Cult of Mac

This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: As Apple’s rumored spring event approaches, all signs point toward new Macs. Lots and lots of new Macs. And an iPhone and an iPad. But we can’t stop talking about Macs. It’s like a cult or something around here.

Also on The CultCast:

• Is Apple fixing AirTag — or ruining it?
• Most Apple Stores in the United States lift their mask mandates (but they’re handing out freebies).
• Apple needs to put a ring on our fingers.

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.

New Apple TV+ thriller/comedy Severance takes a visit to a motivational museum this week. Actors Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro and Yul Vasquez continue to do amazing work with their offbeat characters in this satirical study of the depressing nature of punching the clock.

Severance’s unique look and science fiction premise continue to pay dividends rich enough to get over some of the hurdles the show occasionally throws at the rational part of your brain.

Just in time for the weekend, you can download and play a new farming simulator and adventure game called Sunrise Village. Indie developer InnoGames released it Friday for iOS and Android devices.

Tumblr founder David Karp has said he never wanted advertisements on his social network and microblogging platform, Tumblr. But they came in after a sale of the company in 2013. A lot of people find them tacky and annoying.

Fortunately for those who hate the ads, Tumblr said Thursday you can now pay to make ads go away.

Tax season can be stressful — especially if you feel like your financial situation is out of your control. Not knowing how much you’ll get from your tax return, or if you’ll get one at all, can make it hard to plan (and easy to make costly yet avoidable financial mistakes).

But knowledge is power, and Cult of Mac Deals hunted down some of the best tax and accounting training bundles around. With one (or more) of these four accounting and tax-prep packages, you’ll never again feel like your finances are a shock. And even better, with coupon code REFUND, you can get all four of these deals on sale.

Find out what it’s like to swing through the trees as a gibbon in a game that debuted Friday on Apple Arcade. Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is the story of a family trying to survive amid an encroaching human threat.

The ecological adventure is available to play on a variety of Apple devices.

The Turners throw a truly miserable dinner party on this week’s Servant, the Apple TV+ show about demonic forces assailing the residents of a Philadelphia brownstone.

Leanne makes it her business to embarrass Sean’s guest, Dorothy spies something she shouldn’t, and sober Julian just drinks it all in.

The funniest and most daringly tense episode of the show — powered by Servant creator Tony Basgallop, showrunner M. Night Shyamalan and a host of incredible writers and directors — takes no prisoners. It also gives Nell Tiger Free some of the best comic work she’s done on the show to date.

Spoiler alert: For the seventh year in a row, Apple topped consumers’ lists as the most relevant brand to their everyday lives. Seems like the Cupertino tech giant can’t lose in this particular race.

You have to wonder who placed 293rd. That’s how many companies the annual survey evaluated, in 27 categories.

With a dozen ports, the Belkin Connect Pro Thunderbolt 4 Dock lets users connect a Mac to multiple accessories for data, video, Ethernet and power. All through a single high-speed cable connection.

Belkin also introduced a Thunderbolt 4 cable capable of handling data transfers at 40 Gbps.

Apple TV+’s The Afterparty, the show with a kaleidoscopic approach to genre, hits a new low this week as it becomes a dreadful procedural for its penultimate episode. The show has been many things by now — an unfunny cartoon, a musical, an action movie, an arthouse experiment — but it’s never fully just given into being bad television on purpose before now.

There’s something frankly a little insulting about being asked to watch a half-hearted impression of something The Afterparty creator Christopher Miller and the show’s writers keep telling us is bad and a waste of time and unrealistic. I’d much rather just watch a rerun of JAG on Pluto TV than continue with this baleful re-creation.

What, for heaven’s sakes, is the point of The Afterparty?

Have you ever seen two big ol’ Apple Cinema Displays mounted vertically, in portrait mode, bookending an iMac? We didn’t think so. Or at least, it seems like a rare sight. But today’s featured setup has that nuevo-retro styling going on, big-time, and folks took notice.

After all, secondary displays in portrait mode seems to be all the rage lately, but not so much back in the glory days of Cinema Displays. Or were they?

The Apple TV+ thriller/comedy Severance started out strong. It’s on Reelgood’s list of the Top 10 most-streamed shows of the week.

The series debuted February 18 on Apple’s streaming video service to very positive reviews from critics and audiences.

This discount software activation keys post is brought to you by CDKeylord.com.

Hope for inexpensive software activation springs eternal, doesn’t it? In its Spring Big Sale, software seller CDKeylord.com offers more unbeatable deals on genuine Microsoft software. Cult of Mac readers can get 30% off the regular price of a Windows 10 Pro key. And when you buy a Windows 10 key, you can get a free upgrade to Windows 11! Just enter the special discount code CULT when you check out to grab the exceptional savings.

See currently available discounts on various Microsoft software titles in the list below.

Apple TV+’s Suspicion has gathered its suspects together and now they have to decide who’s who — and more to the point, who’s guilty.

It’s a Ten Little Indians riff this week as everyone accuses everyone of being more guilty than they are. The suspects are going to have to come as clean as they can if they want to make it out of this bottle episode alive.

Rob Williams and his writers have crafted a nifty detour for these characters as they work together to figure out who’s put them in the spotlight and why. The nation is starting to think they’re heroes, but they might kill each other before any new evidence comes to light and they can prove their innocence.

Apple News’ local coverage feature this week expanded its reach to Canada. Users in Montreal and Toronto can now enjoy local news from a number of different sources, including CTV News and Toronto Star.

Local coverage was first added to Apple News in July 2020, but growth has been slow since then. Although it has made its way to additional U.S. cities since it debuted, this is the first time the feature has landed in another country.

Did you know that hidden cameras have been discovered spying on guests in hotels, Airbnbs and public spaces? If you want to travel the world and remain sure of your safety, camera detector devices can eliminate the problem and give you total peace of mind,

The Scout Hidden Camera Detector is one of the best of these essential travel gadgets — and it’s our Deal of the Day. Usually $89, today you can grab it with a special price drop to just $69.99. And you can get a two pack for an incredibly low $79.99.

But you’ll have to be quick, as the deal ends at midnight PST on Feb. 25.

If you want your iPhone to always look brand-new — even after you’ve dropped it over and over again — you’ll need a rugged case that offers plenty of impact protection. And there are loads of tough iPhone cases to choose from.

We rounded up 10, starting at just $7.99, that are all built to be robust bodyguards for your iPhone.

Apple TV+ released the first full trailer for WeCrashed to get viewers pumped for the limited series that premiers in March. It’ll star Jared Leto as the controversial co-founder of WeWork as he builds a cult of personality that eventually helps take the company down.

Watch the trailer to get ready for the wild ride up… then down.

The Wemo Smart Plug with Thread simplifies controlling lamps, fans, and other appliances with an iPhone or Siri. Anything that plugs into a standard wall outlet can be turned on or off.

Rather than Wi-Fi, the HomeKit accessory communicates with other accessories over Thread, a mesh networking standard.

A world where Bluetooth rises above compression and delivers full-stream, hi-res, lossless audio remains in the future. But sound specialist Astell&Kern said it’s about the roll out the world’s first Bluetooth speaker with support for the rarefied LDAC and aptX HD codecs — which should at least allow for CD-quality wireless streaming.

The Acro BE100, Astell&Kern’s first Bluetooth speaker, goes on sale March 7, the company said. And it’s not just the codecs that make it special.

Continue reading

Keeping large numbers of browser tabs open is such a common habit that Apple created a system to organize them. Safari Tab Groups let you put open tabs into logical collections so you can more easily work with them. And the same groups are available across all your Apple devices.

The system gets a little complicated. But here’s how to get started with Safari Tab Groups.

The OtterBox Wireless Power Bank for MagSafe offers two-sided charging capability. It clings magnetically to an iPhone while charging it, and the external battery also magnetically attaches to MagSafe chargers to receive power. It’s that second feature that sets it part from rivals.

There are versions with 3,000mAh and 5,000mAh of capacity.

On the heels of a big Obscura 3 camera app refresh, another popular and powerful photo app sees major changes this week. This time, it’s the Halide MK II app for iPhone and iPad, from Lux Optics, which also makes the Spectre app for creating long exposures.

The Halide app’s important updates include the addition of batch actions — so you can finally work with multiple photos at the same time — and an improved “Image Rescue” function.

Continue reading

Our friends at MacPaw in Kyiv, Ukraine, are today facing the horrifying reality of a Russian invasion. But they want to assure users of their software — including CleanMy Mac X and Setapp — that support will continue.

An emergency plan is in place to ensure that there are no disruptions to MacPaw’s operations, development or customer assistance. “We’ve been enjoying working for you all these years and appreciate all the trust you’ve put into our company,” said CEO Oleksandr Kosovan in a blog post Thursday. “We won’t disappoint your expectations.”

This post on how to recover a Word document on Mac is presented by Tenorshare 4DDiG.

Accidentally deleting important Word files is something we all do sometimes. When you trash an important file that contains necessary data or work, you will need to recover it. For Mac users, 4DDiG Mac Data Recovery is one of the best pieces of software for that purpose. It is easy to install and use, and you can recover any lost Word document with it.

But before we get into that, let’s learn about the reasons why Word documents become lost — so maybe disaster can be prevented in the first place.