This post on excellent Mother’s Day gifts is brought to you by Bluetti.
A mother gives everything at home and in the office as she endeavors to secure her family’s future. For this upcoming Mother’s Day, flowers are fine and chocolates are never a bad choice. But if you want something a bit more special to show your love and appreciation, then you’re in luck. Bluetti rounded up some Mother’s Day gift ideas that will make her smile from ear to ear.
Apple, Google and Microsoft committed themselves to expand support for a passwordless sign-in standard. The goal is to make it easier for websites and applications to offer consistent, secure and easy passwordless sign-ins.
It’s a move toward greater support for biometric security systems like the ones already included in iPhone, Mac and iPad.
Even if you love writing, it takes time. Between an empty draft and a finished document come plenty of research, revisions, formatting and other time-consuming tasks.
AI copywriting platform Autowriterpro streamlines the writing process, with automated tools that can free you from much of the drudgery of writing and rewriting documents. And for a limited time, you can get a lifetime subscription for for just $39.99 (regularly $469).
A 3-meter version of the Apple’s Thunderbolt 4 cable can now be ordered. The extra-long cable connects Macs to peripherals at up to 40Gbps and 100W of power.
It’s $159, or two or three times the cost of a high-quality 2-meter Thunderbolt 4 cable from rival companies. Trouble is, the 3-meter cable doesn’t have any direct competition.
If you need a Mac Studio this autumn, it might be smart to order it now. You could find yourself waiting for up to three months for delivery of some some top-tier configurations.
The macOS desktop appears to be caught by the same assembly delays that are affecting MacBook Pro.
Even if you’re motivated, it can be hard to actually start learning the tech skills you need to start a side hustle. If you want to master complex apps or learn to code, Stream Skill Software Training is the way to go.
With this unlimited lifetime membership, you get 110 in-depth courses for a discounted price of $59 (regularly $1,250).
Smart speaker maker Sonos will soon deploy its own voice assistant, similar to Apple’s Siri. It will let you play and control music on the company’s products, according to a new report.
The new voice assistant, “Sonos Voice,” will work with Apple Music and a handful of other services.
In the world of watch bands, nylon is sometimes overlooked in favor of steel, leather or silicone, but it’s an exceptionally good material for the job. That’s true of analog timepieces as well as smart watches like Apple Watch.
Done right, nylon is soft, comfortable and durable. It’s breathable and it dries quickly, too. It often doesn’t even look like nylon, either.
And if you can find a nylon band that looks and feels a lot like a knit weave fabric, all the better. But look no further, because the popular brand BluShark sells a selection of them in the Cult of Mac Store at a good price.
Ever wonder how champion pro athletes overcome all odds to win? Apple TV+ unveiled its trailer Tuesday for the second season of Emmy Award-winning sports documentary series Greatness Code.
It gives you a glimpse at what drives top athletes to succeed in impossibly competitive scenarios.
The series premieres May 13 on Apple TV+.
“Conversion” stories are fairly common in computing, with people deciding to switch from one “ecosystem” or another. Given Apple’s recent rash of hugely popular products, a fair number of folks are switching from PC-and-Windows-based setups to Apple-centric ones.
An avid PC gamer — strike that, a former avid PC gamer — owns today’s featured setup. In it, a new M1 Pro MacBook drives a couple of big displays. And an Elgato Stream Deck and killer audio components also enter the mix.
During the pandemic, Aria Benefits not only held its own, but business growth more than doubled to almost 20% during the last year. An important ingredient was a customer relationship management and productivity app called Daylite.
“We used to think high single-digit growth was great,” said founder Robin Bailey. “But the pandemic challenged us to doing business differently and Daylite’s been a key part of that.
“Any small business that runs on Macs and other Apple devices should take a good look at Daylite.”
Happy Star Wars Day — even if you didn’t know that was a thing. Apple is celebrating the nerdy holiday by showcasing the widespread use of Macs and iOS devices at Skywalker Sound.
Festivities include the release of a “Behind the Mac” YouTube video and feature article about the audio artists at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, along with a special online “Today at Apple” session about creating Star Wars sound effects.
Apple shipped more computers in the first three months of 2022 than any of its rivals, according to a market research firm. Increasing Mac sales helped Apple take the top spot away from Lenovo in the global market for laptops, desktops and tablets.
Apple could have done even better but supply constraints cut into the number of iPads it was able to ship.
Every night can be movie night if you have the equipment, even if you’re camping (or glamping). With the right free-standing screen and portable projector, you can functionally carry a home theater experience around in the back of your car.
That’s what you get with this Outdoor Movie Bundle, which pairs a powerful Wemax Go portable projector with a 50-inch portable screen.
The powerful mini projector works indoors or out. And the freestanding screen is designed for travel and cozy campfire movie nights. For a limited time, this movie bundle is on sale for just $549.99 (regularly $798).
To make the most of your iPhone’s MagSafe charging capabilities, you need a great battery pack. And the Speedy Mag is one of the best.
Right now, you can grab it on sale for just $48.99, which is a 59% discount off the regular price of $119.
If you think something that’s “compostable” must be easily “destructible,” well, that may be true of your coffee filters. But it’s not true of everything. Take Casetify’s Ultra Compostable iPhone Cases, for example.
These things are tough as hell. They’ll protect your iPhone as well as many other iPhone cases. And the ultimate beauty of them is, once you move on to another iPhone and discard the case, it won’t hurt the environment.
Third-party iPhone apps scored significantly lower than their Android counterparts, according to an analysis of user reviews of 4,400 top mobile apps.
This does not necessarily mean that Android offers better third-party software, though. iPhone users simply expect more from their apps.
“The data shows iOS users are more critical of mobile apps than Android users are,” said David Kravets, senior content marketing manager for unitQ, the company that did the research, in an interview with Cult of Mac.
And after going through nearly 122 million reviews, unitQ analysts say there’s “lots of room for improvement” in mobile software.
Accelerating work on its self-driving electric vehicle project, Apple recruited veteran Ford engineer and executive Desi Ujkashevic to join the team.
The move comes after various stalls and road bumps in Cupertino’s secretive Project Titan in recent years, including Ford luring away Apple car chief Doug Field last year.
If you’re one to suffer charging anxiety while out and about, Anker has your cure. It unveiled its latest portable, MagSafe-compatible charging bank Monday, the Anker 633 Magnetic Battery.
The beastly little brick packs a 10,000mAh battery capacity, Anker’s first product of this kind to do so. Plus it features speedier wireless charging than some previous packs as well as spritely USB-C charging when you just want to pull out a cable and get it over with.
The Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 is a memory card that sits flush in the SD slot in the 2021 MacBook Pro. Use it to add up to a terabyte storage to the notebook or for backups. It’s ideal for people who otherwise have no use for the SD card slot.
I put the just-released 1TB version of the memory card. Here’s why I love it.
Leviton offered five new smart-home products in its Decora line Monday. Three of them help bring HomeKit-enabled smart lighting to older homes, which can be notoriously tricky: the Decora Smart No-Neutral Switch, Dimmer and required Wi-Fi Bridge.
The other two, for more modern abodes, are refreshes of the Decora Smart Motion Sensing Dimmer and Tamper-Resistant Outlet.
The iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 2, a pair of tablets from nearly a decade ago, have been added to Apple’s list of vintage products. This somewhat limits the repair options for them.
It’s a step toward them being declared obsolete by Apple. But that won’t happen until at least ten years after the launch of these products.
Everyone waiting for a new MacBook Pro to be delivered can take heart from a report that Quanta Computer has restarted assembling Apple notebooks. This comes after its assembly plant in Shanghai had been temporarily closed as part of the Chinese government’s attempts to slow the spread of COVID-19.
In the meantime, though, wait times for top-tier MacBooks now stretch into July.
We all have a ton of different devices to power on a daily basis. But that doesn’t have to mean having an unsightly mess of cables to do so.
This Charge & Fold 3-in-1 Docking Station will charge multiple devices at once, wirelessly. And it’s on sale with a huge 70% discount, making it just $35.99 (regular price $119).
The metaphysical-horror-thriller Shining Girls only premiered on Apple TV+ a few days ago, but the Elisabeth Moss series is already in the top 10 most streamed shows. And it’s drawing positive reviews, too.
Plus, the Apple TV+ hit Severance remains on the weekly list of popular shows, despite wrapping up its first season more than three weeks ago.