Newsstand - page 128

In the world of watch straps, we think Ottm, a manufacturer of wooden Apple Watch bands, offers one of the best unboxing experiences.

The box itself is plain and simple, but the package is thoughtfully designed, containing extra links and a pin removal tool that makes it very easy to adjust your new band.

The bands are awesome, too. Made from zebrawood and/or sandalwood, each hand-finished strap is eye-catching, comfortable and unique.

We made a video to show you what to expect. And, check out Ottm’s wooden Apple Watch bands in the Watch Store.

If you like to pretend you’re in a private detective movie, recording yourself with voice-memos as you go about your everyday business, then your app choice is obvious: Voice Memos from Apple. It’s built into your iPhone, it’s simple, quick to use, and rock solid. But if you’re a musician, and you want to quickly capture ideas, the choice is more complicated. Let’s take a look at the best iOS apps for recording music memos.

This tip is less of a how-to, and more of a why-to. Did you ever think about creating a sleep playlist for your HomePod? It’s a great idea for a few reasons.

• You can control the HomePod with your voice, from your bed.
• The HomePod is silent when it’s not playing back audio, so you don’t have to turn it off or listen to it hiss.

Let’s see how it’s done.

iOS 12 will focus on fixing all the problems plaguing iPhone and iPad users. This concept imagines what it could do for Apple Music. It showcases a gorgeous new design with improved controls, and a dark mode that would be perfect for iPhone X.

Apple is prepping more-affordable versions of its new HomePod smart speaker and other pricey devices, according to an unconfirmed report out of Asia.

It’s not like you can ever find the app you’re looking for on your various home screens anyway, so why not do something fancy with those icons instead? Like, making your home screen an expression of your inner chakra, man. Or getting in tune with the color harmonies of the universe or whatever.

Whatever hippie crap you’re using to justify it, the results can be amazing. And who knows — if you arrange your home screens by color, then maybe you’ll actually end up finding things faster.

The Finder has been with the Mac since day one, way back in 1984. But just because it’s old, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some new tricks. Did you know, for instance, that you can add a path bar to the bottom of the window to show the path of the current folder on your Mac? Or that you can add a status bar in the same spot so you always know how full your drive is? Or that you can add a permanent preview pane over on the right side of a Finder window, even in icon and list views?

Let’s take a look, and see what else you can do.

Apple improves the speakers in iPhones, iPads and iPods with each release — usually making them louder than the previous generation. Still, people constantly complain that iPhones are not loud enough.

In our latest Quick Tips video, I’ll show you a super-easy way to boost those tiny speakers. Check out the video below to see how to make iPhone speakers louder!

The augmented reality revolution sparked by Apple’s ARKit needs a dash of accuracy if it’s really going to catch fire — especially when it comes to mapping.

That’s why London developer Andrew Hart created a location-aware toolkit that uses artificial intelligence to punch up the precision in apps built with ARKit.

“One problem with AR location experiences is the low accuracy of phone GPS and compasses, which makes it difficult to ensure that things line up,” Hart told Cult of Mac. “The toolkit uses computer vision techniques to recognize landscapes from tagged imagery, and then aligns the AR environment upon recognition. It works in different weather conditions, and means you can have really precise experiences.”

We’re still in the midst of a startup boom. The model of small, scrappy business-building has resulted in a body of knowledge about how to succeed. It’s also led to a bevy of tools that can help anyone, whatever they’re building. So we’ve gathered some of the best of them into a bundle of biz-boosting software.

Is your Mac stuffed fit to burst? Do you look at the Finder’s Status Bar, see “1GB available,” and then give up what you were doing and go check Twitter instead? What if I told you that you could offload much of the junk/important data on your Mac to iCloud, just like you do with your iCloud Photo Library? Well, you can, and it’s easy. It’s called Optimized Storage.

Square Cash is the world’s best coffee loyalty program — and it’s time you knew about it.

The Square Cash Coffee Reward program has been the highlight of my last six months. You can either take that as an indictment of my quality of life, or a resounding recommendation for this coffee cash-back program.

Some of the most creative iPhone home screen designs we’ve ever seen use blank gaps to separate icons into groups or to create interesting stepped patterns. But how is that even possible? After all, if you delete a home screen icon, the others close ranks to fill in the space.

The answer is to add blank icons to create those gaps. Then, you can add a blank row to organize your iPhone home screen, or move all your apps the the bottom of the screen instead of the top.

There was a time when the little glowing bricks we carried around were called Game Boys. In those simpler days, passing time meant burning through Tetris, not swiping through Tinder. The graphics weren’t great, but the gameplay sure was.

With the Wanle Gamers Console, you can reclaim the nostalgia of portable gaming, and protect your iPhone at the same time.

A reliable source says Apple is working on audiophile-grade headphones with built-in AirPods magic. AirPods Pro? SIGN US UP. Catch the discussion on The CultCast. And stay tuned for: How Apple plans to revolutionize healthcare; the cool, weird and wacky HealthKit gadgets you’ve never heard of; and we wrap up with pro-level whistling, rock accordion, and the best actors of all time in an all-new Get to Know Ur Cultist.

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.

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 series, with its edge-to-edge display and features like iris scanning, offered smartphone buyers a refreshing alternative to an all-too familiar iPhone experience in early 2017. Now the Galaxy S9 is here and things are a little different.

The iPhone isn’t boring anymore. With an edge-to-edge display of its own, as well as Face ID, dual cameras, and the incredible A11 Bionic chip, iPhone X has made Apple the smartphone maker to beat once again. Does the Galaxy S9 have what it takes?

Check out our in-depth comparison to find out which is better.

You don’t buy a $1,000 smartphone and stick it in a $4 silicone shell you bought on eBay. You either leave it exposed so that you can enjoy its gorgeous glass and stainless steel, or you sensibly stick it in a beautiful case that complements its premium design.

Mujjo’s leather cases are perfect for iPhone X. Made from full-grain leather with a super-slim profile, they rival Apple’s own leather cases in looks and durability. I’ve been using two of them for over a month now; here’s what I think of them.

Converting an audio track to MP3 on the Mac is dead easy. Just open it with iTunes, and choose the File > Convert option from the menu bar. On iOS, though, there’s no native way to do this. There are lots of shonky-looking apps in the App Store that offer to create MP3s for you, but it’s likely that you already have the answer installed on your iPhone or iPad.

That’s right. Apple’s own WorkFlow app can quickly and easily convert any audio (or video) file to MP3.

Not looking at your smartphone is the new looking at your smartphone. Or, at least, that’s the idea driving an intriguing app which aims to reward students with discounts on movie tickets and other services if they don’t keep checking their iPhones.

Here’s how it works, and why its creators think it matters.

BARCELONA, Spain — Smart sperm testers, body cavity inspectors, Bluetooth pillows, holographic jump ropes and contactless thermometers. It’s all just another day at Mobile World Congress, where more and more companies show off their new HealthKit-compatible gadgets.

If you want your iPhone to know absolutely everything about what’s going on with your body, these handy medical devices are for you. Here’s what they do — and why they’re cool.

Samsung’s newly announced flagship Galaxy S9 phone is getting destroyed by the iPhone in early benchmark tests.

It’s far, far slower than Apple’s recent models and even much slower than the two-year old iPhone 7.

Siri kind of sucks, despite its increasingly prominent role in the Apple ecosystem.

With the general verdict on the HomePod being “great speaker, shame about Siri,” what does Apple need to do in order to catch up with its rivals? Here are six Siri improvements we’d love to see Apple implement as soon as possible.

Your iPhone makes daily life a lot easier. But when driving, the most you can expect is getting directions. That’s why we’ve rounded up four awesome iPhone car accessories. From smart license plates to wireless charging, speed trap detectors and more, there’s something in here for anyone who wants their phone to be a true road companion. Read on for more details.

If you like Instant Markup on iOS, then you’re going to love ShotBox. It’s a free app, available from the Mac App Store, that automatically pops up a panel of markup tools whenever you take a screenshot. It’s almost exactly like the Instant Markup tools built into iOS 11.

BARCELONA, Spain — The best product I’ve tried out at this year’s Mobile World Congress is the Vuzix Blade AR glasses. These smart specs superimpose a sharp, high-definition display over your regular vision, making real life resemble an awesome Xbox game.

The Blade basically delivers on everything that Google Glass tried to do, but without sucking. I was skeptical about the rumors that Apple is developing its own augmented reality glasses. But what I saw through the lens of a Vuzix Blade showed me how far this technology has come — and just how cool Apple AR glasses could be.