Cult of Mac

A fairly popular group of apps for the Apple TV has been those that add a bit of scenic ambience to your living room. I’m talking live camera streams around the world or footage of gorgeous waterfalls. Even Apple’s own Aerial screensavers are stunning. One such app with a special twist is Aqua TV, which puts a customizable aquarium on your television screen. It’s beautiful to glance at in your peripheral vision, but also fun to build and personalize.

Apple may have been producing units of its upcoming 4-inch smartphone for nearly a year.

The rumored iPhone 5se may seem like a product that’s come out of nowhere, but a new report claims Apple finished development and production on it months ago. Cupertino’s just been waiting for the perfect time to reveal the smaller phone.

You already put your Apple computer on a pedestal. You might as well make that pedestal complimentary to Jony Ive’s design.

The tech accessories company Satechi on Thursday debuted a sleek aluminum monitor stand, perfect to give your iMac monitor or MacBook enough elevation to promote the good posture you otherwise ignore.

Smartphone shipments surpassed a record 1.43 billion units in 2015, according to the latest figures from IDC, and 22.7 percent of them carried the Samsung logo. Despite falling Galaxy sales, the South Korean company still shifted 93.3 million more devices than Apple.

In this day and age a few lines of code can make a meaningful difference in the way we live our lives and get things done. Case in point is the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm, a service that follows you and your computer or mobile device around to provide services like backups, access to virtual private networks, organizing and optimizing workflow, and lots more. We’ve found a bundle of some of the best SaaS’s in the game, and you can get access to the whole shebang for $59.

If you’re the proud owner of a two-prong Apple AC wall plug adapter, as included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, you may have a trip to the Apple Store in your immediate future.

That’s because Apple has announced a voluntary recall of adapters designed for use in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Continental Europe, New Zealand and South Korea, after certain models were found to break and put users at risk of electrical shocks.

Sometimes a good idea can advance technology without an app or motherboard. Photographer Ruoguo Zhou proved that last year with a hunk of plastic called SLOPES, an indispensable accessory for GoPro users that cradles the camera and provides 20 different angles for shooting.

Zhou again applies simple geometry to plastic with his new device, the Pano5+1, a tripod (or water bottle) head that allows the GoPro shooter to create seamless spherical or cylindrical panorama photographs.

Apple could get back in the stereo game with a speaker system capable of finding the “sweet spot” in a particular room and modifying its sound accordingly.

I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that the Lumiére lamp is the coolest one I’ve ever used. And I have a light on my nightstand that’s shaped like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber, so you know it’s real.

The Lumiére wins out, however, due to its unique, clever design and flexibility. And I don’t just mean that the actual lamp bends and holds different shapes — which it does — but this is a single light that can do just about anything you need a light to do. It will fit in with any room in your house, and you might just end up taking it with you when you get up to do something. And that’ll be easy because it’s wireless and super portable.

It’s a really good device, is what I’m getting at.

Despite the noise being made about big multinationals using loopholes to avoid paying tax, Apple’s Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri has made it clear how much he thinks Apple owes as part of the European Union’s ongoing investigation.

“My estimate is zero,” he told the Financial Times. “I mean, if there is a fair outcome of the investigation, it should be zero.”

Don’t spend it all at once, E.U.!

Apple Store retail guru Angela Ahrendts says that the secret behind Apple’s success is its culture, telling an interviewer that, “The company was built to change people’s lives.”

The dedication to keeping not just customers, but also employees, feeling like they’re part of a greater mission is paying off in a big way, too — with Ahrendts noting that last year Apple Stores had their highest employee retention rate in history, with 81 percent of people staying put.

The iPad Air 3 may boast a 4K display, as well as up to 4GB of RAM and improved battery life.

Given that the current iPad Air has a resolution of 2048 x 1536, a 4K display would come close to doubling its predecessor’s image quality.

The rest of the PC industry may be crashing, but Apple expects Mac sales to remain relatively stable in 2016 — with sources in the supply chain claiming that Mac-series product shipments are likely to remain around the 20 million unit mark this year.

A Twitter user has shared surprising details of the first firmware update for Logitech’s Create iPad Pro keyboard, which he was prompted to install after grabbing the iOS 9.3 beta 2 seed.

The Logitech update appears to fix a nagging keyboard lag experienced by some users, but that’s not even the coolest part: It looks like the iOS beta pushed the firmware update to the Logitech Create through the iPad Pro’s Smart Connector.

Facebook is planning to roll out its new “Reactions” icons in the next few weeks, making it possible for us all to react a bit more subtly and carefully to our friends and family on Facebook.

You know how it is — you get invited to a multi-person chat via iMessage with people you sort of know and it gets all kinds of awkward and annoying as the group blows up your iPhone with a ton of messages you really don’t want to pay attention to.

What’s a popular girl or guy like you to do? There are a couple of ways to get out of those iMessage group conversations so you can finally relax.

It appears we won’t have to wait much longer to see what the next-generation iPad Air will look like.

Apple plans to unveil the iPad Air 3 at a special event in March, according to a new report, which claims new Apple Watch hardware will also get some stage time during the keynote.

I don’t like spending a lot of time inside weather apps. Instead, I’d rather just swipe down and view current and impending conditions within the Today view section of Notification Center.

That’s why, when looking at weather apps to try, one of my criteria is that whatever one I choose, it comes complete with widget support. Depending on what kind of weather data you need, these weather apps currently have the best weather widgets for iPhone.

A few years ago, home security systems were a luxury for the rich and famous (or at least the well-off). They could be super-expensive, clunky, and usually had to be installed by a team of security specialists.

But times are changing. As the market becomes flooded with smart home-security systems, they get better and better. A great example: wireless security systems by MyFox.

This post is brought to you by Tenorshare, maker of ReiBoot and iPhone Care Pro.

Too many of us know the sense of powerlessness that comes with staring at a red Apple logo on an iPhone screen for minutes on end, or seeing the device stuck in an endless restart loop. When the time comes to restore a corrupted or compromised iPhone, the simplicity of an iOS device can turn into an imposing, tangled mess as you use iTunes to wake it up from its digital coma.

Following up Monday’s release of iOS 9.3 beta 2 to developers, Apple’s continued its plan to get its latest mobile operating system into the hands of public beta testers as well.

This morning sees the provision of iOS 9.3 public beta 2, which brings with it a new Control Center button to toggle Night Shift — the feature that decreases sleep-disturbing blue light on your iPhone.

Apple is officially moving into San Jose.

The company received unanimous approval from the San Jose city council this week to develop on property it has leased in North San Jose for the next 15 years. The council approved Apple to build up to 4.15 million square feet of space, but what Apple plans to do with it is still a mystery.

Apple’s senior director of real estate development, Kristina Raspe, told the city council that the company still doesn’t have any firm plans on how the space will be used.

Best List: The Element headphone amplifier by JDS Labs

“Take the conn, Jimmy.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Every single time I lay my hands on The Element’s giant, super-precise dial of sonic control, that Star Trek scene rolls through my head. Which is a little weird for me, since Captain Kirk and I have the same name, but I overlook this small snag as I dial in the perfect volume on my JDS Labs headphone amplifier.

Good news for iOS users who prefer Chrome: Google’s browser is now as fast as mobile Safari.

Chrome has switched to the WKWebView engine, which first became a feature in 2014 with iOS 8, allowing third-party browsers access to the same rendering engine as Safari.

You love your Mac, but you can always make it even more lovely. These eight apps will boost your favorite computer’s safety and your productivity across a wide swath of uses, from data recovery to Android management to unlocking PDFs and beyond. The best part, you can pay whatever you want for the whole thing, and a portion of every dollar you drop will go towards the important work of Save the Children.