This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: iPhone rumors are flying, and some of them sound fantastic! But then there’s the one about a potentially troublesome mute button…

Also on The CultCast:

• Apple TV+ gets ready to invade theaters in a big way.
• Celebrity portraits created by Midjourney V5 look shockingly realistic. Erfon’s been trying his hand at AI-generated art, too, and he’s loving this new technology.
• We’re giving away a selfie stick with superpowers.

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.

Our sponsors: Mylio and ExpressVPN

• Mylio: It’s the easy way to manage all your photos on all your devices. Try it at Mylio.com/cultcast.
• ExpressVPN: Get fast, global protection for every device you own. Try it at Expressvpn.com/cultcast.

Fans weren’t bothered by an extra-long wait for Ted Lasso‘s third season. The season premiere brought a tidal wave of viewers, pushing Apple TV+ back to near the top of the ratings charts.

And Shrinking, another Apple TV+ comedy, is finishing its freshman season with strong viewership.

ChatGPT keeps making headlines for its ability to quickly generate effective writing and even write iPhone apps, but how can it benefit you and your website?

This lifetime license for the ChatGPT WordPress plugin answers that question, and it’s now on sale as part of our Spring Blowout for only $39.97. You’ll have to hurry, though, since this best-of-web pricing only lasts through April 13.

Apple TV+ spy thriller Liaison hits a few snags this week on its way to justice and catharsis. A mostly great episode finds Alison, Gabriel, Dumas and Sophie Saint Roche making deals with unlikely allies on their mad scramble to prevent a private war against the whole of Europe.

Didier is desperate, Sabine is growing hopeless, Alison’s father is in critical condition, and Dumas grows a conscience. There’s blood in the water in this episode, entitled “Family Album.” Who will make it out alive?

Apple TV+ series Dear Edward brings its tedious first season to a close this week. Edward winds up lost in the big city, sending his adoptive mom Lacey into hysterics. Plus, Dee Dee’s feeling very unappreciated, Shay and Edward get a second chance, Steve and Amanda have a choice to make, and there’s a party on the horizon.

The Dear Edward season finale, entitled “Shelter,” is a whiff of an ending to a whiff of a season. This show, supposedly about grief in the wake of a catastrophic plane crash, turns out to be largely about nothing at all.

With a subscription to Instabridge, you can enjoy 2GB of fast, reliable cellular data per month for the rest of your days. This deal comes without roaming fees, and gets you fast 5G coverage at a fraction of the normal price.

Best of all, a lifetime subscription to Instabridge is on sale during our Spring Digital Blowout Sale for only $149 (regularly $1,000). That’s the best price you’ll find on the web.

Hello Tomorrow! returns for more Space Age shenanigans — and a brutal comeuppance for one of Earth’s biggest liars. The Apple TV+ show about a guy selling bunk timeshares on the moon finally hits the pause button on momentum to allow a devastating realization to sink in.

Salesman/con artist Jack Billings may be more doomed than he thinks, even as he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams. Shirley and Joey have had enough, Myrtle gets the sign she’s been searching for, Herb makes good, and Jack has to save an old hero in this stellar episode, entitled “The Gargon Mothership.”

The Narwal Freo is a vacuum-mop combination cleaner with five different cleaning modes to make sure your home sparkles. The cleaning modes include vacuum, mop, vacuum and mop, vacuum then mop, and FreoMode. That last one creates a custom cleaning approach based on your home’s specific floor types and your specific needs.

With an advanced lidar sensor system, the Freo can learn what types of floors you have — and what kinds of messes typically befoul them. Then the smart little robovac comes up with a way to clean them better than your typical camera-driven robot vacuum can.

Apple TV+ served up a new trailer Thursday for Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker. It’s a two-part documentary exploring the life of the German tennis legend. He triumphed at Wimbledon at age 17 and won 49 career titles, including six Grand Slams plus an Olympic gold medal. And then he went off the rails, life-wise.

Following an ugly divorce involving infidelity, the troubled celebrity ended up in prison for concealing assets to avoid paying debts. But in the trailer, filled with other tennis stars, Becker says a new chapter in his life is coming. The documentary debuts April 7.

Apple TV+ limited series Extrapolations steeps itself in sci-fi wonkery this week as members of a tech billionaire family find themselves on opposing sides of a terrorist action meant to move the needle on climate change.

Novelist Dave Eggers joins the show’s writing team this week, and Edward Norton, Indira Varma and Michael Gandolfini lead the cast.

While this isn’t a bad version of what Extrapolations set out to do, the show’s sprawling mission statement remains blinkered.

5 Movies, likely the first iPhone app generated almost entirely by ChatGPT, was approved by Apple and published on the App Store late Thursday night.

Morten Just, an independent developer of Mac apps who’s based in Switzerland, guided ChatGPT through the creation of the movie-recommendation app. Just said he told the AI what he wanted, then pasted its output into an Xcode project, writing only an estimated 2% to 5% of the code himself. The chatbot even fixed bugs as Just pasted in error messages.

“What matters to me is creating software that is useful and solves real problems,” Just told Cult of Mac after his 5 Movies app went live. “If I can do that faster with AI, I will.”

Apple’s 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro is available with massive discounts of up to $200. The entry-level model is available with a $100 discount on Amazon, bringing its price down to $1,899 from $1,999.

The best deal is on the 1TB configuration of the machine. After a $200 off, you can get the M2 MacBook Pro for $2,299.

It’s wedding time this week on the season finale of Shrinking, the Apple TV+ comedy where no one has problems — and everyone has to solve them anyway.

Brian’s dad has a short time to make his son’s day by agreeing to be his best man, even if the idea of a gay wedding makes him uncomfortable. Jimmy helps Alice get over her latest round of depression about her deceased mom. Sean and Liz head into business together. And Gaby looks for a second job with a little help from Paul.

It’s truly one half of an hour of TV — you can’t take that away from it.

Today’s featured setup carries a strong vibe of minimalism — so much so it appeared to lack even a computer, at least at a glance at the photograph. But then we realized the laptop was stashed away in unusual (and questionable) fashion.

We recently featured a setup with the MacBook Pro and iPad hidden on a little shelf mounted under the desk. This time the laptop is stashed in a case sitting directly under the monitor stand’s base (not recommended).

The big March Sale at software activation keys provider CdkeySales.com blooms with big deals ahead of spring. This week, you can take advantage of great sales on Microsoft Windows, Office and more. Don’t miss this one. It’s your chance for major savings.

The mystery AirPods referenced in iOS 16.4 are a new version of AirPods Pro 2 with a USB-C case, according to a reliable Apple tipster. And the product could be out in the next few months.

If true, these will be a significant step in transitioning the iPhone ecosystem away from Lightning and to USB-C.

Eva’s been shot and might be dying on this week’s season three finale of Truth Be Told, the Apple TV+ show about a true crime podcaster.

After last week’s shooting, podcaster Poppy goes looking for the truth behind the recent grim series of events. Trini blames herself for Eva’s fate, and Markus has only one more chance to redeem himself. Can they catch the person responsible for all this misery before it’s too late?

The episode, entitled “A Kiss Not Mine Alone,” brings a nicely plotted, excellently performed close to a very fine season.

We’ve all heard of tablets you can draw on — looking at you, iPad lineup — but how about a 24-inch drawing display?

Xencelabs Technologies unveiled its new Pen Display 24 Studio Series at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, which ends Friday.

If you’re serious about your art, it could be for you.

There’s more than one place in your home that might need a little spring cleaning. (And no, this time we’re not talking about your waxy ears.) You may have remembered to clean the little area beneath the fridge, but your internet could still be clogged with ads and third-party onlookers.

Luckily, there’s a way to clean that up, too. AdGuard can give you safer, ad-free browsing on up to 10 devices simultaneously. And now, you can get a five-year subscription to this easy-to-use VPN for only $34.99 (regularly $359) with coupon code SPRING15. But, you better hurry. This sale ends at 11:59 p.m. Pacific on April 3.

New Apple TV+ competition show My Kind of Country gives three celebrity judges a chance to train burgeoning country musicians in an attempt to turn them into superstars.

The talent is unconventional and the stakes are high in the show, which is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and Kacey Musgraves (and underwritten by Apple Music). Nashville better get ready. (And judge Orville Peck better take that thing off his face.)

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency put an AirTag into an item that was suspected to be on its way to illegal drug dealers. The hope was that Apple’s item tracker would enable DEA agents to discover the location of the criminals.

This may be the first time this has happened, and it also may be the last. We don’t know how useful the AirTag was in the investigation, but Apple deliberately makes the device very hard to use for surveillance of any type.

Some software is just essential. And until April 3 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific, we’ve got a great deal on one of computing’s bedrock software suites: Microsoft Office Pro for Mac or Windows. This multi-app bundle comes with the software that functionally runs the professional world.

Right now, a lifetime license to these essential Microsoft Office programs is on sale for just $39.97 (regularly $349) during our Spring Digital Blowout sale.

The Federal Trade Commission wants to make cancelling subscriptions as simple as starting them. The US government agency proposed a “click to cancel” rule that would make it easy for consumers to escape recurring subscriptions and memberships.

Apple users can easily leave subscriptions they signed up for thorough the App Store. That’s not necessarily true for ones started elsewhere.

Nanoleaf opened up preorders for its newly Matter-enabled Essentials lineup of smart bulbs and light strips Wednesday.

Thanks to the Matter smart-home standard, they work with HomeKit and other smart-home platforms. But there is one catch regarding their use with HomeKit.

COVID-19 lockdowns in China didn’t just mess up iPhone production, they inspired the invention of a bizarre new machine with fake lips you can use with your smartphone to “kiss” someone far away.

Chinese startup Siweifushe launched the MUA — named after kissing sounds — a couple of weeks ago, selling more than 3,000 of them and receiving orders for 20,000 more, a new report said.