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All app updates must support iPhone X screen, iOS 11 SDK

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Developers must support iPhone X screen iOS 11 SDK
When developers update their apps, they must support the iPhone X screen and use the iOS 11 SDK,
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Apple just put its foot down about supporting its latest tech. Starting in July, every update submitted to the App Store must take full advantage of the iPhone X’s Super Retina display. They also must be built with the iOS 11 SDK.

Support for the unusually-shaped iPhone X screen has been happening gradually, but expect a rush in the coming weeks.  

Apple closes in on $1 trillion market cap

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European Commission could get even tougher on tech in 2020
Warren Buffet wants to buy 100% of Apple.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The race to become the world’s first $1 trillion company is nearly complete with Apple share prices soaring on the stock market today.

Trading of AAPL stock hit 187.60 per share during the morning trading hours today, putting the company just $55 billion under the coveted $1 trillion market cap mark.

Casetify’s nylon Apple Watch bands hit all the marks

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casetify
These fabric-like, breathable nylon Apple Watch nylon bands from Casetify are comfortable and long-lasting.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Nylon bands for Apple Watch are in high demand for their comfort and versatility. Add in great engineering and style, and you’ve got the ideal strap to fit your everyday needs.

Enter Casetify, a company that believes in being radically unique, creating beautifully designed, made-to-order products that are hand-inspected from beginning to end.

The company recently launched its line of Nylon Fabric Bands for Apple Watch, and we’re now featuring them all in our Watch Store. A great value at $40!

How to restrict what your kids can watch on YouTube

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youtube restrictions
Some things are definitely adults-only.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Kids on YouTube are like rats at a food dispenser. Tap, tap, tap, next video please. But unlike the rats, which get “rewarded” with an electric shock or worse, kids just end up surfing the Up Next links until they end up seeing a rat getting shocked, or worse. A more pompous writer would point out here that it’s a parent’s job to monitor their child’s YouTube activity, but actual parents know this isn’t particularly realistic. So how do you stop your kids watching the wrong thing? Let’s see:

These sleek cases are like leather gloves for your MacBook

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These handmade leather sleeves are the ideal companion to any MacBook.
These handmade leather sleeves are the ideal companion to any MacBook.
Photo: Harber London

This post is presented by Harber London.

MacBooks are workhorse machines, but they’re also luxury items. The consideration that goes into their design and form is just as much a reason for owning one as their performance. So when you get a case — and you should definitely get a case — you should be aware that some are better fit for the MacBook look and feel than others.

Apple just squashing bugs with latest iOS and macOS betas

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Messages in iCloud is a new feature coming to iPhone, iPad, Mac
Messages in iCloud is a new feature coming to three of the five types of Apple computer. It's still in beta, though.
Photo: Apple

The fourth beta of the next versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS just became available for developers. Apple has apparently reached the point where it’s not adding new features to these, but is fixing bugs.

It’s possible features could be removed from the various betas, though.

Retrobatch for Mac means you can finally ditch Photoshop

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retrobatch
Even Retrobatch's icon is fantastic.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Acorn is one of the two best1 Mac image editors for normal humans. Retrobatch, from the same developer, is a batch-processor for images, letting you build simple or fancy workflows that can do pretty much anything to your images, automatically. If you regularly resize photos, remove location data, add watermarks, or anything else, this is for you.

Even crazier is Retrobatch’s machine-learning component, which can apply filters and operations based on what it sees in the image. For instance, you could drop a folder of images onto Retrobatch, and it would check them all and only apply filters to pictures of hot dogs. That’s right. It can detect pictures of hot dogs.

Stay secured with Encrypt.me VPN App [50 Essential iOS Apps #10]

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Encrypt.me protects an open network
Encrypt.me keeps your information safe on unsecured networks
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Encrypt best VPN app There has been a lot of talk about online security lately. Having good internet habits is important, and using a good VPN like BulletVPN features is a great way to make sure your data doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. Encrypt.me is an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand VPN app for iOS (and Mac, Android and Windows) that can help keep you safe.

Thanos arrives to blow up Fortnite

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Get ready for Thanos in Fortnite
Bet you weren't expecting Thanos in Fortnite. But find the Infinity Gauntlet and become the Mad Titan.
Photo: Marvel

Thanos isn’t just appearing in theaters everywhere, he’s also showing up in Fortnite. The villain of Avengers: Infinity War is crossing over into one of the most popular iOS games for a short time.

Even better, one player in each session transforms into Thanos to wield the Infinity Gauntlet.

Get ready for a triple-lens iPhone

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multi-camera smartphones
Imaging the iPhone with three lenses.
Photo: iDrop News/Martin Hajek

Just as you are scraping together the money for an iPhone with two camera lenses, Apple may be coming out with a triple-lens iPhone sometime next year.

A news story out of Taiwan about the rising revenues of two handset components makers buried that little nugget as it reported on an expected recovery of a sluggish smartphone sales across the globe.

Zoom through Apple’s spaceship parking garage

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Apple parking garage
A parking garage like no other.
Photo: DurangoLyft/YouTube

The design of parking garages rarely captures the imagination. But a dash-cam video of a parking facility at Apple’s spaceship campus will likely prompt a few ooh’s and ahh’s from design fans.

The three-and-a-half-minute video shot by a Lyft driver is worthy of narration from Apple design guru Johnny Ive and has all the hallmarks of a well-made Apple device: attractive simplicity, clean lines, and functional flow.

Hack a broken iPhone memory chip into a USB thumbdrive

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Put this iPhone memory chip into a USB drive

Screencap: Strange Parts

Scotty Allen loves to tinker. He followed up on his recent project manually expanding the storage capacity of his iPhone with a new trick: extracting an iPhone memory chip and converting it into a USB drive.

To be clear, Allen isn’t suggesting this is practical. Buying a USB drive is cheaper and vastly easier. But he sure seems to have fun doing it.

iOS 13 will boast great updates for iPad users

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ipad ios 11
Expect iOS 13 to bring significant new features to Apple's tablets, more so than iOS 12.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 12 is right around the corner, but iPad users should be thinking longer term. It’s iOS 13 “Yukon” in 2019 that’s expected to bring more new features to Apple’s tablet.

At the top of the list of the ability to work with multiple windows from the same application side-by-side. This would allow the user to, for example, have two Pages documents open next to each other.

How to keep using Time Machine without AirPort or Time Capsule

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flux-capacitor
This is what makes Time Machine backups possible.
Photo: Morgan Sherwood/Flickr CC

Apple’s AirPort routers introduced one game-changing new feature to the world: easy backups. Time Machine is Apple’s automatic backup utility, and it made backups easy enough for non-nerds to use regularly.

The easiest way to use it was to buy a Time Capsule, a wireless AirPort router with a hard drive built in. Before Time Capsule, nobody backed up. After Time Capsule, anyone could keep hourly, daily and weekly backups without even thinking about it. But now that Apple has stopped making Time Capsule, and AirPort routers in general, how do you keep using Time Machine?

Cult of Mac Magazine: Why everyone was so wrong about iPhone X, and more!

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cover
In this week's Cult of Mac Magazine: Everything you heard about iPhone X sales was wrong. In fact, it's Apple's most popular model.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine: Analysts have been extremely pessimistic about the iPhone X, with almost daily predictions that Apple’s top-of-the-line model was a flop. And they were all dead wrong. Tim Cook just said the iPhone X has been Apple’s best-selling model for every week since it launched, and that sales of all the company’s phones grew last quarter. How did the analysts get it so wrong?

You’ll find that story and more in this issue. Mother’s Day is around the corner on May 13, so check out our Watch Store’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide for on-time shipping. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

Newton, Bias Amp 2, Overcast privacy, and other amazing apps of the week

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Awesome Apps
'Appy weekend.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

This week we look at the amazing new Bias Amp 2 for guitarists, which looks just awful on the big-screen iPad Pro, we see how the Newton email app has banished the “sent” mail folder, we check out the new privacy features in the Overcast podcast app, and find out how to duplicate our entire Instagram history on our own microblog.

iOS 11.3 breaks some iPhone 7 microphones

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iPhone-7
How’s your iPhone 7 mic after updating to iOS 11.3?
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s recent software updates have broken some iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus microphones.

Users report that they cannot be heard during calls since updating to iOS 11.3 or later. Apple has advised Authortized Service Providers that they can initiate repairs if necessary — even on devices that are no longer covered by a warranty.

Lightsaber battles get personal in Jedi Challenges

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It's not your father's lightsaber, but Jedi Challenges lets you battle your megalomaniac dad or whiny son. Virtually, of course.
It's not your father's lightsaber, but Jedi Challenges lets you battle your megalomaniac dad or whiny son. Virtually, of course.
Photo: Lenovo

Just in time for May the Fourth-be-with-you, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges added multiplayer lightsaber battles so you can take on your friends in virtual reality combat. 

Of course, doing so requires a couple of $150 AR helmets and lightsabers. But still. 

Take your podcast listening up a notch with Overcast [50 Essential iOS Apps #9]

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Overcast offers a simple interface and great features. It's the best podcast app around.
Overcast offers a simple interface and great features.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Overcast best podcast app Podcasts are a great way to stay informed and entertained, or just to pass time. The number of podcasts is booming, and if you listen efficiently you can hear even more of them.

With the Overcast podcast app for iOS, you get a great podcast listening experience along with some awesome time-saving features.