Newsstand - page 127

A few months back, we started hearing a lot of creepy stories about folks having real-life, in-person conversations with friends, and then getting Facebook ads on the same subject soon after. Was Facebook using their iPhone/iPad’s microphone to eavesdrop on them, then serving ads based on what it heard? Technically, it’s not much different to Google scanning your email and serving ads based on their content. In reality, it’s a whole ‘nother level of creepy.

You’re missing out on one of the greatest games to ever grace iOS if you’re not playing Fortnite. It’s that good. And now you can dive in knowing all you need to know about getting started with battle royale.

Our beginner’s guide will teach you how to win games without Fortnite experience. You’ll learn which weapons are best for new starters, where to land if you want to stay alive longer, how to loot effectively, and more.

Get stuck in and start racking up those wins!

The Iconfactory’s Linea Sketch drawing app for iPad just got updated to version 2.0, and it’s a winner. Somehow, the developers have managed to keep the app’s signature simplicity and ease of use, while adding in some essential new features.

Your iPhone probably knows more about you than your husband or wife. It knows what websites you visit, and who’s in your VIP contact list. It knows your credit card numbers, and it knows what apps you like to read with your morning coffee. And it also knows where you are, at all times, and even what direction you’re moving in.

Apps like Facebook love to drain as much of this information as they can, but thanks to Apple’s privacy-first policy of giving control to you, the user, it’s easy to deny any app access to this sensitive data. Today we’ll see how to stop Facebook, or any other app, from tracking your location.

PDFs are supposed to be straightforward. Whether it’s a poster or a novel, they make documents big and small look nice, and easy to read and share. But if you want to edit one, you’re going to hit a wall.

Using the Find My Friends app to track adults is creepy stalker-type behavior. But using your iPhone to track your kids is like totally cool, right? After all, no child is safe if left to their own devices. Better to let them know as soon as possible that they should let others be responsible for their well-being.

Luckily, iOS has a bunch of neat, easy-to-use and (mostly) non-creepy tracking tools built in. Let’s see how to use them.

Arduino offers amazing opportunities for makers of all kinds. It offers a vast variety of projects of that combine electronics and machines, so it helps to have some guidance.

Ex-husband won’t take no for an answer? Landlord keeps bugging you about the overdue rent? Boss keeps calling you to work extra shifts? Maybe you want to block their calls. Thankfully that’s easy to do on the iPhone. Not only can you block calls, you can block iMessages, and even FaceTime calls. Short of switching your iPhone off and hiding it in the freezer, this is the best way to stop people from getting in touch.

So you’ve got your iMac, iPad and iPhone at the ready. Your bookshelves are heaving under the weight of all the Steve Jobs biographies, and you’ve got a cabinet containing various rare vintage Apple products, like the ill-fated Pippin games console and that weird vertical Mac display from back in the day.

Now all you’re searching for is a little Apple-themed something for the wall to say to visitors “I’m a little bit too into this Cupertino-based tech company.” Well, look no further — because we’ve got the poster for you!

As St. Patrick’s Day imbibing commences, Cult of Mac offers up all things green for your Apple Watch band-buying pleasure.

We’ve scoured the Watch Store to feature eight special bands in green from these great companies: Casetify, Clessant, E3 Supply Co. and Ullu. Today only, save 20 percent on these Irish-inspired Apple Watch bands by using code IRISH2018 at Watch Store checkout!

My plan to get to bed early last night was ruined when Epic Games dropped a Fortnite Battle Royale invite in my inbox. I had been itching to play it since I signed up for early access on Monday, so I ignored my body’s desperate calls for sleep and dived right in.

I had already played Fortnite on PlayStation 4 and PC, so I had a good idea of what to expect with the mobile version. Epic promised it would deliver exactly the same experience. But I had no idea what the game would look like, or if it would even be worth playing with touch controls.

I was blown away. Here are my first impressions of Fortnite on iOS.

Macs are complex machines, but in some ways they’re a bit like people. Everything they can do relies on a healthy, uncluttered hard drive; the “brains” of the operation. But you can’t take your Macbook to a psychologist (unless that’s your thing), so instead you’ll want a utility app like Drive Genius.

Apple issued invites Friday for an education-themed event in Chicago on March 27.

The invite promises “creative new ideas for teachers and students.” That could indicate the arrival of more-affordable Apple devices — like the new MacBook Air and iPad we’ve been hearing about.

This week on The CultCast: Siri sucks, Apple knows it, and Cupertino isn’t sure how to fix it … but there’s still hope. Plus: Our 2018 WWDC hardware expectations!

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

Charging the Apple Watch while traveling can be a little tricky. Generally, I lug along a super-long charging cable and a wall plug to get the job done when on holiday.

Nomad — makers of great Apple Watch straps and accessories — offers a stylish and super-portable charging solution called the Pod Pro. The Pod Pro wraps that lengthy charging cable neatly inside a stylish, round enclosure that also holds a massive 6000 mAh of power — enough to keep Apple Watch juiced up all weekend long.

Read on to learn more about this amazing, portable charging puck, and check out the Pod Pro in our Watch Store!

I live in San Francisco where car crime in epidemic. Last year there were just under 30,000 reported break-ins — that’s about 85 a day! My car in particular seems to be a magnet for car thieves; it’s been broken into five times in the last couple of years, costing me thousands of dollars in repairs.

So I jumped at the chance to review the new Owl car cam, a combination dashboard cam and interior security device from one of the product design leads of the iPod and iPhone. The Owl combines two HD cameras — one pointing out, the other inwards — with bump-sensing accelerometers and an always-on LTE cellphone connection that sends alerts and live video to my iPhone.

It’s been great. Setup was the easiest of any gadget in recent memory and the video is surprisingly fantastic. Best of all, no one has broken in to steal it — yet!

All the Yoga Flames, Dragon Punches and Sonic Booms of Street Fighter II spill out into the real world in a new demo that mixes classic gameplay with augmented reality.

Michigan-based software developer Abhishek Singh‘s “Real World Warrior” edition of Street Fighter II features all the familiar characters, moves and sounds of the original. But now, the game’s arena is the outside world.

“I loved playing [Street Fighter] as a kid with my sister on an actual arcade machine,” Singh told Cult of Mac. “I was thinking about multiplayer experiences and this kind of popped into my head.”

On the Mac, you can quickly open up and edit any text file using TextEdit. And while there are a ton of great text-editing apps on the iPad and iPhone, none of them is quite as simple as the Mac’s built-in app. Until now, anyway: Textor combines the iOS 11 Files app with an ultra-simple text editor, making it possibly the quickest and easiest way to quickly view, edit and even create new text files on an iPhone or iPad.

The iPad has an amazing split-screen mode. It’s called Split View, and it lets you use two apps side-by-side. On certain iPads, you can even float a third app over the top. Split View lets you drag and drop text, pictures, links and almost anything else between apps, just like on a Mac or PC. It’s also super-easy to use. Let’s see how.

Are you taking full advantage of all the neat new features in your shiny Series 3 Apple Watch? Cellular connectivity grabbed the headlines, but that isn’t the only hardware addition Cupertino managed to cram into a wearable that was already bristling with sensors.

Apple Watch Series 3 models also boast a barometric altimeter. If you think you don’t need one of those, think again. The altimeter makes Series 3 watches the ideal companion for hill workouts. That’s a type of training you really should be doing but probably aren’t.

Your Mac is a mighty machine, but it’s only as useful as the apps you install. With all the software out there to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start, and even harder to look at the price tag. So this bundle of 10 top notch apps is well worth checking out.

Using your iPhone on a poor, weak, or spotty Wi-Fi is not only frustrating. It could also have a detrimental effect on battery life. But there’s a fix, for flaky Wi-Fi at least. You can tell your iPhone to use cellular data to make up the shortfall, giving you smooth internet access, at the expense of some cellular data use. It’s called Wi-Fi Assist, and it could be the answer to all of life’s problems.

Does your husband/wife/boss/presumptuous, spoiled teenage kid send you lists via iMessage or SMS? Do you then spend the whole day flipping to the Messages app and scanning it to see which tasks you’ve done (or groceries you’ve dropped in your cart), and trying to work out what’s still left to do? Then you need to get that list out of the Messages app, and into the Notes app, turning it onto a checklist along the way. And don’t worry. This is so quick and easy, you can do it in a few seconds.

Your iPhone’s dock is ever present. Also ever-present is the translucent ribbon behind the icons. Maybe it’s there to provide visual separation from the wallpaper behind it, but seeing as the rest of your home-screen icons are left to fend for themselves, visibility-wise, then maybe not. Perhaps it’s there to provide a visual separation between the privileged Dock and the rest of the home-screen proletariat?

But if you don’t like this separator, then you’re stuck with it. Or are you? You may not be able to remove the ribbon, but you can hide it.

This week’s episode of The CultCast is packed with great Apple stories. We talk: Reports of a cheaper, smaller HomePod; the end of iTunes; MoviePass tracking your every move; the first security camera for your car; and more! Hit play to catch the discussion.

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