Cult of Mac

With all the technological wonders we take for granted today, it’s easy to lose track of the cutting edge in consumer tech. So to keep that sense of wonder alive, we’ve rounded up some of the most innovative new personal gear and gadgets you can find.

Below you’ll find a solar-powered, antitheft backpack, a Bluetooth speaker that doubles as a wireless charger, a touch-free controller for IoT devices, and more. Even better, each item is massively discounted, some by more than half. Read on for more details.

Apple has pretty much clung onto its title of world’s most valuable company since early in Tim Cook’s reign at the top. However, it may not hold that claim for too much longer if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has much to say about it!

Amazon shares rose 7.1 percent for a record high in premarket trading today, following the company’s massive Q1 earnings. That narrows Apple’s market cap lead to less than $50 billion.

Apple is usually pretty great at gauging demand for its products. Something seems to have gone wildly wrong for the iPhone X, however, since the company is now reportedly trying to “burn off” its excess supply of the devices after disappointing adoption rates.

According to a source speaking with Fast Company, Apple ordered the production of way too many iPhone X units in the last calendar quarter of 2017, and is now dealing with excess supply.

iTunes is finally available to download from the Microsoft Store for the first time.

The release makes it possible for Windows 10 S users, who cannot install applications obtained from third-party sources, to get their hands on Apple’s popular entertainment platform. This version of iTunes is exactly the same as the one available through Apple’s website.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was reportedly “most helpful” during his White House meeting with President Donald Trump earlier this week. Cook was enthusiastic about the Trump administration’s recent tax cuts, and also had some advice about business dealings in China.

“I really enjoyed the meeting,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “I spent a good amount of time with [Cook], and then we came back and we visited the POTUS.”

Shipments of iPhone in China increased 32 percent in the first quarter of this year. This was during a period when the overall Chinese handset market declined. 

Many Chinese see Apple devices as status symbols and pick them over local brands that cost significantly less.

The biggest tech company in the world is getting out of WiFi. Kind of…

Apple decided to finally put the nail in the coffin for its lineup of AirPort routers that haven’t been updated in years. We’ve known this day has been coming for nearly two years, but Apple just officially gave us the bad news.

Here’s the official statement:

Say goodbye to 3D Touch. A very reliable analyst predicts one of the iPhones coming in autumn won’t have this pressure-sensitive technology, and none of the 2019 devices will.

Ming-Chi Kuo says it’s all because Apple is changing the components of its displays to make them lighter and less likely to break.

Ever since iOS 9, you’ve been able to block ads, trackers, and other content in Mobile Safari. But as websites fought back, and the content-blocker apps added yet more rules in return, the war escalated. Blocker apps started to hit Apple’s hard limit of 50,000 rules.

Probably the most popular and comprehensive blocker is 1Blocker, which just got superseded by 1Blocker X. The new app splits off itself into seven “extensions,” each of which have 50,000 rules, bringing the total to 350,000 rules.

This doesn’t just allow 1Blocker X to boast in the app store. It also allows whole new categories of content blocking. The new setup works slightly differently, so let’s see how to get things started.

Maybe you’ve heard of this thing called cryptocurrency? Besides an investment craze, it’s a scene that may well define the future of money. One of the most popular and promising coins out there is Ethereum.

Right now is your chance to win $500 of Ethereum at Cult of Mac Deals. That’s right, we are literally giving away free money.

The Opera Touch web browser tries to solve one problem: people want to use their phone one-handed, but searching the Web takes both hands. The whole focus of this just released app is one-handed searching and browsing.

Also announced today was Opera Flow, a simple method for synchronizing the new mobile browser with this company’s desktop one.

On your Mac, screenshots are pretty automatic. You hit the shortcut of your choice, and the resulting picture is saved to your desktop as a PNG image file. But what if you want a JPG? We’ve already covered that. How about saving the image to somewhere other than your desktop. Like iCloud maybe? Today we’ll see how to change the Mac’s default screenshot location to an iCloud folder.

Spotify objects to Apple collecting a share of all the subscription fees paid by iOS users.  A law proposed today in European Union would force Apple and Spotify into mediation on this issue.

And it’s not just Spotify. Under the proposal, Apple, Google, and other tech giants would have to appoint mediators in all their disagreements with smaller companies.

If you’re on the lookout for a new iPhone with 3.5mm headphone jack, your dream may be answered with the upcoming iPhone SE 2.

Despite a previous report stating that Apple would ditch the popular port for the new handset, photos circulating on Chinese social media suggest this may not be the case after all. Whether that’s a good thing or not will largely depend on whether you’re still mourning the arrival of earbuds with a Lightning connection!

And that’s not the only surprise…

Machine learning is shaping up to reshape the world, and there’s plenty of opportunity for developers. So it’s a great time to learn how machine learning works.

A new startup, based in the United Arab Emirates, promises to give $3 million to anyone who can successfully hack iOS devices.

The Crowdfense startup is looking for zero-day exploits, referring to hacking tools which exploit vulnerabilities unknown to the system creators. In addition to iOS, the company is seeking zero-day exploits for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.

One of the works nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, an annual award given out to the best British visual artist, is a short film that was shot on an iPhone.

Shortlisted Scottish artist Charlotte Prodger filmed her video Bridgit on an iPhone. It’s just the latest example of how Apple’s devices can be used by creators to make art.

Samsung has joined the chorus of voices complaining about weak iPhone X sales, citing the “slow demand for flexible OLED panels” in its earnings report as one of the reasons for its performance in the past financial quarter.

Although the display making part of Samsung’s business experienced 3.4 percent increased sales over the three month period, this was less than the 20 percent growth of Samsung in its entirety.

Breakups can be complicated. If you’ve built a life together, then extricating yourself from the other party isn’t necessarily as easy as ripping off a band-aid.

That’s a life lesson which applies to Qualcomm and Apple. Despite spending the last year-and-a-half feuding with one another, it seems that 2018-era iPhones are still going to rely on Qualcomm for a certain number of chips.

Because life is complex that way.

Microsoft’s head of marketing says his company is no longer interested in battling with Apple. This is surely a shocking statement to anyone who remembers the days when these two brawled relentlessly. But those days are over.

The change was brought about by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who accepted the need to bring his company’s products to whatever devices could run them, not just Windows.

Apple’s CEO and the President of the United States took a meeting today in the Oval Office. Trade was at the top of the agenda for Tim Cook and Trump, as the President and China’s leaders increasingly put tariffs on each other’s products.

Cook was already in Washington to attend a White House formal dinner last night to honor the French President.

In the streaming music battle, the competition is between Spotify and Apple Music. Google Play Music is barely a blip, with 4 percent of the U.S. market.

But the situation is more complex than that. Google’s YouTube video service actually dominates streaming music, though it isn’t supposed to be in that business at all.

According to unconfirmed reports, Google plan is to merge its music service with another, and also turn millions of free YouTube listeners into paying customers.

In case you’ve been living in a cave in Wakanda, tomorrow is the premiere of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War movie. Super-fans can celebrate with new Avengers iPhone cases from OtterBox.

These feature characters from Marvel’s highly anticipated movie, including Iron Man, Black Panther, Captain America and Thanos. Plus, there’s one that combines multiple images from this blockbuster superhero team-up flick.

Today we’re going to learn how to record a movie that’s playing on your Apple TV direct to your Mac, with no wires required, no weird hacks, and not even any third-party software. The tools are all built into every Mac that ships. To record a movie off the “screen” of your Apple TV, you’re going to use Apple’s QuickTime app, and one of its lesser-known but super-powerful features.

There’s little that’s more hipster than an audio cassette. Its sound is far from perfect, it’s impractical, and — most important of all — it is easy to see that you’re using one. But that doesn’t mean that tapes were all bad. Lo-fi cassette decks actually add some rather pleasant audio artifacts to audio.

So what? Well, now you don’t need to lug around a Walkman and a bag of tapes to enjoy the retro sound of audio cassettes, because there’s a) an iOS audio plugin and b) a website that will tape-ify any track you like.