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15 Apple Watch-inspired gifts for Mom [Mother’s Day Gift Guide]

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mom
The editors of Cult of Mac Watch Store have rounded up a beautiful collection of Apple Watch bands, chargers and stands specifically picked for Mom in our Mother's Day Gift Guide.  
Photo: Bezels & Bytes

Mother’s Day is on Sunday, May 13 — mark that down and prepare to pay homage to the woman who gave you life. How about a little something for her Apple Watch?

Cult of Mac has rounded up a beautiful collection of Apple Watch bands, chargers and stands specifically picked for Mom in our Mother’s Day Gift Guide.

If you mother is a nerd, a Luddite, a traveler or style maven, we’ve got you covered. There’s a unique gift for every Apple Watch-loving momma out there, and we can vet for the quality and popularity of these bands and stands. Check out Cult of Mac Watch Store’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide.

All app updates must support iPhone X screen, iOS 11 SDK

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Developers must support iPhone X screen iOS 11 SDK
When developers update their apps, they must support the iPhone X screen and use the iOS 11 SDK,
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple just put its foot down about supporting its latest tech. Starting in July, every update submitted to the App Store must take full advantage of the iPhone X’s Super Retina display. They also must be built with the iOS 11 SDK.

Support for the unusually-shaped iPhone X screen has been happening gradually, but expect a rush in the coming weeks.  

Apple closes in on $1 trillion market cap

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European Commission could get even tougher on tech in 2020
Warren Buffet wants to buy 100% of Apple.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The race to become the world’s first $1 trillion company is nearly complete with Apple share prices soaring on the stock market today.

Trading of AAPL stock hit 187.60 per share during the morning trading hours today, putting the company just $55 billion under the coveted $1 trillion market cap mark.

Casetify’s nylon Apple Watch bands hit all the marks

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casetify
These fabric-like, breathable nylon Apple Watch nylon bands from Casetify are comfortable and long-lasting.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Nylon bands for Apple Watch are in high demand for their comfort and versatility. Add in great engineering and style, and you’ve got the ideal strap to fit your everyday needs.

Enter Casetify, a company that believes in being radically unique, creating beautifully designed, made-to-order products that are hand-inspected from beginning to end.

The company recently launched its line of Nylon Fabric Bands for Apple Watch, and we’re now featuring them all in our Watch Store. A great value at $40!

Apple just squashing bugs with latest iOS and macOS betas

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Messages in iCloud is a new feature coming to iPhone, iPad, Mac
Messages in iCloud is a new feature coming to three of the five types of Apple computer. It's still in beta, though.
Photo: Apple

The fourth beta of the next versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS just became available for developers. Apple has apparently reached the point where it’s not adding new features to these, but is fixing bugs.

It’s possible features could be removed from the various betas, though.

Retrobatch for Mac means you can finally ditch Photoshop

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retrobatch
Even Retrobatch's icon is fantastic.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Acorn is one of the two best1 Mac image editors for normal humans. Retrobatch, from the same developer, is a batch-processor for images, letting you build simple or fancy workflows that can do pretty much anything to your images, automatically. If you regularly resize photos, remove location data, add watermarks, or anything else, this is for you.

Even crazier is Retrobatch’s machine-learning component, which can apply filters and operations based on what it sees in the image. For instance, you could drop a folder of images onto Retrobatch, and it would check them all and only apply filters to pictures of hot dogs. That’s right. It can detect pictures of hot dogs.

Thanos arrives to blow up Fortnite

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Get ready for Thanos in Fortnite
Bet you weren't expecting Thanos in Fortnite. But find the Infinity Gauntlet and become the Mad Titan.
Photo: Marvel

Thanos isn’t just appearing in theaters everywhere, he’s also showing up in Fortnite. The villain of Avengers: Infinity War is crossing over into one of the most popular iOS games for a short time.

Even better, one player in each session transforms into Thanos to wield the Infinity Gauntlet.

Get ready for a triple-lens iPhone

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multi-camera smartphones
Imaging the iPhone with three lenses.
Photo: iDrop News/Martin Hajek

Just as you are scraping together the money for an iPhone with two camera lenses, Apple may be coming out with a triple-lens iPhone sometime next year.

A news story out of Taiwan about the rising revenues of two handset components makers buried that little nugget as it reported on an expected recovery of a sluggish smartphone sales across the globe.

Zoom through Apple’s spaceship parking garage

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Apple parking garage
A parking garage like no other.
Photo: DurangoLyft/YouTube

The design of parking garages rarely captures the imagination. But a dash-cam video of a parking facility at Apple’s spaceship campus will likely prompt a few ooh’s and ahh’s from design fans.

The three-and-a-half-minute video shot by a Lyft driver is worthy of narration from Apple design guru Johnny Ive and has all the hallmarks of a well-made Apple device: attractive simplicity, clean lines, and functional flow.

Hack a broken iPhone memory chip into a USB thumbdrive

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Put this iPhone memory chip into a USB drive

Screencap: Strange Parts

Scotty Allen loves to tinker. He followed up on his recent project manually expanding the storage capacity of his iPhone with a new trick: extracting an iPhone memory chip and converting it into a USB drive.

To be clear, Allen isn’t suggesting this is practical. Buying a USB drive is cheaper and vastly easier. But he sure seems to have fun doing it.

iOS 13 will boast great updates for iPad users

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ipad ios 11
Expect iOS 13 to bring significant new features to Apple's tablets, more so than iOS 12.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 12 is right around the corner, but iPad users should be thinking longer term. It’s iOS 13 “Yukon” in 2019 that’s expected to bring more new features to Apple’s tablet.

At the top of the list of the ability to work with multiple windows from the same application side-by-side. This would allow the user to, for example, have two Pages documents open next to each other.

Cult of Mac Magazine: Why everyone was so wrong about iPhone X, and more!

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cover
In this week's Cult of Mac Magazine: Everything you heard about iPhone X sales was wrong. In fact, it's Apple's most popular model.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine: Analysts have been extremely pessimistic about the iPhone X, with almost daily predictions that Apple’s top-of-the-line model was a flop. And they were all dead wrong. Tim Cook just said the iPhone X has been Apple’s best-selling model for every week since it launched, and that sales of all the company’s phones grew last quarter. How did the analysts get it so wrong?

You’ll find that story and more in this issue. Mother’s Day is around the corner on May 13, so check out our Watch Store’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide for on-time shipping. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

Newton, Bias Amp 2, Overcast privacy, and other amazing apps of the week

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Awesome Apps
'Appy weekend.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

This week we look at the amazing new Bias Amp 2 for guitarists, which looks just awful on the big-screen iPad Pro, we see how the Newton email app has banished the “sent” mail folder, we check out the new privacy features in the Overcast podcast app, and find out how to duplicate our entire Instagram history on our own microblog.

iOS 11.3 breaks some iPhone 7 microphones

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iPhone-7
How’s your iPhone 7 mic after updating to iOS 11.3?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s recent software updates have broken some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus microphones.

Users report that they cannot be heard during calls since updating to iOS 11.3 or later. Apple has advised Authortized Service Providers that they can initiate repairs if necessary — even on devices that are no longer covered by a warranty.

Lightsaber battles get personal in Jedi Challenges

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It's not your father's lightsaber, but Jedi Challenges lets you battle your megalomaniac dad or whiny son. Virtually, of course.
It's not your father's lightsaber, but Jedi Challenges lets you battle your megalomaniac dad or whiny son. Virtually, of course.
Photo: Lenovo

Just in time for May the Fourth-be-with-you, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges added multiplayer lightsaber battles so you can take on your friends in virtual reality combat. 

Of course, doing so requires a couple of $150 AR helmets and lightsabers. But still. 

Google’s search payments to Apple could diminish this year

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What’s it like to have your startup bought by Apple? Stressful
Apple's Google cash is an easy source of money.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The money that Google pays Apple to be the default iOS search engine is poised to become a much smaller part of Apple’s Services revenue.

In its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple singled out licensing as one of the main factors for its 31 percent increase in Services revenue over the past quarter. But Google parent company Alphabet told investors that the money paid to distribution partners — including Apple — will slow down this year.

iPhone X may have sold close to 50 million handsets so far

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iphone x
By our calculations, the iPhone X alone has sold as many units as Apple sold iPhones in the first three years.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

It was written off as a flop by analysts until just a week ago, but according to newly released figures from Strategy Analytics, Apple’s iPhone X was actually the world’s best selling smartphone model in the first quarter of 2018.

Selling a massive 16 million units out of total smartphone shipments of 345 million worldwide, the iPhone X has seemingly disproved everyone who expected this to be a sales dud for Apple.

iPhone X is a huge hit, the death of 3D Touch, and inflatable paddle boards on The CultCast

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Tim Cook with money bag
Tim Cook
Illustration: Cult of Mac

This week on a very volatile episode of The CultCast: the analysts were all wrong—iPhone X is a massive hit. Plus: the death of 3D Touch starts with 2018 iPhone; the world’s most famous Apple analyst may no longer be reporting on Apple; Apple’s AirPort router lineup is officially dead; and we pitch you our favorite show, movie, and vodka in an all-new Under Review. It’s a juicy one. Hit play and catch the discussion.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace website. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first hosting plan or domain.

Razer’s new mouse is built for budget gaming

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Razer-Abyssus-Essential
The Abyssus Essential won’t break the bank.
Photo: Razer

If you do a lot of gaming on your Mac or PC, a $10 mouse from Walmart isn’t going to cut it. But that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank on something super-fancy, either.

The Abyssus Essential, Razer’s newest mouse, has everything the average gamer needs — and it’s ideal for buyers on a budget.

Warren Buffett didn’t believe the iPhone X doom predictions

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Buffett
Warren Buffett continues to sing Apple's praises.
Photo: CNBC

Analysts everywhere are trying to restore their Apple credibility after predicting doom for the iPhone X, only to be confronted with Apple’s best ever March quarter!

One person who apparently didn’t buy into the negative chatter about Apple? Renowned investor Warren Buffett. In the first quarter of 2018, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm shelled out for a massive 75 million AAPL shares. That joins the 165.3 million shares it owned at the end of last year.

Goosebumps: HorrorTown promises a scarily good time on iOS

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Pixowl
Let's hope there aren't too many terrifying in-app purchases along the way!
Photo: Pixowl

Back in my distant misspent youth, I was an enormous fan of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series of kids’ horror books. Jump forward 25 years and this fond piece of nostalgia is about to make its way onto iOS — courtesy of a new mobile game. And it actually sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Check out the trailer below.

Instagram introduces in-app payments feature

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Instagram
Now you can pay for things in Instagram's app without having to leave.
Photo: Instagram

Is there a single tech company out there that doesn’t want to get in on the mobile payments game?

Not wanting to be the kid picked last for soccer practice, Instagram has started rolling out a native payments feature for its app. This allows you to register a debit or credit card as part of your profile, add a pin code, and then start making purchases right inside of the Instagram app.