Apple will introduce a Beats-branded $250 HomePod smart speaker at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference, predicts Apple analyst Gene Munster.

Munster’s other predictions for the big Apple developer event include new HomePod capabilities, additional Siri abilities, extra Core ML extensions, and more.

Move over, Pokémon Go; there’s a new Pokémon game in town!

Newly launched on Nintendo Switch and coming to iOS in late June, Pokémon Quest is a free-to-play title which looks like a mashup of Pokémon and Minecraft. And if it can rake in the kind of combined income of those two properties, its creators will be very, very happy indeed!

Adding a smartphone-controlled sprinkler system to your house just became insanely affordable feature thanks to a little black box made by the folks at Elgato.

The Eve Aqua aims to turn dumb water faucets into smart water systems by adding Apple’s HomeKit technology to the scene. Watering your lawn is as about to become just a Siri command away.

Rumors of Apple introducing a triple-lens iPhone in 2019 is picking up steam after an analyst told investors the three lenses were a likely push to make the iPhone the top augment reality device.

Jialin Lu, a Deutsche Securities analyst, is among the latest in a number of tech observers who believe Apple is planning a three-lens rear camera set-up, though some speculate the third lens may be added to expand the reach of the handset’s zoom function.

AirDrop is a fantastic Apple feature. You can use it to share files of pretty much any size with anyone nearby, even in the middle of a desert with no Wi-Fi and no cellular. It Just Works, and once you get used to it, any other way of sharing files seems primitive.

Today, we’ll make AirDrop even easier to use on your Mac, by adding AirDrop shortcut to the Dock.

Apple has been told by Russian regulators that the company has 30 days to remove Telegram from the App Store. Or else!

The Russian government hasn’t said what will happen if Apple fails to respond to the legally binding letter it sent to the company. Telegram — an app used to send peer-to-peer encrypted messages — has supposedly been wreaking havoc on Russia’s internet services. Now Russia is asking Apple to step in and help.

Apple pushed two other software updates for Apple TV and Apple Watch owners this morning to go with the big new iOS 11.4 release that came out today.

tvOS 11.4 and watchOS 4.3.1 don’t contain nearly as many exciting new features as iOS 11.4, but if you like playing music from your Apple TV you should definitely grab the update ASAP.

WWDC 2018 is less than a week away and to prepare developers for the big event, Apple just updated its WWDC app for iPhone and iPad.

Developers and regular iOS users alike can all download the app to access information about sessions and other events that will be going down this week. The app comes with a new look too that makes videos more prominent than ever.

Cultured Code’s lovely to-do app Things just got a massive update on iOS, and set the standard for iPad keyboard support at the same time. Now you can control pretty much anything from the keyboard, in a way that’s intuitive and useful, and not just there for power-nerds.

Also — finally — this update lets you drag tasks onto the Things sidebar to add them to your lists.

The iOS 11.4 update finally brings Messages in iCloud, which means you can treat your iMessages like you treat your photos.

Your messages will sync across all iOS devices and should work soon on Mac. (Update: It works on Mac now, once you update to macOS 10.13.5). You can even delete them from an iPhone or iPad that’s short on space. But they will remain accessible from the cloud. Here’s how to switch on iCloud support for Messages.

iOS 11.4 is finally here, bringing AirPlay 2’s multi-room audio capabilities as well as the long-awaited ability to use two HomePods in stereo.

The free update uses AirPlay 2 to move music from room to room or play the same music throughout the home on compatible speaker systems. You can control music using an iOS device, HomePod, Apple TV or making requests through Siri.

Apple vice president Phil Schiller has offered clarification on Steam Link’s App Store ban in an email to disgruntled iOS users.

Valve’s hotly-anticipated app violates a number of guidelines, including those around in-app purchases, as suspected. Schiller insists, however, that Apple will work with Valve in an effort to resolve the problems and bring Steam Link to the App Store.

The 2018-era iPhone refresh could be a bit more colorful than recent years if two new images are to believed.

Supposedly leaked from one of the iPhone manufacturing plants in India, the pictures show two alleged iPhone prototypes, complete with “rich gold stainless steel frame” and violet and green color glass backs.

No matter where you work, Microsoft Office isn’t far away. It’s the productivity platform for countless businesses, used for word processing, spreadsheets, emails, presentations and more. So one surefire way to enhance your resume is by mastering Microsoft Office.

All iPhone models launching in 2019 will get an OLED display, according to a new report.

Apple is expected to finally ditch LCD displays entirely, however, one of three new handsets expected to arrive this September — the most affordable model — could have an improved LCD panel.

Apple manufacturer Pegatron has reportedly received orders from Apple to manufacture an ARM-based MacBook model, codenamed “Star” or “N84.” ARM processors are currently used for Apple’s iPads and iPhone, but not its Macs.

Compared to iOS or even macOS, Apple’s CarPlay in-vehicle standard seems relatively minor in terms of importance. However, according to a new report, in-car systems such as this are rapidly becoming the norm.

In the first three months of this year, analysts at Canalys suggest that Apple’s CarPlay or Google’s Android Auto were available in 46 percent of new vehicles sold in Europe, and 52 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S.

With around 5.18 million paying subscribers, Pandora is around one-tenth the size of Apple Music, which recently announced 50 million active users. But that’s not stopping it from doing its best to compete.

In order to compete with giants like Apple Music and Spotify, Pandora is matching their pricing with a $15-per-month Premium Family plan. The monthly subscription grants up to six family members access to the service with no ads, plus superior audio quality compared to Pandora’s free tier.

Memorial Day weekend is no exception to the epic sales typically found on holiday weekends. In addition to a little R&R, why not spend a minute treating yourself to some great scores on Apple Watch bands?

Cult of Mac Watch Store’s Memorial Day Weekend Sale will offer up to 25 percent off the majority of our vendors. You’ll find great discounts on some of our most popular brands for Apple Watch straps, chargers and stands. Sale ends Monday, so check out these stellar discounts while they last, and see some of our featured brands below.

To open a link in a new tab in Safari for iPhone or iPad, you have to tap and hold the link, then wait for a pop-up menu to arrive. That’s a long wait, and it got even longer in iOS 11, thanks to the addition of drag-and-drop. Your iPhone or iPad waits a little longer just to check you’re not planning to drag that link somewhere.

But what if there were a one-tap way to open links in a new tab? You could power through a list of links, tap tap tap, and they’d all open up in new background tabs, loaded and ready to read. It would be like command-clicking on the Mac. Well, there is such a trick, and it’s super-super easy to use.

You’re most likely sick of the GDPR notifications coming at you via email and the web, but they’re actually great. Or rather, GDPR itself is great. Unlike the EU cookie notices that still seem to pop up in your browser, GDPR is actually useful, and shows the U.S. what happens when government looks after the interests of citizens, not corporations.

Thanks to GDPR, internet giants are being forced to change what they do with all the personal data they harvest from you. And hidden behind those many, many GDPR notices are opt-out lists¹ that let you limit what data these companies can share.

Of course, many of these companies are making it as difficult as possible to actually change these settings. Tumblr, for instance, lists all of the companies to which it supplies your information, and gives no “uncheck all” option.

I got sick of this, so I made a bookmarklet to uncheck all the boxes on any website with just one click.

Reddit isn’t something that is typically associated with the modern features and design of iOS. While much of the platform calls back to the days of user forums, it is indispensable as a source of news, conversation and entertainment for many. With Narwhal, you can make the most of your Reddit experience on iOS — and find the latest trends or the dankest memes.

This week we take lots of photos with the new manual camera app Obscura 2, then we delete them again with the duplicate and junk-finding app, Gemini Photo. And while we’re waiting for those duplicate photos to get scanned, we waste a bit of our lives playing Pocket Run Pool.

Memorial Day weekend is still kicking (it’s a long one), so we’re still turning out can’t-miss deals on tools and tech. This go-round, we’ve got a palm-size drone, a master class in Photoshop, an awesome Apple Watch charging dock, and lots more.

Everything is massively discounted — by as much as 97 percent!

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine: We’re expecting big things from iOS 12, including a whole host of improvements that will make our devices more stable, and plenty of welcome bug fixes. Apple will surely surprise us with some nice new features, too at WWDC 2018.

Here’s our lengthy wish list for this update, which includes a Home screen overhaul, a more powerful FaceTime, better multitasking, and more!

You’ll find that story and more in this issue. Celebrate Memorial Day Weekend with three days of great savings on Apple Watch bands and accessories in Cult of Mac’s Watch Store. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.