a map, or a quick diagram of that chest of drawers you think would look great in the guest room.
And that’s in person, where gestures and feedback from the listener help communication. Given the limits of email, then, wouldn’t a sketch, chart, or diagram be even more useful? The answer is a resounding “probably,” and the best news you’ll hear today is that it is dead easy to add a drawing to your emails, even without an Apple pencil, and even on an iPhone.
Looking after you MacBook battery is really easy. Photo: FruitJuice
Did you know that leaving your MacBook plugged in all the time is a sure way to ruin its battery? That instead you should use your notebook computer on battery power for an hour or two each day? That’s the advice from battery health app FruitJuice, which will help you to keep your battery in tip-top condition.
This app is packed with tools to keep your Mac drive clean and healthy. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Regular use of any Mac means a lot of work for its drive. With all that mileage, like any machine it’s going to develop problems. So to make sure your Mac leads a long, productive life, you’ve got to get ahead of drive issues.
This bundle of courses covers all of iOS 11. Just beat the average price to score the entire bundle. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
iOS 11 has become the new standard when it comes to design-focused operating systems. With every update, comes more fun, intuitive, and functional features. Learning to code for the iPhone isn’t as daunting as you think, practice makes perfect.
Who doesn’t love emoji? People with bad eyesight, that’s who. Everyone else, everyone everywhere, loves the little pictures of medals, flags, headphones, eggplants, and feces. What we don’t like is finding them by swiping around the keyboard section of an iPhone screen. In some ways it’s a metaphor for human existence. We love to manipulate the meaning of symbols through context and juxtaposition, the way a standup comic does, but we’re too lazy to spend the time to do it properly.
Happily for the future of the human race, there are shortcuts to great emoji if you’re using iOS. Let’s take a look.
Instantly add a variety of useful connections to your new MacBook Pro. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
There are many great features to point out about the latest MacBook Pros. But with only USB-C ports for external devices, a wide variety of connections isn’t one of them.
Don't miss on this eight Mac app bundle, featuring PDF Expert and Roxio Toast. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
That’s right, it’s almost time for Black Friday to roll around again. This year, forget facing the long, bleak lines at department stores. Instead, you can bring a truckload of new apps to your Mac with the click of a button, including award-winning Mac app–PDF Expert 2.2.
Clessant uses prized Barenia leather from the Haas Tannery in France. Photo: Clessant
Best List: Clessant Black Barenia Apple Watch Band
When it comes to fashion, it’s hard to beat basic black. However, sometimes you want a little something extra — a design that adds subtle interest without going over the top. The Clessant Black Barenia Apple Watch band does the trick, thanks to fine off-white stitching that looks almost like racing stripes.
The laser in the iPhone X's Face ID could one day transform the speed of broadband. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
What do you do when Face ID doesn’t recognize your face? Do you reposition your face? Reposition the iPhone? Stare a little harder at the camera, to tell it you really mean business?
Stop! Instead of acquiescing to your iPhone X’s silent demands, you should use this as a teaching moment (and show your phone who’s boss at the same time). Face ID learns how your face changes over time, but you can also teach it to recognize you better. Here’s how.