You could safely assume that computer hackers and people who knit have little to talk about. One activity is clearly analog and seemingly old-fashioned while the other pre-occupies the mind of a tech geek.
Fabienne Serriere blows up that assumption by being both. She combines the two rather different activities to make eye-catching scarves imprinted with Mac ROM code.
Ounce for ounce, Apple’s replacement Apple Pencil tips are probably more expensive than gold1. It will cost you $20 for four of the tiny things, all of which are ridiculously easy to lose.
But if you use your Pencil for anything more than the odd casual stroke, sketch or swoosh, you’ll eventually need to replace a worn tip. The good news is that it’s easy. The bad news? That price.
Future iPhones and Apple Watches could pack “smell recognition capabilities,” based on some new patent filings submitted by Apple.
The iPhone-maker has been researching ways to detect air pollution and other dangerous chemicals with tiny sensors that could be integrated into its products. In the new patents, Apple describes how it could use multiple sensors to detect things like spoiled food, body odor and maybe even blood sugar levels.
Ever since I got a 2018 iPad Pro last year, I’ve gone through a drawerful of USB-C hubs. And finally, I’ve found one that works. Or rather, one that works without any odd, annoying or inexplicable behavior. It’s the Kingston Nucleum, it doesn’t have quite enough ports, and it’s just great.
Crowding a group of people into a selfie can be challenging. Seems someone always ends up halfway out of the picture. Apple has a solution: it’s developing a way to automatically combine multiple images into a group selfie.
This could become a part of iOS 13 this fall, perhaps as a new feature in the iPhone XI.
Amidst calls for a touchscreen MacBook, Logitech introduced the next best thing: a keyboard case that converts the 2018 iPad Pro into a laptop. The Slim Folio Pro has a backlit keyboard and a design that protects the tablet and the attached Apple Pencil.
We fully tested this just-released accessory for businesspeople and students, so don’t miss our review. Or our comparison of Logitech’s latest with the similar Apple Smart Keyboard Folio.
Are you thinking of switching from the Mac to the iPad? Maybe you’re sick of your MacBook’s glitchy keyboard, or you would prefer to be able to remove the keyboard altogether when you don’t want it, and use touch instead?
Or perhaps you’re tempted by the cheaper pro apps on iOS, or the portability, or you just can’t see the point of a 27-inch iMac on your desk when all you do is read and write.
Whatever your excuse, switching from macOS to iOS is easier than ever. Thanks to iCloud, and a host of great apps and accessories, switching can be almost seamless. Let’s see what you need.
Let me be among the first to thank Apple for killing the wireless charging pad known as AirPower.
While tech commentators try to rank this failure against other doomed Apple products, I feel grateful that Cupertino pulled the plug. AirPower, an ambitious attempt to use multiple coils to charge an iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods, was a public health hazard.
Contrary to what you might expect, merging PDFs is easier on your iPhone than on your Mac. On the desktop, you first need to open both PDFs in the Preview app, and then work out how to combine the two of them. On the iPhone or iPad, you can select your PDFs in the Files app (or in the Mail app, or anywhere else you find them), and use a quick shortcut to combine and save them in one go.
It’s instant, foolproof, and Just Works™. Let’s see just how easy it is to merge PDFs on iOS.
Whether you’re in need of a sport band, a luxe leather strap, or cool stainless steel, your search ends here.
Sure, you could go all out on Apple’s new Spring lineup with prices reaching as high as $489, but if you’re like me and putting away the cash for bigger and better hardware upgrades down the road, then these totally affordable and equally stylish bands are just for you.
Check out this watch store guide and find your perfect color match this season for price tags as low as $25.
The next iPhones might steal a page out of Samsung’s playbook.
Apple is reportedly planning to add two-way charging that will allow it to recharge your Apple Watch, AirPods and even other iPhones.
Got a new Apple Pencil? Once the initial novelty wears off, you might find that it spends most of its time magnetically clipped to the side of your iPad Pro or, worse, stuck in the back of a drawer. After all, there are only so many PDFs to annotate and screenshots to mark up.
Which is a great shame, because what your Apple Pencil really wants to do is create art. You only appreciate the true joy of owning one when you draw with it. So, why not follow this handy how-to guide and start sketching lifelike portraits of friends and family? It’s a really fun hobby.
As Kate Winslet once said in Titantic, “Draw me like one of your French girls.”
Now that Apple’s AirPower charging mat has been cancelled, this dual iPhone and Apple Watch charger is perhaps the best alternative.
Like the AirPower, the Dual+Watch Aluminium Wireless Charger can charge three devices simultaneously, including the new wireless AirPods.
AirPower is officially dead.
It’s been about 1.5 years since Apple titillated fans by revealing a wireless charging mat that supposedly would charge not one, not two, but three Apple devices at the same time.
Frankly, it looked too good to be true at the time. And after a year of avoiding the subject, Apple confirmed today that AirPower will never caress the backside of your iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods at the same time.
This is an unofficial guide to why AirPower failed.
Owners of late-model iPhones (starting with iPhone 8) can stash all their old Lightning cables in a desk drawer and start charging their phone more easily with a wireless charger. Instead of sticking a wire into your phone and attaching it to a power adapter, you just place the phone on a small charger pad — or on a stand-up charging pad — and you’re good to go.
Now that Apple officially killed off its AirPower charging mat, it’s time to take the plunge and get yourself a third-party wireless charger. And if you’ve got one of those newfangled AirPods wireless charging cases, a charging pad is even more essential to your setup.
Here are our recommendations for best wireless chargers.
Did you know that you can send the audio from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac via the Lightning cable? That audio stays in pristine digital ones and zeros, and can be recorded (or otherwise used) anywhere you can edit audio on your Mac.
For musicians, this turns your iPad and all its music apps into a plugin for your Mac. And for anyone else, it could just be a neat way to route audio into your Mac’s speakers. The feature is called iDAM, and it’s built into your Apple devices. Oh, and it works with MIDI too.
This week on The CultCast: News+, TV+, Arcade, Card … we react to it all. We’ll fill in the details on Apple’s new services. And, just when you thought it was safe to type, Apple apologizes for yet more MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboard issues.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain..
Here’s your chance to get a signed and personally-engraved copy of my new Tim Cook biography.
If you preorder a copy of Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, I’ll sign and inscribe the book for you.
Apple’s Contacts apps are terrible. On both iOS and Mac, they’re opaque, confusing and frustrating to use. Cardhop is a brand-new contacts app for iPhone and iPad that is better than the built-in app in almost every way.
Here’s how to add a new contact without typing a thing.
This might seem like an absurd subject for a how-to. I mean, all you have to do to charge your new AirPods with the new wireless charging case is toss them onto the charging mat, right? That’s true, but there are a couple of neat tricks that you might like to know.
They are simple, but these AirPods charging tips can save you frustration and wasted time.
Back in December 2016, I was ecstatic to receive my AirPods. In the first few days after they arrived, I had them in my ears almost every moment I wasn’t sleeping or in conversations with others.
Since then, I’ve worn my AirPods, on average, something like four hours every day. When they aren’t in my ears, they are in their case, in my front left pocket. They are as much a part of me as the iPhone they’re typically paired to.
With the second-generation AirPods (can we agree to call them AirPods 2?), Apple took the product I’ve loved dearly for the last 800-plus days, and made it just a little better.
If you’ve updated your iPhone or iPad to iOS 12.2, and you own a pair of first-gen AirPods, the wireless earbuds probably got an automatic firmware update already. Today we’ll see how to check your AirPods firmware version, and learn what’s new in the update.
Spoiler: Some owners even report better battery life in their original AirPods.
AirPods 2 have arrived. Faster, longer-lasting, and with extra Hey Siri action, they’re a solid upgrade to the (deservedly well-loved) originals.
The new AirPods work — for the most part — just like the old ones, with a few extra Siri options. And that means that all the best AirPod tricks, like eavesdropping with Live Listen, and customizing your double-taps, all still work. Check out our roundup of the best tips and tricks for AirPods 2.
Apple is here to save the magazine and newspaper industry. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Back in 2011, Apple’s Newsstand made the same promise.
Newsstand was a kind of odd hybrid app/folder, and you could subscribe to individual magazines. Some were specially designed to work on the then-new iPad, and others were repurposed PDFs. Publishers thought it would prop up their failing print sales, but it did nothing of the sort.
Will Apple News+ be any different?
At a time when critically acclaimed TV shows serve up a steady stream of sex and violence, the upcoming Apple TV+ service proffers an unusual prescription for success: optimism, inclusion, creativity and inspiration.
Touting its upcoming streaming video service as “the new home for the world’s most creative storytellers,” Apple is carefully framing its upcoming Apple TV+ day as a healthy antidote to Hollywood’s toxic hellstew of nudity and mindless gore. The company even suggested its original shows could act as a tonic to heal a nation divided by the bitter partisan politics of the Trump era.