News - page 97

Need a portable charger to juice up your iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch pretty much anywhere? Enter our new giveaway! Through January 31, Cult of Mac and Kuxiu offer users worldwide the chance to win a sleek Kuxiu X55 3-in-1 Foldable Magnetic Wireless Charger and Stand.

The little three-way charging stand, which folds up small enough to slip into a pocket, normally retails for $79.99. It and other products are on sale now for Valentine’s Day, but wouldn’t you rather just win one? Enter the giveaway below. X55 stands will go to three lucky winners worldwide.

If you don’t want to go “nearly nude” with your iPhone 15, check out Laut’s supremely stylish and highly protective cases for the handsets.

You can shop all 14 products in the Laut collection, including 11 cases, two screen protectors and one lens protector for iPhone 15, in the Cult of Mac Store. See some highlights below.

Martin Scorsese’s historical crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon has been the most popular movie since it hit the Apple TV+ streaming service in mid January, according to a market analysis.

The fact that the film earned ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, surely helps.

One of the most popular, critically acclaimed and flat-out weird shows on Apple TV+ — the darkly comedic workplace thriller Severance — has resumed production on season two after pausing for the recent writers strike.

Apple posted on X (formerly Twitter) about it Monday. Take a look below.

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Major League Soccer’s 29th season kicks off February 21 on MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app, but fans can subscribe to the service starting Monday, Apple said.

International superstar Lionel Messi joined Inter Miami CF late last season, so 2024 will see his first full season with the club, and fans can also check out a variety of exclusive content.

With all the computer setups out there with two, three and even five displays, sometimes you’ll see them stacked. But a dual-Studio Display setup that stacks one on top of the other is a rarity.

Today’s Mac Studio user, who is also an avid PlayStation 5 and Ninendo Switch gamer, said the stacked displays work well and don’t cause any neck pain from looking up all the time.

If you’re the proud owner of an iPad, you should get yourself a stylus that will help you write and draw well on the tablet. But an Apple Pencil 2 will set you back $129 (if you don’t find a good sale). So how about something just about as good for less than half the price? Enter SwitchEasy’s EasyPencil Pro.

Check out the SwitchEasy Sale in the Cult of Mac Store to get 20% off two versions of the stylus, plus extra tips for writing and drawing.

DJ Novotney first started at Apple in June 1999, and now he’s been lured away by electric-car-maker Rivian.

Over his two decades  with the company, he helped design many iconic Apple products, including iPod, iPhone, iPad and more.

Any time a company sends a push notification to an iPhone, its application can gather information about the user, including their location, according to security researchers. Meta and TikTok reportedly use push notification tracking, and many other companies do it, too.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution for users to protect their privacy and keep apps from spying on them.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Vision Pro preorders didn’t exactly go smoothly last week. In our post-mortem, we discuss what went right, what went wrong, and why we can’t wait to finally get our hands on Apple’s headset.

Also on The CultCast:

• Apple plans to radically change the App Store … for Europeans.
• An update on new iPads and new Macs that seem poised to pop out of Tim Cook’s magic pipeline.
• The Apple car is still on the road to release. However, it might arrive a little later (and a lot less amazing) than we were led to believe.

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

A noted Apple critic used the terms “malicious compliance” and “hot garbage” to describe the elaborate rules the company laid down Thursday for allowing European iPhone users to sideload applications.

Those blasts came from Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, a company that’s locked in a legal battle with Apple over App Store rules. But other devs also cast aspersions on Apple’s framework for setting up App Store rivals. They pointed out that the new system comes with a huge financial obligation, and that it will make free apps almost impossible.

To be clear, though, not all developers are unhappy. Apple’s new rules also drew some compliments.

Shazam, Apple’s popular app that can name any song in seconds, added a cool new feature Thursday in version 17.3 — it now works even when you wear headphones.

And that’s true for music playing around you or within apps like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Apple said.

Paired for stereo sound, two full-size HomePod smart speakers — the original or second generation — are a thing of auditory beauty. And they don’t just sound great, they look good, too. Yet we don’t see paired HomePods much in computer setups (HomePod minis yes, the big ones, no).

Today’s MacBook Pro setup takes full advantage of Apple audio, however, and the user couldn’t be happier. Well, except with Siri, that is. Check out their setup’s cheerful day version (above) and moody night version (below).

Elago’s lineup of Apple Watch bands offers supreme comfort, immense durability and brilliant blue and red color options. They’re also just $18.99 each!

Bag one today from the Cult of Mac Store.

The updated iPad Pro expected in spring 2024 could make a change tablet users have wanted for years: move the front-facing camera for better horizontal use.

Modified wording in the just-released iPadOS 17.4 beta suggests the camera move is on the way.

Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 17.4 to developers Thursday, offering a first look at new emoji coming soon to iPhone. For Europeans, the update will be a major one, as it will allow users to sideload apps (among other big changes).

Also on Thursday came the initial betas of iPadOS 17.4 and tvOS 17.4. There’s no sign yet of macOS 14.4 beta 1, however.

Apple is further opening up iOS to alternative browsers and browser engines, as part of Cupertino’s plan to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.

In iOS 17.4 — launched Thursday as a beta — iPhone users in the EU will have a lot more choice over the default browser and browser engines.

The biggest change will be the ability to use alternative browser engines, like Google’s Blink renderer instead of Apple’s WebKit.

Apple is bringing sideloading and alternate app stores to the iPhone — but with significant restrictions.

Apple gave EU developers guidelines and access to the tools needed for sideloading —  installing applications that don’t go through the App Store. But the new rules require these apps to be approved by Apple before they can be installed by iPhone users. And they need to be in alternative marketplaces, not directly available for download.

In other words, sideloading won’t be the free-for-all some people had hoped.

This is part of sweeping changes to iOS, Safari and the App Store required by the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. And Apple’s announcement of these changes in Thursday is loaded with warning about how sideloading brings risks for users.

To comply with EU mandates, Apple will open the iPhone’s NFC payment chip to third parties, the company said Thursday. Starting in March, users in the European Economic Area will be able to utilize tap to pay on iPhone services other than Apple Pay when making purchases.

The new payment option, part of sweeping changes forced on the iPhone and iOS by the EU’s Digital Markets Act, could cut into Apple’s services revenue. And the company warns that it could put users at risk. Read more about the expansion of iPhone’s Tap to Pay feature across Europe.

Apple eased up on longstanding App Store limitations on how iOS apps can deliver experiences to iPhone and iPad users, including streaming games and mini-programs, the company indicated Thursday. Developers like gaming companies can now submit a single app with the ability to stream all games in a catalog, rather than one app per game.

Accompanying these options will be new analytics reports for developers starting in March, plus new sign-in options they can include with apps.

TSMC is on course to make the first processors made with a cutting-edge 2nm process. And all of the initial supply of these might go into iPhone and Mac, according to a published report.

It wouldn’t be a surprise, considering the same thing happened with the Taiwanese foundry’s 3nm chips.

The first 2nm chip won’t be out before 2025, though.

Just as Apple overtook Samsung as the worldwide smartphone leader in 2023, iPhone also became China’s favorite smartphone during that timeframe, according to a new report Thursday from International Data Tracker (IDC).

Apple captured 17.3% of China’s smartphone market in 2023, up from 16.8% in 2022 — albeit in a shrinking marketplace where smartphone shipments declined 5% overall, but with signs of recovery showing up late in the year.

Juuk makes Vitero aluminum Apple Watch bands in Hong Kong, providing them to several high-end Swiss watch brands. But you can get one — or more than one — straight from the Cult of Mac Store.

The bands in the Juuk Vitero collection feature a strong sense of style, including several two-tone looks that are not for the timid.

After Killers of the Flower Moon attracted 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Apple and Paramount Pictures agreed to rerelease the historical crime drama in theaters starting Friday.

The film, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by him and Eric Roth, will see a limited run in 1,000+ locations worldwide, Apple said.

For the second time in as many weeks we’ve come across someone ditching a nice external display and keeping just one — and this time it’s to add a second powerful MacBook Pro used as both a computer and a secondary display. In fact, now it’s triple-display setup, but two of them are laptops on stands.