Can you see Siri, an iPhone and an Apple Pencil among the flora here? Photo: Apple
Cupertino’s latest Apple Store location is coming to tony Brompton Road, London, on July 28. To go along with that opening Apple just put out a flowery new wallpaper with some hidden imagery to help pique your interest.
Among the exotic flora in the image above, can you spot an Apple Pencil, an iPhone and Siri remote? That’s not everything lurking there, but it’s a start.
Don't miss out on 15 games leaving Apple Arcade soon. Photo: Apple
In the very near future Apple Arcade will lose 15 games, according to a new section in the Arcade area of the App Store labeled as “Leaving Arcade Soon.”
So if you subscribe to Apple Arcade or think you might — it’s $4.99 a month — consider downloading those games before they’re gone.
And according to new information about the situation, some games may return, but Apple Arcade subscribers who had them will have to re-download them.
Miya Cech, Spencer Hermes-Rebello and YaYa Gosselin in “Surfside Girls,” premiering August 19, 2022 on Apple TV+. Photo: Apple TV+
A new supernatural series for kids and families is coming to Apple TV+. The streaming service dropped a trailer for Surfside Girls Monday showing best surfer-girl friends solving supernatural mysteries in their sleepy California beach town.
And did we mention: pirates! They fit into this. There’s some sort of cave-portal and a pirate ship and a friendly boy who is, somehow, a pirate, apparently.
The adventurous mystery series debuts August 19 on Apple TV+.
Sometimes it makes sense to walk back your choice of a massive monitor. Photo: [email protected]
You might think you’d give your right arm for one of those stunning, 49-inch curved ultra-wide monitors to use with your Mac. But then again, you might end up begging for your appendage back, as well as your old display. Or at least something a little less colossal.
Minus the stray arm — as far as we know — that’s more-or-less what happened with today’s featured MacBook Pro-based setup.
Apple Covent Garden was robbed by armed men on Sunday afternoon. Photo: Apple
Armed criminals carried out a daylight robbery of the Apple store in Covent Garden in London’s West End. The thieves reportedly got away with stolen Macs, iPhone and iPads.
Grab-and-run raids on Apple stores aren’t unusual, but it’s very rare for the perpetrators to be armed. No one was injured in Sunday’s U.K. incident, though.
Don't settle for a MagSafe cable that keeps you on a short leash. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Tired of being tied down by a short charging cable that’s barely long enough to use your phone with? Love wireless charging but hate needing to set your phone down to charge every time the battery gets low?
You can wirelessly charge at a distance with this 10-foot magnetic wireless USB-C charging cable from ZeroLemon. And it’s now on sale for just $20.99 (regularly $24).
Made for iPhone hearing aids, like Oticon More, connect directly with your iPhone. Photo: Graham Bower
Imagine if Apple sold AirPods for $5,000, and they were so buggy they kept disconnecting from your iPhone. Sounds crazy, right? But that’s the reality faced by me and millions of other hearing aid users today.
Apple offers a solution for hearing aids called Made for iPhone (MFi). This enables third-party hearing aids to work like regular AirPods. In hardware terms, there’s not much difference between them anyway these days. But while AirPods will set you back just $129, MFi hearing aids cost 30 times more, and they’re far less reliable.
Your iPhone 13 is more durable than you think. Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Apple has dropped a couple of new ads highlighting iPhone 13’s splash resistance and the durability of the Ceramic Shield front.
The entire iPhone 13 series carries an IP68 certification, making them dust and water-resistant. However, Apple is only highlighting the phone’s splash resistance capabilities in the ad.
Apple's next MacBook Pro refresh could be here sooner than usual. Photo: Apple
MacBook Pros powered by upgraded Apple M2 Pro and M2 Max chips could debut as early as this fall. The new chips would focus on delivering improved GPU performance.
The upcoming 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro refresh is not expected to pack any other significant changes.
Just plug in your favorite lamp or appliance, and you're off to the home-automation races. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
If you want to set up a smart home, you may not have to pay as much as you think. Sure, you could buy lights that turn on when you get home or a fridge that knows when you’re out of milk. Alternatively, you could just get a Wireless Wall Tap Smart Plug and turn anything you connect into a smart device.
For a limited time, this simple way to turn your dumb house into a smart home is on sale for $39.99 (regularly $49).
Nobody's got anything bad to say about the new MacBook Air. Image: Cult of Mac
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: Everyone’s raving about the new M2-powered MacBook Air — and so are we. Although Erfon just bought a different Apple laptop (and offers up a pro tip for anybody thinking of getting the hot new MBA).
Also on The CultCast:
Bye-bye, Jony Ive. We’re gonna miss ya. Mostly.
The emoji people scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Toys are about to get personal (but brace yourself for disfigured plastic selfies).
BMW foists an outrageous subscription plan on car buyers.
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 livestream, embedded below.
★★★☆☆
Veteran actor Ray Liotta, left, turns in a compelling performance in this week's episode. Photo: Apple TV+
Apple TV+’s newest limited series Black Bird hits its stride in a strong third installment.
Prison guards and inmates hound undercover informer Jimmy Keene as he tries to get close to suspected serial killer Larry Hall. McCauley and Miller search for harder evidence as time slips away from them. And outside prison walls, Big Jim is in a bind that affects little Jim.
Black Bird still has a little ways to go to be truly great, but so far this is a promising look at guys at the end of their ropes looking for a way out of very bad circumstances that they brought on themselves.
Build and manage targeted microsites with no web design experience necessary. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Why spend dozens of hours or thousands of dollars building mobile websites to showcase your brand? Linkcard lets you quickly design one-page micro websites that are optimized for mobile and easy to share.
And for a limited time, a lifetime Linkcard Professional Plan is on sale for just $49.99 (regularly $478).
Humane's teaser video has a strong "1984" vibe. Photo: Humane
It looks like Humane’s upcoming iPhone-killer will be a laser-projection system after all, based on a cryptic teaser video that dropped Friday.
Humane is a San Francisco startup staffed with a glittering roster of ex-Apple talent, many of whom were instrumental in developing the original iPhone.
The company hasn’t yet announced its first product, but patents hint Humane is working on a smart, screenless device that projects information onto the environment around the user.
★★☆☆☆
Things were really looking up for a minute there. Photo: Apple TV+
In this week’s episode of Physical, Apple TV+’s death trip in spandex pumps the brakes to reconsider its priorities.
Aerobics star Sheila breaks her contract, reconnecting with Danny and Greta as she plots her next big move. But she remains selfish at heart, so nothing goes quite the way any of them had planned. Meanwhile, John and Maria plot one last attempt at salvation.
This week’s episode, titled “Don’t Try This at Home,” delivers some of the highest highs of the season, but still manages to blow a commanding lead in the home stretch.
This SwitchEasy Odyssey lanyard case helps keeps you from dropping your iPhone. And it protects your handset if it somehow goes tumbling to the ground. Photo: Adel Neal/Cult of Mac
The SwitchEasy Odyssey 3-in-1 Lanyard Shockproof Case protects an iPhone 13 in two ways. A removable strap helps you keep hold of the device, and the case is designed to absorb the shock if you drop your handset anyway.
I put my own iPhone in this hard case to see how it stood up to real-world use. Here’s why there’s a lot to like about it.
The base model M2 MacBook Air is reportedly slower than
Those in the market for a M2 MacBook Air should be aware that the base model with 256GB of storage reportedly will have slower performance when moving large files and when multitasking than versions of the new laptop with more storage capacity.
Apple says real world performance isn’t affected, but benchmarks show the base model is slower even than its M1 predecessor for some tasks.
"Cables? What cables?" asked one commenter. Photo: [email protected]
Sometimes you see a pristine computer setup flaunted on social media and you think, how is that even real? Is it staged? Is it a render? At the very least, it looks like they left out all the cables for the photograph. But that’s not necessarily the case.
A lot of us live with messy setups, in part due to cable clutter. But neatening things up doesn’t have to be next-to impossible, as today’s featured Mac mini setup demonstrates.
★★☆☆☆
A gala turns into a team-building affair this week. Photo: Apple TV+
The Loot crew dons black tie and tails for a humanitarian gala this week. Billionaire divorcee Molly is being honored, hit on and insulted all at once. Arthur is starstruck. Howard is in crisis. And Nicholas is just happy to be in a tuxedo surrounded by rich people again.
The Apple TV+ comedy swings hard for big moments of personal empowerment through kindness and self-respect. That’s all well and good, but I came to this show for something a little more caustic.
This is when we should have invested every cent in Apple stock. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
July 15, 1998: Apple reports its third profitable quarter after the return of Steve Jobs, continuing the company’s remarkable turnaround.
Cupertino earns $101 million for the quarter, largely thanks to the success of the Power Mac G3. In the same quarter a year earlier, Apple lost $56 million. This marks the first time in three years that the company managed three straight profitable quarters.
For great deals on software, head over to Keysbuff.com. Photo: Keysbuff
This post on discount Microsoft software is brought to you by Keysbuff.
The July Shopping Sale at software activation keys provider Keysbuff.com lets you score great deals on Microsoft products. Cult of Mac readers can hit the links below and save big on Windows 10 — and uncover significant savings on lots of other Microsoft software, too.
Sound good? Just use promo code COM at Keysbuff.com. That will save you an extra 25% off the site’s already-low prices on keys for Windows 10 Pro Global, Microsoft Office 2021 Pro and other software.