While iPhones have pretty much replaced standalone video cameras, they don’t offer the same level of polish that a dedicated video camera or DSLR produces. It’s true that “the best camera is the camera you have with you,” but you can almost always spot a video shot on a phone.

The quality gap isn’t purely due to the lenses and tech within our phones, though. Bad habits make plenty of iPhone videos look lackluster. To show just how good an iPhone video can be, I put all my filmmaking knowledge to use for the montage below.

Instead of using my $3,000 video camera, I picked up my iPhone. With a minimum of accessories, I managed to produce what I think is a pretty cinematic video. You can see the results below — and then I’ll give you some useful tips and tricks for shooting iPhone videos like a pro.

PDFs are a part of everyday life for pretty much anyone who works at a computer. While they’re great for sending clean, easy-to-read documents of all sorts, they’re less than easy to edit with standard Mac apps and readers like Preview.

With a Mac app like PDF Expert, you can work with this common document format almost as though it were a Word file. Fixing typos, rearranging sections and performing other tasks is a total breeze with PDF Expert. And right now, you can get PDF Expert for just $24.99 at Cult of Mac Deals with coupon code “EXPERT5.”

This week on The CultCast: Official new Nvidia drivers make your Mac compatible with the best GPUs on the market! Plus: A mole gives us our best look yet at what it’s really like to work in an iPhone factory; Apple’s working on a “breakthrough” diabetes treatment with the Apple Watch; and the saga of Ron Wayne, the forgotten Apple co-founder who traded his $22 billion of Apple stock for just $800.

Our thanks to Casper, maker of the internet’s favorite mattress, for supporting this episode. Learn why and save $50 off your order at casper.com/cultcast.

By Chris Brantner, guest blogger

The NBA playoffs are upon us again! At this point, it could be anyone’s championship, which makes watching all the more interesting. Who will rise to compete in the final games, and who looks likely to fall?

If you plan to watch the NBA playoffs on your Apple device, you’re in luck. Whether you’re using your Mac or your iPhone, there are several options for both cable users and cord cutters.

A new batch of classified NSA data was leaked today by the hacker group called Shadow Brokers, revealing malware used by the government agency to break into PCs and servers running Windows.

The leaked software is so powerful, it could give nearly anyone with a bit of technical knowledge the ability to hack millions of Microsoft users.

Looks like it’s time to finally get a Mac.

Apple might have popularized virtual assistants, but Siri has fallen behind in recent years as rivals like the Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and even Microsoft Cortana pull ahead with greater capabilities and unique features.

One area in which Siri is lacking is in standalone devices like smart speakers, such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Isn’t it about time Apple caught up with a smart speaker of its own powered by Siri?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we throw punches over a Siri speaker.

Kendrick Lamar unleashed his eagerly anticipated fourth studio album, DAMN, on the world today.

Lamar is known for his perfectionism, using some of the best producers and equipment in the game to get his sound just right. But when it came to one of the best tracks on his new album, one of Lamar’s producers crafted the entire thing using only his iPhone.

Many artists and designers have said guiding the tip of an Apple Pencil along the surface of the iPad Pro is one of the best digital drawing experiences. Jan Sapper thinks he can eliminate the word digital from that last sentence.

Sapper says he has come up with a screen cover that makes the iPad Pro’s slick glass surface feel more like paper.

Apple’s self-driving car project just shifted to a new level this week thanks to California’s DMV which just gave Apple an official permit to test autonomous vehicles on public roads.

One of Canada’s most famous music interviewers, George Stroumboulopoulos, is coming to Apple Music where he’ll host concerts featuring some of the biggest names in the industry.

Unlike the large-scale Apple Music Festival concerts hosted every year, Stroumboulopoulos (aka Strombo), will be hosting the acts at his tiny house in Toronto, giving fans an intimate concert experience unlike any other.

Disney just made Good Friday a little extra good by dropping the first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

The two-minute video teases Rey getting some one-on-one lightsaber training with Luke Skywalker, as well as tons of epic battle scenes with huge explosions, new ships and some new faces.

Check it out:

That last few years have seen plenty of grief-stricken editors and photographers deliver eulogies about the craft of photojournalism. Others hang on hoping for changes in an industry that has seen massive layoffs and reduced pay for freelancers.

The team behind a startup platform called ViewFind, not only understands the pain of an entire industry, it’s trying to cancel the funeral.

iPhone-assembler Foxconn may be about to get some help from none other than Apple in its quest to buy Toshiba’s chipmaking business.

Apple is reportedly considering whether to make a huge multi-billion dollar investment in the world’s second-largest memory chip maker. If the deal goes through, it would give Foxconn and Apple a major advantage over other smartphone manufacturers.

Any project on the computer can require a mess of files and folders, with revision histories and tracked changes quickly turning into a confusing mess. That’s why DeltaWalker 2 Pro is a file manager worth checking out for almost any digital professional.

With this Mac app (it’s available for Windows, too), you can easily compare, sync and merge up to three files or folders at once. It’s like gaining X-ray vision for your files and folders, and right now you can get DeltaWalker 2 Pro for just $29.95 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple’s push to finish the landscaping on its soon-to-be opened spaceship campus is causing headaches for other landscapers and architects hoping to buy trees for other projects.

The company has been known to corner the market’s supply for certain Mac and iPhone components to shut out competitors, but a new report out of San Francisco reveals Apple is bringing its overpowering tactics into foliage market too.

This post is brought to you by PDFelement 6.

If you work at a computer a lot, PDFs are a part of daily life. It makes sense — PDFs are reliable and look great on a wide range of devices, making them ideal for a huge number of uses. But since the text, images and other information comes baked into the document, not unlike a printed page, doing anything but reading a PDF can be tricky.

Three more of Apple’s suppliers say they are committed to making the switch from energy generated from fossil fuels to using 100% renewable energy to make iPhone components.

Despite Donald Trump’s plan to roll back environmental regulations, Apple Inc is continuing on with the promises it made under the Obama administration. Even though it may cost more money initially, Apple’s partners are starting to realize the change is good for business too.

The iTunes brand is being slowly carted off to the Apple graveyard.

On Thursday morning, Apple made a very subtle but profound change to the way it markets podcasts. From now on, they’re no longer called “iTunes Podcasts” — they’re called “Apple Podcasts.”

The National Hockey League is going all-in on the iPad for this year’s playoffs.

Apple and the NHL struck a partnership for the 2017 playoffs that will give all 16 playoff teams three iPad Pros that can be accessed by players and coaches during their quest for the Stanley Cup.

Snapchat may be popular with the young, but Instagram continues to show it can be young and fun, too.

The photo-sharing network of 600 million users rolled out new sticker tools Thursday in response to the rapidly growing number of people using the Stories feature.

There are plenty of iPhone charging cases out there, but none of them are quite as game-changing as this one. Usually, you’ll plug in your phone as usual, which charges the case at the same time to extend its lifetime. CoBattery uses a different approach that means you’ll never have to plug your phone into the wall again. It’s a clever, simple case design that could change the way you use your phone while protecting it. And right now you can get a CoBattery Charging Case Kit for just $59 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Yet another set of schematics for iPhone 8 have surfaced ahead of its official debut, again hinting at slimmer bezels that make room for a larger display, and the removal of the Home button.

The latest also suggest that Apple will relocate its fingerprint scanner to the back of the device to retain Touch ID functionality.

RBC Capital analyst Amit Daryanani has a suggestion for how Apple could spend its cash stockpile, while also growing its presence in media: buy the Walt Disney Company.

“There are plenty of factors to consider,” Daryanani wrote in a note to investors, “but such a deal would create a tech/media juggernaut like no other and instantly scale AAPL’s services, content, and media portfolio, which would make the case for a higher valuation.”

A growing number of MacBook Pro owners are complaining of a mysterious “popping” sound coming from their machines.

The sound doesn’t appear to be generated by certain tasks or uses, though some say it is more common during intensive tasks like gaming.

Back in 2015, Square Enix Montreal released Tomb Raider GO, an audacious attempt to reimagine the Lara Croft franchise by turning it into a fun, turn-based isometric puzzle game.

By all rights, it totally shouldn’t have worked, but it did — and the results were excellent. Now the game has been given an overhaul with new levels, courtesy of the Mirror of Spirits update.

Check out the trailer below.