Cult of Mac

If you own an iPhone XS or newer, your device comes with eSIM built in. That means you can skip physical SIM cards and simply set up cellular plans for international travel right on your phone, avoiding roaming charges wherever you go.

Apple Arcade normally grows by one game a week, but Apple added no less than 20 new titles to the service on Thursday.

These include TMNT Splintered Fate, What The Car?, Disney SpellStruck and Cityscapes: Sim Builder — all exclusive to Apple Arcade.

You might’ve dropped your iPhone on the floor and felt massive relief to find it undamaged. Or maybe a bit cracked. But what happens when an iPhone plummets 14,000 feet?

Thanks to TikTok and a skydiver who failed to secure his handset, now we know. At least in this one very lucky case.

Before the work-from-home revolution, cloud storage was a boon. Now, it’s a necessity. For so many of us, the office isn’t in some cubicle or even our home laptop. It’s wherever we are, on whatever device we can access. Files need to be both accessible and secure, and that’s why savvy cloud users are turning to Koofr.

Now that Koofr is offering 1TB of lifetime cloud storage for just $139.99 (regularly $2,700), you can expect even more people to jump on board.

Apple’s Maryland store became the company’s first retail store to unionize earlier this year. This was despite Apple’s best efforts to head off all unionization attempts.

The store employees are now demanding a 10% hike in their pay, overtime policies and more time off. More importantly, they also want Apple to allow consumers to tip retail employees.

The Ford CEO Jim Farley indicated his company will not end support for Apple’s CarPlay in the vehicles it makes. He said the decision was an easy one because a majority of Ford buyers own Apple products.

He was asked the question in an interview because rival GM recently announced it will end CarPlay support in some of its vehicles.

Skip the monthly cost of web hosts and get it all your website management needs covered in one go. With DoRoyal, you get a host that can help you manage, protect and grow your web space, and it’s on sale for a super-low price.

A lifetime subscription is now on sale for only $49.99 (regularly $750), but it’s up to you to get started.

Don’t expect record-breaking profits when Apple reveals its financial results from the first three months of 2023. Quite the opposite. Analysts are predicting that the company’s revenue and profits will be down when compared to the same quarter of 2022.

If true, this will be the second quarter in a row in which global problems cut into Apple’s bottom line.

Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! wraps its second season with an action-packed episode this week entitled “Over and Done.” Josh and Melissa are being held captive, and unless some unlikely people decide to change their ways and recover from past wounds, they’ll be killed or married — or both!

It’s a lovely little wrap to the big-hearted show’s second season.

Reddit updated its iOS app to allow rich-link previews for shared content, the social media chat site said Tuesday. That makes it easier to see what someone texted your way before you click through.

Before now, you’d just see the URL and have nothing else to go on in terms of what was shared, short of words in the URL or an explanation in the sender’s text.

The Big Door Prize focuses on the prickly mayor of Deerfield this week. The Apple TV+ show, about a small town interrupted in a big way by a machine that’s supposed to be capable of telling people’s futures, digs deep into the hidden feelings among Deerfield’s citizenry.

The episode, entitled “Izzy,” proves very affecting.

Goldenerre calls its Mesh Link Apple Watch Bands its “latest statement piece,” and the company’s not kidding. The beautiful, hand-assembled band will make your wearable stand out like the belle of the ball.

And it’s new in the Cult of Mac Store for $148.

Ted Lasso finds almost everyone in a rut this week. Keeley is a wreck after leaked footage of her reaches the internet, and it may have even worse consequences than she fears. Ted thinks his wife is going to get engaged to someone else — and he’s not handling it well.

The thornier-than-usual episode, entitled “We’ll Never Have Paris,” still comes with the usual gallon of sentimentality we expect from the most popular show on Apple TV+.

It’s great that Apple put out a high-quality display that costs a lot less than the $5,000 Pro Display XDR. But the Studio Display, at $1,600, is still too pricey for many folks. If you’d rather have a 5K display for way less than a grand, today’s featured M2 Pro Mac mini setup is for you if you’re willing to do some work.

Following an instructional video included below, the user converted a 5K iMac to a 5K standard USB display for about $700.

Epic Games Fortnite was just added to the Amazon Luna cloud gaming service. That means the very popular game is playable on iPhone and iPad, as well as Mac.

Because of a dispute between Apple and Epic, Fortnite has been banned from the App Store since 2020. But it’s now on Luna.

In a move it calls “the beginning of the end of the password,” Google began rolling out passkeys for its accounts Wednesday. The move means that users of Apple devices can sign into these accounts using Face ID or Touch ID rather than a password.

The underlying tech already comes built into iPhone, Mac, etc.

Yeelight launched its highly customizable, Matter-compatible and almost Lego-like Cube ARGB Table Lamp at CES 2023. You can mix and match its Matrix, Panel and Spotlight elements to suit your computer setup in myriad ways.

And the company’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with early-bird deals of up to 36% off the standard kit ends in three days.

It’s easy to underestimate how much we rely on our smartphones — until we can’t use them. One time you definitely don’t want that to happen is when you’re in an unfamiliar country. But that’s precisely what awaits travelers who don’t plan ahead. The aloSIM Mobile Data Traveler plan is a cheap and easy way for vacationers to ensure they don’t get cut off from their data.

For a limited time, you can get aloSIM for only $24.99 (regularly $50). And on top of that, you’ll also get $50 of credits for international data. Staying in touch while abroad — whether that’s through social media, email or any other online communication method — has never been easier.

WhatsApp is working on allowing you to transfer your chat history from one iPhone to another without iCloud. A local transfer tool will make WhatsApp chat migration faster and easier.

Currently, your WhatsApp history must be backed up to iCloud before it is transferrable to another device. This is a time-consuming process and also requires you to have enough free space in your iCloud account.

Refurbished iPhones are “selling like hot cakes” in India. This is despite Apple not officially selling pre-owned iPhones in the country.

iPhones already dominate the premium smartphone market in India. However, its share in the secondary market is 2x higher.

If you’ve got a dream vacation (or a few) in mind, things can become complicated when it’s time to actually turn that trip into reality. Rather than do it alone or rely on an expensive travel agent, put the power of professional travel planning in your own hands.

A lifetime subscription to “ultimate travel buddy” VacayGo will give you access to travel-planning tools and unbeatable deals. It typically costs $1,119, but for a limited time, you can gain complete access to VacayGo for only $49.99 — the best price online.

After that deal, your savings are just getting started, though. This comprehensive tool will send you to your favorite destinations for less.

The mophie powerstation XL offers 20,000mAh that goes with you anywhere, always ready to charge up your iPhone, iPad or MacBook. It stores enough juice to keep devices going for days.

It comes at a relatively low price for such a high-capacity battery, especially one made by a very reputable company.

I put the consumer-grade power bank through testing to make sure real-world performance lives up to the specifications.

A check that Steve Jobs signed in the earliest days of Apple is up for auction. The Apple co-founder sent the check to a consulting firm way back in 1976, when the upstart computer company still operated out of Jobs’ garage.

Also up for auction: a Steve Jobs business card from when he ran NeXT in the early 1990s.

iPad mini, the most compact iPad in Apple’s lineup, is available with a whopping $170 discount. The deal knocks selected iPad mini 6 configurations to their lowest-ever price.

You can grab the entry-level iPad mini 6 with Wi-Fi for $399.99, a sweet $99.01 discount on its $499 price tag. The more significant discounts are available on the Wi-Fi + Cellular model with 256GB storage.

Cable Matters unveiled a foldable 4K USB-C hub Tuesday for hybrid workers to use on the road or in a home office.

“The Cable Matters Foldable USB-C Multiport Adapter with HDMI & USB Power Delivery (PD) converts a single USB-C port into a multimedia powerhouse, all in a small and ultra-portable form factor,” the company said.