Intel has confirmed plans to drop Thunderbolt royalties in an effort to boost adoption. The chip-maker also plans to integrate Thunderbolt 3 into its own processors starting next year, eliminating the need for a dedicated controller.
Your postal carrier doesn’t usually ask about the contents of a package he’s dropping off, but I couldn’t blame him for being curious about a long box with a logo that said ZestDesk.
I explained to him it was a kind of standing desk and that I would be reviewing it. The man who is on his feet for his entire work day asked me what I did for a living and I said, “I sit at a computer, mostly, and write.”
To be clear, I sit on a couch or a comfy chair at a coffee shop with a MacBook Pro on my lap or belly and do not miss the cubicle life. A standing desk sounds so Type A and I worked hard to get further down the alphabet.
Spring is here, everything is new and blooming and the world invites you to explore its wonders. Of course that’s a lot easier to do if you speak more than your native language. There are few better ways to learn a new language than with Rosetta Stone. Their program is world famous for how effective it is, with an immersive method that’s been used even by national governments to train international employees. Whether you’re eager to learn Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, or Italian, Rosetta Stone can teach you to read, write, and speak with fluency. And right now, you can get box sets for levels 1 and 2, both digital and physical DVD versions, for just $119.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
If you want an affordable iPhone, but you don’t want to settle for a 4-inch iPhone SE, you might want to check out Apple’s relaunched 32GB iPhone 6.
It originally made its debut in emerging markets back in March, then in the U.S. — and now you can buy it in the United Kingdom.
Designer and leaker Benjamin Geskin has posted a short video online, showcasing what he claims to be an identical dummy unit of the iPhone 8.
Backing up a lot of previous rumors about the next-gen handset, Geskin’s iPhone features a curved glass infinite display, lack of physical Home button, and vertical dual camera setup. Check it out below.
The Look Up feature in iOS, which lets you tap on a word and look it up in the dictionary, the web, Wikipedia, and more, is one of the most useful things about reading on an iPhone or iPad. But did you know that you can also add new dictionaries, including translation dictionaries for foreign languages? That’s right. You can look up words in all kinds of other languages and translate them into English, or vice versa.
What if you could type out any of your email addresses just by tapping on the same key a few times? Or do Google searches over and over on a favorite website just as easily? What about easily typing that special symbol that’s so hard to reach on the iOS keyboard that you usually never bother? All this, and more, can be yours, if only you’ll spend a minute or two setting up some text replacement shortcuts. Let’s do it right now.
Apple is stepping up its efforts to become a more diverse workplace this week by promoting longtime employee Denise Young Smith to a new job as the VP of Inclusion and Diversity at Apple.
Despite the demand for larger, sharper smartphone displays, iPhone SE has beaten out all other smartphones to top the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
Just two of Apple’s devices placed in the top five, and with a score of 87 out of 100, iPhone SE took the number one spot ahead of iPhone 7 Plus and the Galaxy S7 series.
Here’s the worst way to organize any task: email. You can’t put everything in one place, and even if you could, you could never find it. Apple’s built-in Notes app, on the other hand, is the perfect place to store all those snippets of info you accumulate when planning something like a vacation. You can collect web pages, add checklists and photos, and even sketch maps, or add other media like PDFs or apps. And then you can share that note with any number of people and all read and update it.
Let’s see how it all works.
Accessory makers are already manufacturing cases for Apple’s next-generation iPad Pros. According to two that have leaked early, they’ll come with tweaked designs, while the new 10.5-inch model could have a taller display.
The great thing about Mac setups is that they can all be completely different. While one person may dream of a super minimalist science lab-type room, another may want an inspiring, comfortable haven. That’s what makes this week’s iSetups submissions so great.
iSetups is our new show that highlights the best Apple-centric setups submitted by our viewers. (You’ll also get plenty of tips and tricks for how you can improve your own setup.) Check them out for yourself in the video below, as well as full breakdowns and links to featured products.
Plain-text nerds probably also enjoy over-organizing things. If that sounds like you, then NotePlan might just send you over the top, joy-wise. NotePlan is an app for iOS and Mac which combines plain-text (and Markdown) notes with a calendar.
Your Mac is meant to work like magic. But we all know that beneath the sleek silver there’s a complicated machine, one that needs to be taken care of if it’s going to last. Drive Genius is a popular app designed to keep hard drives hygienic, and recover ones that have already gone kaput. Used by no less than the Apple Genius Bar itself, they offer a suite of tools that can help to speed up, clean up, protect, and even revive your Mac. It’s well worth looking into for any Mac owner, but right now you can get a standard license for Drive Genius 5 for just $39 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Apple has begun charging a fee for its Apple Music trials in some countries.
New users could previously enjoy the service for three months before having to hand over any cash, but those in Australia, Spain and Switzerland must now pay 99 cents.
A gorgeously illustrated, story-driven game with an utterly unique gameplay mechanic is just one of the titles we’ve picked out for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup.
We’ve also got Google’s AI assistant, a classic Capcom game finally landed in the App Store after almost 30 years, and a third party keyboard that’s gotten even better. Check out our picks below.
Safari on the Mac is almost entirely controllable by the keyboard. You can open tabs, navigate forms on the page, and search through pages. And even if there’s no built-in shortcut, the Mac lets you add custom shortcuts to any menu item. The iPad isn’t quite so well-served, but you’d be surprised at just how many keyboard shortcuts there are for Safari on the iPad. In fact, there are so many great shortcuts that you may even forget you’re not using a Mac. Let’s take a look.
Google brought its Google Assistant to iOS this week, finally giving iPhone fans a taste of the best virtual assistant on the planet. But those on Android are in for so much more, with major improvements on the way, including impressive Google Lens integration.
The changes make it harder than ever for Siri to catch up. Despite the improvements Apple made with iOS 10, it still feels like Siri is well behind its rivals. Is that gap now too big, or can Apple catch up? Will Siri ever be as good as the Google Assistant?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we wage war over virtual assistants.
Apple’s own battery case, cleverly titled the Smart Battery Case, has been on the market for over two years now. I had never really taken an interest in it; it was just another battery case, only this one looked like it was pregnant with an iPod.
That was until last week, when I was desperately in need of some form of charger for my iPhone and decided to pick one up. Since then, my thoughts on what was just an ugly, overpriced battery case have totally changed.
Check out the video below to find out why it’s earned a place in my heart — and is now my favorite iPhone case.
Worry no more about an iPhone 8 delay.
According to the latest rumors surrounding Apple’s next-generation smartphone, a launch will go ahead in September as originally planned. Analysts say they see no delays in the company’s supply chain, and still expect the iPhone 8 to enter mass production on time.
Tis the season for a spring clean, which can mean anything from simple tidying up to a major upgrade. Considering all the money and time you’re likely to spend on any significant improvements, it’d be a big help to get a look at what the final result will be ahead of time. Thankfully, technology offers a ready solution that’s also affordable. Live Home 3D Pro is a powerful Mac app that makes it easy to build fully realized buildings in 3D, from basic structures to complex buildings of any size. And right now you can get Live Home 3D Pro for just $24.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.
This week, on The CultCast: new MacBook Pros at WWDC? Insiders say yes! We’ll tell you all we know. Plus: why future Macs might get much faster CPUs; Apple makes a big move to bring manufacturing back to the US; and we’ll wrap up with 5 weird and whacky facts about the new Apple Park campus.
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.
Apple has blamed a third-party battery for the explosion of a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
Apple does not specify which batteries should be used with its devices, and the owner, who was wearing the headphones when they blew up on a flight between Australia and China, is “disappointed” with the company’s response.
The iOS Photos app might just look like a simple grid-like list, but it has a ton of hidden power. For instance, you can see your photos on a full-screen, 3-D Flyover map. And with one simple swipe on a photograph, you can see where it was taken, see other photos taken nearby, and collections photos that your iPhone figures are related to the one you’re looking at. It’s a fantastic way both to find out more about your pictures, and to browse. After all, why limit yourself to flipping through pictures, one by one, in the order you shot them, like some film-camera using hipster luddite, when you can see your photos on a map in Apple’s glorious 3-D Flyover view?
Photographer, videographer and online instructor Cielo de la Paz uses the iPhone and other Apple products for a lot of her work. She never envisioned she’d find value in the new Apple AirPods.
But she recently discovered how the AirPods’ Bluetooth microphone, combined with the iOS app MoviePro, solves a big problem when she shoots some of her tutorials.