News - page 394

Actors Cherry Jones and Jason Segel have joined the cast of upcoming Apple TV+ original movie The Sky Is Everywhere. Jones (HBO’s Succession and Apple TV+’s Defending Jacob) and Segel (the excellent Forgetting Sarah Marshall) will join relative newcomer Grace Kaufman.

The movie is an adaptation of a Jandy Nelson young-adult novel. The plot follows a high-school girl mourning the death of her sister. She becomes romantically attached to her late sister’s fiancé and another young man newly arrived in town.

Over 30% of iPhones are running iOS 14 exactly a week after the release, according to data from an analytics company. That’s a 50% faster adoption rate than iOS 13 a year ago.

Thanks to iOS 14’s new widgets, seemingly everyone is redesigning their iPhone Home screens right now. Some of these look amazing. Others evoke the eyeball-abusing tragedy of late-stage MySpace, serving as painful reminders of why most of us didn’t become professional graphic designers.

Here are some of the better iOS 14 custom Home screens we’ve seen. (Want to make your own? We’ve got a guide for you: How to give your iPhone Home screen a new look with custom icons).

Ever wanted to make your brand-new iPhone look like it’s running Windows 95? That’s the outrageously novel idea that sprang into the mind of Ashley, an 18-year-old from Indiana who wants to work as a graphic designer, after she upgraded to iOS 14 last week.

Taking advantage of iOS 14’s new Home screen widgets feature, and a clunky workaround that employs the built-in Shortcuts app, she gave her iPhone 11 a vintage Microsoft-style makeover that screams retro cool and picked up 4.4 million views and 664,000 likes on TikTok.

“As someone who wasn’t even alive in the ’90s, other operating systems, such as Windows XP, are more nostalgic to me, but I went with Windows 95 because it furthered the contrast between old and new,” Ashley, who did not want her last name revealed, told Cult of Mac.

The iPhone 12 will debut at a special event on October13, multiple sources claimed on Wednesday. The release date will reportedly come shortly thereafter.

Cupertino is widely expected to introduce its next-generation handset in October, with only the date remaining a mystery. According to several sources, there’ll be an Apple event the second Tuesday of that month to take the wraps off.

Apple computers hold their value remarkably well — especially when they’re well looked after. Keep your MacBook looking brand-new with an ultra-slim, ultra-affordable hard case from Elago.

These snap-on protectors prevent your machine from picking up scuffs and scratches while it’s on the move. They’re not too thick or too heavy, and they don’t hide your MacBook’s gorgeous design.

Get yours today from the Cult of Mac Store for as little as $24.99.

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing unexpected consequences, including a sudden sharp rise in tablet sales, according to a market-research firm. Specifically, there’s significantly increased demand for large tablets with removable keyboards that can function as laptops.

Poké-hit Pokémon Café Mix just got an update that will let you join other players to form teams, as well as get your hands (virtually, that is) on a range of items, including a Snorlax costume Pikachu.

The team feature lets you to share an ID with a buddy to hook up for special events. The teams you form can be both public and private. The feature promises to add a new dynamic to the popular food-serving game.

Apple Pay’s latest promotion offers customers at sandwich chain Jimmy John’s a free drink when they spend at least $10 on an order. The promotion is available through September 27.

In order to be eligible for the promotion, you have to be a Freaky Fast Rewards member, and pay for your order with Apple Pay — either in-store, through the iOS app or via the Jimmy John’s website.

Update: Apple opened the new online store today. You can check it out here.

Apple will officially launch its Apple Online Store in India on September 23, finally bringing Apple’s online delivery experience to the world’s second most populous nation.

Everyone knows that the iPhone 12 is on the way, but — having been MIA at September’s “Time Flies” event — it’s not clearly exactly when. A leaked video from U.K. mobile network EE and BT could have answers, suggesting that the world’s first 5G iPhones are coming very, very soon.

In a leaked marketing video produced for interval use, EE and BT boss Marc Allera said that, “We are just days away from Apple’s next major launch, a 5G iPhone, which will be a huge boost for 5G.”

Alex Knoll is a professional photographer with some serious carpentry skills. When he couldn’t find a desk he liked that matched his budget, he decided to just build one himself. He sketched a plan on his iPad with the Procreate app and bought himself a few long slabs of pine and got to work. With a set of $100 table legs he bought from TableLegs.com, the total cost of the materials came out to roughly $300.

Laut’s super-stylish Prestige Necklace Sleeve lets you wear your iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone XS Max so that it’s always ready to go. It’s made from high-quality leather, looks terrific, and keeps your iPhone protected.

Bag yours today from the Cult of Mac Store for just $34.99.

Apple TV+ on Tuesday unveiled High Desert, an upcoming half-hour comedy series to star Patricia Arquette, winner of several Academy, Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

Fellow comedian Ben Stiller will direct the first episode. Both Arquette and Stiller will serve as executive producers, too.

Apple rolled out new updates Tuesday for its entire iWork suite on iOS, adding Scribble support, a new image picker and more. You can download the newest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote now.

Microsoft is working on a major Outlook redesign inspired by macOS Big Sur. Its new app, which is redesigned from the group up and promises to deliver a reimagined email experience, will land in October.

Apple fans love to complain every so often, but overall they remain pretty darn satisfied when it comes to the company’s personal computer offerings.

That’s according to data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which reports that Apple ranks No. 1 in user satisfaction for personal computers with a score of ACSI score of 82. This ranking covers iMacs, MacBooks and iPads.

Chinese LED chipmaker San’an Optoelectronics is reportedly making “better-than-expected” progress developing Mini LED technology it hopes will be used in Apple’s future Mini LED iPad and MacBook devices, a Tuesday report by Digitimes claims.

If all goes according to plan, San’an Optoelectronics will join Taiwanese LED chipmaker Epistar in producing the screen tech for Apple. It is expected to enter trial production by the end of this year and receive orders from Apple in 2022. Apple’s first Mini LED devices likely will debut in 2021.

Tim Cook is reportedly impressed by how well employees have managed to work remotely, and says that some of these new work habits will endure after COVID-19.

In an interview with the The Atlantic Festival on Monday, Apple’s CEO said he does not think the company will “return to the way we were because we’ve found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.”

The top three applications on the App Store right now all focus on iOS 14 widgets. They let users create custom Home screen widgets that aren’t tied to other applications.

Apple’s latest operating system adds these mini-apps, and a small selection of them come built into iOS 14. Plus, many third-party applications like browsers and email apps recently released widgets.

But applications whose entire focus is adding useful widgets to the iPhone Home screen quickly found plenty of users. Here are some of the most popular ones available now.

Elago’s super-soft silicone cases are a great way to ensure your new iPhone 11 will always look its best. They’re available now in a range of pretty colors, and they’re just $27.

Apple Watch Series 6 adds a sensor for blood-oxygen levels, but that doesn’t make it thicker. A teardown of this new wearable shows how Apple actually managed to make it a bit slimmer than its predecessors.

Plus, it turns out the device is relatively repairable. More so than an iPhone.

Anyone can start testing iOS 14.2, along with the iPad equivalent, thanks to the new public betas released Monday by Apple.

The first developer beta of iOS 14.2 and iPadOS 14.2 went out Thursday, just a day after the full release of iOS 14. The most notable new feature in the new betas builds the Shazam music-recognition service into the Control Center.

It’s not clear what’s happening with iOS 14.1, but it isn’t part of Apple’s testing program for developers.

iOS 14 benchmarks running on the iPhone 6S show that Apple’s newest operating system doesn’t slow down old handsets.

The European Commission has yet to appeal its loss to Apple in the landmark multi-billion dollar tax bill case. And it may not do so at all.

The EC lost lost its court case about Apple’s $14.8 billion tax bill in July. At the time, it was widely assumed that the EC would appeal the case. However, with the deadline looming on Friday it has yet to do so.