News - page 151

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Apple’s roadmap for future AirPods looks ambitious. The company wants them to take your temperature to see if you’re feverish, test your ears to see if you’re hard of hearing, substitute for hearing aids, and charge using the one cable to rule them all … USB-C!

It’s all music to our ears.

Also on The CultCast:

• An Apple monitor that works even when your Mac is turned off sounds perfect for some people and situations.
• Shocker! Apple’s Vision Pro headset might be in incredibly short supply at launch.
• Threads, the new “Twitter killer” from Meta, doesn’t seem like that much of a threat. However, it might play nice with Mastodon. (Griffin is optimistic!)
• Suddenly, Apple TV+ seems like a streaming contender.
• Erfon is pretty, pretty, pretty pleased with Apple’s stock price.

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.

Hijack, a new thriller starring Idris Elba, quickly rose to near the top of the rating charts showing it’s among the most popular shows on any streaming service.

And it’s not the only stand-out Apple TV+ series right now — Silo also continues to draw a large audience.

If Apple made a turntable, would it cost $60,000? Almost certainly not, but that’s the lofty price tag on the new 50th anniversary Linn Sondek LP12-50, sketched out by former Apple chief designer Jony Ive and his firm LoveFrom.

It’s his first hardware design project since leaving Apple in 2019. And he did it for free.

On social media we see plenty of people flaunting pristine computer setups, and even completely staged ones. But plenty of them are “lived in,” and some aren’t necessarily complete. People sometimes call out for help: “How do I make this better?”

Today’s featured M1 MacBook Air setup is example of the latter. The user asked for advice and got it. But he didn’t agree with some of it. See below.

When former Apple design honcho Jony Ive released his super-premium Apple design book in 2016, a lot of folks thought it was an overpriced ego trip. After all, Designed by Apple in California went for $299 for the large size and $199 for the small size.

And now? Well, now you’d be lucky to get the fancy coffee-table books for dollar amounts in the high hundreds and low thousands.

A short film commissioned by Apple demonstrates that the iPhone 14 Pro can be used to make a movie. In this case, a short action comedy called Huracán Ramírez vs. La Piñata Enchilada.

Apple also released a “making of” video to show how the film was made with an iPhone 14 Pro.

Apple will reportedly require you to make an in-store appointment to buy the Vision Pro headset when it launches next year. This is the same strategy the company employed for the Apple Watch launch in 2015.

Apple plans to set up special demo zones inside its stores when the $3,500 headset goes on sale in the United States in early 2024. The company reportedly will utilize custom tools to make sure accessories fit buyers’ faces.

All Spotify subscribers who’ve been paying for the music streaming service through the App Store are being switched to a free, ad-supported plan whether they want to or not.

Those who wish can switch back to a for-pay plan, but can not pay for it through Apple’s app payment system.

The Galactic Empire and the Foundation prepare for massive conflict in a new trailer for Apple TV+ show Foundation, with the sci-fi series’ gorgeous special effects and cinematography very much on display.

Foundation season two premieres July 14. So now’s the time to watch the epic trailer Apple released Thursday — or get caught up on season one.

Mobile accessory brand Spigen unveiled its new Spigen ArcPack Portable Charger on Monday. It features a 10,000mAH battery pack and 30 watts of quick-charging power for your devices on the go.

This week we teamed up with Kuxiu to put an X40 3-in-1 foldable magnetic wireless charger and stand in the hands of one lucky winner.

This charger, which retails for $89.99, can juice up an iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch all at once. And it’s perfect for travel, thanks to its light weight and compact size. It tips the scales at just 6.9 ounces, so you can take it anywhere and just pop it in your pocket for extra convenience.

Nathan Pyle’s humorous Strange Planet graphic novels are being made into an Apple TV+ animated series that’s now set to launch in late summer.

The show uses brightly colored aliens to poke fun at all of us.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max will cost more than last year’s equivalent version, according to an analyst. If true, this will be the first time the largest and most powerful of Apple’s flagship handsets has seen a price change since 2019.

The analyst also predicts the entire iPhone 15 series will go into production in August. The four new models are expected to launch in September.

Meta just launched Threads, a new text-based social networking service that goes head-to-head with Twitter. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have always competed with Twitter, of course, but Threads does so directly. The two apps are nearly identical.

Twitter has struggled since being acquired by Elon Musk in 2022, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly sees an opportunity to supplant it.

With all the buzz about its upcoming Vision Pro augmented-reality headset, Apple sent out a reminder that iPad Pro also has AR capabilities. The tablet powers Deep Field, an application that lets children use an Apple Pencil to draw plants inspired by works of art, and have their creations rendered into 3D via the magic of augmented reality.

A federal judge in Louisiana issued a broad injunction Tuesday limiting federal government contact with social media sites over what the Biden administration may see as disinformation spreading out of control.

The ruling is one of many upcoming that frame a fight over the constitutionality of curbing social media’s influence in light of the First Amendment’s right to freedom of expression.

A smartwatch like your trusty Apple Watch might be able to screen you for Parkinson’s disease up to 7 years before symptoms would show up if you have it, according to a fascinating new study.

Parkinson’s damages the brain slowly, so early detection via smartwatch could offer treatment advantages as new therapies develop.

Apple TV+ dropped the official trailer Wednesday for its upcoming historical drama Killers of the Flower Moon. The sprawling period piece is filled with the rage and bloodshed of one of America’s most-enduring murder mysteries.

Based on a nonfiction account of a deadly conspiracy by white men to capture oil wealth held by the Osage Indian nation members in early-1900s Oklahoma, the Marin Scorsese film counts Leonardo Di Caprio and Robert De Niro among its sprawling cast.

Amazon is knocking a sweet 20% off second-gen AirPods Pro ahead of next week’s Prime Day sale. Take advantage of the deal, and you can get Apple’s best AirPods Pro for $199.99, down from $249.

While not the lowest price ever seen, this is still a terrific deal you should not miss.

The number of Apple TV+ subscribers has more than tripled in the past two years, according to data from a market-analysis firm.

Apple’s streaming service now sits in the middle of the pack in the battle against competitors like Netflix, Hulu and Disney+.

SwitchEasy makes an array of cool bands for Apple Watch in different styles and with various materials, from stretchy nylon to stainless steel mesh. In the SwitchEasy Flash Sale, the Cult of Mac Store has four excellent choices on sale for 20% off the regular prices through July 3.

Check out all four SwitchEasy bands for Apple Watch below.

Monitor mounts and the like may not be terribly glamorous or exciting, but they can do an awful lot for a computer setup.

Today’s featured MacBook Pro workstation uses them to make the laptop and two other crucial pieces of hardware easy to move around. And they keep the hardware off the desk, creating space for other items.

The dark comedy High Desert will not be returning to Apple TV+. The series starring Patricia Arquette earned generally positive comments from critics and viewers, but perhaps didn’t find a big audience.

Arquette herself made the announcement Sunday.

Apple reportedly made hefty cuts to its production goals for the Vision Pro due to the headset’s complex design, which makes mass production a challenge.

Announced at WWDC23 in June, Apple’s mixed-reality headset will go on sale in early 2024. So the company has more than a few months to sort out these manufacturing challenges.

Apple is exploring adding health-focused features to future versions of AirPods Pro, including sensors that measure body temperature. The company also is working on features that would make the earbuds a viable hearing aid replacement, including an advanced hearing test to evaluate the wearer’s capabilities.

Apple also reportedly plans to transition the AirPods Pro’s charging case from Lightning to USB-C this year. This could happen alongside the iPhone 15 series in September.