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Sprint and T-Mobile merger takes giant step toward approval [Updated]

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FCC chairman Ajit Pai isn’t down with China Mobile coming to the United States.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai says its OK for there to be three nationwide carriers instead of four.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC

Your iPhone may soon have one less option for wireless service. The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has signed off on the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. This is a significant step toward the third and fourth largest U.S. carriers becoming one.

Update: An unconfirmed report indicates that the Justice Department might nix this merger.

1TB iPod Classic is a music junkie’s dream

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1TB iPod
Remy Sternbach wants you to have 50,000 songs in your pocket
Photo: Remy Sternbach

The iPod was an instant classic — killed off in an instant by the iPhone.

But the iPod has a Dr. Frankenstein in Remy Sternbach. The San Diego tech repairman is determined to bring two to life each week with shiny new bodies, solid state drives, new high-capacity batteries and a full terabyte of storage.

What Sternbach has discovered is the obsolete hardware has an enduring cool.

“I know this is a niche market, but there are people who really like the iPod and like Apple nostalgia,” Sternbach told Cult of Mac. “We also get a lot of audiophiles and people who travel a lot to places with patchy cell service. They want their music.”

Awesome ARKit demo magics up an iMac out of thin air

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Apple iMac showing the Apple logo.
Imagine having an iMac wherever you needed one.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Try as people might, moving an entire iMac around with you is never going to be easy. But what if all you had to do was to take the keyboard and mouse, and everything else would automatically follow?

That’s the vision of a nifty AR creation made by WWDC Scholar and Georgia Tech student Nicholas Grana. Check it out.

Apple to sell back its stake in Toshiba Memory after just 1 year

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Toshiba
Toshiba is ready to go public.
Photo: Toshiba

Apple could be about to sell back its stake in Toshiba Memory less than a year after acquiring it.

A new report claims Toshiba plans to buy back the shares it sold to Apple, Dell, Kingston, and Seagate after securing billions in loans from Japanese banks. It’s thought Toshiba later plans to become a public company.

China overtakes U.S. as world’s biggest smart speaker market

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Apple debuts HomePod in India at its cheapest price yet
Are you a smart speaker user?
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s biggest smart speaker market. According to new figures from Canalys, the Chinese market grew nearly 500% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019.

Approximately 10.6 million units shipped in China over the quarter, compared to 5 million in the U.S. This means that China is now 51% of the global global smart speaker market. The U.S., on the other hand, comes in second place at just 24%.

Nintendo kicks off first Mario Kart Tour beta test

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Mario Kart Tour has the second best debut month ever on mobile
Mario Kart Tour has the second best debut month ever on mobile
Photo: Nintendo

Nintendo has finally kicked off its first Mario Kart Tour beta test.

A lucky few have received invites to play the game early ahead of its public release this summer. Nintendo hopes the test will help “improve the quality of the game” before every Mario Kart fan gets their hands on it.

HBSC thinks tariffs could increase iPhone prices by $160

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Apple could be a $2 trillion company by end of 2021
Would you pay an extra $160 for your iPhone?
Photo illustration: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

HSBC has cut its price target on Apple based on concerns about the company’s uncertain future in China.

Specifically, it is worried that Apple may ramp up the (already steep) price of iPhones in the U.S. if new import tariffs from China are implemented.

Google, Qualcomm and others cease partnerships with Huawei

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Huawei P20 Pro
It’s just a backup plan for now.
Photo: Huawei

Google has suspended its business with Huawei and revoked its Android license following a U.S. crackdown on Chinese technology companies.

It’s a massive blow for the world’s third-biggest smartphone-maker — and it’s not the only one it received this weekend. Intel, Qualcomm, and other chip manufacturers have also halted their partnerships with the company.

Apple tech could improve visibility in bad driving conditions

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Street at night 2
This could be an important development for an Apple Car.
Photo: j3n53r/Flickr CC

As part of its Project Titan initiative, Apple has invented some smart tech for improving detection of road signs and other vehicles on the road in low visibility situations.

This could ramp up safety in situations such as an autonomous Apple Car driving in foggy, snowy, low light or otherwise hard-to-see situations.

Apple donates products to New Orleans’ Ellis Marsalis Music Center

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Tim Cook talks diversity, sustainability, and coming out as gay
Tim Cook was in town to give a commencement speech at Tulane University.
Photo: Apple

After giving his commencement speech for Tulane University on Saturday, Tim Cook visited the nearby Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

He met with founders Ellis Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. He also announced that Apple will be donating Apple products to help produce music in EMCM’s studios.

U.S. iPhone growth lags: How slow can it go? [Cult of Mac Magazine No. 297]

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Cult of Mac Magazine No. 297 cover
Cult of Mac Magazine No. 297
Photo: Cult of Mac Magazine No. 297

Apple’s iPhone sales in the U.S. are starting to flatline, according to data from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Growth of the iPhone install base in the U.S. has been on a downward trend for years now, but CIRP’s latest report reveals that growth was at its slowest rate ever during the first quarter of 2019.

Find out what’s going on in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine for iOS.

Or read on to get the rest of the week’s best Apple news, reviews and how-tos in your browser.

Lady Gaga rumored to make Apple Park opening fabulous [Updated]

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Shocker! The rainbow Apple Stage took a massive amount of work to create.
The rainbow stage inside Apple Park is expected to be the center of a huge event this weekend.
Photo: Duncan Sinfield

The rainbow-colored stage that appeared recently at Apple HQ is about to get its first big-name act; Lady Gaga is reportedly going to perform at the opening event for Apple Park, the company’s ring-shaped campus in Cupertino.

Updated: She did! And Tim Cook tweeted about it early this morning.

This Apple Lens concept is so ugly I can’t look away

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Apple Lens
These Apple Lenses are waterproofed with style.
Photo: Antonio De Rosa

Some pretty bad Apple Glasses concepts have graced the homepage of CultofMac over the last two years but this one might be the ugliest one yet. Most concepts go over-the-top with unrealistic tech features. This one has plenty of that, all wrapped up in some Neo Art Deco-style shades that somehow manage to look dorkier than the Microsoft HoloLens. It’s so bad, I’m absolutely fascinated.

If Apple’s long-rumored augmented reality headset looks anything like this we’re going to have to stage a intervention in Jony Ive’s design lab.

Warning — You can’t unsee this video:

Want to use these Apple pillows? There’s a nap for that

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Apple pillows
This Iconic hardware will make your Apple dreams soft and sweet.
Photo: Throwboy

We’ve all fallen asleep at our computer. So why not recreate that moment with hardware that’s actually soft?

Throwboy, the company that takes the familiar symbols of our personal computing lives and sews them into plush pillows, turned Kickstarter success into a warehouse stocked with the new Iconic Pillow Collection.

TikTok remains most-downloaded app on iOS

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TikTok 1
Adults may be befuddled by TikTok, but there's no denying its popularity!
Photo: TikTok

TikTok may be a bit of a head-scratcher for older users, but there’s no denying its popularity. According to a new report, the video-sharing app was the most popular iOS app for the first quarter of 2019.

That means beating out giants like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, which have the backing of either Google or Facebook. In total, TikTok was downloaded an astonishing 11.7 million times in the quarter.

U.S. carriers are no longer sharing customer location data

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Significant Locations
Your location data is no longer up for grabs.
Photo: Cult of Mac

U.S. carriers have (mostly) put an end to the practice of selling customer location data to third-parties, a new report reveals.

This dodgy practice was previously carried out by giants including T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. They passed on this data to middlemen, which then sold the information to other companies without getting the necessary permission from users.

Apple lists Macs it can’t patch against ‘ZombieLoad’ exploits

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Apple iMac 2019
The modern iMac is a stunner... and last on our list.
Photo: Apple

Apple has published a list of Macs that are still vulnerable to “ZombieLoad” exploits because they cannot be patched.

The older machines — all made before 2011 — may receive security updates, Apple says. But a proper fix won’t be available because Intel won’t release the necessary microcode updates.

Estate of ‘Over the Rainbow’ composer is suing Apple and others

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Judy_Garland_Over_the_Rainbow_2
Judy Garland singing the song in Wizard of Oz.
Photo: Wikipedia CC

The son and estate of Broadway composer Harold Arlen is suing a number of tech companies, including Apple. Arlen composed numerous iconic songs during his career — most notably the Oscar-winning song “Over the Rainbow” from Wizard of Oz.

His estate is suing Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Pandora. They are accused of joining “with notorious music pirates to sell and stream thousands of pirated recordings.”