Apple TV+ show Tehran puts its second-season plot in motion this week, but the Israeli espionage drama keeps making bizarre missteps in its pursuit of pulse-pounding thrills, twists and turns.

Manjar steps into Farraz’s home in the perfect disguise, Tamar tries out her new character, Milad almost screws everything up for all of them.

Everybody’s tense and everybody’s guilty, as usual. And Tehran continues to benefit from good performances, tight editing and solid music and sound design, which keep every nail-biting scene running efficiently. But is that enough to save the show from an increasingly blinkered perspective?

Apple TV+ listed its new lineup of shows and specials for kids and families set to air this summer, including new series like Duck & Goose and Best Foot Forward plus Peanuts specials and new episodes of fan-favorite shows.

The new summer lineup of kids shows will kick off in July with the first series, Duck & Goose.

You can watch a trailer all about the summer’s content and how to watch it below with Jack McBrayer from Hello Jack! The Kindness Show.

Popular new Apple TV+ series Shining Girls keeps finding new clues to the identity of its time-traveling menace Harper. Meanwhile, Kirby and her reporter co-worker Dan get closer to breakthroughs — and further from normalcy — at every turn.

Kirby must ensure she doesn’t alienate everyone in her life just when she needs them most, even as she tightens the noose around Harper. Dan just needs to make sure Kirby doesn’t come across as an unreliable witness.

Being done with school doesn’t have to mean you’re done learning. These days, you can learn exactly what you want, however you want, and at your own pace.

Sound appealing? The Lifetime Project Professional Agenda 14 Premium Bundle gives you two things to make learning beyond the classroom truly rewarding. It pairs an app to make note-taking and project management simple with a vast catalog of courses to choose and learn from at your leisure.

Plus, it’s affordable. This learning bundle is on sale for a limited time at only $29 (regularly $1,529).

Amazon has the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip and 1TB storage discounted to just $2,249 — down from its retail price of $2,499.

On the listing page, Amazon is offering a $50 discount, with the additional $200 off being applied checkout. Do note the offer is only available on the silver shade for now.

Apple is testing an iPhone with a USB-C ports and planning to launch a USB-C adapter that can be used with devices with Lightning connectors, according to a new report.

The news comes on the heels of an analyst’s prediction on Wednesday that the switch to USB-C in Apple’s handsets will come with iPhone 15 in 2023.

Apple TV+’s most shameless cash grab is back for a truly unearned victory lap. Gotham Chopra and Co. have crafted the thoroughly un-asked-for second season of Greatness Code, the only show on TV about how great and talented athletes are.

Oh, what’s that? There are 10 million other shows about the same thing, and they’re all more involved than 10-minute interviews with competently animated interstitials and some vague notion of what makes an athlete “great”?

Well shut my mouth. Guess there’s no reason to watch this one, is there?

A new Apple TV streamer will launch in the second half of 2022, according to a trusted analyst. And there’s a hint in the prediction that the device will cost less than its predecessors.

A cheaper version of Apple’s set-top box could help it grab a higher share of the set-top box market. And it could certainly use the boost.

Gear4, an accessories brand owned by Zagg, just added two nylon Apple Watch bands to its lineup. One is a braided nylon band priced at half the cost of Apple’s popular Solo Loop. The other is a two-tone sport band with Velcro. Both are made with recycled materials.

Hard to say if the quality meets Apple’s, but the prices certainly beat Apple’s.

“Drop it, we dare you,” says Limited77 of its Clear Magnetic iPhone Case Series 13. Now that’s confidence. The slim, clear case can protect and showcase your iPhone 13 at the same time.

Not only does the case feature solid drop protection, its coating eliminates bacteria. We all know how dirty handsets can be because we touch them constantly. And in addition to those features, the case is MagSafe compatible, so it won’t interfere with charging your iPhone 13 wirelessly.

But even counting all those features, the best thing about the case might be its price right now. You can get 20% off the regular price in the Cult of Mac Store, a savings of $7.

A cool aspect of both Mac minis and the newer Mac Studio are the platform-like USB-C hubs festooned with ports and added storage capacity that third parties have designed for them to sit on. Satechi was quick out of the gate with one for the mini, but there are other such cleverly designed, space-saving hubs on the market. And many of them also fit the Studio.

Today’s featured setup boasts a powerful new Mac Studio perched on a Qwiizlab hub as it drives an LG UltraWide display, among other gear.

This post on discount Microsoft software is brought to you by Keysbuff.

Mother’s Day itself may be just past, but Keysbuff’s Mother’s Day Sale for great deals on software is ongoing. Cult of Mac readers can still get deep discounts from the software activation keys provider. You can save up to 90% off the full price on Windows 10 and find great savings on lots of other Microsoft software, too.

To nab these bargains, 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 others in the list below. You can purchase many products with lifetime licenses.

The Essex Serpent is Apple TV+’s first foray into folk horror and a welcome return to BBC-style costume dramas. Based on the book by Sarah Perry, and starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston, this series holds a lot of promise in its deviously clever premise.

Shepherded by writer Anna Symon (Dark Matters: Twisted But True, Deep Water) and director Clio Barnard (The Arbor, The Selfish Giant), the series’ excellent production design and game cast make The Essex Serpent appointment television. You can watch the first two episodes Friday on Apple TV+.

Elon Musk has put his Twitter acquisition on hold, he said early Friday in a tweet. Musk said he awaits further details and calculations confirming Twitter’s claims that spam accounts on the platform account for less than 5% of active users.

The move comes less than a month after Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition offer.

Between all the pictures of pets, files from work, app data and everything else that builds up on your Apple devices, you have a lot less storage than you might think. Record just a few videos, and what used to be a few gigabytes of room can barely fit a compressed JPEG.

But you can fix all that with a lifetime subscription to Prism Drive Secure Cloud Storage. It gets you a huge 2TB of storage you can access from any device, forever. And for a limited time, it’s on sale for $49 (regularly $790).

Ready to unlock the hidden features of your Mac? There are well over 1,000 you can unlock with the right software. This MacPilot Lifetime License is the key to getting more from your Mac. It gives you instant access to 1,200-plus features, all in a familiar interface. And it’s on sale for just $39.99 (regularly $99).

Apple gave both developers and the public access to the release candidates of macOS Monterey 12.4 and iOS 15.5 on Thursday. The iPadOS 15.5 Release Candidate also went out, as did the watchOS 8.6 RC and tvOS 15.5 RC. That’s the final step before introducing them to the public.

Aside from long-overdue improvements to the Studio Display webcam in macOS, all these are really just minor tweaks. But that’s not surprising considering Apple is expected to unveil the next major upgrades for the OSs at WWDC22 in early June.

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Cha Cha Real Smooth looks to be a romance, a drama and a comedy all rolled into one. What do you call that? A rom-dramedy?

At any rate, Apple TV+ just put out the first trailer for the unconventional love story starring Dakota Johnson and Cooper Raiff. It premieres on June 17.

Few would dispute that Sony’s flagship wireless WH-1000XM4 active noise-canceling (ANC) headphones have been among the best on the market since they came out in August 2020. But Sony has improved upon them, offering its fifth-generation WH-1000XM5 headphones on Thursday.

The redesigned cans flaunt several impressive improvements over the previous model, making the XM5s an even worthier competitor to AirPods Max and other premium headphones.

Just like your watch face says something about your personality, so does your watch strap. The color, texture and pattern all mean something to you and those who catch a glance of your wrist. That’s where BluShark’s top nylon watch straps, the AlphaPremier collection, comes in.

And they’re not just for classic analog watches. BluShark has a whole lineup of smooth, comfortable AlphaPremier Apple Watch bands in stock in the Cult of Mac Store.

When it comes to kicking back and playing a game on my iPhone, I love loading up Outlanders and seeing how long my community of villagers lasts before everything falls apart and society implodes.

It might sound a little deep, but Outlanders is far from it. This Apple Arcade title is a whole load of tactical fun and well worth a look.

This post on earning cash back and gift cards is brought to you by Fetch Rewards.

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Apple is no longer the world’s most valuable company. That honor now goes to the Saudi Aramco oil giant. The Mac-maker had (mostly) held onto the title since 2020, but has now lost it.

So far in 2022, the value of AAPL shares is down 20%, while the share value of the Saudi oil company has surged 25%.

After leaks in April first revealed its impeding release, Sonos officially unveiled its lowest-priced Soundar, the Ray, on Wednesday.

The compact speaker features AirPlay 2 support for streaming from Apple devices as well as “Hey Sonos” voice control integrated with Apple Music.

In 2021, Google made a funny video making fun of iPhone for not having a headphone jack. Fast forward a few months, and Google launched the Pixel 6A without a headphone jack. That sure looks like hypocrisy.

And there’s little excuse for it, as Samsung got busted years ago for doing the same thing – mocking iPhone for not including a headphone jack then dropping the feature from its handsets.