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Apple’s South Korean retail store puts it on Samsung’s doorstep

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The design of Apple's new store blurs the line between the inside and outside world.
Photo: Apple

Ahead of Apple’s first ever Apple Store opening South Korea, the company has shared pictures of its spectacular new Seoul store online.

Located on the south of the Han River, in the heart of the upmarket Gangnam district, the store boasts a 25-foot glass facade, stunning 6K video wall, and a tree-lined interior that is designed to blur the line between street and store. It opens this Saturday.

Ex-Google engineer says the company is boring. Is the same true of Apple?

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An image of the Google beta logo with the rainbow Apple logo in place of the first O
Google isn't innovating and Apple is "meh" claims a departing Google exec.
Photo illustration: Google/Apple

Google can no longer innovate, claims departing 13-year company vet Steve Yegge in a long Medium post this week.

Yegge puts Google on blast for what he perceives as the four biggest problems facing the company today. How many of them hold true for Apple as well?

Increase in designer job openings at Apple hint at exciting future plans

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Jony Ive CultCast
Jony Ive recently resumed his post at the head of Apple's design team.
Photo: BBC

A big increase in the number of exciting-sounding job openings for designers and engineers at Apple’s new Apple Park campus suggests that some exciting projects are underway.

According to a new report, based on data from Apple’s HR website, Apple began hiring a whole lot more designers in October, with openings jumping from an average of 40 or less to a peak of 70 new positions. While the company hires new engineers all the time, this uptick in hiring suggests that Apple is bringing in a whole lot more creative folks than they have in a long while.

Swift Playgrounds adds new robots for budding coders

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Swift Playgrounds
Dive into coding with Swift Playgrounds.
Photo: Apple

Swift Playgrounds, Apple’s code-learning app aimed at youngsters, got a huge update today with the biggest new set of features sent the app came out in 2016.

With the Swift Playgrounds 2.0 update, coders get access to a host of new robots, as well as the ability to subscribe to third-party level creators so you can find and download new levels faster.

Apple adds new privacy icon to iOS 11.3

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iPhone X laying down
iOS 11.3 makes iPhone more secure.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 11.3 landed with a bunch of big features this morning but it looks like Apple added a few small surprises not mentioned in its preview, including a new feature that makes it easier to tell when apps are trying to access your personal data.

Keeping a healthy Mac requires strong antivirus protection

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Protect your Mac from viruses the easy way with Dr. Antivirus Mac antivirus.
Protect your Mac from viruses the easy way with Dr. Antivirus.
Photo: Tim Gouw/Pexels CC

This post is presented by Trend Micro, maker of Dr. Antivirus.

In some ways, our Macs are a lot like us. They live in a world full of bugs and viruses that can compromise their systems, slow them down, even kill them. Just like people, the best way to stay on top of health threats is to get regular checkups.

Custom thumbnails make your Apple Notes easier to find

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thumbnails in notes
Thumbnails make notes way easier to spot quickly.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Apple’s Notes app gets better and better, with the iOS 11/macOS Sierra version bringing all kinds of amazing features. But however good any notes app is, you still have to find your notes, and for most of us that means scanning a list until we find the one we’re looking for. Today we’ll see how to add a custom image thumbnail to any note, so you can quickly identify it in the list. Even if you use search to narrow down the results, an image will still make notes easier to spot.

Over half a billion devices now ‘actively’ use Siri

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Siri
Siri usage is climbing rapidly.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Siri is now “actively” used on more than half a billion devices, Apple has revealed. The virtual assistant, which will be used to control HomePod, has been attracting users at a rapid rate despite falling behind its competitors in features and accuracy.

Woz’s job goes up in smoke after startup burns through $100 million

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Steve Wozniak
Woz was employed as the company's chief scientist.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC

Primary Data, an enterprise storage startup which employed Steve Wozniak as its chief scientist, appears to have shut down. At time of writing, the company’s Twitter and Facebook appear to be down, although its webpage is still working. Its operating status is described as “closed.”

Apple teases iOS 11.3 with new Animoji, big improvements

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iOS 11.3 ARKit
Augmented reality will be even better with glasses.
Photo: Apple

Apple today offered fans a preview of a big iOS 11.3 update coming this spring.

Alongside 16 new Animoji characters for iPhone X owners, the update will bring big improvements to ARKit and Messages, the ability to view battery health on all iOS devices, music videos for Apple Music, and lots more.

ARKit upgrade makes augmented reality apps better than ever

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ARkit
Apple's augmented reality platform just got slicker.
Photo: Alper Guler

Apple’s ARKit augmented reality platform just got better thanks to ARKit 1.5, which has rolled out to developers in beta.

The upgrade adds a big new feature to AR developers’ toolset: wall detection. Previous versions of ARKit only focused on horizontal plane detection, meaning that it only able to detect floors for objects to be placed onto. With the new upgrade, AR developers will now be able to add walls into the mix — for instance, creating a game in which you throw darts at a wall-mounted board.

Tim Cook: Music ‘deserves’ the audio quality HomePod offers

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HomePod
Tim Cook thinks HomePod will blow away the "squeaky sound" of its rivals.
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook talked up the audio quality of Apple’s HomePod smart speaker during a recent interview, while taking a shot at the competition.

“We think one thing that was missing from this market was a quality audio experience, a very immersive audio experience,” Cook said. “Music deserves that kind of quality as opposed to some kind of squeaky sound.”

E.U. fines Qualcomm for paying Apple billions to shut out rivals

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What’s it like to have your startup bought by Apple? Stressful
Qualcomm allegedly paid Apple billions to keep its business.
Photo illustration: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The European Commission has fined Qualcomm 997 million euros ($1.2 billion) for abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets, supposedly paying Apple billions of dollars in order to secure their business and stop Apple buying chips from rivals.

Such practice is illegal under EU antitrust laws.

Quick Tip: Stop Mac Spaces rearranging themselves

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find-the-lady
Dealing with Spaces' default behaviour feels like trying to battle a street magician.
Photo: Rich Anderson/Flickr CC

If you use Spaces on your Mac, then there may be one “feature” that annoys the hell out of you. Do you keep nicely-arranged workspaces for specific tasks? Do you like to always have your text editor in the middle Space, and your slacking off apps (Twitter, Slack) out in the very last space of all?

That’s neat, but macOS can drive you crazy by forever rearranging your Spaces, so that your Twitter and Tumblrs end up where your work Space should be. Fortunately, it’s a one-click fix.

Why Apple’s HomePod is poised to bomb

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Will Apple's HomePod smart speaker be DOA?

Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

HomePod, the first new Apple product of 2018, is about to arrive. And as a huge Apple fanboy, I couldn’t care less.

Apple’s been hyping its smart speaker ever since unveiling the device last June at the Worldwide Developers Conference. And yet HomePod has failed to really excite fans (except through leaks that gave us early details about the iPhone X). Apple bills HomePod as a powerful speaker that packs Siri to take your listening experience to an all-new level. But with its Feb. 9 release just weeks away, HomePod is looking more like Apple’s next big bomb.

Mac FoneLab is your first aid kit for iPhone

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The Mac FoneLab iPhone Data Recovery app offers a powerful and intuitive alternative to iTunes for recovery of lost iOS data.
This Mac app offers a powerful and intuitive alternative to iTunes for recovery of lost iOS data.
Image: Aiseesoft

This post is presented by Aiseesoft, maker of Mac FoneLab iPhone Data Recovery.

New year, new phone — and the same old risks of damage or data loss. Whether you’ve shelled out more than a thousand bucks for a new iPhone X or still use one from five years ago, these devices are essential to day-to-day life. So just like keeping a first aid kit around, it pays to have the tools to recover your iPhone data if and when something goes wrong.

Emergency Bypass lets selected contacts punch through Do Not Disturb

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sofa
Now you can finally relax and take that siesta, without missing texts from your loved ones.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

The iPhone’s Do Not Disturb feature really is great. It silences your phone on a daily schedule, so you never need to worry about being woken up by a Facebook alert, or some other useless beep. But maybe you want to be disturbed by certain people. Maybe your teenage kids are out late, or your better half is away on a trip. Is there a way to let their calls and texts punch through the Do Not Disturb shield? Well, yes, there is! It’s called Emergency Bypass, and here’s how to enable it.

iOS 11.2.5 is out along with tvOS, watchOS and macOS updates

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iPhone plus model next to iPhone X
A new update is out for iPhone!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple pushed out a big batch of software updates this morning for iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS, bringing a host of bug fixes and performance improvements to all of its major platforms.

iOS 11.2.5 is the biggest of today’s software updates. The update for iPhones and iPads adds a couple new features, including support for Apple’s HomePod smart speaker, which opens for preorders this Friday.

2018’s entry-level iPhone might lack key features

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iPhone X
Ready to ditch your iPhone X already? There's still time to get a great price!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple will cut key features from its upcoming 6.1-inch iPhone to reach a more affordable price tag, according to one reliable analyst.

The device, which is expected to look a lot like iPhone X, could cost as little as $700. But buyers will lose luxuries like a stainless steal frame, dual rear-facing cameras, and even 3D Touch.

DJI unveils impossibly tiny new Mavic Air drone

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Mavic Air
So tiny, yet so powerful.
Photo: DJI

The most popular consumer drone on the market just got a huge upgrade that gives it even more mass appeal for budding droners and video creators.

DJI unveiled its new folding drone, the Mavic Air, today. A blend of the company’s two most popular drones, the Mavic Pro and the Spark, it also packs new features you won’t find on DJI’s other drones.

Take a closer look: