Cult of Mac

The usual informal relationship between police and criminals is that criminals commit the crimes and the police catch them. A New Orleans police officer recently decided to shake things up, however, by allegedly stealing a pair of AirPods wireless earphones from the Apple Store in Metairie, Louisiana.

24-year-old patrol officer Ayona McGilberry was issued with a summons for misdemeanor theft this week, according to a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. McGilberry has subsequently resigned from the force.

A rare Macintosh prototype that was once rescued from the trash recently sold for more than $10,000 on eBay.

But the winning bidder backed out and now, the clear-plastic Macintosh Portable M5126 laptop is back on the auction site. Bidding started at 99 cents with no reserve.

A mophie juice pack air for iPhone X has been approved, if not announced. The case will come with a built-in battery that supports wireless charging.

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!

Google Street View now offers panoramic views from nearly a dozen Disney theme parks, giving users a glimpse inside.

These join thousands of other immersive images from attractions around the world already in the app.

Safari is a pretty full-featured mobile browser, but if you tap the time to long-press on its buttons and icons, you’ll discover a whole lot of neat extra tricks. These aren’t esoteric power-user tricks either. Pretty much every button on a safari page has an extra function, and it is almost always something you’ll find yourself using every day. Today we’ll see what the plain old reload button can offer us.

Xiaomi is gearing up to invade the U.S. with its Apple clones.

We’ve been waiting years for the Chinese company to make its most popular gadgets available outside of Asia. Now Xiaomi has confirmed that it plans to enter the U.S. market in late 2018 or early 2019.

Although the notch at the top of the iPhone X display drew quite a bit of criticism, many Android makers like the idea. LG might become the next to release a device that resembles Apple’s flagship phone.

Is your Mac stuffed fit to burst? Do you look at the Finder’s Status Bar, see “1GB available,” and then give up what you were doing and go check Twitter instead? What if I told you that you could offload much of the junk/important data on your Mac to iCloud, just like you do with your iCloud Photo Library? Well, you can, and it’s easy. It’s called Optimized Storage.

A Canadian farm couple is demanding Apple pay them $600,000 because a fire they claim was caused by an overheated iPhone destroyed their home.

Ian and Cathy Finley of Langley, British Columbia, say the October 2016 fire was sparked by a three-month-old iPhone 6 left charging on a leather living room chair. Local fire investigators found a charred handset and cord and believe the device “generated enough heat to ignite” the chair.

Square Cash is the world’s best coffee loyalty program — and it’s time you knew about it.

The Square Cash Coffee Reward program has been the highlight of my last six months. You can either take that as an indictment of my quality of life, or a resounding recommendation for this coffee cash-back program.

Apple could kill off iTunes in the near future, a new report suggests.

It cites an email that Apple reportedly wrote to people in the music industry recently, announcing the “end of iTunes LPs.” The iTunes LP format was first introduced in 2009 and let publishers add interactive artwork, along with assorted iTunes Extras, with their content.

The LP format never achieved great popularity. However, the fact that Apple plans to ditch iTunes LPs in 2018 potentially hints at the possibility that Apple may stop selling iTunes music downloads in the near future.

Wi-Fi is everywhere, except when it’s not. At home or the office, few things are as inconvenient or frustrating as suddenly losing your connection to the internet. So the reason for getting an app like this is obvious.

An Apple reseller in Malaysia had to temporarily close after 11,000 would-be customers turned up to buy a small selection of discounted iOS and Mac products.

The incident took place over the weekend after the Switch store announced that it was selling off its stock of demo products, including iPhone models 5s to 7, iPads, Apple TVs, MacBooks and more. These devices were discounted to as little as $25 and as much as $514. Unfortunately, it seems that someone underestimated demand.

The latest iOS 11.3 beta, rolled out to registered developers Monday, includes a small but significant change to one of Apple’s apps. “iBooks” has returned after briefly being renamed “Books.” The move could suggest a rumored revamp is currently on hold.

Google is using artificial intelligence to make it easier for you to find the files you need inside Google Drive. Its next update will add an interface that predicts the people and files you’re most likely to want and makes them more visible, speeding up your workflow.

Want to know how much difference replacing the battery in an old iPhone makes to the overall speed of the handset? A new video posted online by Bennett Sorbo compares an iPhone 6s with depleted battery against one with a fresh battery.

The two iPhones are then put head to head as they run through a variety of CPU-intensive tasks, including opening apps, using the internet, playing games and videos, and more. Check out the video below.

Do you want to continue being able to unlock your iPhone in a timely manner? Then maybe don’t leave a 2-year-old child playing with your handset.

That’s the lesson learned by a mom who ended up locked out of her iPhone for 47.5 years because her son entered the passcode incorrectly enough times.

Spike Jonze’s surreal new short film about the HomePod is likely to go down as one of the year’s best Apple ads.

The Oscar-winning director’s four-minute creation is unabashedly joyful, which is a feeling that sometimes can get lost in all the Apple minimalism. Check out Jonze’s playful and creative HomePod ad below.

Using a strong passcode makes the iPhone very secure, but two companies are now offering to unlock them. For a hefty price, of course.

Fresh beta versions of iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4 and tvOS 11.3 point to the full release of these new versions drawing nearer.

Some of the most creative iPhone home screen designs we’ve ever seen use blank gaps to separate icons into groups or to create interesting stepped patterns. But how is that even possible? After all, if you delete a home screen icon, the others close ranks to fill in the space.

The answer is to add blank icons to create those gaps. Then, you can add a blank row to organize your iPhone home screen, or move all your apps the the bottom of the screen instead of the top.

The Google iOS app just added an iMessage extension that lets users conduct searches without leaving Apple’s chat app. Google also added a couple other features that should make life easier for Apple fans: a Safari plugin that serves up related content, and iPad drag-and-drop support.

Did you ever hit your macBook’s play/pause key to pause that YouTube video, only to have iTunes launch instead, and start playing that embarrassing tune from your last home workout session? Then you may be interested in a way to have your media keys control the site or app you want to control, instead of the app that Apple decides it will control. Luckily, there’s an app for that, called BeardedSpice.

A Piper Jaffray survey of iPhone users who did not upgrade to the iPhone X came to a predictable conclusion: Most were satisfied with the performance of their current model and many find the X too expensive.

However, the financial services firm predicts Apple will coax some upgrades out of these users with a line of new iPhone models this fall, one of which is expected to be more affordable.