Cult of Mac

You’ve all been there. You’re sitting near a window or a lamp, reading an excellent article on your iPad — perhaps a well-written How-To from Cult of Mac — and your iPad’s screen Auto Brightness is going haywire. You slide open Control Center, and set it back where you want it, and continue reading. Then, you turn the iPad a little too far towards the light, and the screen brightness creeps up again.

In iOS 10 and prior, you’d just open the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness, and hit the switch for Auto Brightness. In iOS 11, that option has disappeared. The good news is that it hasn’t gone — the Auto Brightness switch has just moved.

WriteMapper is a new Mac app that combines a mind mapper with a text editor. It works like a regular mind-mapping app, with easy-to-create nodes to get your ideas down and arrange them. But if you open a node, you get a full-featured, cleanly-designed text editor in which to write, so you don’t have to switch to a word-processor or anything else to complete your project.

Then, when you’re done, you can export the mind map as a document to publish it, or whatever you want to do with the finished text.

Apple surprised developers today with the release of an all-new iOS 11 beta for testing, coming just four days after the previous beta build was seeded.

The new beta build is accompanied by the ninth beta for tvOS 11. Both of the new builds appear to add a number of bug fixes and performance improvements and likely signal that the public release isn’t that far away.

Apple has finally broken its silence on the argument for net neutrality today by sending the FCC its comments on whether carriers and internet service providers should be able to provide fast lanes for companies that pay extra.

As a company that sells content through its online stores and services, Apple warned the Trump administration to not roll back protections. The company didn’t take a stance on whether the FCC should be able to protect the Internet like a utility, but it urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to keep the current rules in place.

Best List: BUBM gadget and cord organizer by ATailorBird

Pulling your charging cord from your shoulder bag or backpack can resemble that gag where you think you’re opening a can of peanuts and get surprised by springy snakes. Your bag’s other contents can catch on your cords and fly out.

The BUBM cord and gadget organizing case offers just one surprise. The mundane task of organizing your cords and other small accessories turns out to be fun and satisfying.

The next iPhone keynote has been officially revealed by Apple today.

After months of anticipation and a flurry of rumors, Apple finally sent out media invites to its big iPhone 8 event today, welcoming the press to come to Apple Park for the big date.

From the iPhone 8 to iOS 11, Apple’s got no shortage of big launches coming in the next few weeks. But the one with the biggest long-term potential for Apple is one that Tim Cook says makes him want to “yell out and scream” with excitement.

That product is ARKit, the augmented reality platform Apple unveiled this year at WWDC. Here’s why it’s going to be massively important for Apple.

Pokémon GO developers Niantic have debuted three new Legendary Pokémon in the popular augmented reality game.

The trio of Raikou, Entei, and Suicune, from the Gold, Silver and Crystal incarnations of the game, are arguably the best Legendary Pokémon yet. Although to catch ’em all you’re going to need to shell out for some plane tickets. (Or exhibit a bit of patience!)

The new MacBooks are great, except for that one thing. No, literally, the single USB-C port. After all, MacBooks are powerhouses of content creation and consumption. So for most people that one port just doesn’t cut it.

China has confirmed that it is reviewing a possible antitrust complaint against Apple for allegedly abusing its market position in the country.

The complaint, from 28 Chinese developers, claims Apple charged excessive fees (the company’s usual 30 percent) and also removed apps from its App Store without providing a full explanation.

The iPhone 8 may be Apple’s most significant handset update since 2014, but if you’re a lover of large smartphones you may be better off waiting on next year’s iPhone.

That’s according to a new report, claiming that Apple has started development of an additional sized OLED iPhone for 2017, which will be the largest screen iPhone yet.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Tim Cook has penned an open email to Apple employees, outlining the company’s efforts to help — including a $2 million donation to aid with relief efforts.

You can check out his letter in full below.

Apple’s effort to build its own self-driving car has hit some more speed bumps in recent weeks.

Some of the best minds working on Apple’s Project Titan team have reportedly left the iPhone-maker to join one of the hottest autonomous vehicle start-ups in Silicon Valley.

Pedometer++, from developer Underscore David Smith, is everyone’s favorite step-counting iPhone app. It’s simple, it is accurate, and it just works. Now, in version 3.0, the four-year old app gets a neat new Today widget, and — brace yourself — Achievements.

The plus-sized iPhones might be a great fit for media consumption, but the large screen makes one-hand typing inconvenient. It can be a pain to type on your iPhone with one hand while sipping coffee with the other.

Thankfully, iOS 11’s keyboard includes a one-handed mode that shrinks the size of the keyboard, thus making it easier to type with one hand. Here’s how to enable and use iOS 11’s one-handed keyboard.

If you have a lame password, then your iCloud account will eventually get hacked. You might not think a hacker is interested in you, but you’re wrong. The good news is that there are several easy steps you can take to lock your Apple ID down and make it safe.

If you don’t think it’s important, consider this: Your photos, your email, all your browsing history, your credit card information, all of the files you have in iCloud, your contacts, notes, calendars, and all your personal messages will all be open to anyone that hacks your account. Not only that, but you can then be impersonated on social media, so that all your other accounts can be hacked too.

Acquiring Toshiba’s chip-making business could still be in play for Apple after all, even though the company’s previous attempts to secure the coveted division with Foxconn fell through.

According to a new report, Apple is part of a “last-ditch” bid to acquire Toshiba’s chip-making ability along with Bain Capital and a few other players. If successful, the acquisition could give Apple a serious weapon in its battle with Samsung for smartphone supremacy.

This fake iPhone looks so impressive that it fooled us for a hot minute. A rose gold iPhone 7 Plus clone, it shines just like the real thing. At first glance, it seems to deliver everything you would expect from a real iPhone: Lightning port, dual rear cameras, even a touch-ready Home button.

In short, this is the highest-quality iPhone clone we’ve ever seen. It’s a surprising indicator of just how good Chinese manufacturers are getting at reproducing Apple products. And it’s also a cautionary tale for anybody looking to buy a used iPhone.

Every hard drive is like a time bomb of inconvenience, just waiting to go off. If you’ve backed up your Mac’s drive onto an external drive, that’s good. But if you’ve been using computers long enough, you know that the day may come when both go kaput.

AR has a bunch of real-world uses that will help make our lives easier. Sometimes, though, you just want to use cutting edge technology to blow away a few brain-hungry zombies.

That’s a noble goal that upcoming iOS game The Walking Dead: Our World is more than willing to make a reality. Well, an augmented reality, at least.

Check out the super atmospheric trailer below.

Apple has released two new trailers showing a preview of next week’s episodes of Carpool Karaoke: The Series.

One ad shows the pairing of Michael Strahan and Jeff Gordon as they sing songs like the 1980s classic “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John. The other depicts what may be the most fun oddball pairing so far as Shaquille O’Neal goes on a drive with one of WWE’s most popular wrestlers — and his name is John Cena.

Check out the ads below.

It’s no secret that Apple is planning to ditch its Home button for the next-gen iPhone 8, but with the exception of how Touch ID will be replaced by facial recognition, very few details have been circulated about how the move will impact the iPhone UI.

A new report may change that, however, by revealing how the removal and replacement of the Home button, which has existed on every iPhone since 2007, will actually work.

Apple’s original TV show efforts haven’t exactly set the world on fire, but that didn’t stop the company from being honored with an Emmy award this week.

Apple was among the tech companies who received technical Emmy awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, alongside Microsoft, YouTube, and others.

The skateboarding experience doesn’t have to come with grazed knees and broken teeth. With Scooterboard, you get the same ride with the stability of a scooter — and a built-in motor that means you don’t have to do all the work.

It’s just one of the awesome ideas in this week’s Crowdfund Roundup. We also have the world’s most powerful smart wallet, a dongle that turns your iPad into a wireless secondary display for your Mac, and more!

Are you still using RSS? If you are (and you should be, as we’ll see in a moment), then you should use the Feed Hawk app on your iPhone and iPad. Feed Hawk puts itself in your iOS Share Sheet and locates the RSS feed(s) from any website you visit. If you want, it can automatically subscribe you to the RSS feed in your RSS reader of choice.

The latest version of Feed Hawk can even find feeds for YouTube channels. That, in case you’re wondering, is huge.