It might be a short week for most of us here in the U.S., but that didn’t stop us from piling up a whole, well, pile of great content for your long weekend enjoyment.
We’ve got all the Black Friday sale info you can handle, a bunch of sweet gadget reviews (like the rumbling, rabble-rousing Sonos Play:5) and a fantastic assortment of Apple news and views that you’ll love.
Be sure to download the Cult of Mac Magazine app now to get your own copy of our latest issue.
Here’s the rundown:
Readdle’s highly praised iOS app PDF Expert has landed on the Mac. Shortly after its debut, it shot straight to the number one spot for paid apps on the Mac App Store. Apple’s own Preview app works fine for simply reading through PDF files or making tiny edits, but people who work with PDF files more frequently and need more power can benefit from giving the $19.99 PDF Expert a chance. Cult of Mac got the opportunity to do just that.
Everybody knows that the leader in the category of PDF editors and readers is Adobe with its Reader and Acrobat apps, but the latter costs $14.99 per month for a subscription or a staggering $449 for the full desktop software. As long as you don’t need to create PDFs, PDF Expert only asks for $20 out of your pocket and it’s jam-packed with all of the necessities and then some.
Because we’re really feeling the holiday spirit this season, we’ll be giving away a brand-new black 38mm Apple Watch Sport to one person who sells their old device to us before December 15.
The magic of what Moog has done with this analog stompbox isn’t completely evident until you plug an expression pedal into it.
Certainly the drive tones are exceptional and the controls provide a myriad of useable and inspirational tones, but the expression pedal unlocks Moog’s industry-leading love of sonic experimentation.
Coding is as useful a skill as it is a time consuming (and often expensive) one to learn. It doesn’t have to be that way though — whether you want to master HTML5, Ruby, Python or anything in between, we’ve got a content-packed, 92-hour bundle of courses and you can get it for whatever you want to pay. 10% of anything you decide to pay goes to Project Hope, who provide medical expertise and resources to crises around the world.
Fossil’s first Android Wear watch, the stunning Q Founder, has finally arrived. The device ships with a bunch of exclusive Fossil faces, and it can be ordered from Fossil’s online store now for $295.
Apple has come to a preliminary agreement with China UnionPay to introduce Apple Pay in China through UnionPay’s point-of-sales network.
The deal — which builds on this week’s report that Apple Pay will be coming to China by February 2016 — will help UnionPay and Chinese banks to fend off third-party payment services like those belonging to Alibaba and Tencent.
Apple has released its first major Christmas ad for the holidays that doesn’t show many Apple products, but instead features soul pioneer’s Stevie Wonder and Andre Daye singing Wonder’s 1967 holiday classic ‘Someday at Christmas’.
Along with Wonder and Daye, the ad includes shots of a family getting ready for Christmas, exchanging gifts, and decorating the tree. There are a few glimpses of the Apple Watch and a MacBook, but the focus is on Christmas, and ends with a simple “Love, Apple” note at the end.
Check out the ad below:
The first trailer for next year’s Captain America movie Civil War debuted online last night, and it’s actually really freaking good.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron kind of soured me on Marvel’s gigantic cinematic universe, but Civil War could redeem it if it turns out to be anywhere as good as the first taste Marvel’s given us. Civil War will pit Tony Stark against Steve Rogers sometime in the future after the events after Age of Ultron. Stark is convinced the world’s superheroes need some kind of supervision, while Captain America takes the side of his old pal Bucky to fight the government.
Watch the full trailer below:
If a movie or TV show is too loud, you can always turn down the volume, but depending upon the way the sound was balanced, that can have the effect of making the dialogue impossible to hear. But the new Apple TV has a neat way around that problem. Here’s how to reduce loud sounds on the new Apple TV.
Having recently arrived in Canada and Australia, and with plans underway for a February launch in China, it’s safe to say that Apple Pay is taking over the NFC payments world.
Which is exactly why, according to a new report, banks are ramping up their technology budgets in order to compete — concerned that tech companies like Apple could outgun them on the payments front.
If you like Android’s app drawer, but prefer iOS’s apps, you’re just a jailbreak away from having it on your iPhone.
Almost all major retailers have unveiled their Black Friday ads by now, and some of our predictions have been blown out of the water by lower prices. Many will definitely qualify for the coveted Editors’ Choice nod. And with price-matching driving down prices next week, more will likely follow.
We tallied up the spoils that debuted during the November 21 to November 29 time frame last year, and selected the top five stores that had the most Editors’ Choice deals. These vendors offered the best prices on the most popular items, and we’re already seeing them attempt to repeat this year.
Now, all that’s left to do is allocate your cash wisely, prepare some comfortable running garb, and get your Black Friday game face on.
As a company staffed by some bona fide geeks (and, hey, we’re not complaining!) Google is undoubtedly excited about the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And what better way to show it than with possibly my favorite Easter egg in Google history? If you haven’t heard about it yet, read on to discover more.
While Apple Pay has become a near ubiquitous payment option at stores across America, Android Pay is having a harder time getting off the ground. But here’s a reason to feel good about using Google’s service over Apple’s: until the end of the year, Google will donate money to special needs students across America every time you use Android Pay.
Dream of working in Cupertino? Or just want to scramble your brain and break out in a cold sweat at some nightmare brainteasers? Check out this selection of 10 of the toughest Apple job interview questions to be asked in genuine Apple interviews.
People aged 16 to 30 spend around 3.2 hours per day on mobile devices like iPhones and iPads, according to a new study by global market research company TNS.
That translates as 49 days out of the year staring at miniature screens — with people reported to look at their phones a massive 150 times daily.
Well, when you put it like that…
When you go to theaters to see the latest Star Wars movie, the special effects — particularly the faces of aliens — will now be driven by Apple technology. That’s because Apple has purchased Faceshift, a Zurich-based company that has created cool tech to capture a person’s facial expressions in real time.
There are so many Black Friday deals out there it’s incredibly difficult to keep up with them all, even for someone who’s paid to do just that.
We’ve taken pity on you and have pulled the absolute best deals that we could find and added a special value-added service at the end: A single line of text that you can copy and paste into your Google Calendar Quick Add field or your Calendar Quick Event field (just click on that big Plus button at the top of your Calendar app).
That way, you’ll have reminders when these fantastic deals appear, whether you’re at home zoning out to Fallout 4 or out at a holiday party drinking good cheer.
Check out our evolving list below.
DVD players are going the way of the Walkman, leaving many of us with vast libraries of obsolete discs. Of course the movies and TV shows themselves aren’t obsolete — just their shiny plastic medium — but with hard drive space getting more and more vast it makes less and less sense to let a bunch of discs take up cabinet or closet space.
Xiaomi latest iPad mini clone got its grand unveiling today, and it has a neat trick up its sleeve. The 7.9-inch Mi Pad 2, which would look right at home in the Apple Store, can run either Android or Windows 10 — and it starts at just $156.
The iPad Pro is the most impressive tablet Apple’s ever created, but it’s missing one killer feature: 3D Touch.
Developer Hamza Sood has found a clever workout around though that brings Peek and Pop features to the iPad Pro, and it’s all made possible thanks to the pressure sensitive features of the Apple Pencil.
Check it out:
Twitter is bringing its short video sharing service, Vine, to wrists across the globe today with its first Apple Watch app.
Vine for Apple Watch brings two feeds to users — favorites and featured — which allows you to catch up on clips from favorite creators, as well as watch featured videos that are handpicked from channels across the network.
We’re just days away from carving up turkeys in the US, but the folks at iFixit are busting out the blades a little early for their official teardown of the new Apple Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro.
The new teardown from iFixit reveals how Apple made the Keyboard/Smart Cover super durable by encapsulating the entire product in some high tech fabric that should make it last much longer than a normal keyboard, which is good because it is also impossible to repair.
Check out the keyboards guts below:
No one would accuse Urban Armor Gear of being sleek or subtle. The company’s iDevice cases are loud and rugged. You might even call them masculine, although I know a few of my female friends would embrace the bold statement they make.