News - page 683

This week on The CultCast: Did you know about Apple’s super-secret special return and exchange policy? We’ll tell you what it is, and how to use it if you’re unhappy with your Apple purchase but outside your 14-day return window. Plus: A quest to trade up — the stories of three MacBook Pro owners trying to get Apple to trade in their newly purchased 2018 MacBook Pros for models with the brand new, smoking-fast Vega 20 GPUs. And finally, and most importantly: Happy Thanksgiving!

Our thanks to Gantri for supporting this episode. Gantri’s 3D-printed lights are both beautiful and affordable. Check them out in AR at gantri.com/cultcast, and use code CultCast at checkout for $20 off.

The Steve Jobs Theater has earned an award for Structural Artistry from The Institute of Structural Engineers.

Located on the Apple Park campus and opened last September, the theater received recognition for being the largest structure in the world solely supported by glass, and for the way in which pipes and other systems have been integrated into its roof.

Both global and U.S. search interest in the iPhone peaked in September 2012, around the time of the iPhone 5 launch, Google Trends reveals.

The stat is pointed out in a new Bloomberg report, titled, “iPhone Interest Drops Off.” But while we don’t doubt Google’s results, search terms and overall interest are not exactly the same thing.

CSR Racing 2, one of the best and most popular racing games on iOS, just received a great update. The new “Legends” refresh adds 15 new cars from the 1960s through the modern today, including the iconic McLaren F1.

Check out the trailer and new features list below.

If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that buying for other people is a pain. If they haven’t told you exactly what they want for the holidays, where do you even start? What if you end up getting a gift that they hate?

But it doesn’t have to be difficult. Cult of Mac’s handy gift guides will help you find the perfect present for the Apple fan in your life. We’ve hand-picked the best gadgets and accessories for lovers of the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.

What’s more, everything we’ve selected can be purchased online, so you don’t even have to leave the house to get your shopping done.

Is your family driving you nuts this Thanksgiving weekend? Of course it is. That’s what families are for. So when you need relief from the endless offers of snacks and drinks, the catty remarks about the fact that you’re “still” child-free, or your nephews’ and nieces’ constant pestering to let them play with your new iPad Pro, while simultaneously ridiculing your attempts at flossing, you might turn to Chillscape to calm yourself back TF down.

It may sound like a crazy Mad Lib, but it’s not: Queen guitarist Brian May really has taken to Instagram to pen a lengthy rant about Apple’s UBC-C connector.

May dramatically declares that “This is one of the reasons my love for Apple is turning to hatred.” And, from the look of the comments, it seems that quite a few people agree with him.

A group of Korean smartphone retailers are upset at Apple for forcing them to purchase in-store tester iPhones. This differs from the usual practice of manufacturers, who will provide free display smartphones and pick them up later.

Apple, it seems, thinks different.

Epic Games has promised to make big tweaks to shotguns in its next Fortnite update. Players can look forward to increased damage in close quarters gunfights, while the pump shotgun will be rebalanced to “improve effectiveness.”

The iPhone X had one of the shortest lifespans of any iPhone Apple has ever made, being cancelled when Apple introduced its next-gen handsets back in September. However, according to a new report, Apple is restarting production on last year’s iPhone model in certain markets.

And it may all have to do with a lack of demand for some of the newer iPhones.

Apple is offering students in the U.K. the chance to learn more about coding, engineering and design — courtesy of Field Trip events as part of the UK’s government’s “Year of Engineering.”

The events offer around 1,700 students, aged 5 to 18, the chance to go “behind the scenes” at Apple Stores around the country. Apple is running around 100 of these Field Trip events, during which students will shown how to create various digital projects. These relate to topics from coding to the solar system.

Apple has spent upwards of $1 billion creating original TV shows, but as of yet it hasn’t revealed exactly how it plans to get these in front of users. One idea? That it could release a streaming dongle, similar to Google’s Chromecast and Amazon’s Fire TV Stick.

This could be a lower cost entry point into the streaming TV market — since both Amazon and Google’s offerings cost under $50, compared to $180 for the Apple TV.

The iPhone is a coveted totem of status in most parts of the world. In the United Arab Emirates, the wealthy elite buys them two at a time.

But to carry an iPhone in China means you’re less educated and trying to hide dire financial straits. The well-off prefer Huawei or Xiaomi smartphones.

This according to research conducted by the Shanghai firm Mobdata, which looked at income and education backgrounds of smartphone users.

The biggest shopping day of 2018 is nearly upon us and Apple and Amazon are teaming up to take advantage of the spending bonanza.

As part of its new online sales deal with Apple, Amazon has recently added a bunch of Apple’s latest products to its authorized reseller page, some of which are a bit cheaper than on Apple’s website.

If you have a new 2018 iPad Pro, then you probably need a new USB-C hub. Without it, you can only plug in one accessory at a time, and that includes the charger. With a hub, you can plug in an almost unlimited number of USB devices (and other gear), plus provide power for everything at the same time.

The problem is, almost all USB-C docks are designed for laptop computers like the MacBook. They’re designed with short tails so they can sit on a desk next to the MacBook’s desk-level USB-C port, and plug in without trailing a long cable all over the place. But these short tails are terrible for the iPad — especially if you use the tablet on a stand.

They result in a dongle dangling from the iPad, trailing all the cables and accessories hooked up to the hub. This puts a strain on the USB-C port, and reduces mobility for the iPad. It also looks ridiculous. Ditto those docks that clip to the iPad itself. They’re a disaster waiting to happen. Fortunately, I have a better idea.

Ubisoft’s newest Assassin’s Creed game just landed on iOS. Rebellion is a free-to-play strategy RPG in which players assemble a Brotherhood of powerful assassins to fight back against the Templars and the oppression in Spain.

It boasts more than 40 characters, including legendary ones and some brand new to the Assassin’s Creed series — plus limited-time events and premium access if you want it.

The iPad is an artist’s canvas, a way for coaches to track stats and draw up plays and a replacement for the cash register at the local coffee shop.

It has also earned its wings flying in the cockpits of passenger jets.

Singapore Airlines recently assigned its pilots iPads with two proprietary apps to track important data and reduce the pre-flight paperwork.

Apple’s MacBook lines performed surprisingly badly in the third quarter of 2018 — with double figure declines in growth worse than any of the other five leading notebook manufacturers.

While Dell managed 8 percent year-on-year growth, market leader HP saw its shipments decline 1.8 percent. That’s nothing compared to Apple’s decline, however, which saw the company plummet a whopping 24.3 percent. That’s not good!

Do you think you have what it takes to earn real money playing Fortnite? You’ll soon have the opportunity to prove it in the Winter Royale Online Tournament, a new competition from Epic Games that’s offering a $1 million prize pool.

Winter Royale will serve as a testing ground for next year’s Fortnite World Cup, and it will be open to all Battle Royale players — not just the pros.

There’s great news for fans of Google Assistant with an iPhone: for the first time, iOS users can now access the smart assistant using a verbal command.

The solution is a little bit convoluted, but it’s a world better than the previous way of opening it. Here’s what you can do.

Apple’s biggest supplier, Foxconn, is having to shed a whole lot of costs. According to an internal company memo, it aims to cut 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) from its expenses in 2019.

This is supposedly because it faces, “a very difficult and competitive year” — although it does not expand on exactly what this means.

Apple has reportedly acquired an artificial intelligence startup that specializes in on-device machine learning software.

Silk Labs’ technology processes data without sending it to the cloud, which is a perfect fit for Apple’s privacy-conscious approach to AI. It’s not clear how much Cupertino paid for the company when the deal was struck earlier this year.

Apple is in discussions with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to provide veterans with access to their electronic medical records on iOS, a new report claims.

The company began discussions last year, with a view to allowing up to 9 million veterans to migrate their health records to iPhone to simplify medical treatment. It’s not clear how far plans have progressed since then.

Sir Jony Ive — the first recipient of the Stephen Hawking Fellowship — delivered a lecture at the Cambridge Union, the University of Cambridge’s debate society, earlier this week.

Ive reflected on everything from his earliest experiences with Apple devices to the philosophical challenges of design.

The Symmetry Series 360 just became the first OtterBox case released for the newest iPad Pro. This isn’t one of the super-rugged cases this company is best known for, but it brings some protection without adding a lot of bulk.

A bulkier OtterBox Defender case promising even greater shelter for the latest iOS tablet was announced a few weeks ago but is not yet available.