Cult of Mac

People have been spotted wearing Apple’s Vision Pro headset at gyms. I was curious whether they had unlocked a secret killer feature or whether they were bearing through aches and pains just to show off. What’s it really like working out wearing a Vision Pro?

To find out, I hopped on a treadmill, lifted some weights and did some crunches while wearing the headset to discover the pros and cons of wearing a Vision Pro while working out. Check out our latest YouTube video to see what it’s like first-person.

The overall experience proved unsurprisingly mixed — with one very surprising drawback.

Belkin rolled out a new portable 2-in-1 charger Thursday that should suit people who travel a lot or work in different places, like hybrid employees, because it’s both a wall charger and a power bank. It’s the Belkin BoostCharge Hybrid Wall Charger 25W + Power Bank 5K, great for keeping devices like iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch going.

It’s set to start shipping on Valentine’s Day, February 14. And no, we’re not saying it’s a romantic gift idea.

The other day we featured an M1 Ultra Mac Studio setup. We wanted to loop back to call out a couple of cool components in it — namely, a Loupedeck streaming media console and a Keychron Q1 Pro Mechanical Keyboard. It turns out Loupedeck Live is great for video editing (photos, too!).

Love is a many-splendored thing, the old song says. And mid-February means many sweet deals on Microsoft products you’ll love in CdkeySales.com’s Valentine’s Day Sale. Bargains galore await on Microsoft productivity software like Windows and Office. You’ll be smitten.

Despite the sci-fi epic Foundation being a huge hit for Apple TV+, the restart of filming for season three has reportedly been postponed as producers look for ways to trim the budget.

The news is somewhat surprising, as leaks indicated that the series was costing less than many might expect.

Making a FaceTime call in Vision Pro is a bit more involved than on iPhone or Mac. After all, you have a computer strapped onto your face, which is not typical with other devices.

Step 0, of course, is setting up your Persona — the dynamic, digital version of yourself that Vision Pro uses for FaceTime calls. If you didn’t create a Persona during the Vision Pro setup process, or your Persona looks less fantastic than you’d like, we wrote a separate explainer for you:  How to create your Persona in Vision Pro (or make it better).

Once your Persona is set, here’s how to FaceTime in Vision Pro.

You can take a screenshot or a screen recording on Vision Pro, just like on an iPhone or a Mac. The screenshot is saved as an image file, and is easy to view in Photos or share.

Here’s how to take screenshots in Vsion Pro.

Apple made an unexpected software update available Thursday with a bug fix across devices, releasing macOS Sonoma 14.3.1, iOS 17.3.1, iPadOS 17.3.1 and watchOS 10.3.1 for users to install.

The fix relates to text that automatically duplicates or overlaps in various apps, like Safari, Mail and Messages.

Apple offers a $199 Travel Case as an accessory for its new Vision Pro spatial computing headset, but Waterfield Designs just came out with a much smaller and more portable one — the Vision Pro Shield Case.

The first production run of WaterField’s cool new case is already sold out, but you can order it now and it will ship on February 29, the company said.

 Apple Vision Pro is controlled by just five simple gestures you do with your hands. The Vision Pro gestures even work in the dark!

If you’re going to try on someone’s Vision Pro, or you’re lucky enough to buy one yourself, here’s how to use what Apple calls “the most advanced personal electronics device ever.”

While Vision Pro takes a physical form resembling ski goggles, the whole idea is that, unlike with a MacBook or iPhone, you don’t have a screen, keyboard, mouse or trackpad to interact with. It’s an invisible computer. Apple has a bunch of breakthrough gestures to make it work — here’s how to use them.

When it comes to deploying artificial intelligence in products, companies like Google might seem quicker on the draw than Apple. But no major tech company bought more AI startups than the iPhone-maker in 2023, according to a new report.

That suggests Apple might soon become a leader in generative AI rather than playing catch-up.

Windows users can now download full versions of the Apple Music and Apple TV applications, as well as a new Apple Devices app. They make the venerable iTunes app almost obsolete.

The software combination is the new way to manage an iPhone or iPad on a Windows PC.

Can you get real work done inside a Vision Pro? Yes — although it comes with many asterisks.

It’s closely correlated to how much work you can do entirely on the web without specialized apps, although the virtual Mac display can smooth that down a bit. Surprisingly, typing in Vision Pro is great.

Working on Vision Pro has its annoyances, quirks and limitations, but I think Apple has built a very solid foundation here for a version-one product.

Check out our video or keep reading below.

Spatial photos and videos look incredibly lifelike in full 3D while wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset. But how do you take photos with Vision Pro? It might be confusing at first since there’s no Camera app in the headset. Instead, Vision Pro uses a new Capture app.

But don’t worry. Any photos or videos you take with Vision Pro will sync to your Photos library. And they’re fully compatible with your other Apple devices, although you’ll only see them there in a boring two dimensions, like it’s still 2023. Yawn.

You can now buy the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip from Apple’s Certified Refurbished store. The machine launched less than four months ago, in late October 2023.

While the M3 Pro/Max MacBook Pros also debuted in October, they are not listed for sale on Apple’s refurbished store.

Released in 2017, the Nintendo Switch remains a popular hybrid gaming system that allows for play at home or on the move. While the device itself is familiar, accessories present new possibilities.

For a limited time, you can pick up a 3-in-1 Nintendo Switch Docking Station for only $19.99 (regularly $24). For that low price, you’ll gain a fresh experience with the gaming console you already own. This deal makes it easier than ever to improve your Nintendo Switch experience.

Screen sharing from your Mac to Vision Pro is a great way to work inside the headset while using your Mac’s keyboard and trackpad. You can enlarge your Mac’s screen to enormous size, and surround it with apps that work inside Vision Pro.

It’s called Mac Virtual Display. Unfortunately, it’s limited to only one Mac screen. But set up right, it can be the ultimate big screen setup — without the actual big screens.

Here’s how to use your Mac with Vision Pro.

Ugreen rolled out three new series of Revdock hubs Tuesday compatible with Macs, including the Revodok Max 213 Thunderbolt 4 dock with 40Gbps transfer speeds, support for dual 4K displays and a staggering 13 ports.

“The Max 213 [is] the premier product specifically tailored for professionals in fields such as media, data/financial analysis, photography, audio/video production and more,” the company said. “With ultra-high speed and ultra-high efficiency, it facilitates seamless collaboration and productivity.”

One of the design goals of a folding iPhone is a unit no thicker than one of Apple’s current handsets when folded closed, according to information leaking out of the company. In fact, a pair of incredibly thin folding iPhone prototypes already exist, according to a new report.

Cupertino’s efforts in this area have supposedly been going on since 2018, but available components haven’t been up to making the device the company wants to build.

If you recently got an iPad, you probably want a stylus so you can write and draw on it more precisely than you can with your fingertips. But Apple Pencil 2 might set you back $129. So how about something similar for less than half the price?

A good option is the SwitchEasy EasyPencil Pro. You can get the fourth-gen version of it in the Cult of Mac Store for just $47.99. Plus you can get 20% off tips for different uses. Or you can nab the third-gen EasyPencil for only $43.99. Sale ends today.

Apple researchers released an open-source artificial intelligence model called MGIE that responds to a user typing natural language — simply saying what they want — to alter an image. Apple’s new AI image editing tool could wind up making it easy for iPhone or Mac owners to tweak photos.

MGIE — short for MMLM-Guided Image Editing — can handle Photoshop-style tweaks, global photo optimization and local editing. But output quality remains limited for now. And only Apple knows what it plans to do with its AI image editor.

The M1 Ultra Mac Studio set a new benchmark for computing power in a package smaller than Mac Pro when it came out in spring 2022. Today’s setup sparked discussion about the relative merits of the powerful desktop machine, with one user citing a surprising point of praise — the Mac Pro braided power cord!

iFixit’s Apple Vision Pro teardown continues, now with a focus on the headset’s incredibly high-resolution displays. As the experts point out, “You can fit ~54 Vision Pro pixels into a single iPhone pixel.”

However, the screen looks to the viewer like it’s a lower resolution than an iPhone.

The Vision Pro Persona is a 3D representation of yourself that will appear to others in FaceTime calls. It also fuels the EyeSight feature, which shows a ghostly 3D version of your eyes on the outside of the headset to make the device seem less isolating. 

Many people criticize the Personas for looking unnatural, so the feature very much deserves its beta label. However, there are some things you can do to create a better one. If you didn’t create a Vision Pro Persona while setting up your headset, or want to redo it to make yours look a little less uncanny, I’ll show you how to do it at any time.

Apple’s smallest desktop computer is a powerhouse in a small package, but it doesn’t come with peripheral devices — so what are the best keyboards for Mac mini?

Whether you use a Mac mini for work or gaming, adding the right keyboard is crucial for maximizing your productivity and comfort.

I’ve always been fascinated with keyboards and have several. I’ll show you 10 of my favorite choices for great keyboards to use with Mac mini below.