Whether it’s wedged between the cushions or kicked far under the couch, a handy-dandy feature in iOS 17 and tvOS 17 lets you find your lost Apple TV remote using your iPhone.

Sure, you can take the L and simply use your iPhone or Apple Watch to control your Apple TV. But I like having the physical remote on hand, too.

The mind races when one imagines how many hours of human life might have been saved if everyone had this feature 30 years ago. Let me show you how to find your AWOL Apple TV remote with your iPhone.

iPhone, iPad, MacBook, AirPods … the more Apple gear we collect, the more important is it to have a multiple-charging cable. The inCharge X Max — a six-in-one cable with Lightning, USB-C and more — cuts down on the clutter in your bag with its compact design and multiple connections.

As the Cult of Mac review of the inCharge X says, these cables are “adaptable enough to enable almost any type of Apple device to get power from almost any charger.” And for a limited time, you can get one of these multi-tip cables at a new low price: just $19.97 with code INCHARGE.

Apple Watch shipments dropped almost 20% year over year in the first quarter of 2024. Market analysts blame some of the decline on Apple being temporarily forced to halt sales of its most recent wearables in a patent dispute over blood oxygen monitoring in units sold in the United States.

AirPods sales also declined in Q1 2024 but for a different reason.

Last chance: Save a whopping 40% on SwitchEasy’s great Skin Silicone Magnetic Apple Watch Band. For just $17.99 (regularly $29.99), you can get a great-looking magnetic band that’s super comfortable and great for the office or the gym. But hurry: The sale ends soon.

The Skin Silicone band is a great example of a comfortable, stylish, durable and easy-to-adjust band. We gave it four-and-a-half stars in our hands-on review. The magnetic closure keeps it secure on your wrist, while getting it on or off is a snap. And the soft silicone feels great.

It’s a hot seller, and we have it on sale exclusively for Cult of Mac readers.

Apple Pencil Pro is the latest and greatest iPad stylus coming out of Cupertino. It adds a new “squeeze” gesture, an internal gyroscope, haptic feedback and Find My support. I’m not a digital artist, so for this iPad Pencil review, I tested the stylus by writing notes, entering text with Scribble and doing moderate editing of photographs.

Plenty of artists have reviewed the new accessory, so my goal was to answer the question, “Does a typical iPad user need Apple Pencil Pro?” Or would a cheaper alternative suffice?

Audio brands and manufacturers can now buy cutting-edge reference designs for solid-state, all-silicon micro speakers online to bring new generations of true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds and in-ear monitors (IEMs) to market faster, xMEMS Labs said Tuesday.

This is another step toward realizing the “ultrasonic revolution” I wrote about in-depth in November 2023. In it, old-school speaker technology still used even in tiny earbuds may give way to new solid-state tech providing the full sonic range digitally compressed audio has compromised.

“Steve Jobs was a digital pioneer, but when he went home, he listened to vinyl,” classic rocker and noted audiophile Neil Young once said. He was getting at all the sonic detail lost to digital compression in forms like MP3 files.

The Netflix streaming service will soon stop working on second- and third-generation Apple TV models. It’s not a shocking development as both are over a decade old.

If you’ve been looking for a reason to buy a newer tvOS device, it may have just arrived. (By coincidence, Verizon currently offers the Apple TV 4K for just $89.99.)

Apple TV+ subscribers are just as happy with their streaming service as Netflix subscribers are, according to new data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. That’s after Apple’s offering improved considerably in this year’s rankings.

But neither scored as well on the survey of U.S. consumers as Amazon Prime did.

HomePod (2nd generation) is a great smart speaker, but the $300 price tag holds some folks back. That’s $600 for a pair. But now you can get a great deal on HomePod 2 for a price of $175 for one, or two for $350, thanks to a sale at Verizon.

Sorry, not the white one, just the midnight option. But still!

A Virginia carpenter put Apple AirTag trackers on some of his tools so he could find them if they were stolen. It worked beyond his wildest expectations — he led police to what eventually turned out to be multiple collections of 15,000 stolen construction tools.

This is far from the first time an AirTag has helped locate a stolen item. But it’s never been quite this enourmously successful before.

Qualcomm tried a new spoof of a legendary Apple ad campaign Sunday, coming in 14 years late and more than a few dollars short. The new ad for Arm-powered PCs stars “I’m a Mac” actor Justin Long pretending that notifications would drive him away from his MacBook.

The ad appeared at the end of Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon Computex 2024 Keynote: The PC Reborn.” You can see it and Long’s other work for Apple and competitors below.

Some computer setups just seem to have it all. Today’s featured workstation sports a new M3 Pro MacBook Pro with hefty amounts of memory and storage, plus a speedy Thunderbolt 4 dock connected to a well-curated selection of peripherals. Even the gear stands and furniture are especially nice.

The streaming music service Spotify just increased its prices for new U.S. subscribers. The costs of most subscription options are now above those of its arch rival, Apple Music.

The new prices go into effect for current subscribers in July.

Apple will overhaul its Settings app across iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS 15 when it unveils the updates at WWDC24, according to a report Friday. In other words, not everything at the big developers conference will be about AI.

Update: Control Center, which provides easy access to frequently used features on iPhones (as well as Macs and iPads), should see changes, too. Apple will upgrade it “with a new music widget and improvements to how it operates smart home appliances,” Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman wrote over the weekend in his PowerOn newsletter.

The iPhone 16 Pro could sport the world’s slimmest bezels on a smartphone. Its borders will apparently measure just 1.2mm, with the iPhone 16 Pro Max having even slimmer bezels at 1.15mm.

The slimmer bezels should help offset the size increase due to Apple using larger displays on its 2024 iPhones.

Don’t get your heart set on new Macs launching at WWDC24 next week. A generally reliable tipster predicts that that’ll be none unveiled at Apple’s developer conference.

And not just Macs. Supposedly the agenda includes no new hardware at all.

Kids (and adults) love to collect toys, but what if they could create their own? That’s precisely the point with the Toybox 3D printer deluxe bundle. This 3D printer for kids’ toys packs innovative technology into a simplified product that’s perfect for young minds.

Wanna get your own? We just cut the cost of this 3D toy printer to just $348.99 (regularly $439).

Apple’s 2024 iPad Air ships with a binned M2 chip featuring a 9-core GPU. The company’s original announcement claimed it packs a 10-core GPU.

The Cupertino giant silently updated the iPad Air’s tech specs page to reflect this change.

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: In the near future, your iPhone might look as wild and unique as you want it to. Home Screen customization options, rumored to arrive in iOS 18, could bring a new level of personality to iPhones. And then there’s the AI-generated emoji we’ve been hearing about.

Hold onto your hats, iPhone owners. Things are about to get weird!

Also on The CultCast:

• No joke: Siri might get the brain transplant it needs to remain relevant in the ChatGPT era.
• Fascinating new videos show how rigorously Apple tests iPhones. We’re talking firehoses, an iPhone-flinging robot and a seriously advanced shake table.
• Erfon wants to get his hands on Nomad’s new tracking card, which works with Apple’s Find My network, fits in a wallet, and recharges via MagSafe.
• Griffin explains how easy it is to give your Mac a makeover with custom icons, folders and more.
• And we wrap it up with a new edition of What We’re Into!

Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.

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Build your own app (iOS, Android and/or Windows — or all three simultaneously) with Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 and the 2024 Premium Learn to Code Certification Bundle.

This double deal features Microsoft Visual Studio Professional, an integrated development environment where you can code complex projects, along with video lectures teaching beginner coding. And you can get the whole thing for just $52.97 for a limited time.

Marvel Studios’ new What If…? An Immersive Story is a free app for Apple’s Vision Pro headset that combines interactivity with storytelling in a brand-new way. Is it a game? Is it an episode of the What If…? animated TV series? It’s not entirely either. It’s an hour-long story where you’re the main character, casting spells with your hands and collecting the Infinity Stones.

If you aren’t a Marvel fan, you’ll find the story a bit drab. But if you want to see the bleeding edge of what’s possible in gaming when you can seamlessly switch between VR and AR with natural hand controls, you need to check it out.

It’s like no other game I’ve ever played.

Apple could add new text effects to iMessage in iOS 18. One of the effects reportedly includes the ability to animate individual words in a message. If you’re curious about how to bold text in iMessage, Apple has some useful tricks that can help make your messages stand out.

iMessage, Apple’s proprietary instant messaging service, already supports many message effects and animations to add some excitement to texts. The possible new text effects in iOS 18 should make things even more eye-catching and fun.

There are a few hidden gestures on your iPhone that you absolutely need to know. You’re typing out a long text on your iPhone and you need to go back to fix a typo. Tapping on the screen to move the cursor feels like a shot in the dark — but there’s a secret gesture to move around and select text.

Here are three top iPhone tips. Also in this article: how to select and delete a bunch of emails, text messages, anything in a list at once; and the secret gestures that undo and redo. Like, for example, if you accidentally delete a bunch of emails.

For years Keychron made its bones on good mechanical keyboards. Now it’s jumping into the scissor-switch game with a pair of Keychron ultra-slim keyboards that are direct Magic Keyboard competitors.

They looks the part, include solid features and beat Apple on price by a mile.

Some people don’t amp up the sound in their computer setups simply because they lack room for the speakers. So they just use their computer or monitor speakers. But what if somebody made tiny but powerful speakers that could fit almost anywhere? Somebody did — Gallo Acoustics Micro Speakers. And today’s Mac Studio setup uses them for rich sound.