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Date trick gives Amazon Prime Video for Apple TV an early reveal

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apple tvPIC
Coming soon. Or is it?
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple still hasn’t delivered on its promise to bring Amazon Prime Video to Apple TV — although an apparently accidental reveal on the App Store suggests that it may be on the way as early as today.

As posted yesterday by a user on Reddit, setting their iPhone time and date forward to December 6 caused Amazon Prime Video to appear in the App Store, although the “fault” has now been rectified.

iOS 11 adoption lags behind iOS 10, but puts Android to shame

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iPhone X
iOS 11 is currently installed on 59 percent of compatible devices.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

iOS 11 is currently running on 59 percent of compatible devices, gaining 7 percent from the last time Apple reported the figures in early November.

By comparison, 33 percent of devices are running last year’s iOS 10, while the remaining 8 percent are still using a previous version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

Clean Text tidies up messy text on iOS

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clean text
Clean Text does what it say on the... name.
Photo: Apimac

Don’t you just hate messy text? Text with extra spaces between words. Text with carriage returns inserted in the middles of lines. Text with lots of %-encodes and %nbsp mixed in. Text with > symbols at the beginning of every line. Filthy, dirty, unclean text? What you need is Clean Text, the smiter of hinky formatting, and quasher of non-smart punctuation.

Text snippets now support multiple lines, iCloud sync

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MK Mac
Keyboard snippets make your life way easier.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Text snippets are one of the most useful “unknown” features on Mac and iOS. They let you type a few letters, and have them expand into a whole word, sentence or paragraph. You can use them to type, say, aadd and have it turn into your office address, for example. Or you might set up a shortcut to generate a symbol usually hidden on the iOS keyboard: xx to type a #, for example.

Until now, though, Apple’s Text Replacement function proved a royal pain to use. It never synced properly between devices, and it didn’t support multiple-line snippets. But in an update last week, Apple fixed both those problems.

Apple Pay Cash comes to Apple Watch in watchOS 4.2

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apple pay iphone x
Apple Pay Cash works on iPhone and Apple Watch.
Photo: Apple

The official launch of Apple Pay Cash is finally here and you can even use it to send friends money from your Apple Watch.

Apple released watchOS 4.2 to the public today, bringing a host of new features and bug fixes, including support for the new Apple Pay Cash feature that started trickling out to iPhone users yesterday.

Amazon tops Apple for title of best-managed company

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Amazon is on fire.
Amazon is on fire.
Photo: Amazon

American tech companies are a some of the most effectively managed businesses in the world, according to a new landmark system that ranked the top 250 companies.

Even though Apple is the world’s most profitable company, the rankings found that Amazon is actually the most efficiently run business. But Apple follows at a close second.

HoverDock charging bed for Apple Watch doubles as alarm clock [Watch Store]

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HoverDock
Just Mobile's HoverDock is a minimalist, chic charging solution for Apple Watch.
Photo: Courtesy of Just Mobile

Keep your Apple Watch fired up and ready to go this holiday season with the HoverDock from Just Mobile — makers of design-award winning charging docks and stands for Apple Watch. Pack this compact dock for charging while traveling, or use as a bedside alarm clock.

Just Mobile continues to impress us with its great Apple-centric accessories, and is well-known as a company who’s ethos is great design. We’re excited to feature Just Mobile’s full range of elegant charging solutions for Apple Watch in our Watch Store — the TimeStand, Lounge Dock and, now, the HoverDock. At $34.95, the HoverDock makes a great gift or stocking-stuffer.

Apple buys startup that makes podcasts searchable

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Podcasts 1
Apple wants to make its Podcasts service even better.
Photo: Pop Up Archive

Apple has acquired Pop Up Archive, an online platform that builds tools for transcribing audio files and making them searchable.

One of the startup’s most significant tools is a podcast search engine called Audiosear.ch, which closed its doors November 28. The service issued “Buzz Scores” for podcasts, based on their charting on iTunes and reviews.

Get a sneak peek at next year’s new emojis

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iOS 11.1 emoji on Twitter
Who doesn't love a good emoji?
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Have you found yourself unable to continue a conversation without the use of a drunk emoji, a female supervillain or a strand of DNA?

If so, you may be pleased to hear that the Unicode Consortium has released its Emoji 11.0 beta to developers, offering a glimpse at the 130 Draft Candidate emojis we may be able to enjoy sometime next year.

Never stop learning with lifetime access to 170 courses [Deals]

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Stone River eLearning
Access one of the 170 plus courses on Stone River eLearning straight from your iPhone
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

The payoff of learning a new skill or developing existing ones are endless; whether that means a higher likelihood of making yourself more marketable in the workplace or starting a side project. The Stone River eLearning Lifetime Membership made it easier for anyone to learn everything from iOS app development to graphic design at your pace and even straight from your iPhone.

Xiaomi can’t trademark its iPad ripoff

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Xiaomi pic
One of Xiaomi's soundalike "Mi Pad" tablets.
Photo: Xiaomi

Xiaomi, the Chinese company which once specialized in brazen iPhone ripoffs, has gained its own identity in the past few years — but that doesn’t mean that it no longer rips off Apple’s intellectual property.

Fortunately, Apple just gained some struck back, persuading an EU court not to grant Xiaomi a trademark for its “Mi Pad” tablet name.

Apple now sells iPhone X SIM-free

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Sims free 1
A perfect option if you don't like to be tied down to one carrier.
Photo: Apple

If you’ve been holding out on buying an iPhone X until you can buy a SIM-free version without having to select a carrier, this is your lucky day!

Apple now has SIM-free versions of the iPhone X, in all storage capacities, available online. These carry the same one week delivery estimate as other iPhone X handsets.

How to use Apple Pay Cash to send money to friends

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Apple Pay Cash
Apple Pay has been a key service for Apple.
Photo: Apple

Apple Pay Cash lets people send money to each other using iMessage. You can send up to $3,000 — certainly enough to cover your share of lunch — and the transaction is free if you use a debit card registered in your Apple Wallet.

All you need is to have a card in Apple Pay, and be running iOS 11.2 or newer, and you’re good to go. Here’s how to use it.

Meet the Baxters, a family of awesome storage shelves for iMac

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The Baxter iMac shelves are super-practical.
The Baxter shelves are super-practical.
Photo: Baxter

Did you ever take a look at the sleek and simple back of your iMac and thought to yourself: “That could really use some more clutter,”? Then we have some great news. Short of turning your Mac face-down in your grandmother’s house and leaving it to accumulate lace doilies and figurines, the Baxter Storage Shelf is the best way to add clutter, aka. storage space to your iMac.

Key Apple supplier strikes AR glasses deal

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Face Id
Apple smart glasses would have to look stylish.
Photo: Apple

One of Apple’s biggest manufacturing partners says it plans to get into the augmented reality business.

Quanta Computer revealed today that it has struck an agreement to start making lenses for an augmented reality headset. Even though the deal isn’t with Apple, it could signal that augmented reality headsets are about to hit the market in a big way.

4 reasons to buy a classic watch instead of an Apple Watch

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The Apple Watch is without doubt a modern technological masterpiece, but Vincero Collective offers timeless timepieces.
The Apple Watch is without doubt a modern technological masterpiece, but Vincero Collective offers timeless timepieces.
Photo: Vincero Collective

This post is brought to you by the Vincero Collective.

We love the Apple Watch. But sometimes you want a timepiece that doesn’t look quite so digital — and doesn’t pester you with notifications.

Neil Young rips Apple Music over streaming audio quality

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Neil Young takes Apple Music to task for
Neil Young takes Apple Music to task for "low quality" audio tracks.
Photo: Takahiro Kyono/Flickr CC

Canadian rocker Neil Young, an outspoken promoter of high-definition audio, calls out Apple in his latest diatribe about declining standards in the streaming music biz.

While ripping Apple Music for distributing what he calls “low-quality audio,” he throws down the gauntlet and challenges Apple to make music great again.

How to track package deliveries on iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch

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cardboard boxes
With a decent tracking app, all you have to worry about is recycling the old boxes.
Photo: exceptinsects/Flickr CC

It’s gift-giving season, that time of year where you buy people yet more junk that they neither want nor need, all out of a guilt forced on your by tradition and the fear of looking cheap. It’s going to stress you out. But we can at least make the process of buying unwanted dross a little smoother, by making an app do all the package deliveries tracking for you.

Point is a home security system that can’t spy on you

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Point home security
Point couldn't be easier to set up.
Photo: Minut

A home security system gives you complete peace of mind when you’re away, but at what cost? If your system relies on cameras, there’s always a worry that someone else could be watching. Not with Point.

Point is a complete home security system that doesn’t require cameras. It’s a single device that can alert you to anything unexpected using clever sensors and machine learning.

Apple will cough up for its giant tax bill early next year

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France fines Apple $27 million for intention iPhone 'throttling' controversy
$15 billion is quite the tax bill!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Ireland has revealed that it has come to an agreement regarding when Apple will start paying the enormous 13 billion euros ($15.4 billion) tax bill that it was ordered to more than one year ago by the European Commission.

The record sum will be paid in the first quarter of 2018, and will be held in escrow until the matter has been sorted.