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Google’s search payments to Apple could diminish this year

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What’s it like to have your startup bought by Apple? Stressful
Apple's Google cash is an easy source of money.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The money that Google pays Apple to be the default iOS search engine is poised to become a much smaller part of Apple’s Services revenue.

In its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple singled out licensing as one of the main factors for its 31 percent increase in Services revenue over the past quarter. But Google parent company Alphabet told investors that the money paid to distribution partners — including Apple — will slow down this year.

iPhone X may have sold close to 50 million handsets so far

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iphone x
By our calculations, the iPhone X alone has sold as many units as Apple sold iPhones in the first three years.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

It was written off as a flop by analysts until just a week ago, but according to newly released figures from Strategy Analytics, Apple’s iPhone X was actually the world’s best selling smartphone model in the first quarter of 2018.

Selling a massive 16 million units out of total smartphone shipments of 345 million worldwide, the iPhone X has seemingly disproved everyone who expected this to be a sales dud for Apple.

iPhone X is a huge hit, the death of 3D Touch, and inflatable paddle boards on The CultCast

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Tim Cook with money bag
Tim Cook
Illustration: Cult of Mac

This week on a very volatile episode of The CultCast: the analysts were all wrong—iPhone X is a massive hit. Plus: the death of 3D Touch starts with 2018 iPhone; the world’s most famous Apple analyst may no longer be reporting on Apple; Apple’s AirPort router lineup is officially dead; and we pitch you our favorite show, movie, and vodka in an all-new Under Review. It’s a juicy one. Hit play and catch the discussion.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace website. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first hosting plan or domain.

Razer’s new mouse is built for budget gaming

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Razer-Abyssus-Essential
The Abyssus Essential won’t break the bank.
Photo: Razer

If you do a lot of gaming on your Mac or PC, a $10 mouse from Walmart isn’t going to cut it. But that doesn’t mean you have to break the bank on something super-fancy, either.

The Abyssus Essential, Razer’s newest mouse, has everything the average gamer needs — and it’s ideal for buyers on a budget.

Warren Buffett didn’t believe the iPhone X doom predictions

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Buffett
Warren Buffett continues to sing Apple's praises.
Photo: CNBC

Analysts everywhere are trying to restore their Apple credibility after predicting doom for the iPhone X, only to be confronted with Apple’s best ever March quarter!

One person who apparently didn’t buy into the negative chatter about Apple? Renowned investor Warren Buffett. In the first quarter of 2018, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm shelled out for a massive 75 million AAPL shares. That joins the 165.3 million shares it owned at the end of last year.

Goosebumps: HorrorTown promises a scarily good time on iOS

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Pixowl
Let's hope there aren't too many terrifying in-app purchases along the way!
Photo: Pixowl

Back in my distant misspent youth, I was an enormous fan of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series of kids’ horror books. Jump forward 25 years and this fond piece of nostalgia is about to make its way onto iOS — courtesy of a new mobile game. And it actually sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Check out the trailer below.

Instagram introduces in-app payments feature

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Instagram
Now you can pay for things in Instagram's app without having to leave.
Photo: Instagram

Is there a single tech company out there that doesn’t want to get in on the mobile payments game?

Not wanting to be the kid picked last for soccer practice, Instagram has started rolling out a native payments feature for its app. This allows you to register a debit or credit card as part of your profile, add a pin code, and then start making purchases right inside of the Instagram app.

Google makes iPhones extremely secure

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Apple requests DMCA removal of iPhone security tweet. Then changes its mind
Apple requests DMCA removal of iPhone security tweet. Then changes its mind
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Google’s service making its accounts uncommonly secure has been extended to iOS native apps. This is only for people who carry around really sensitive information and who therefore expect their iPhone or iPad to come under sophisticated attack.

Starting today, the Advanced Protection Program supports Apple Mail, Calendar, and Contacts. Naturally, this is only for those who connect these iOS apps to Google accounts.

Hogwarts Mystery costs too much, but might become cheaper

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Harry Potter
Considering it's a children's game, many wonder why Hogwarts Mystery cost so much to play.
Photo: Jam City

Reviews of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery don’t agree whether it’s a good iOS game, but all say it’s vastly too  expensive. It’s actually free to download, but playing the game essentially requires buying expensive power-ups.

But now developer Jam City may have changed course because reports are coming in that the cost of power-ups has dropped by up to 80 percent.

Apple Watch shipments almost double Fitbit’s

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Save big on the Apple Watch Series 3
Apple Watch dominates the global wearables market, solidly beating its arch-rival.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

There’s no doubt who’s top dog in the global wearables market. Just over 4 million Apple Watches shipped during the first quarter of this year. That’s nearly double the number of Fitbits shipped.

The performance of Apple’s wearable was also up dramatically when compared to the same period of last year.

How to master Split View on the Mac

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Split View on the Mac
This is how they did Split View on the olden days.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Split view on the iPad is amazing. Two apps, side-by-side, open up all kinds of neat shortcuts. You can drag text, links, and pictures from Safari into notes apps, emails, Pages documents and so on. The Mac is less in need of such a mode, because screens are bigger, and you can already place two windows side-by-side, but on a little MacBook, where every 1/64th inch counts, Split View is a great feature. Here’s how to use it.

Google gamifies machine learning with Emoji Scavenger Hunt

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Emoji game Scavenger Hunt turns powerful machine learning and image recognition technology into a game for your phone.
Emoji Scavenger Hunt turns powerful machine learning and image recognition technology into a game for your phone.
Screenshot: Google

Emoji are many things to many people. Depending who you ask, they’re fun, flirty, confusing, a whole new language, or the demise of language itself.

Google’s Emoji Scavenger Hunt adds one more to the many meanings of emoji: a way to play with machine learning.

iOS 11.4 adds AirPlay controls to Siri

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Siri do not disturb
You can now use Siri on your iPhone to control music on your HomePod.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple is about to let Siri control your AirPlay speakers.

As part of the latest beta for iOS 11.4, Apple has added the ability to use AirPlay commands through Siri, allowing users to use Siri on their iPhone to play something on their HomePod.

Signups open for free Apple Developer Academy

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Apple Developer Academy
A student at the Apple Developer Academy describes it as both challenging and creative.
Photo: Apple Developer Academy

Apply now for the 2018 class of the Apple Developer Academy to learn to create iOS apps. And did we mention you get to live in Naples? And it’s free?

This isn’t a basic bootcamp. In addition to learning Swift programming and user interface design, students are taught how to be an entrepreneur.

The iconic Koss Porta Pro headphones go wireless

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Koss Porta Pro Wireless
Look, no wires! Wait a minute…
Photo: Koss

Koss’s amazing Porta Pro headphones have finally gone “wireless.” These lightweight, great-sounding headphones first launched in 1984, and have been on sale since. And now, they are available with a Bluetooth connection. Behold, the Koss Porta Pro Wireless.

Fortnite is killing it on iOS, but it could be so much better

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Fortnite
Team Rumble just got a lot better.
Photo: Epic Games

I’ve been encouraging every gamer I know to play Fortnite on iOS since it made the leap to the App Store back in March. I’ve gushed about how spectacular the game is on mobile, and how it keeps up with its console counterparts.

I’m not at all surprised that the game is making an absolute killing on iPhone and iPad, raking in more than $25 million in revenue during its first month of availability. I’ve played it almost every day, and spent more than I’d like to admit on items I don’t really need.

But two months on, now that the novelty has worn off, I have some complaints to make. Fortnite could be so much better on iOS if Epic was to give it the attention it really deserves.

MacBook butterfly keyboard problems spawn recall petition [Update]

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MacBook butterfly keyboard
A new petition calls for Apple to recall the MacBook butterfly keyboard, which can fail when a speck of dust gets in the wrong place.
Photo: Apple

The butterfly keyboard in recent MacBooks draws frequent complaints. And these have now escalated to the point where an online petition is requesting that Apple recall every MacBook Pro released since 2016.

These laptops are super-slim, and so are their keyboards. Reducing the thickness left room for very little key travel, resulting in accusations that even a small speck of dust underneath one of the keys can cause it to stop functioning.

iPad remains top dog as tablet market shrinks

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iPad-Pro
Grab yours before it’s too late!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The iPad remains the king of tablets after strong sales helped the device grab its highest share of the worldwide tablet market since 2014.

Apple confirmed on Tuesday that it sold 9.1 million iPads last quarter, which helped its market share grow 2.1 percent despite a drop in overall tablet shipments.

Ban on FaceTime may soon be lifted in United Arab Emirates

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Facetime
FaceTime has been banned in the UAE for years.
Photo: Mathieu Thouvenin/Flickr CC

Apple may have been voted consumers’ favorite brand in the United Arab Emirates, but one of the iPhone’s most popular features — FaceTime — still isn’t allowed in the country.

That could soon change, however, because Apple is in talks with the UAE federal government to lift the ban on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services as far as it affects FaceTime.

Beef up your resume with serious Salesforce skills [Deals]

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Become a master of Salesforce, the go-to customer relationship management platform.
Become a master of Salesforce, the biggest customer relationship management platform out there.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

So many of today’s businesses keep track of their customer relationships with Salesforce. It’s become an essential platform for managing sales, customer service, marketing, apps, analytics, and lots more. So it’s a great skill to have on your resume.

Iron Man’s iconic head-up display was inspired by the first iPhone

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Marvel Studios
Save the world? There's an app for that!
Photo: Marvel Studios

Apple’s design principles make it into all sorts of areas of pop culture — from the robots in Pixar’s Wall*E to the Stormtroopers and lightsabers in the Disney Star Wars movies to… Iron Man’s head-up display (HUD)?

According to a new oral history of Tony Stark’s instantly recognizable HUD, the computer interface’s design was greatly influenced by Apple’s then-brand new handset, which had only just shipped when the first Iron Man movie was in production.