Apple has rolled out its Business Chat platform in new countries, including Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Singapore, the U.K., and Hong Kong.

The platform is designed to make it easy to exchange messages with companies — whether that is for making purchases, scheduling appointments, or simply asking questions.

Nyloon makes one of the best nylon NATO Apple Watch bands out there, and now offers a brand-new unboxing experience. Your shiny new Series 4 deserves a band made with really high-grade materials and hardware — Nyloon is that band.

First impressions are so crucial, especially when cold hard cash is involved. That’s why I love that Nyloon has such sleek and streamlined packaging, a nod to the high-quality Apple Watch band nestled inside. Cult of Mac takes a look inside the box for the Moai — Nyloon’s best-selling band. Let’s check it out.

Starting today, students at three U.S. universities — including Tim Cook’s alma mater, Duke University — can use their Apple Watch or iPhone for their campus ID.

The feature, also available at the Universities of Alabama and Oklahoma, lets students add their ID cards to their Apple Wallet app. This can then be used by campus ID holders to pay for laundry, lunch, book supplies and more, along with accessing dorms, the gym, or the school library.

Apple Pay Cash could be ready to make its debut in Europe.

Screens invited users to set up Apple’s peer-to-peer payments service have started popping up on devices on the other side of the Atlantic this week. Apple has also started publishing Apple Pay Cash support pages in European countries.

The fast and simple mobile browser from Opera is now available on iOS.

Opera Touch was built with gesture-based devices like the iPhone X and iPhone XS in mind, and it’s optimized for one-handed use on larger screens. It boasts a number of useful features, including Flow, which lets you share content with Opera on your desktop.

There’s more bad news for Apple’s fortunes in India. According to a new report, the iPhone XS and XS Max have seen lower sales in the Indian market than previous devices after the first weekend.

What’s more, they could be about to face new government-imposed challenges, too.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Apple’s colorful iMac G3, the computer Steve Jobs said looked good enough to lick. While Apple has long since moved away from this fun design in favor of the sleekly minimalist iMac of today, Apple fans still remember the G3 fondly. One of those fans, talented designer Antonio De Rosa, recently paid homage to Apple’s first-gen iMac by putting together some retro iMac concept art for what a new iMac in the same style might look like.

Check out De Rosa’s designs below and ask yourself: Would you buy one?

We know and love Ullu’s leather straps for Apple Watch, so much so that they are best-sellers in Cult of Mac’s Watch Store. The company’s bread and butter, however, is its popular iPhone cases.

Check out any of Ullu’s social media and you’ll witness tons of A-listers toting around their various iPhones in Ullu’s luxurious cases. From wallet and strappy to Ullu’s famous SnapOn and dual-iPhone cases, there’s a chic option for everyone.

Last year, Samsung’s smartphones offered significantly faster cellular-data speeds than Apple’s, but a new study shows that the iPhone XS LTE performance almost catches up with its rivals’.

Apple’s latest flagship handsets include some long-overdue technologies that give them noticeably quicker LTE connections.

Urban Armor Gear today joined the fight against breast cancer with Product PNK, a case for all recent iPhone models.

Until the end of this month, UAG will donate 100 percent of the profits from sales of this case to charities that support breast cancer awareness.

Beyond just professionals, Apple encourages everyone to send in their pictures to be part of the “Shot on iPhone” advertising campaign. Today it posted the first crop of images taken with the brand-new iPhone XS.

Apple’s latest handsets sports new features that are highlighted in these spectacular shots.

Turns out the entire “Beautygate” controversy has been much ado about nothing.

Corners of the internet have been up in arms over a perceived flaw in the iPhone XS camera that makes people in selfies look better than they should. Apple is supposedly looking to “fix” the undisclosed beauty filter, but developers behind one of the best iOS camera apps revealed today that such a filter does not exist.

At its huge press event last month, Apple took the wraps off the iPhone XS, XR and Apple Watch Series 4. But we don’t think that’s everything the company is going to unveil this season.

Here are five good reasons why we think Apple will hold another press event in October to show us new tablets, laptops and desktops.

Apple Watch is pretty awesome at doing a lot of things. But mapping workouts isn’t one of them. At least, not until now. Back in 2016, I was pretty disappointed with the maps I got from my Apple Watch Series 2 (the first model that came with built-in GPS). When I tested it at my local running track, the maps it generated looked like random scribbles.

Fast-forward to today, and things look a whole lot better. Last week, I repeated that test with a shiny new Apple Watch Series 4 and got some very interesting results.

For many people, the new “For You” tab in Apple’s Photos app could become the default front page for their pictures. The new feature in iOS 12 gathers everything you care about — recent pictures, sharing activity, memories and something called “Featured Photos” — into one convenient spot.

Let’s check out the Photos For You tab and see what you can do with it.

This post is presented by Dashlane.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re big advocates of using a virtual private network to stay safe and anonymous online. So when Dashlane announced it would build a VPN into its already useful password manager, we were thrilled.

The number of Americans who own an iPad or other tablet computer increased marginally in the past two years. However, ownership of a laptop/desktop has dropped significantly in the same period.

Smartphone ownership stayed at the high rate it’s held since 2016. And that’s what’s really cutting into sales of traditional computers.

Best Buy is running another big Apple Shopping Event, with impressive discounts on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s just one of the awesome offers in today’s Deals & Steals roundup. We also have Apple-certified Lightning cables at a bargain price, and $20 off a great USB-C hub for MacBook.

Plus, you can save $60 on the Astro A20 gaming headset for Mac, and there’s still time to save $55 on the Belkin Valet charging stand for Apple Watch at B&H Photo.

Despite its many flaws, Siri is still useful for lots of tasks: Setting a coffee timer, adding a reminder, looking up a fact. But what I almost never want is Siri’s voice feedback.

Usually I’m looking at my iPhone when I use Siri, and I don’t use Hey Siri ever. What I want is to ask Siri a question, and have it answer, without all the usual smart-mouthed nonsense. Thankfully, there’s one setting that does just that: Mute Siri.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! is partnering up with Apple to help the streaming service give more exposure to new and emerging musical artists.

The two sides revealed today that the second iteration of Apple Music’s “Up Next” program will let bands and other musical acts perform on Kimmel’s stage. K-pop boy band NCT 127 will be the first group to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, marking the first time Apple has promoted Korean band for its tastemaker series.

You can already get an early glimpse of their new single:

Google Maps just added additional tools designed to make long commutes more tolerable. These include a new tab that combines features commuters need, such as warnings that the trip will take longer than normal and integration with some popular music-streaming services.

Some of these tools are already available in rival applications, but nevertheless should be welcome to fans of Google Maps.

By Chris Brantner

With the Major League Baseball playoffs starting Tuesday, fans will be anxiously watching to see if their team advances and, eventually, who will bring home the World Series title.

Whether you have cable or not, you can still watch the entire MLB playoffs season from the Apple device of your choice. Here’s how to catch all the action on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, etc.

Apple still hasn’t publicly revealed whether it’s working on an autonomous car, but a company started by former Apple engineers certainly is.

Opening up about its plans, startup Aeva has revealed that it is building a smart sensor that will help self-driving cars make sense of the world. And, from its sleek design to its mix of hardware and software magic, it totally looks like the kind of product Apple would design and make!

Reading is a skill, and like all skills, there’s always room for improvement. So if you constantly find yourself re-reading paragraphs, or just staring at a book but never finishing it, these courses can help you out.

YouTube’s handy picture-in-picture mode has started making its way to desktop. The new “miniplayer” function lets you watch while you browse on Mac and PC. Here’s how to activate it.