Cult of Mac

If you work with other people, you know the grinding feeling of being in a meeting that’s going nowhere. Getting together with your team should be productive, not painful. And with a little help, it can be. In the case of Steve Jobs, he had three ways to running productive meetings: keep meetings small, each participant should be responsible for one specific agenda, and don’t make meetings too formal.

Apple’s announcement about its proposed North Carolina East Coast headquarters is supposedly “imminent,” but not everyone is happy about it. Last month, activists were reportedly “livid” about the location due to its history of LGBT-unfriendly laws. Now another advocacy group is accusing the region of racism, related to the state’s new voter ID proposal.

The advocacy group in question is a civil rights group called Color of Change. It is upset about North Carolina’s voter ID bill on the grounds that it allegedly discriminates against African-Americans. This bill was announced by the state’s House Republicans on Thursday.

Apple’s updated App Store guidelines finally give developers the ability to offer free trials for all apps — not just those that require a subscription. It’s a great move for users and creators, and something we’ve been demanding for a long time, but it has its problems.

Daniel Jalkut, developer of the MarsEdit blogging app for Mac, lists eight reasons why Apple’s approach to app trials is flawed.

It may not have been action-packed, but this week’s WWDC was bursting with great stuff. Don’t miss our WWDC 2018 reactions on this week’s episode of The CultCast. Then stick around for our list of all the best new iOS 12, watchOS, and macOS features announced at the keynote.

Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. Learn why Casper makes the internet’s favorite mattress, and get $50 toward select mattresses at casper.com/cultcast.

Apple has reportedly warned its supply chain of plans to cut 20 percent of new iPhone component orders. This news triggered a drop in Apple’s valuation, with shares falling 2.1 percent in U.S. pre-market trading.

Shares in Apple suppliers including AMS AG, Dialog Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Infineon Technologies also fell as a result of the news.

As part of its push into original video content, Apple signed a Writers Guild of America master contract promising writers greater benefits.

The deal means that scribes employed by Apple to work on its growing list of projects will receive script fees, weekly payments and residuals on shows that air for free. This is a better deal for writers than the current baseline agreement on offer.

Shortcuts is a cool feature in iOS 12 that carries out a collection on actions with a single Siri command. But a startup accuses Apple of stealing its logo.

The company’s name is Shift, and both it and the Apple Shortcuts app have logos that are stylized versions of the letter ‘s.’ Additionally, both use similar colors: blue and magenta.

Apple’s original TV content team is revving on all cylinders this week after ordering a second TV series this week.

Gregory David Robert’s novel “Shantaram” will be developed into an original drama series by Apple. The iPhone-maker reportedly had to beat out a number of competitive bidders on the project which has been kicking around Hollywood for a few years.

iOS 11 added screen recording to the iPhone and iPad, letting you make movies from whatever is running on then screen. I use it to make video clips for how-tos, or to capture video and then create animated GIFs. But did you know that you can also use screen recording to copy a YouTube video? Or to make a screencast complete with a live voiceover? Here’s how.

Amazon has not launched an Alexa app for watchOS, but new third-party software lets you sideline Siri on your Apple Watch should you prefer the voice of Alexa.

The app, Voice in a Can, will also work on iPhone and iPad, though the voice assistant won’t do all the things it does on the Amazon Echo.

Here’s an easy way to get macOS Mojave’s constantly-changing Dynamic Desktop on any Mac. Dynamic Desktop wallpapers slowly fade through a set of photos throughout the day. The default set of images is of a pile of sand, presumably in the Mojave desert, showing the same view as the light changes throughout the day.

We already showed you where to download those wallpapers. Now we’re going to see that your Mac can already turn these images into a Mojave-style Dynamic Desktop slideshow.

The World Cup is set to kick off one week from now in Russia and one of the country’s gaudiest iPhone modders has come out with a collection of custom gold iPhones to celebrate your favorite players.

Caviar is no stranger to super expensive iPhones, but their latest designs might have the most universal appeal. The new Football Legends collection features eight new designs that are dedicated to one modern football hero and the national team he plays for. By combining patterns from the players’ countries with Russian design elements, Caviar’s new iPhone X collection actually looks pretty cool.

Check em out:

Google has bowed to pressure from vegans and taken the egg out of Android’s salad emoji.

This isn’t something iPhone users need concern themselves with, as Apple’s version is already meatless.

The latest Fortnite Battle Royale challenges for Season 4 Battle Pass buyers are now available. There are seven in total for week six — four easy and three hard — which will earn you a total of 50 Battle Stars.

Here’s what those challenges are and how to complete them.

Despite Apple Maps being found on every iPhone and iPad, Google Maps has a few big advantages.

One thing helping Google Maps’ visibility is the fact that it can be easily embedded into websites. That means that if you’re using a website to navigate to, say, an Airbnb online, there’s a good chance you’ll be directed to Google Maps. But Apple is taking steps to change all that.

Logan Bailey’s first commercial invention is the Side Winder, a reel that neatly coils a MacBook charging cord to keep it tangle-free.

But the Side Winder isn’t his first Eureka! moment. That came in the fourth grade when he built a better toenail clipper.

We’re still eagerly anticipating Nintendo’s first The Legend of Zelda game for mobile. iOS users in China may have briefly believed the wait was over this week when Breath of the Wild landed in the App Store — except it wasn’t actually Breath of the Wild.

It turns out Apple approved a shameless Zelda clone that, unsurprisingly, doesn’t deliver everything its description promises.

Any designer knows that one of the best resources is a solid library of images and assets. But building up a big library can take time, and a lot of money. So s no wonder the Netflix style subscription model has come to the world of design assets.

When Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un meet, they could always break the ice by talking about their favorite Apple devices.

While Trump has expressed his admiration for Apple in the past, it turns out that North Korea’s top officials are also quite the fans of the Cupertino tech giant. According to research firm Recorded Future, analysis of the devices being used by North Korea’s elite include numerous iPhones and a MacBook.

Every Apple Watch that Apple has made is defective. At least, that’s the argument made by a new class action lawsuit, asking Apple to pay $5 million in damages for refusing to acknowledge an issue which affects its wearable devices.

According to Kenneth Sciacca of Colorado, who filed the suit, Apple Watches contain a flaw “which causes the screens … to crack, shatter, or detach from the body of the Watch, through no fault of the wearer, oftentimes only days or weeks after purchase.”

Valve is making a huge change that’s going to have a massive impact on the content you see in the Steam Store. The company is doing away with human curation and allowing everything to be sold through its platform.

Valve says it should be up to players to decide what kinds of games they play, while developers should have the freedom to choose what kinds of games they make. However, it will be creating new tools that give shoppers greater control over what appears in their Steam Store.

Epic Games is rolling out another Fortnite Battle Royale update with big weapon changes.

It is the second patch to arrive this week after bouncer traps and other weapon tweaks were introduced on Wednesday. This release focuses on reducing shotgun damage for both the pump and tactical variants, and reversing the decrease recently made to trap damage.

Epic has also confirmed it will be sending the jetpack to the vault this month.

At WWDC, Apple revealed that it will finally make it possible to do FaceTime group calls for up to 32 people. That’s great news — provided that all your friends, family and co-workers use Apple devices.

But it didn’t have to be like this. Back in 2010, when Steve Jobs introduced FaceTime, he made a big point about how it was set to become an open industry standard that could be used by Apple’s competitors, as well as Apple. Nearly a decade on, that still hasn’t happened. And now a theory has emerged as to why.

Apple’s 2018 iPhone plans reportedly include three models launching this September. One will be an upgraded version of the iPhone X, but the other two are more interesting. They’re months away from being announced, but a new render shows what both might look like.

The 6.5-inch version on the left has been called the iPhone X Plus, as it’s larger than last year’s 5.8-inch one. In the artist’s concept image, it sits next to a 6.1-inch iPhone that, unfortunately, might not look like this.

Apple took to the WWDC stage to promise that iOS 12 would offer better performance than the iPhone’s current operating system. And tests on the first beta seem to bear this out, even on older devices.

Side-by-side comparisons between iOS 12 beta 1 and version 11.4 show clear speed improvements. Benchmark scores show marginal increases.