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Set your alarm: HomePod goes on sale … soon

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Will Apple's HomePod smart speaker be DOA?

Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s first big product launch of 2018 is finally here after the HomePod launch was pushed back last year.

HomePod pre-orders are set to open to the public in just a few hours on Friday, January 25th. If the launch is anything like the iPhone X or AirPods, shipping times could slip quick, but it’s going to be hard to know when you can buy one.

Week’s best Apple deals: Get an Apple Watch for only $180!

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The Apple Watch Series 1 is on sale now at the best price we've seen.
The Apple Watch Series 1 is on sale now at the best price we've seen.
Photo: Apple

Have some New Year’s resolutions? See if these ring a bell. You can get fit with a new Apple Watch, cut the cable cord and save money with an Apple TV, and more!

And you can do those things on the cheap, with the Apple Watch sale and o†her Apple deals you’ll find in this week’s roundup.

iOS 11.3 beta reveals unannounced ‘Modern iPad’

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bezel free
Prepare for an all-new iPad Pro.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple left a big clue in iOS 11.3 that it is working on a brand new iPad for release later this year.

After Apple released the first beta of iOS 11.3 earlier this week, developers dug through the new software. They found references to a mysterious “Modern iPad” that packs Face ID.

La La Land director inks huge TV deal with Apple

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La La Land
The director of La La Land is making a TV show.
Photo: Summit Entertainment

Apple’s growing roster of high profile Hollywood projects has added yet another A-list director to its swelling ranks.

Acclaimed filmmaker Damien Chazelle has reportedly signed a deal with Apple to create a mysterious new original TV show for the iPhone-maker.

Apple’s self-driving car fleet gets way bigger

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Project Titan
Apple is invested heavily in self-driving tech.
Photo: Idiggapple/Twitter

Apple is revving up its efforts to catch its competitors in the self-driving car market.

The company has aggressively expanded its fleet of vehicles used to test its autonomous driving systems, according to a new filing that shows the company added nine times as many cars over the last year.

Sonos offers 2 speakers for the price of a HomePod

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Sonos-HomePod
Are you sure you want a HomePod?
Photo: Apple

Sonos just made HomePod seem even more expensive with a new deal that gets you two Sonos One speakers for the same $349.

The promotion is available “for a limited time,” Sonos says — but it will surely be around long enough to make life harder for HomePod initially.

Twitter wants to make it way easier to share videos

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Twitter
Twitter's redesign is reportedly inspired by Snapchat.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Twitter wants to make it easier for people to post videos to its app, and it’s reportedly planning to take some inspiration from Snapchat in order to do so.

According to a new report, citing sources familiar with the matter, Twitter is currently working on a tool that will let users more easily utilize their camera to take and share video clips, showing what is happening around them.

Nintendo is already ditching its first mobile game

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Nintendo Miitomo on iPhone
Miitomo is no more.
Photo: Nintendo

Nintendo has confirmed plans to shutdown its first mobile game less than two years after its launch.

Miitomo wasn’t exactly the Nintendo name fans were hoping to see when the Japanese company finally embraced Android and iOS. Unsurprisingly, the game couldn’t sustain our interest for long and now it’s no longer worth Nintendo’s time.

Apple’s South Korean retail store puts it on Samsung’s doorstep

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South Korea2
The design of Apple's new store blurs the line between the inside and outside world.
Photo: Apple

Ahead of Apple’s first ever Apple Store opening South Korea, the company has shared pictures of its spectacular new Seoul store online.

Located on the south of the Han River, in the heart of the upmarket Gangnam district, the store boasts a 25-foot glass facade, stunning 6K video wall, and a tree-lined interior that is designed to blur the line between street and store. It opens this Saturday.

Ex-Google engineer says the company is boring. Is the same true of Apple?

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An image of the Google beta logo with the rainbow Apple logo in place of the first O
Google isn't innovating and Apple is "meh" claims a departing Google exec.
Photo illustration: Google/Apple

Google can no longer innovate, claims departing 13-year company vet Steve Yegge in a long Medium post this week.

Yegge puts Google on blast for what he perceives as the four biggest problems facing the company today. How many of them hold true for Apple as well?

Increase in designer job openings at Apple hint at exciting future plans

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Jony Ive CultCast
Jony Ive recently resumed his post at the head of Apple's design team.
Photo: BBC

A big increase in the number of exciting-sounding job openings for designers and engineers at Apple’s new Apple Park campus suggests that some exciting projects are underway.

According to a new report, based on data from Apple’s HR website, Apple began hiring a whole lot more designers in October, with openings jumping from an average of 40 or less to a peak of 70 new positions. While the company hires new engineers all the time, this uptick in hiring suggests that Apple is bringing in a whole lot more creative folks than they have in a long while.

Swift Playgrounds adds new robots for budding coders

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Swift Playgrounds
Dive into coding with Swift Playgrounds.
Photo: Apple

Swift Playgrounds, Apple’s code-learning app aimed at youngsters, got a huge update today with the biggest new set of features sent the app came out in 2016.

With the Swift Playgrounds 2.0 update, coders get access to a host of new robots, as well as the ability to subscribe to third-party level creators so you can find and download new levels faster.

Apple adds new privacy icon to iOS 11.3

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iPhone X laying down
iOS 11.3 makes iPhone more secure.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 11.3 landed with a bunch of big features this morning but it looks like Apple added a few small surprises not mentioned in its preview, including a new feature that makes it easier to tell when apps are trying to access your personal data.

Over half a billion devices now ‘actively’ use Siri

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Siri
Siri usage is climbing rapidly.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Siri is now “actively” used on more than half a billion devices, Apple has revealed. The virtual assistant, which will be used to control HomePod, has been attracting users at a rapid rate despite falling behind its competitors in features and accuracy.

Woz’s job goes up in smoke after startup burns through $100 million

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Steve Wozniak
Woz was employed as the company's chief scientist.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC

Primary Data, an enterprise storage startup which employed Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist, appears to have shut down. At time of writing, the company’s Twitter and Facebook appear to be down, although its webpage is still working. Its operating status is described as “closed.”

Apple teases iOS 11.3 with new Animoji, big improvements

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iOS 11.3 ARKit
Augmented reality will be even better with glasses.
Photo: Apple

Apple today offered fans a preview of a big iOS 11.3 update coming this spring.

Alongside 16 new Animoji characters for iPhone X owners, the update will bring big improvements to ARKit and Messages, the ability to view battery health on all iOS devices, music videos for Apple Music, and lots more.

ARKit upgrade makes augmented reality apps better than ever

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ARkit
Apple's augmented reality platform just got slicker.
Photo: Alper Guler

Apple’s ARKit augmented reality platform just got better thanks to ARKit 1.5, which has rolled out to developers in beta.

The upgrade adds a big new feature to AR developers’ toolset: wall detection. Previous versions of ARKit only focused on horizontal plane detection, meaning that it only able to detect floors for objects to be placed onto. With the new upgrade, AR developers will now be able to add walls into the mix — for instance, creating a game in which you throw darts at a wall-mounted board.

Tim Cook: Music ‘deserves’ the audio quality HomePod offers

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HomePod
Tim Cook thinks HomePod will blow away the "squeaky sound" of its rivals.
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook talked up the audio quality of Apple’s HomePod smart speaker during a recent interview, while taking a shot at the competition.

“We think one thing that was missing from this market was a quality audio experience, a very immersive audio experience,” Cook said. “Music deserves that kind of quality as opposed to some kind of squeaky sound.”

E.U. fines Qualcomm for paying Apple billions to shut out rivals

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What’s it like to have your startup bought by Apple? Stressful
Qualcomm allegedly paid Apple billions to keep its business.
Photo illustration: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The European Commission has fined Qualcomm 997 million euros ($1.2 billion) for abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets, supposedly paying Apple billions of dollars in order to secure their business and stop Apple buying chips from rivals.

Such practice is illegal under EU antitrust laws.