Apple isn’t giving up on its dreams of an AirPower wireless charging mat, according to Jon Prosser of FrontPageTech. In a series of tweets sent Sunday, Prosser said that Apple is in the process of “re-engineering” AirPower from the ground up. “Prototyping is underway,” he wrote.

While that’s still no guarantee that AirPower will make it to market, it’s good news to hear that Cupertino’s not abandoning plans for a product many people were excited about.

Apple is offering users in the U.S. (and hopefully elsewhere soon) a selection of free books and audiobooks to help while away the hours while in self-isolation.

A push notification Apple sent out Sunday advises customers to “enjoy a good book, on us.” It reads as follows:

The limit on the number of iPhones, iPads and new MacBook Air models each customer could purchase that Apple put into place a few days ago has already been lifted everywhere outside China.

This means any hoarders who have money left after buying every scrap of TP in their town can stock up on Apple devices, hoping the limited supply will make prices skyrocket.

Apple TV+ has launched a surprise interview series with former talk show Oprah Winfrey talking about the global coronavirus pandemic. In its first episode, Winfrey spoke to actor Idris Eba, one of several celebrities to test positive for COVID-19.

The series – entitled “Oprah Talks COVID-19“- debuted Saturday, with little production value for a quick-to-air show. Winfrey’s first installment features FaceTime interviews with Elba and his wife, Sabrina Dhowre. 

If playing golf is how you relieve stress, being stuck at home is not ideal. If you’re being responsible and self-isolating — and missing the driving range — this immersive golf simulator offers a way to get in your swings without leaving the living room.

Adding an extra camera lens and LiDAR to the 2020 iPad Pro changed the design enough that virtually all keyboard cases designed for its predecessor can’t be used with the new model. And Apple’s own Magic Keyboard won‘t debut for months.

Still, there are already a couple of keyboard cases available for people expecting a new iPad Pro to arrive this week.

This week we stay in touch with Slack, show appreciation with Props Love, download YouTube with ViDL, and more.

As COVID-19 continues to impact businesses big and small across America, Best Buy announced Saturday it is closing all of its 997 North America locations temporarily except for curbside pickup services. Best Buy is one of the nation’s largest independent retailers of Apple products.

Netflix is stepping up to help people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic by creating a $100 million fund that will go to support production and other workers in the industry.

The moves comes after production on nearly all major TV shows and movies has come to a grinding halt as more states and cities in act stay-at-home mandates.

Apple enhanced its Siri voice assistant Saturday with a step-by-step query instructing users on determining if they have been exposed to COVID-19, the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. 

The instructions are based on specific instructions from the U.S. Public Health Service, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A major new feature in this fall’s iPhone 12 is rumored to be a LiDAR scanner. A concept artist created a series of images showing what this change might look like.

This scanner would enable the next high-end iPhone models to create an accurate 3D map of their location, greatly improving augmented reality applications.

With U.S. cinema chains like AMC, Cinemark, Landmark, Alamo Drafthouse and Cineplex Odeon closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Walt Disney Company moved up the online release of Pixar animated film Onward two weeks.

Apple has pledged to donate two million industrial respiratory masks to help health-care workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and Europe, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence revealed during Saturday’s White House press briefing.

Pence called on other companies to step up and follow suit with more physical donations. Pence was optimistic about the supply of masks and said clothing-maker Hanesbrands is retrofitting some of its factories to make masks.

Repaired devices that customers couldn’t pick up before Apple Stores closed will remain piled up for some time due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Many Mac and iPhone owners now find themselves between a rock and a hard place, according to various reports and social media posts.

From a hardware perspective, the new iPad Pro seems unassailable. The new Magic Keyboard with trackpad looks amazing. And iPadOS 13.4 feels like a game-changing upgrade.

It’s true: The iPad Pro is really having a moment right now. One could even argue that Apple’s tablet is better than a Mac at this point.

Find out what makes that practically blasphemous statement true in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Download it now and read it on your iPad or iPhone. Or get the links below for our blowout coverage of the new iPad Pro. You’ll also find the rest of the week’s top Apple news, reviews and how-tos.

For a growing number of people, the COVID-19 lockdown makes it unclear where the next paycheck will come from. That makes it a good time to brush up on skills so that wherever opportunity arises, you’re ready. The courses in this Cult of Mac Deals roundup will teach you vital, resume-boosting covers skills like iOS development, Excel, digital marketing and foreign languages.

Grab one (or more) of these deeply discounted educational bundles today. And then start racking up certified skills so you’ll be ready to jump on future hot jobs.

Mired in scandal and plagued by delays, the debut fiction film purchased by Apple TV+ is finally here to stream, just in time for everyone in America to be trapped with little else but their TVs.

The Banker, starring Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson, likely won’t top many best-of lists this year. It’s too slight, though neither does it embarrass itself in the telling of a compelling true story about overcoming discrimination in a racist world.

Following a request to streaming services to switch from high definition to standard in an effort to reduce the strain on the internet, indications were Friday that Apple has followed suit of other major services and slowed down its Apple TV+ streaming service.

Cult of Mac has confirmed through two Apple TV users – one in Great Britain and one in southern France – that the quality of content on Apple TV+ has been lowered. Subscribers described the differences as primarily fast-moving content that is slower to refresh, heavily compressed and more pixelated.

Worldwide smartphone shipments took a much-anticipated nosedive in the month of February as the COVID-19 outbreak began to spread around the globe.

Strategy Analytics reported Friday a 38% drop in shipments, the worst ever since smartphone sales began more than a decade ago.

The Apple TV+ reboot of Amazing Stories started with a warning most viewers likely heeded: The show is going to be maudlin, and it will broadcast its emotional and dramatic beats from a mile away. Thankfully, having thrown down that gauntlet, the threat turned into a promise worth keeping. Each episode has been an improvement on the pilot.

“Dynoman and the Volt,” the third episode of the series, has quite a lot to recommend it. Enough, in fact, that it becomes easy to overlook its obvious storytelling and only half-earned poignancy.

Spyder brings a new perspective on the spy thriller. Today’s addition to the Apple Arcade subscription service features a tiny robot spider on a mission to save the great big world.

This itsy-bitsy superspy must use his gadgets to sabotage the nefarious plans of villians, requiring players see everything from a new perspective.

Apple is making it easier for Podcasts users to discover new shows focused on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The app’s new “Coronavirus: Stay Informed” section highlights content from the likes of CNN, NPR, BBC and ABC News.

The MacBook Air unveiled this week offers performance up to 73% faster than the version of this Mac laptop released in 2018, according to benchmark tests done by a reviewer.

The speed boost comes from the new model‘s 10th-generation Intel Core processor. Its predecessor has a slower, 8th-gen chip.

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Gary Waterfield should be collaborating with colleagues today over the hum of sewing machines producing an elegant leather crossbody laptop bag.

The small-batch tech backpacks and shoulder bags of WaterField Designs since 1998 have attracted discerning Apple users. Waterfield likes to time a new production run with an Apple product launch.

But when Apple unveiled the new MacBook Air and iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard this week, the handful of WaterField employees were stuck in their San Francisco-area homes on one of the strictest lockdowns since the coronavirus invaded American soil.

Your home is clean and sanitized. You wash and moisturize your hands regularly, and you haven’t left the house in days. By all measures, you’re pretty sure that your home is an oasis from the pandemic outside your door. But then the new MacBook Air, or that emergency delivery of tea leaves from Amazon, arrives. You have just accepted a potential COVID-19 virus carrier into your home. What do you do?

You sanitize it, that’s what. Just like you’ve sanitized the surfaces in your home.