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How to use Mojave’s fancy new screenshots tool

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No, not this kind of screenshot.
No, not this kind of screenshot.
Photo: Pete/Public Domain

You almost certainly know the shortcuts for snapping quick screenshots on your Mac. It’s ⇧⌘3 to capture the entire screen, and ⇧⌘4 to get a crosshairs cursor to select a section of the screen.

Now, there’s a new screenshot shortcut in town: ⇧⌘5. And boy is this fella fancy. If this were a western movie, ⇧⌘5 would be the young upstart blowing into town with a couple of Uzis and a pair of Kevlar chaps1. Let’s check out Mojave screenshots.

Bulletproof privacy makes price of iPhone worth it

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data privacy
Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses his company's data privacy philosophy on VICE News Tonight.
Screenshot: VICE News Tonight/You Tube

Android users can pat themselves on the back for paying less for a smartphone. Apple fans can rest easy knowing the steeper price they paid for their iPhones came with better data privacy.

This was a point Roger McNamee, an Apple investor and co-founder of the private equity firm Elevation Partners, delivered Wednesday during a discussion on CNBC about where the big tech companies stand on privacy.

Jimmy Kimmel turns Trump’s nationwide text into a Hollywood blockbuster

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Trump text
Trump's texts cause nationwide mayhem in Kimmel's hilarious video.
Photo: Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Giving Donald Trump the power to send a text to every person in the U.S. is a horrible idea, but as Jimmy Kimmel has shown, it could make for a great movie.

Everyone was talking about the first-ever nationwide Presidential alert. Thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as bad as Trump’s tweets. However, during Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night, the late night comedian showed what type of mayhem could ensue if Trump could text whatever he wanted. From cops shooting their iPhones to a man chopping his arm off to get away from Apple Watch alerts, the entire movie concept is truly phenomenal.

Watch the craziness unfold:

How to export GarageBand stems on iPad

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It's super-easy to export GarageBand stems on iPad with AudioShare once you know the trick.
It's super-easy to export GarageBand stems once you know the trick.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you use Apple’s magnificent GarageBand for iOS, you will come up against one frustration over and over again — exporting stems. Or rather, not exporting stems. “Stems” is a cool music-producer term for the individual tracks in a song, and it is common practice to export them separately to either edit them in another app or send them to other people.

GarageBand on iOS doesn’t do this. It’s inexplicable. But there’s a fast and easy way to grab the stems right from your GarageBand project. You just need a copy of the magnificent AudioShare app, which costs just $3.99. Here’s how to export GarageBand stems.

Epic will let Fortnite players merge multiple accounts

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Fortnite
Rescue your purchases from an old Epic account.
Photo: Epic Games

Epic Games is giving Fortnite players a new tool that will allow them to merge multiple accounts.

The merge will combine all item purchases, V-Bucks, game stats, and Save the World campaign access. It’s perfect for those who were forced to set up a second Epic account to play Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch, or because they were locked out of their original.

UK hip-hop DJ Charlie Sloth leaves BBC for Apple Music

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Charlie Sloth 1
Sloth during one of his famous "Fire in the Booth" segments.
Screenshot: BBC/YouTube

Following in the footsteps of fellow ex-BBC presenter Zane Lowe and others, UK-based hip-hop DJ Charlie Sloth will be leaving his job presenting on the BBC to join Apple Music.

Sloth is a presenter on both BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra. He has been a BBC broadcaster for the past decade, and is best known for hosting the popular rap freestyle segment, “Fire in the Booth.”

Apple tops Best Global Brands list for 6th consecutive year

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Apple adds 5 new vice presidents to its executive lineup
Apple is way ahead of the competition in value.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

Apple has topped Interbrand’s annual list of the Best Global Brands for the sixth consecutive year.

The iPhone-maker, which has seen its brand value increase 16 percent this year, ranked highly in consistency, engagement, and differentiation. It is followed by Google, while Amazon has quickly climbed into third place after its brand value increased an impressive 56 percent.

Turn your phone into a tool for relieving stress [Deals]

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Your iPhone doesn't have to be a distraction. With the Aura app, it can actually help you get back in touch with the moment.
Your iPhone doesn't have to be a distraction. It can actually help you get back in touch with the moment.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

For all their many uses, let’s face it: our smartphones are a major source of distraction. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, with the right app, your phone can actually help you regain focus and reduce stress.

Facebook ‘borrows’ from Snapchat for updated Nearby Friends feature

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Facebook owns 4 of the top 10 apps of the past decade
Facebook wants to get some of that Snapchat cool!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Facebook is taking another crack at providing a way to help us meet up with friends offline. Having seen its “Facebook Nearby Friends” feature fail to gain much traction, the social media giant is now supposedly planning on a Snapchat-inspired redo to try and change its fortunes.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is testing a redesign of its “Nearby Friends” that looks a whole lot like Snap Map. This feature will replace the list view of “Nearby Friends” with a map that shows friends grouped according to their city.

‘Patent troll’ sues Apple over AirDrop technology

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AirDrop shortcut
AirDrop lets you send files between devices.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple introduced its super useful AirDrop file transfer feature way back in 2011. However, a patent licensing company called Uniloc — sometimes referred to as a “patent troll” by critics — claims that Apple is infringing on its intellectual property.

Uniloc says that Apple’s AirDrop tech infringes on a patent first filed in 2000, a decade before Apple debuted AirDrop. And it wants some sweet Apple cash for its troubles!

Apple hires police to watch over its Apple Stores in Sacramento

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Thieves grab MacBooks from an Apple Store
This is the kind of situation Apple wants to avoid.
Photo: CBS New York/Apple

Police might have cracked the crime ring behind the spate of snatch-and-grab robberies in Apple Stores across California, but Apple’s taking no chances. According to a new report, it has contracted local police departments to bring officers in as extra security in some of its stores.

Specifically, the report notes that Apple is doing this in Sacramento. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple followed a similar strategy in other locations which have been the target of criminals.

Civilization VI marches onto iPhone

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Civlization VI
Get ready to give up hours on end!
Photo: Aspyr Media, Inc.

There are some technological feats that just hammer home how far we’ve come in a few short years. One of those is the fact that, through what we can only presume is the software engineering version of witchcraft, Sid Meier’s epic Civilization VI game has been squeezed onto iPhone.

And it’s available in the App Store right now — with a 60 percent price discount if you hurry!

People love declining phone calls on their Apple Watches

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Man’s brand new Apple Watch turns out to be toilet plunger
Here's what people regularly do with their Apple Watch.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple made a big deal of people being able to make and receive phone calls with your Apple Watch, but you know what it turns out people prefer doing to answering calls with their Cupertino smartwatch? Declining them, you unsociable bunch!

At least, that’s according to a new Creative Strategies survey of Apple Watch users, shared by researcher Ben Bajarin. Based on the Silicon Valley research firm’s analysis, here’s what else they found Apple Watch owners do on a regular basis:

Google Translate for iOS can speak in Australian, Indian, Spanish accents

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Google Translate can speak in a variety of accents. And it's not just English.
Google Translate can speak in a variety of accents. And it's not just English.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The days are over when Google Translate could only provide spoken translations with an American accent. The latest iOS version adds regional accents from the former British Empire.

And it goes beyond English. French translations can be said in a Canadian accent, for example.

LG’s horrible hybrid watch shows how bad Apple’s competition is

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lg
LG's smartwatches have always been bad, but the W7 is even worse.
Photo: LG

Apple has quickly become the world’s biggest watch company and based on its latest competition from Android smartwatch maker LG, the company’s not in danger of losing its title anytime soon.

LG’s new Watch W7 was unveiled today with a hybrid design that makes it half smartwatch, half mechanical watch. The watch face has mechanical hands so that you can always see what time it is. To keep them from blocking the display, LG put a little feature in it that makes the two hands fold horizontally but the execution of the idea is quite atrocious.

Look at how dumb this thing is:

Apple cuts price of BeatsX headphones

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beatsx wireless
The BeatsX Wireless earbuds charge via Lightning.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The good news is that Apple just significantly cut the official price of BeatsX wireless headphones. The bad news is that half the color options also just went away.

These in-ear headphones compete with Apple’s own AirPods but, unlike their rivals, are permanently connected to each other.

iPhone XS first week sales solidly outpace iPhone 8

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iPhone XS box gold
People around the world snapped up the iPhone XS models more quickly than they did the iPhone 8 series last year.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The iPhone XS and XS Max debuted last month, and some versions sold out almost immediately. But that doesn’t automatically mean they’re a huge hit. Still there’s new evideance that sales are strong.

Drawing on data compiled from over 1 million mobile apps, an analyst says that, during the first week they were available, Apple’s XS series outsold last year’s iPhone 8 and 8 Plus by 45 percent.

Wi-Fi version names finally make sense

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home Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi 6 is coming, and you don't have to care which version of 802.11 it is. You will care that it'll make public Wi-Fi better, though.
Photo: Alan Levine/Flickr

802.11ax will soon get a public release, but you won’t be left trying to remember if it’s better than 802.11ac or 802.11n. That’s because every version of Wi-Fi is getting renamed with a simple system that anyone can understand.

The next generation is going to be called Wi-Fi 6, which is obviously better than its predecessor, Wi-Fi 5.

Cult of Mac’s 50 Essential iOS Apps [The complete list, sorted!]

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50 Essential iOS Apps
The best and most useful apps for iPhone and iPad
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

With our 50 Essential iOS Apps series, the goal was to help you find some of the best apps for iPhone and iPad. Picking the finest offerings from the more than 2.2 million iOS apps in Apple’s App Store proved challenging. But we highlighted apps that offer excellent features or make life easier in various ways.

To wrap up the series, we’ve sorted the apps by category to make the list easier to browse. We’re also showcasing Cult of Mac readers’ alternatives to our picks.

(You’ll find reader faves linked at the end of this post. That’s especially helpful since one of our must-have apps is about to die an unceremonious death.)

iPhone XS Max camera takes second place in DxOMark rankings

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iPhone data privacy
Data privacy comes with the price.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

The iPhone XS Max camera is one of the best mobile cameras ever tested by the digital camera testing lab DxOMark. It’s just not as good as Huawei’s triple-camera P20 Pro, the tests show.

The XS Max scored a 105, four points less than the flagship of its Chinese competitor, a result only wonky photophiles are likely to debate ad nauseam.

Hundreds of people are dying from selfies

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iPhone X portrait lighting ad
Be careful where you selfie.
Photo: Apple

Think twice before you take your next selfie because it could be your last.

Selfie-related deaths are on the rise, according to a new study that found there were over 250 reported deaths from October 2011 to November 2017 that happened while the person was trying to snap a selfie.

Everyone can get the latest iOS 12.1, macOS, tvOS betas

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Apple Beta Software Program
Get in on the new betas while they're hot.
Photo: Apple

Apple isn’t wasting time getting out the next versions of all its operating systems. Yesterday, it introduced fresh betas of iOS 12.1, macOS 10.14.1, and tvOS 12.1 just for developers, and today these are all available to the general public.

This is the second round of betas of all this pre-release software. It comes two weeks after the initial round.

Brass grip gives iPhone camera feel and control of a DSLR

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Pictar Pro
Get a grip on your iPhone when shooting pictures or video with the Pictar Pro
Photo: miggö

Each new iPhone and its ever-improving camera tends to stir up talk about the demise of the DSLR.

Yet, there are just some key features of a conventional camera’s form factor that relegates the iPhone to the casual camera category.

But the photography accessories company miggö has developed – and now improved – a nifty attachment dubbed Pictar tp bring DSLR-like speed and ergonomics to the iPhone.

iPhone XS lineup is great, but not as great as Samsung’s Note 9

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Apple wins benchmark and real-world comparisons of the performance of the iPhone XS Max and the Galaxy Note 9.
Two great handsets, but which is better?
Photo: SuperSaf TV

Respected consumer testing publication Consumer Reports has released its full review of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.

While neither Apple handset quite dethrones Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9 as the group’s top-rated smartphone, the testing results do highlight multiple improvements from previous iPhones.