This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Maybe, just maybe, Apple can make a metaverse competitor that won’t leave us ready to heave. Stranger things have happened, but we’re not so sure the long-rumored Apple mixed-reality headset will be right for us.

Also on The CultCast:

• Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite feature looks pretty cool and potentially lifesaving. Be sure to try the demo before you find yourself stranded on a mountaintop.
• We’re endlessly searching for a Black Friday deal on AirTags. (Editor’s note: Oh, wait, here’s one now: Grab an AirTag 4-pack for less than $80 before this deal disappears.)
• iPhone 4K video — it’s a scam!
• Erfon’s missing AirPods Max story takes a strange twist.
• You won’t believe how much somebody paid for an ancient pair of Steve Jobs’ stinky Birkenstocks.

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.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, there’s a good chance you’ll have some down time on the way. Whether you’re planning a trip to see family, doing some shopping, or just want to flex your Apple knowledge, this week we have some Awesome Apps to infuse some tech into your holiday week.

What do you give the golf lover who has everything? How about the luxury of perfecting their swing from anywhere? Make their holiday season with a great at-home golf simulator. For a limited time, you can get the Phigolf Premium Swing Trainer Bundle on sale for $199.99 or 28% off.

Aspiring IT and computer science professionals should consider earning professional certifications as part of their education and training. Want to prepare for the challenging exams ahead? Check out the Complete 2023 CompTIA Certification Course Super Bundle, which is on sale ahead of Black Friday for $49 — no coupon necessary.

PDF files are a fact of life online. All sorts of information, forms, contracts, applications and more come in the format, which is fixed to preserve formatting and resist having just anyone make changes. So you need special software to fill in, edit and sign a PDF, which can be a hassle.

That’s where UPDF comes in. It’s a versatile and easy-to-use PDF editor that’ll have you filling in and signing PDF files in no time, or even making more substantial changes, like reordering pages and converting files to other formats.

Even better, you can use UPDF on any platform for no additional cost. Cult of Mac readers can get UPDF at 53% off. Grab this deal (at the end of the article) and you will have an all-in-one PDF editor that works onMac, iOS, Windows and Android.

Traveling for the holidays can be fun, but it has its challenges. Some of those are a bit easier to manage if you have the distraction of your phone handy, but batteries have to die eventually. The Stand-O-Matic is a free-standing wireless charger that allows you to use your iPhone as it charges, so if long airport layovers have you down, at least you can stream something without killing your battery! And we’ve already dropped prices early during our Every Friday is Black Friday sale, so you can get the Stand-O-Matic for $39.99 instead of $129.

Apple TV+’s Mosquito Coast finds sanctuary at long last this week, but is it everything it appears to be? The Foxes are still learning hard lessons the hard way, surrounded at once by people who are like them and not —  and who know their place, unlike the Foxes.

Dina, Margot and Charlie have their doubts about their new home but Allie is all in, and he’s going to make sure they know how he feels. A hefty new complication rears its head in a tense episode of the thriller series about a family on the lam.

Three lucky winners in this week’s giveaway will be able to cast aside the Siri Remote forever. We’re giving away three Function101 Button Remotes for Apple TV.

But even if you don’t win, you can still free yourself from one of Apple’s most divisive devices. Retailing at just $29.95, the Button Remote is a deal for everyone who doesn’t like the Apple TV’s Siri Remote.

In this week’s edition of Apple TV+ limited series Shantaram, Lin recovers from cholera with Karla’s help, and she’s discovering she isn’t the moral person she’d been hoping she was deep down. Shah and Khan go to war over water, Prabhu gets a win, Ravi makes a chilling discovery, and Lisa and Modena have an ultimatum or two in front of them.

As the show enters its back half, Shantaram’s becoming a very agreeable place to hang — even with all the bad people hanging around.

Sick of awkward remote meetings and lockdown-style chats with loved ones? You can make video chatting more natural with the Three-in-One Self Videographer.

With this gadget, you won’t be forced to sit stiffly in front of your camera during video calls. And that newfound freedom doesn’t need to cost a fortune. You can get this motion-tracking Bluetooth camera, speaker and mount for your iPhone at an early Black Friday price. It’s just $49.99 while we have them in stock.

Mujjo is known for leather iPhone cases and wallets. It also makes sleeves and cases, and now it offers a new pair of vegan leather sleeves — one for a 14-inch MacBook Pro and one for a 16-inch MacBook Pro.

The elegant Envoy Laptop Sleeves, which look like they’d be equally at home in a lecture hall or a board room, are waterproof and offer room for the other stuff you need to carry around, too.

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It’s girlboss brunch time on this week’s Mythic Quest, the Apple TV+ show about the overworked, undervalued and confused team of executives and developers who keep a gaming company afloat. Jo, Poppy and Rachel go to brunch together and make some discoveries about themselves and each other.

Meanwhile, Ian and Dana search for inspiration in the desert. David gets excited because a Mythic Quest movie might be in the works, even though everyone and everything is screaming at him that it’s a bad idea. Also, Brad might not be the changed man he appears to be.

Totallee, known for its ultra-slim, lightweight and branding-free iPhone cases as well as charging accessories, is about to launch a big-time Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale.

Between November 21 and 28, products will go for half off their regular prices on Totallee’s website as well as Amazon and Walmart.

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If you have an iPhone 11, 12 or 13, now’s your chance to get a little extra protection for its beautiful screen and advanced camera lenses. This week all SwitchEasy screen protectors and lens protectors are on sale in the Cult of Mac Store.

So go ahead and check out the 20% off deals on SwitchEasy iPhone screen and lens protectors in the SwitchEasy Flash Sale and give your favorite gadget the protection it deserves. Sales ends November 18.

Apple TV+ comedy Acapulco, about an old millionaire reminiscing about his early life as a wage slave at a popular resort in the ’80s, takes two trips down memory lane this week. Diane relives her glory days before Las Colinas, while Maximo remembers a moral dilemma that cost him and rewarded him in equal measure.

There’s a party at the resort, and all the ghosts of Diane’s past are invited in an unfortunately middling episode.

Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro is getting a massive $499 discount on Amazon ahead of Black Friday. The attractive discount drops the entry-level 16-inch MacBook Pro price to $1,999.99—$499 cheaper than its MSRP.

You can also grab the 1TB storage configuration for $400 off.

A new external display for your computer setup is usually a joy to behold. It is, after all, what you look at most. And you probably just replaced your old one with a bigger, brighter and more beautiful new one. But sometimes buyer’s remorse creeps in. Is it actually the best screen for your needs that you can afford?

Today’s featured setup comes from a software coder who has started to have doubts about a substantial recent monitor purchase. Will he succumb to them? He’s keeping his eye on the return deadline and asking for advice.

Black Friday sales have become synonymous with savings on holiday shopping. And this extends to Microsoft software when you visit the Black Friday Sale at software activation keys provider CdkeySales.com.

As a Cult of Mac reader, you can click on the links below and get a great deal on Windows 10 that gets you a free upgrade to Windows 11. And you can dig up big savings on plenty of other Microsoft software, too.

To get the most savings, enter promo code CULT at CdkeySales.com. That will take an extra 35% off the site’s already-low prices on keys for Windows 10 Pro Global, Microsoft Office 2021 Pro and more.

Interrupting Chicken, the new Apple TV+ children’s show about a family of chickens who get lost in the power of books and storytelling, is a winning combination of beautiful animation, good voice acting, and charming and warm-hearted stories.

Based on the Caldecott Medal-winning book series of the same name, written and illustrated by David Ezra Stein, it’s another solid entry in Apple’s growing catalog of kids shows.

Spirited, the Apple TV+ musical comedy remake of A Christmas Carol, is a depressingly literal, overly sarcastic and nightmarishly unfunny look at the lives of the people who work from beyond the grave to make Christmas cheer.

In the film, which hits the streaming service today, Will Ferrell plays a spirit who’s lost his mojo when he meets a man who’s more persuasive than he is. The laughs never start and the songs never stop in this gaudy waste of money and talent.

Around 1.4 billion people use Microsoft Office daily to create and share documents, crunch numbers and more. Mac owners don’t need to miss out on the Office party — or even pay a lot for the popular software suite.

For a limited time, you can pick up a pair of lifetime licenses to Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021 for only $59.99 (regularly $698).

Accessories maker Laut just released a dozen new iPhone 14 cases, screen protectors and camera lens shields in the Cult of Mac Store. They cover a range of styles and applications. We highlight some below.

And Laut is just part of the picture. You can see the company’s new entries and other new iPhone 14 cases in the rapidly growing field of choices.

The famed Mayo Clinic showed us a new way artificial intelligence (AI) and Apple Watch can help save patients’ lives, according to a new study.

Instead of relying only on expensive tests conducted in clinical settings, doctors may be able to turn to AI and Apple Watch electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings to help determine which patients have previously undetected heart pump problems that could lead to heart failure.

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You’ve heard the outcry before — the robots are coming to take our jobs! But as it turns out, the joke is mainly on the robots. Most of us would be more than happy to give up some, or even all, of our responsibilities and let a dedicated computer brain pick up the slack for a while instead.

Fortunately for humanity, that’s become increasingly common, with robots doing those jobs amazingly well. For example, Narwal Robotics has been on the cutting edge of robot mop and vacuum technology for a while following the release of its well-received vacuum bot from last year, the Narwal T10. Now, the company has unveiled the next step in its bot-cleaning revolution with the brand-new Narwal Freo.

These days, many people find themselves completely immersed in online video, which often proves more engaging and easier to digest than other forms of media.

But that also brings unexpected problems. Sometimes a video recorded on iPhone won’t upload to a desktop video editor. Or YouTube won’t let you upload your favorite family vlogs. Or you can’t watch videos you downloaded online on your TV.

Luckily, Digiarty Software’s VideoProc Converter can solve all those problems and more, on either Mac or PC.