December 10, 2012: Apple fixes an early Apple Maps error that caused several motorists in Victoria, Australia, to become stranded in the remote Murray-Sunset National Park.
Previously, the egregious Apple Maps glitch showed the town of Mildura nearly 45 miles from its actual location.
In the aftermath, Victoria police describe Apple’s navigation app as “potentially life-threatening.” That’s pretty much the opposite of “it just works.”
If you’re hunting for a portable Bluetooth speaker that delivers exceptional sound without breaking the bank — maybe as a holiday gift — now’s the time to pounce. The Soundcore Motion X600 — my all-time favorite of its kind — is currently on sale for $139.99 at both Amazon and Soundcore, marking a $60 discount off its regular $199.99 price tag.
AI voiceover generator iSpeech instantly turns text into natural, human-sounding audio in 32 languages. If you need to produce professional-sounding audio tracks for your projects, this AI tool will save you loads of time (or loads of money, if you typically hire voice actors).
So, ditch the mic, forget about hiring outside help, and generate your voiceovers the easy (and cheap) way with lifetime access to iSpeech for just $39.99.
Apple is bundling three months of free Apple Arcade access with every Apple Gift Card purchase. Best Buy is running an even better offer, bundling access to Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and Apple TV with an Apple Gift Card.
The best part? The offer applies to both new and returning subscribers.
Apple’s HomePod smart speaker rarely sees a discount, but a special holiday deal from B&H cuts the price by $20 for a limited time.
The timing is awesome, because a HomePod makes a great gift for the Apple lover in your life. And with this deal, you can scoop up a full-size, second-generation Home Pod for just $279 in either midnight or white.
Apple TV has emerged as the streaming platform to beat this awards season, capturing half of the Best Drama series nominations at the 2026 Golden Globe Awards unveiled Monday — a remarkable achievement that signals the tech giant’s arrival as a major force in prestige television.
Three of the six nominations in the coveted Best Drama TV series category belong to Apple — the mind-bending workplace thriller Severance, the darkly humorous espionage drama Slow Horses and the breakout new sci-fi series Pluribus. That puts Apple ahead of streaming rivals Netflix and HBO Max, which each landed only one drama series nomination in the category.
December 9, 2011: Apple opens a store in New York’s fabled Grand Central Terminal, the company’s fifth Manhattan retail outlet.
Overlooking the terminal’s Main Concourse, the enormous Apple Grand Central makes a stunning addition to the 140-year-old train station, which is one of New York’s busiest transportation hubs.
This deal on Setapp AI gives you access to 260-plus Mac apps, as well as powerful AI tools. It’s a welcome addition to MacPaw’s pioneering and popular Mac app subscription service, Setapp, that’s fine-tuned for the AI age.
Grab this deal to get a full year of Setapp AI for just $68.99, then take advantage of killer Mac apps and AI tools that will streamline every part of your workflow.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max is Apple’s flagship phone. But in popular YouTuber MKBHD’s yearly Smartphone Awards 2025, the iPhone 17 bagged the Phone of the Year award, beating its siblings and Android rivals.
The iPhone Air and iPhone 16e also won three more awards in different categories.
Despite its age and stiff competition from Android flagships, the iPhone 16 was the bestselling smartphone in the world in the third quarter of 2025. More impressively, a new report from Counterpoint Research indicates iPhones bagged the top four slots.
Even the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which launched toward the end of the quarter, made the list.
You can ping a lost Apple Watch from your iPhone, giving you an easy way to find your misplaced wearable.
If you take your Apple Watch off at the end of the day, forgetting to throw it on the charger, you might not remember where you left it the following morning. (The reverse has always been a cool feature of the Apple Watch. Read our post: How to find your lost iPhone with Apple Watch.)
Now, you can find a lost Apple Watch from your iPhone. Here’s how it works.
Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, reportedly reassured his team Monday that he won’t become the next high-level exec to leave the company.
Srouji leads Apple’s internal custom chip design team, the group behind Apple silicon, the Neural Engine and several of the company’s other in-house processors. Losing him would have been a major blow to Apple’s hardware division.
December 8, 1975: San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur Paul Terrell opens the Byte Shop, one of the world’s first computer stores — and the first to sell an Apple computer.
Years before Apple would open its own retail outlets, the Byte Shop stocks the first 50 Apple-1 computers built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Apple is adding new language options for Fitness+, its subscription workout service. Hundreds of workouts and meditations will be digitally dubbed into Spanish and other languages. In addition, Fitness+ is expanding to 28 new markets around the world.
The expansion should broaden the appeal of a service voice that reportedly hasn’t found many customers so far.
December 7, 2007: Apple opens its magisterial store on West 14th Street in New York City. The new Apple Store features a three-story glass staircase deemed the most complex ever made.
The store is Apple’s biggest in Manhattan (and second-largest in the United States, after the one on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue). The first three-story Apple retail outlet, it boasts an entire floor dedicated to services. It’s also the first Apple Store to offer free Pro Labs classes to customers.
The sheer size of this Apple Store — with its 46-foot Genius Bar — proves impressive. However, its astonishing spiral staircase steals the show as its most iconic design feature.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: With the sudden departure of Apple’s UI design chief Alan Dye — and the prompt naming of a Steve Jobs-era veteran to take his place — are we looking at a software renaissance for iPhones and Macs?
We certainly hope so!
Also on The CultCast:
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 version, embedded below.
AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation have dropped to near their Black Friday low at just $99.99. Amazon’s stock of entry-level AirPods 4 (without ANC) seems depleted, because those earbuds shot up to cost more than their more sophisticated siblings!
With the “regular” AirPods 4 AWOL from holiday sales, you should jump on this deal on AirPods 4 with ANC if you want to gift a pair of Apple’s affordable earbuds.
Finding an outlet at the airport or keeping devices charged on a trip can feel like a treasure hunt. But this portable USB-C travel hub changes the game. Designed for on-the-go charging, this hub lets you power up multiple devices from just one outlet — no need for extra adapters or clutter.
It includes a high-power USB PD slot for MacBooks and iPads, and a built-in wireless MagSafe charger for iPhone, AirPods and more.
Now at a budget-friendly $23.99 (regularly $36), it’s a great travel companion for those who value convenience, functionality and, most importantly, fully charged batteries.
The best people to ask about Steve Lemay, the new head of user interface design at Apple, are the people who’ve worked with him.
Spoiler alert: They seem absolutely thrilled. The word “excited” keeps coming up in their comments on the change in leadership.
Here’s what the people in a position to really know Lemay have to say about him.
December 6, 2000: Apple Computer’s stock price falls after the company posts its first quarterly loss since Steve Jobs’ return to Cupertino in 1997.
Shares tumble $3 to just $14 a share as doom-predicting pundits worry that the big Apple comeback might come screeching to a halt. Little did they know …
Alan Dye, the former chief of Apple’s user interface design, has done brilliant, groundbreaking work — but almost no one is getting to experience it.
Dye just got poached by Meta, and the majority opinion among Apple fans seems to be “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Some of Dye’s critics, like John “King of the Apple nerds” Gruber, are scathing. “His tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company,” Gruber wrote after Dye’s departure from Apple became public Wednesday.
Dye, of course, is not perfect. He is rightly getting criticized for Liquid Glass, the shiny new interface in Apple’s operating systems, that’s been tweaked, rolled back, tweaked again, and is now semi-optional for users who don’t want it.
Where’s the conviction Apple is famous for? Steve Jobs must be spinning.
But Dye’s best work is spectacular, important and deep. You’ve just not seen it.
If you’re trying to listen to podcasts or music on your iPhone, it can be annoying when your AirPods keep switching to other devices, like your Mac or iPad.
Personally, I don’t mind this behavior. If I’m sitting at my Mac, I want to use the Music and the Podcasts apps on the Mac. But a lot of people consider their iPhone their primary device — and always want to play audio from their phone, no matter which other device they’re using.
If you want your iPhone to retain supreme control over your ears, here’s how to disable AirPods auto-switching.
The M4 MacBook Air is the best mobile computer for most people, and a sweet new deal drops both the 13-inch and 15-inch models to low, low prices. You can snag the 13-incher for only $799 or the 15-incher for only $999.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over, but you can still find wickedly good deals for a beautiful and powerful Apple laptop.
The first trailer for Apple TV’s upcoming documentary series Born to be Wild means well, offering hope in the face of species extinction. But it leans so hard on baby-animal cuteness and human hero worship that I found it cloying. Nowhere does it acknowledge humans as a major cause of animal extinctions. The series itself most likely does, but we’ll have to see when it airs.
The emotional six-part documentary series debuts December 19.
Classic console game Red Dead Redemption, as well as companion title Undead Nightmare, are now free to play on iPhone and iPad for Netflix subscribers.
Released in 2010 and widely regarded as one of the best video games of all time, Red Dead Redemption mixes Western themes, gunfighter gameplay and a vast open world that players can walk (or gallop) through.
It’s also one of the most emotionally resonant and artistically accomplished titles to ever come out of Rockstar Games. If you own an iPhone or iPad, and subscribe to Netflix, playing Red Dead Redemption should fill up your weekend!