News - page 318

Ted Lasso’s second season brings more of the aw-shucks charm and positivity that made the show the biggest hit on Apple TV+.

I didn’t find the show’s concept — a cornball U.S. football coach gets hired to lead a U.K. soccer squad — all that intriguing when the show debuted last year. But Ted Lasso’s relentless optimism won me over. And I’m not alone: The upbeat show definitely struck a chord with pandemic-weary viewers all over the world.

The show might be too sappy for Cult of Mac reviewer Scout Tafoya, who’s apparently not a sports fan. (He’s more of a Schmigadoon! kind of guy.) But even he grudgingly admits Ted Lasso is “handsomely produced and well-acted.”

And really, the show isn’t about sports … it’s about life, leadership and the transformative nature of teamwork.

Scout’s Ted Lasso season 2 review is the cover story of this week’s free edition of Cult of Mac Magazine. Download it now to read on your iOS device of choice. Even if you’re not into sports, or Apple TV+, you’ll find the mag’s stocked with plenty of Apple news, reviews and how-tos.

You’re on a plane, binge-watching your favorite show, but your laptop is running out of battery. With two hours left before you land, you kick yourself for not being prepared. “That’s it,” you think to yourself, “as soon as I land, I’m getting a powerful battery pack.” Well, this week’s giveaway is for you.

ZMI is giving away two powerful portable chargers valued at nearly $230 to two lucky winners. The top prize is the $149 ZMI PowerPack No. 20, which puts out a massive 210W and can recharge a 16-inch MacBook Pro and two other devices simultaneously. This good-looking battery pack won a prestigious design award from Red Dot.

Second prize is the more portable ZMI PowerPack 20K Pro, which puts out 65W max and is valued at $80. Enter this week’s giveaway for your chance at winning one of these two battery packs.

The new Accell Power UV Sanitizer with Wireless Charging promises to kill 99% of common germs and bacteria on your devices with UV light. And of course you can also use it to power them up.

Add Facebook to the list of companies offering a gaming service for iPhone. There’s a lengthy list of titles available on day one, including strategy, role playing, trivia and other types of games.

But don’t look for these in the App Store — Apple’s stringent rules on gaming services caused Facebook Gaming to be introduced as a web app instead.

Smart home accessory maker Aqara’s new gadget for HomeKit lets you monitor air quality in your house. As pollution rises from wildfires and other causes — depending on where you live — you may find it handy to glance at the Aqara TVOC Air Quality Monitor to know whether you need to do something about the air you breathe.

Satechi, known for an array of iPad and iPhone accessories, has released a trio of GaN wall chargers to help you keep all your Apple devices powered up.

A Kickstarter campaign promises a new iPhone wireless charger with a zirconia ceramic body and interior mechanics designed for easy repairs and upgrades. That means it bucks the “planned obsolescence” trend and begs longterm — and even permanent — use. The product’s name? Biscuit.

Redditor N3oPuff drew some attention on the social media platform with a setup photo that flaunts mind-blowing gear not so much as it does natural beauty. It definitely brings to mind the old real estate maxim: “location, location, location.” But an M1 Mac mini always helps.

In fact, it could be the perfect Setup for a summer Friday.

The 2021 iPad mini will be Apple’s next tablet with a mini-LED display, according to information leaking from a component supplier. This type of screen looks better than the standard LCD used in many current iPads.

But an display industry expert claims there’s no truth to this report.

Even so, Apple allegedly won’t reserved the display tech for tablet much longer. mini-LED displays will also supposedly be used in upcoming MacBook Pro models.

Jetpack Joyride+ launched on Apple Arcade Friday, allowing subscribers to play the classic game without the hassle of in-app purchases.

Strap on a jetpack and fly through an endless runner. Or ride a mechanical dragon or giant mech while wearing a crazy costume — the game offers all these modes.

YouTube channel ChargerLAB got its hands on Apple’s new MagSafe Battery Pack and gave it the teardown treatment to see what secrets it contains.

The video, which you can check out below, shows off the magnetic battery pack’s dual-cell design. It looks like it essentially contains twin iPhone batteries — providing a total power output of 11.13Wh, based on two 3.82 volt batteries (7.62 volts combined).

Apple’s new MacBook Air with 13.3-inch Mini-LED display will debut in mid-2022, says respected TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in a new note to clients, seen by Cult of Mac.

Kuo had previously said that a MacBook Air with Mini-LED screen would arrive sometime next year. However, he had not narrowed this down to a particular time of the year. Kuo is one of the more accurate (although not infallible) Apple analysts/reporters. According to AppleTrack, he has an accuracy rating of 76.6%.

Apple’s AirPods 3, the third iteration of its standard issue wireless earbuds, could make their debut in September alongside the iPhone, Digitimes reported Friday.

According to the report, the new AirPods — which are rumored to receive a redesign in line with the AirPods Pro, minus the active noise cancelling feature — will “remain price-friendly.” The current AirPods launched in March 2019 at $159 with standard charging case or $199 with wireless charging case.

Ikea and Sonos unveiled their latest collaboration recently — a Symfonisk Wi-Fi speaker embedded in a picture frame that blends into your home’s decor. But sorry, you won’t be slipping your oil painting of Steve Jobs in there. It’s not actually a picture frame.

OWC built Thunderbolt into the new Envoy Pro SX to make the portable drive fast and reliable. And don’t worry if you spill coffee on the SSD — it can take the punishment.

It’s available with up to 2TB of storage, isn’t bulky, and requires no fan.

Following the release of its 12-port Thunderbolt 4 dock in June, Anker is now rolling out a new addition to the PowerExpand range, the PowerExpand 9-in-1 USB-C PD Dock. It keeps a slimmer profile than Anker’s beefier docks in the range, some with a 12 and 13 ports.

Sony is offering PlayStation 5 owners a free, six-month trial of Apple TV+. This comes one month after Apple reduced the one-year free Apple TV+ trial for people who buy a new Mac, iPad or iPhone down to three months only. The Sony deal is open even if you’re already paying for Apple TV+ on a monthly basis.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously Wednesday to increase right to repair regulation stopping businesses from making it difficult for customers to fix their own products. Apple has repeatedly lobbied against right to repair laws around the world.

Back in May, the FTC published a report for Congress in which they listed some of the ways that companies (including Apple) make products tough to repair. These include gluing components together and restricting software and parts needed for carrying out maintenance. President Biden then recently signed an executive order asking the FTC to create new rules to bar these practices.

This appears to be the start of this ruling become more official.

TikTok is big. Almost unfathomably enormous, actually. The product of Chinese parent company ByteDance, the social media video-sharing app has remained a fixture at the top of the App Store charts for more than a year now — with no sign of it losing that position any time soon.

Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of a new book, titled TikTok Boom: China’s Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media. It launches today in Europe and worldwide, with a US launch coming September 30.

Stokel-Walker spoke with Cult of Mac about what makes TikTok, well, tick, the app’s face-off with Donald Trump, and why it’s no longer exclusively an app for teens to show off their dance moves.

Twitter is running an experiment that lets iPhone users downvote a reply to a tweet. It tests allowing users to actively show that they disagree with a response to a post on the social-networking service.

Twitter is often a venue for people to angrily argue politics, sports, entertainment, etc. Giving people the ability to downvote each other isn’t likely to calm the storm.

We’ll soon find out how the ongoing fascination with Steve Jobs will combine with the new fascination for NFTs. A handwritten job application the Apple cofounder filled out in 1973 is going up for auction both as a physical document and as a Non-Fungible Token.

Apple’s just-released MagSafe Battery Pack faced plenty of mockery for not being about as slim as a credit card, as some people apparently expected. This criticism clearly comes from people ignoring an inescapable fact: Batteries are always bulky.

Until there’s a revolutionary breakthrough in power storage tech, there’s no way to make an ultra-slim battery store a useful amount of power. Stop expecting it. And stop criticizing companies for not miraculously producing an impossible product.

Targus recently launched a trio of EcoSmart cases for iPad made from recycled post-consumer plastic and up to 40% biodegradable materials — with no compromise on protection, the company said. The cases showed up on Amazon in mid-to-late June.

Both macOS Big Sur 11.5 and iPadOS 14.7 made the jump from beta to full release on Wednesday. They bring only a handful of new features, though, as well as bug fixes.

The updates follow several days after the debut of iOS 14.7 for iPhone.

Accessories maker Hyper has launched 65W and 100W HyperJuice chargers — based on power-efficient gallium nitride (GaN) technology — that you can stack to increase power output.