You don’t need to buy the new Apple Watch Series 4 to get one of this year’s coolest new features on it.
As part of the watchOS 5 update released earlier this week, Apple introduced a new Walkie-Talkie app that lets you chat back-and-forth with other Apple Watch owners. The Walkie-Walkie app works no matter the distance between you and your friend. And it’s so easy to use, it might become your favorite new way to communicate.
Apple’s new video shows exactly how to use it.
Back in 1979, the original Sony Walkman had an odd feature. If you pressed an orange button on the end, a built-in mic would connect to the user’s headphones, letting the person hear what was going on in the outside world. This may be the first case of technology being used to mitigate the bad manners surrounding personal audio.
Now, in iOS 12, this type of feature is back — and way more useful than it was in music’s greatest-ever decade. Live Listen is a new iOS 12 feature that pipes live audio from the iPhone’s mic directly to your AirPods. Why? Well, it’s an accessibility feature, but it can be used for much more.
In iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, Safari gets solid improvements that will win you back from Chrome — especially if you value your privacy. But while safeguarding your security on the web fuels many of Safari’s great new features, there’s much more goodness to anticipate on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Let’s take a look at the Mac and iOS versions of the Apple web browser.
With the release of iOS 12 earlier this week, Apple made broad sweeping improvements to the OS. Unfortunately, the update also came with a small bug for fitness zealots sporting a cabinet full of limited edition Activity challenge badges. If that just described your Apple Watch badge collection, you can cool your cycling shorts, everything will be ok.
Even if you never make a voice memo, you might be interested in Apple’s updated Voice Memos app. Powerful new features in iOS 12 make it much more than just a way to record voice snippets.
In fact, in iOS 12, Voice Memos morphs into a full-fledged audio recorder and audio editing app. As such, it’s useful for people recording interviews, and for musicians working on ideas. Let’s take a look around.
The new camera sensors on the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max could be worth a $1000 upgrade all their own.
Early reviews of the new cameras are overwhelmingly positive. Even though we already knew Apple made the pixels larger and the sensor bigger, we now have a better idea of the crazy engineering that went into making it the best iPhone camera ever.
iOS 12’s best new feature may be Do Not Disturb at Bedtime. That sounds boring, but ask anyone who has been using it and they’ll tell you that it rocks. Apart from being active overnight, the main difference between regular Do Not Disturb and the new “at Bedtime” flavor is that all notifications are hidden from the lock screen until you deliberately swipe up on the screen to reveal them.
Regular Do Not Disturb suppresses audio and vibrating alerts, but the notifications still appear on the lock screen. You’ll see them any time you pick up your iPhone or unlock your iPad. This can make the difference between enjoying your hooky afternoon at the beach in peace or worrying the whole time because you accidentally saw that Slack message from your boss.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could take the regular Do Not Disturb and make it hide your alerts all day long? The good news is that you totally can.
“Instant Tuning” is the rather odd name that Apple gave an excellent new iOS 12 feature. You know how some apps on your iPhone keep popping up notifications you never want or need? And you keep telling yourself that you will dig into the Settings app and switch them off? Only you never, ever get around to this annoying busywork? Instant Tuning is for you.
Now, when a notification comes in, you can access the notifications settings for that app right there in the notification itself. This is huge, and makes culling your notifications way easier. Which in turn makes your most important notifications, like text messages or that sweet eBay auction you’re following, stand out more.
iOS 12 was clearly designed for an iPad where Face ID replaces the Home button. Apple has revamped the tablet’s gestures for iOS 12, bringing us an easy way to return to the Home screen, and an iPhone X-style gesture to access the Control Center.
If you’re a long-time iPad users, these changes will seem a little jarring at first. You’ll soon get used to them, though, and even learn to love them. The new Control Center gesture, in fact, is a lot better than the old one.
If you watched last week’s Apple Watch Series 4 unveiling and are dying for those new animated watch faces — but don’t want to buy a new watch — you’ll be happy to know that watchOS 5 brings the best of them to Apple Watch Series 1 and up.
They’re not quite as nice as what you’ll get with the new larger Series 4 watches coming Friday, but they’re still pretty great. Here’s a hands-on look at the new Apple Watch faces.
Shortcuts is Apple’s new automation app for iOS 12. It integrates with Siri and lets you build all kinds of amazing automated workflows, from shutting your house down when you go to sleep, to downloading videos from YouTube and saving the them to iCloud.
Shortcuts is really just the new name for Workflow, an iOS automation app that Apple bought a year or so back. Let’s take a look at what Apple has put in Shortcuts.
iOS 12 adds a great new feature in the Photos app. Now, when you share a photo, you can choose to copy a link to that photo, and share that instead. This is a lot like sharing a file from Dropbox. You can even copy a link to a whole slew of files and share them by sending a single URL.
Shared photos are stored in iCloud, and the link is accessible to anyone that has it, for up to a month. Let’s see how it works.
Photos already has a pretty decent search function on iOS 11. Thanks to Apple’s machine-learning tech, and AI categorization, you can search for thousands of “scenes.” These include the places you took the photo, but also anything from abacus to zucchini, people in the images, and times the images were taken.
This has gotten even better in iOS 12. You can still search on many thousands of categories and keywords, but now you can combine searches. For instance, you could search for several different people, and see photos only containing them all. OR you can combine search terms like Christmas, Food, and 2015, for instance. Let’s take a look.
After months of testing, Apple finally release iOS 12 to the public this morning.
See all the cool new iOS 12 features in the video below.
iOS 12 is out now, and you probably already downloaded it and installed it on your device. But what does the new version of iOS actually do? Apple introduced Screen Time, the great new Do Not Disturb, and the powerful Siri Shortcuts at the WWDC 2018 keynote in June. But until you dig into them, you won’t have an idea how great these new features are, along with many more.
There are also plenty of tweaks to Safari, some great new security features, Bedtime and even a couple of new Apple apps (on the iPad at least).
Here’s everything you need to know about iOS 12 and how to take advantage of all its new features.
Apple Watch Series 4 orders open midnight September 13 (tonight!) with shipping beginning on September 21.
In the meantime, grab yourself a strap or two befitting Apple’s fourth-generation smartwatch. The 40mm band works with the 38mm straps; the 44mm band works with the 42mm straps. You’re going to love the Series 4 and Cult of Mac’s lineup of best bands to outfit it.
We’ve all been conditioned to look with envy at a set of Beats headphones. But that’s mostly marketing, and the allure of expensive toys. Turns out it’s possible to get comparable sound quality for a fraction the cost.
Purchased digital content has been around since before the launch of the iTunes Store back in 2003, but things were much different then. Devices weren’t constantly connected, and streaming wasn’t the primary way to access your “purchased” (or subscription) content, and most things came in the form of physical media (VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, or 8-Tracks). Now that things are streamed, stored in the cloud, and available across all our devices, digital content ownership is much more complicated than simply buying a movie, book, or album and having it indefinitely.
Let’s not beat around the bush — the new iPhone names are a mess. “iPhone XS Max” sounds like a body spray for teenagers and the “XR” in iPhone XR means … well, not very much at all.
Today’s iPhones are an explosion of confused branding.
But the 2018 iPhones definitely aren’t the first time Apple products bore baffling, awkward or just plain rubbish names. Brace yourself for a repulsive refresher as we recount the worst Apple product names of all time.
Apple Watch Series 4 is now available to preorder ahead of its official launch on September 21. It’s packed with new features, but considerably more expensive than its predecessors, with prices starting at $399.
Last year’s Apple Watch Series 3 is also still available. It’s not quite as impressive as the latest model, but it’s now more affordable at $279.
Which one should you buy? Find out right here in our 2018 Apple Watch comparison.
This week on The CultCast: Hot off the heels of Apple’s keynote, it’s our unfiltered Gather Round event reactions! We’ll tell you what we think about iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR and the new Apple Watch Series 4. Plus: Is it worth upgrading from iPhone X to iPhone XS? We discuss that and all the other products that were noticeably missing from the keynote.
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.
Portrait Mode on the iPhone XR may not be as fully-baked as the version found on Apple’s other iPhones.
The iPhone XR looks like it has almost all of the same features as its higher-priced siblings. Even though it only has one camera lens in the back, it can still take Portrait Mode photos. However, attendees at Apple’s keynote yesterday found out the iPhone XR version only works on people.
It’s an incredibly big deal that Wednesday’s Gather Round keynote featured Lisa Jackson, Apple’s head of environmental initiatives.
The annual iPhone unveiling is Apple’s biggest product event of the year. Every single word and image is carefully calibrated to do one thing, and one thing only: sell as many of the new products as possible.
So why did Tim Cook turn over several precious minutes to Jackson to talk about renewable energy and recycling?
Can Apple Watch Series 4’s fall-detection feature tell when you have fallen in love? I hope so, because I’ve really fallen for it. Big-time. I haven’t felt this way about an Apple Watch since my first love, the original model, was announced back in 2014.
It’s not just the sleek new design. Nor the spacious new screen. It’s not even the breakthrough new health features. It’s when you combine them all together. It defies all logic and reason that Cupertino managed to cram so much awesomeness into such a tiny, beautiful package.
I can’t wait to strap an Apple Watch Series 4 onto my wrist next Friday and take it for a run. But until then, here are my first thoughts on this exciting new direction for Apple Watch.
Unlike previous iPhone launches, it’s not immediately obvious which iPhone you should buy if you want the best. Or rather, the iPhone XS is clearly the flagship model, but the iPhone XR, launching a month later, has some features which are better than its sibling.
So, what are the important differences to know before you choose which new iPhone X is right for you?