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Original Apple Watch gets extended service coverage

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Apple Watch sensors
Has your Apple Watch's sensor panel popped off?
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple has extended its service coverage for the first-generation Apple Watch. If you have a unit with a separated sensor panel, you can get it repaired for free by visiting Apple or an authorized service provider within three years of your purchase date.

Siri sheds users as AI assistants struggle to take over

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Sorry, Alexa: Siri still the most widespread AI assistant
Siri's popular, but getting less so.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Siri remains the most widely used virtual assistant but is losing popularity, according to a new report.

What does this mean for HomePod, Apple’s upcoming smart speaker? And what type of person is an AI assistant “superuser”? The study offers some surprising insights.

Head-up display gives any car a fighter-jet feel [Deals]

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Hudway Glass Display
Get valuable trip info and a fighter pilot vibe all at once with this HUD for your car.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Driving comes closest to the feeling of being a pilot that most of us will ever get. Given the way most people handle a car, that’s probably a good thing. But one simple way to safely bring the sense of a cockpit to the driver’s seat is to add a proper head-up display (HUD).

Train passenger using an iMac clearly hasn’t heard of MacBooks

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train
Well, that's one way to get your work done.
Photo: Twitter

There’s dedication to Apple computers and … well, taking your iMac on the train with you.

While riding the rails in the U.K. recently, a passenger spotted a woman using a full-size Apple desktop in the first-class carriage of a Virgin train — alongside a mechanical keyboard. We’re betting her fellow passengers were pleased!

Not everyone thinks iPhone 8 will spawn the ‘supercycle’ Apple needs

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iPhone8
The iPhone 8 may struggle to beat the iPhone 6.
Photo: Imran Taylor

Pretty much everyone thinks the iPhone 8 is going to be Apple’s biggest hit to date, with some Wall Street pundits even claiming its success will transform Apple into a trillion-dollar company.

Some analysts at Deutsche Bank don’t agree, however. In a note to investors, analysts Sherri Scribner, Adrienne Colby and Jeffrey Rand write that they think “investors will be disappointed by iPhone growth in FY-18 and FY-19.” Here’s why.

New iPhone 8 image casts more doubt over Touch ID’s future

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Touch ID
'Leaked' iPhone 8 image shows no rear Touch ID
Photo: Weibo

An image which has shown up on the Chinese microblogging service Weibo depicts what is claimed to be an authentic backplate for the iPhone 8 — complete with missing rear-mounted Touch ID sensor.

Earlier this year, reports circulated that Apple was considering moving the Touch ID sensor to the rear of its next-gen iPhone, much as Android device makers have been doing. Provided that this image is authentic, it suggests that this is not the case.

Replace Photobucket sharing with this automatic Dropbox action

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workflow dropbox photo bucket
Workflow makes short work of rolling your own image-hosting service.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Imagine if an almost 15-year-old image hosting company suddenly decided to deactivate all the links to the photos you had stored there. That’s exactly what happened last week, when Photobucket cut all “hot-linked” — or embedded — images, and insisted that users pony up $400 per year to get them back. That’s a big deal, because Photobucket images power much of the web. It’s not used only for posting images to forums, but to put images on Amazon store pages, and eBay listings.

Few of the folks affected by this are going to pay the ransom to get their photo links back, so the web will be littered with Photobucket placeholders reminding people of this fiasco for years to come. We can’t help with that, but we can offer a great alternative to Photobucket. Today we’ll see how to upload a photo to Dropbox and grab its direct link automatically, so you can use the image on any website you like.

Little Snitch keeps Mac apps from going rogue

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little snitch network map view
It sounds impossible, but Little Snitch 4 makes network security fun.
Photo: Objective Development

Little Snitch, from the maker of the sublime LaunchBar, just got updated with a new Silent Mode that makes the app about a million times better to use, especially the first time you install it. Little Snitch is a network monitor that tattles on every other bit of software on your Mac, telling you when an app connects to outside servers.

That’s pretty much its only function, but Little Snitch Version 4 packs a ton of neat touches that tell you everything about how your Mac is connecting to the outside world. I’ve been using it for the past week or so, and it makes keeping your Mac safe far less annoying.

Apple seeds third betas for iOS 11, macOS High Sierra and more

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iOS 11 Control Center
In iOS 11, the Control Center becomes a remote control for your life.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The latest batch of beta builds from Apple is now available to developers this morning. Developers can download the third betas of iOS 11, macOS High Sierra, watchOS 4 and tvOS 11.

Apple’s new software comes with a slew of new bug fixes and performance enhancements for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV to go with the new features that were unveiled at WWDC 2017. iOS 11 beta 3 also packs a couple of big changes to Siri and Control Center.

Your chance to lunch with Eddy Cue at Apple Park

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Eddy Cue
Eddy Cue is auctioning off another charity lunch.
Photo: CNBC

Eddy Cue really likes helping out charities. Either that or he really enjoys lunches with fans.

That’s based on the fact that, just weeks after his last charity auction offering lunch to one lucky Apple fan ended, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services is auctioning off yet another charity lunch date — this time to benefit the charity Autism Movement Therapy.

Runkeeper app brings innovation and minor glitches [Runner’s Week: Day 2]

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Runkeeper is one of the best running apps for Apple Watch, but it's not quite perfect.
One of the most innovative running apps for Apple Watch, Runkeeper is not quite perfect.
Image: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Runner's Week Choosing an Apple Watch running app can prove exhausting. So let Cult of Mac Runner’s Week help get you off the starting blocks.

Every day this week, I’ll review a different running app for Apple Watch. Yesterday I reviewed Nike+ Run Club. Today, it’s Runkeeper’s turn.

Apple’s new GPU lab rubs salt into Imagination’s wound

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Apple patches things up with mobile GPU maker Imagination
Imagination first started building GPUs for Apple with the iPod.
Photo: Apple

Apple is upping the ante in its battle with British iOS chipmaker Imagination Technologies by opening a new office “a stone’s throw” from Imagination’s headquarters in St Albans, in the U.K.

This comes days after Apple attacked Imagination for its “inaccurate and misleading” claims. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Apple will be ditching Imagination to develop its own mobile GPUs in-house. Imagination has made clear its belief that Apple can’t design its own GPUs without copying Imagination’s technologies.

iPhone 8 color options to include mirror-like finish

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chrome iPhone
A possible new iPhone
Photo: Benjamin Geskin‏

The new OLED iPhone 8 will come in four different color options including a new mirror-like reflective version, claims Twitter designer and leaker Benjamin Geskin.

Geskin shared an image of an existing iPhone in a mirror case with his post, although he suggests that the iPhone 8 will look very similar.

Comcast and Amazon Video are putting the hurt on iTunes movies

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iTunes movie
iTunes movie downloads suffering thanks to the rise of rival services.
Photo: Apple

It’s not just music downloads where iTunes is struggling. According to a new report, Apple’s share of the digital home video movie market has also been falling precariously in recent years — largely thanks to the rise of companies like Comcast, Amazon Video and Netflix.

From a high of over 50 percent in 2012, market share has now fallen to between 20-35 percent, with various Hollywood studios reporting a decline in iTunes’ leadership position.

Sticky AI, Battlezone 98, and other awesome apps of the week

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Awesome Apps
'Appy weekend everyone!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Want to impress the kids by sending them animated stickers of yourself against a funky background, courtesy of the latest AI image recognition breakthroughs?

That’s just one of the picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup. We’ve also got a great note-taking app for Apple Pencil users, a revisited classic tank blaster newly arrived on iOS and Mac, and an update to the massively popular Instagram Stories.

Check out our choices below.

Which Apple Watch running app deserves to log your sweaty miles? [Runner’s Week: Day 1]

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It's Runner's Week at Cult of Mac
It's Runner's Week at Cult of Mac
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Runner's Week It takes a lot of effort to go running with Apple Watch, and not just because it gets you all sweaty. The hard work starts before you even put on your running shoes. Simply choosing which running app to use is an exhausting task.

Even if you don’t install any of the plethora of third-party running apps, the Apple Watch Nike+ model comes with two preinstalled options to choose from. So this week, to help get you off the starting blocks, we’ll be reviewing six of the best running apps for Apple Watch.

Master iOS 11, unblock streaming content, and more [Week’s Best Deals]

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Best Deals of the Week

Seems every week there’s something new and exciting arriving at the Cult of Mac Store. This week is no exception, with a deals that include a lesson bundle in iOS 11, ahead of its fall release. There’s also a tool for bypassing geo-restrictions on streaming content, a universal remote for the Bluetooth age, and a wireless charging system for Apple Watch. Everything is discounted by massive margins, some by more than 95 percent. Read on for more:

How to bulk select and delete photos the easy way on iPhone

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bulk select iOS photos
Swipe your way to quick selections in iOS Photos.
Photo: Cult of Mac

You know how to share, and how to delete photos from your iPhone and iPad, and you have no trouble selecting a bunch of photos at once in the Photos app. But what if you want to select a ton of images at a time? Tapping on each, one at a time, to enable the check mark, gets old pretty fast.

What if I told you that you could just swipe across the photos you wanted to bulk select instead? That would be be pretty great, you say? Yes it would. Let’s see how to do that.