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Ditch your old router, Eero is the new king of Wi-Fi routers [Review]

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In a recent survey, Apple's soon-to-disappear AirPort was ranked the most popular Wi-Fi router.
In a recent survey, Apple's soon-to-disappear AirPort was ranked the most popular Wi-Fi router.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

I’ve seen the future of Wi-Fi. It’s called Eero. It comes in a pack of three, costs an arm and a leg, but boy is it worth it.

Eero is a slick system of mesh-connected routers that blanket your whole house in Wi-Fi. Eero promises to eliminate dead spots, make restarts redundant, and offer blazing speeds from the basement to the attic.

In my tests, Eero performs as advertised. After years of Wi-Fiheadaches, and an Apple Time Capsule that barely worked, we now have fast and reliable Wi-Fi all over the house.

Apple products subject to secretive Chinese security reviews

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Photo of Apple CEO Tim Cook talking with Chinese children to illustrate an Apple history article about the deal that brought the iPhone to China Mobile, the world's largest carrier.
The Chinese government is snooping on Apple devices.
Photo: Apple

Chinese authorities are scrutinizing Apple devices before allowing them to be sold in the country, claims a new report.

The reviews involve Chinese officials requiring executives of foreign tech companies to answer questions in person, with the concern being that companies like Apple may be forced to trade trade secrets for market access.

Android phones crash at almost twice the rate of iPhones

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samsungvapple
One of these phones is not like the other.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

Android handsets crash far more regularly than iPhones, a new study by the Blanco Technology Group claims.

Measuring the number of failures of Android phones and iPhones during the first three months of 2016, devices running Google’s mobile platform were found to have a failure rate of 44 percent, compared to 25 percent for the iPhone.

Apple Pay rival CurrentC has been delayed yet again

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Apple Pay's biggest competitor has already been hacked. Photo: MXC
This isn't the first time it's been delayed, either.
Photo: MXC

Have companies not yet worked out that trying to go against Apple rarely seems to work out? If not, they may be learning quickly — with Apple Pay rival CurrentC reportedly delaying its arrival yet again, while laying off 30 of its staff.

Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it?

GarageBand celebrates Chinese music with big content update

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garageband.jpeg
GarageBand just got an update with China in mind.
Photo: Apple

Tim Cook’s in China right now, and what better way to showcase Apple’s dedication to growing its Chinese customer base than by updating GarageBand for Mac and iOS with new instruments intended to, “celebrate the rich history of Chinese music?”

The update adds 300 new Chinese musical loops including guzheng, dizi, yangqin and Peking Opera samples, as well as a plethora of Chinese musical instruments such as the pipa, erhu, and Chinese percussion.

Twitter will stop counting links against 140 character limit

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Twitter
Twitter wants to give you more flexibility.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Don’t you just hate it when you compose the perfect tweet and then insert a link that takes it over the 140 character limit? Well, that could soon become a thing of the past.

According to sources familiar with Twitter’s plans, the company will soon stop counting the URLs and photos inserted into your tweets.

How BYOD can be as fun as BYOB

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VMWare AirWatch BYOD
Employees prefer their own iPhones. AirWatch could be your BYOD solution.
Photo: William Iven/Pixabay CC

This post is brought to you by VMware AirWatch.

Let’s face it: Asking a person to carry around two devices all the time, one for work and one for play, is just inefficient. When organizations implement overbearing management or ignore privacy concerns, they almost force users to carry a device for work and a device for personal use.

While a few employees may enjoy the air-gap separation of church and state, most people buckle under the stress of having two separate devices to potentially forget in a cab or leave on the airport bathroom sink (true story!).

Apple’s building a start-up accelerator in India

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The next iPhone will have a huge battery.
Apple plans to help India develop iOS apps.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple CEO Tim Cook will have a lot to talk about with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi when Cook touches down in the country later this week.

The iPhone-maker is ready to make a big push into India, and according to a new report, that will include investing in India’s start-up scene with an incubator focused on helping companies in the country that build iOS apps.

Jamstik+ teaches you to rock (while looking like a dork) [Reviews]

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Jamstik Bluetooth guitar
The Jamstik looks like a toy, but it could teach you some serious skills.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

As a long-time player of console rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I’ve had several people’s share of silly, plastic instruments laying around my house. And while they’ve all looked varying levels of authentic, none of them actually taught me anything about how to play the guitar other than the base concepts of “one hand pushes down here while the other one goes up and/or down.”

But the Jamstick+ aims to change that by being an odd-looking, toy-like instrument that actually has lessons (via apps) to show you the basics and help you learn strumming, plucking and finger assignment. It even has real-feeling strings and frets to help you translate your lessons into the real thing.

Other than those individual pieces, however, you might feel ridiculous holding it.

Warren Buffett is betting big on Apple

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iphone stocks app
Berkshire Hathaway's investment in Apple could send the price back up.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Some of the world’s biggest investors have ditched their Apple shares lately, but where others see doom and gloom Warren Buffett sees an opportunity to make some serious money. 

Warren Buffet’s legendary investment firm Berkshire Hathaway has taken a large position in Apple stock, scooping up 9.81 million shares, worth about $1.07 billion.

TarDisk is a slim solution for stretching MacBook storage [Deals]

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TarDisk adds 64GB of flash storage to your MacBook Air via the SD slot, without changing its slim profile.
TarDisk adds 64GB of flash storage to your MacBook Air via the SD slot, without changing its slim profile.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

The MacBook Air is delightfully lean, but it’s less than pleasing when its drive space runs thin. It’s a costly hassle to upgrade the internal drive, which makes TarDisk’s 64 gig SD drive expansion a very attractive alternative. It plugs right into the SD slot on the side of your laptop and stays out of the way, for an easy expansion that you can get right now for just $99.99.

How to quickly recover deleted notes on iOS

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Notes-2
Always deleting important notes? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Notes on iOS is an extremely useful app, and it got more useful with the addition of password protection in iOS 9.3. Keeping bank codes, addresses, passwords and more has never been more secure from outside threats. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe from you.

If you tend to tidy up apps and notes in a rush — as I do — you may end up deleting something you need or want. And if you haven’t finished with that note yet, that becomes a big problem. But it’s one that’s easy to fix.

In this week’s Quick Tips video, I’m going to show you how to recover deleted notes and restore all those personal details you’ve jotted down to their rightful place.

Check the video out below.

Google Chrome will swap Flash for HTML5 this fall

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Google-Chrome
Slowly but surely Flash is dying.
Photo: Apple

Google is finally stepping up its bid to kill Flash content. Later this year, its Chrome browser will default to HTML5 wherever possible, using Flash only as a last resort.

The move should make Chrome speedier and more stable — and better on battery life when used on a MacBook.

Gorgeous puzzle game Mekorama hopes to be 2016’s Monument Valley

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mekorama
Familiar, but with a difference.
Photo: Martin Magni

I was an enormous fan of the puzzle game Monument Valley, and it appears that I was far from the only one.

That’s based on the look of new iOS puzzler Mekorama, which adopts a similarly surreal aesthetic for a game that looks set to dazzle, delight and downright befuddle gamers mobile gamers everywhere.

Check out the trailer — and download link — below.

‘Leaked’ iPhone 7 confirms what we all feared

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iPhone 6 Plus_5
The iPhone 7 is on its way. But a major redesign apparently isn't.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The iPhone 7 is still four months away from debuting, but a new picture “leaked” online appears to give us another early glimpse of the next-gen handset — suggesting once again that this might not be a significant redesign from the current iPhone 6s.

Check it out below.

Larry Ellison: Steve Jobs shot down my Apple takeover plans

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Why Salesforce chief gave up AppStore.com for Apple
Oracle's founder says Steve Jobs didn't re-join Apple for the cash.
Photo: Ben Stanfield/Flickr CC

Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison gave the commencement speech at the University of Southern California late last week, and among other things he talked about a plan with his best friend, Steve Jobs, concerning a mid-1990s bid to stage a takeover of Apple.

And how Steve talked him out of it.

iOS 9 adoption hits 84 percent, weeks before iOS 10 arrives

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iOS 9 is good, but iOS 10 needs to be spectacular.
More than 8 out of 10 users are now running iOS 9.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

With WWDC (and, presumably, iOS 10’s debut) weeks away, Apple has revealed that 84 percent of possible users are now upgraded to iOS 9, currently the latest version of its mobile OS.

For those keeping track at home, not only is that an extra 4 percent increase from the numbers announced at Apple’s iPhone SE launch event in March, but it also puts Android’s fragmented adoption figures to shame.