The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is a sign of a fundamental shift at Apple: It includes a keyboard that makes this laptop slightly less stylish but more useful. It’s hard to believe this would have happened in the days when chief designer Jony Ive’s habit of putting form ahead of function still reigned supreme over all Apple’s products.
As Ive slowly exits the company, we’re already seeing products less willing to make compromises in functionality in order to get super-sleek looks.
The just-released 16-inch MacBook Pro handles heat better, giving it faster performance than the 15-inch models introduced earlier this year, even though both laptops use exactly the same processor.
Apple unleashed the 16-inch MacBook Pro this week, delivering a powerful beast of a machine that answers many of our prayers. That butterfly keyboard? Gone, replaced with a Magic Keyboard. And those thermal throttling problems? Supposedly fixed forever.
Sure, we found a couple of not-so-happy surprises. But all in all, we feel just a little bit giddy. Find out all the reasons why in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. You can download it free from the iOS App Store. As always, it’s jammed full of Apple news, reviews and how-tos.
You may never have heard of Gerard Williams III, but for years he played a large part in designing every iPhone processor. He left Apple early this year, and is now the CEO of Nuvia, a firm headed by three ex Apple execs that’s designing its own chips.
But they aren’t taking on their old company. Instead, Nuvia will make processors for data centers.
Children and their parents can enter Rosie’s Reality, a game where they’ll guide this miniature robot through a series of puzzles by building paths with blocks that resemble virtual Legos.
This latest addition to the Apple Arcade service is the only new title out this week now that its total number of games has passed 100.
YouTube is full of photographers comparing their professional kits with the latest iPhone camera.
But a recent test and conclusion by Sawyer Hartman risked sounding blasphemes. Could a $1,300 iPhone 11 Pro outshoot $20,000 worth of some of the best gear produced by the iconic German brand, Leica?
That may depend on who’s looking.
With the fifth episode of The Morning Show landing on Apple TV+ this morning, attention is already turning to season number two.
Morning Show showrunner Kerry Ehrin revealed how the U.S. political landscape could impact some of the storytelling next season. While Trump and current political issues won’t be brought up, Ehrin says some political themes could be added to plot.
A follow-up to the world’s first HomeKit-compatible video doorbell from Robin Telecom Development will support Apple’s new system that makes video security systems more private and secure. It’s quite possibly the first video doorbell to do so.
Almost as importantly, the Robin ProLine Compact is smaller than its predecessor.
Academy Award winner Gary Oldman is the latest big-name actor to sign up for an Apple TV+ original series.
Oldman will star in an adaptation of Mick Herron spy novel Slow Horses. The book is the first in the Slough House series, which currently contains six novels and two novellas.
A new German law forces Apple to allow other mobile payment services to use NFC on iPhone.
Apple has allowed only Apple Pay to take advantage of the technology until now. But Germany has decided that it won’t stand for that anymore — despite Apple’s concerns.
Apple is removing all 181 vaping-related apps from the App Store. This is the result of mounting health concerns about the impact of e-cigarettes.
At least 42 people have died as the result of vaping-related lung illnesses. Apple, it seems, does not want to be in any way responsible for contributing to any more.
This week on The CultCast: Everything you need to know about the new 16-inch MacBook Pro! Plus, our first impressions of this hot new machine. And we discuss Disney+, and why it may beat Netflix and Amazon as the best streaming service today.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
The money Apple earns from advertising could rise to a whopping $11 billion a year by 2025, one analyst says.
Cupertino currently rakes in around $2 billion a year from ad revenue. The recent launch of Apple TV+ provides an opportunity for that to skyrocket over the next six years.
But will Apple really take advantage of it?
Fortnite’s latest crossover sees Star Wars stormtroopers invading the game for the first time. Players will also see a Star Destroyer hovering above the Battle Royale map.
The event celebrates today’s release of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the newest title from EA Games. And if you plan to pick that up, you could get Fortnite’s new stormtrooper outfit free.
Apple has hired a pro-Trump lobbyist to lobby on its behalf to help it avoid tariffs.
Jeffrey Miller was vice finance chairman of Trump’s inaugural committee prior to becoming a fundraiser for President Trump’s reelection campaign.
It’s Friday, which means that the weekend is almost here, and — more important — new episodes of the top Apple TV+ shows are up.
As expected, Apple debuted episodes of See, The Morning Show and For All Mankind at midnight Eastern time. Here’s what you can expect in this week’s episodes.
Influencer Andrew Levitt and friends spent a summer week recreating Apple’s famous wallpaper landscapes for the Mac operating systems.
Not long after, Apple released macOS Catalina. What was finished business now had a loose end.
Apple will beat out Samsung and Huawei in 5G handsets next year, according to a forecast by industry analysts. This despite accusations by some critics that not putting 5G in the iPhone 11 would put Apple far behind its rivals.
Apple News+ has been struggling to ramp up its subscriber numbers since launching in March, according to a new report that claims growth has been stuck in neutral for months.
News came out this morning that Apple is considering bundling services like Apple Music, Apple News+ and Apple TV+ together for a monthly fee. At this point, the company might need to do that to get more people onto the Apple News+ platform in order to make it worthwhile for publishers.
Anxious influencers worldwide opened their Instagram feeds to a new reality today: the “like” tally on their posts won’t be seen by their followers.
Instagram started removing public-face “likes” this summer as a test in a few countries. The test is now global and Instagram took to Twitter this morning in hopes of reassuring content creators who make money off their posts.
The new 16-inch MacBook Pro launched yesterday, and by all accounts, it’s fantastic. But it arrives at a time when the MacBook (Pro or otherwise) is no longer the default choice for a portable Apple computer. Regular readers will know that several Cult of Mac writers use an iPad Pro as their main machine. Killian, Ed, Ian and I all ditched the Mac awhile ago in favor of iOS.
And I haven’t bought a Mac since 2013. It was a MacBook Air that has since moved on. The only Mac I still own is a 2010 iMac. And yet I have already ordered the new MacBook Pro. Why? What changed?
The flip phone is back, baby! A vastly updated — and very expensive — 2019 Motorola Razr uses a flexible display to make an Android-based smartphone with the same basic design as the iconic handset of 2004.
It’s another option in the growing selection of foldable phones — a formfactor Apple is also considering.
Police arrested nine suspects in England after a raid on an Apple Store. The dramatic incident saw authorities employ a helicopter and officers on the ground during the search for the thieves.
The robbery took place in Basingstoke, the largest town in the county of Hampshire. Three thieves involved in the incident attacked a security guard, before making off with seven iPhones.
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has chimed in on the allegedly sexist Apple Card debacle. Warren criticized Apple Card partner Goldman Sachs, saying that if the bank can’t explain how the algorithm used to determine credit score works, it should “pull it down.”
The complaints about Apple Card began last week when entrepreneur David Heinemeier Hansson said he was offered a credit limit 20 times that of his wife. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak claimed something similar.
Well, here’s a reason to listen to the recommendations of Apple’s Screen Time feature! A woman in China reportedly suffered a grisly injury after going temporarily blind in one eye due to excessive strain from overuse of her smartphone.
The female patient’s retina burst from “excessive strain” after spending too long using her mobile device.