Facebook shrunk the size of its Messenger app, and stripped out some features, intending to make it faster to load and simpler to navigate.
Some of the missing features will be back, though.
Smartphone lens-maker Moment will develop photo and video apps exclusively for iPhone, after the company said Monday it will discontinue the Android version of its popular Pro Camera app.
Moment, known for its high-quality lenses, bailed on Android because it does not have the “engineering bandwidth” to keep up with the various camera systems among Android brands. The Pro Camera app continues on iOS.
Apple’s brilliant HomePod speaker is back to its lowest price yet. Best Buy is matching its big Black Friday discount by slashing $100 off the usual price for a limited time only.
That’s just one of the awesome offers in today’s Deals & Steals roundup. Other highlights include:
Find all these and more in today’s Deals & Steals roundup.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak suggested in a tweet Monday that he or his wife might be “patient zero” for the COVID-19 virus currently spreading in the United States. Wozniak said he and Janet Hill came home from China early this year, as the novel coronavirus began to wreak havoc in Wuhan.
Update: Wozniak’s wife says she has an ordinary sinus infection.
A top Apple executive who oversaw development of some of the first Apple TV+ series is headed to a rival studio.
20th Century Fox TV revealed today that it tapped Michelle Mendelovitz to lead the development of its drama TV series. Mendelovitz worked at Apple for less than two years, helping to oversee the production of For All Mankind, Servant and Visible: Out on Television.
Shortcutify is a free iOS app that lets you use web-based services in your Shortcuts. For instance, it can connect with Spotify, Todoist, AirTable and more, and provides an easy bridge between these services’ complicated APIs and the Shortcuts app on your iPhone or iPad.
If you use any of the supported services, you’re going to totally love Shortcutify. If not? More app integrations are planned for the future.
AT&T’s latest cable replacement for cord-cutters, AT&T TV, launched nationwide today, replacing the streaming service DirecTV Now.
The carrier is offering big discounts to customers that sign a 24-month contract for AT&T TV which allows you to stream live sports, news, shows, and on-demand titles for a monthly fee. The only problem is it might not be much cheaper than your old cable bill.
Throughout March, select Apple Stores will host “She Creates” sessions led by women from across industries and mediums. This includes co-chair of the Women’s March Linda Sarsour, musicians Meghan Trainor and Victoria Monét, designer Carla Fernández, and many more.
Spotify is reportedly making a big push to get record labels to pay to promote artists’ music in its service as a new way to generate revenue.
Despite having nearly double the number of paid subscribers as Apple Music, Spotify still isn’t a profitable company and is looking to the music industry to help it create new revenue streams. Although the talks are still ongoing, you could soon see sponsored songs in your playlists and other areas of the app.
Did you know you can control your iPad using just a keyboard? You can use the arrow keys to move between icons on the Home screen. You can use the arrow keys (again) to scroll lists. And you can even tap and toggle buttons using the space bar. Apple added this capability via iOS 13.4’s new Full Keyboard Access feature, and it’s wild.
How wild? How about offering system-wide, custom keyboard shortcuts for running actual Shortcuts? And that’s just the beginning.
Apple has reportedly reached an agreement to pay up to $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in which it was accused of secretly throttling iPhone CPU speeds.
According to Reuters Apple reached a preliminary agreement for the lawsuit on Friday night. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila still has to approve it, but if the settlement goes through, some U.S. iPhone owners could get paid $25 per iPhone that Apple throttle.
If you owned one of these iPhones covered in the lawsuit, a check might be coming your way:
Want a text-based puzzle game that will stretch your brain, help you relax and, heck, maybe even teach you some new words? Sticky Terms is the game you’ve been searching for.
Created by 28-year-old iOS game developer Philipp Stollenmayer, it’s a playable head-scratching lexicon of words covering a wide array of languages. The game presents each word as a puzzle, torn into between two and five pieces. It’s up to you, the player, to arrange them into a completed word. No timers, failures or high scores apply.
And you know what? It’s kind of addictive.
At the end of 2013, Apple released a completely reimagined Mac Pro. No longer the sleek silver tower we all knew so well, it had become a droid-like black cylinder. It was compact, powerful — and expensive. Like, $4,000 expensive.
If you always wanted to get your hands on a radically redesigned 2013 Mac Pro, but didn’t want to spend all that cash, now’s your chance. Thanks to this deal, you can snap one up for a fraction of its original price.
Coronavirus will cause mobile device shipments to plummet during the first quarter of 2020, according to a new report.
Production at major manufacturing plants throughout China is said to be at “way below normal levels” this week after workers returned to their posts last month. Smartphone shipments could slip below 1.3 billion units for the year.
Have you noticed Fortnite isn’t running so smoothly on Mac or iOS since the introduction of season two, chapter two? You’re not alone; almost every player is experiencing significant frame drops following last week’s update.
The good news is Epic Games is working on a fix.
Two suppliers that make components for Apple in China employ forced labor, according to a report published Sunday. The Washington Post says BOE Technology Group, which supplies screens to Apple, and O-Film, which makes iPhone cameras, both use Uighur labor, either directly or through contractors. Apple lists both companies on its latest supplier list.
The report describes how the Chinese government detained more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang region in reeducation camps. And it says evidence indicates that authorities “are moving Uighurs into government-directed labour around the country as part of the central government’s Xinjiang Aid initiative.”
Apple has raised the price of several iPhone models — including the top-tier iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max — yet again in India, risking denting sales in the country that were just starting to take off.
The price hike is just under 2%, making it smaller than the sizable iPhone price increase Apple introduced in India in 2018. It follows increased import duties announced during India’s Union Budget 2020.
iPhone camera module supplier LG Innotek closed one of its South Korean factories over the weekend after a worker tested positive for coronavirus.
LG Innotek has long been part of Apple’s supply chain, supplying camera components for iPhones. This year, it is also expected to manufacture 3D Time of Flight (ToF) modules for Apple’s next generation iPads and iPhones.
FlashDock solves two limitations in Apple’s MacBooks. Not only does it bring an array of legacy ports to Apple laptops, this very portable USB-C hub includes up to 2TB of storage.
And it does so for less than the cost of building additional storage capacity into a macOS laptop.
This week we read the news with NewsBlur and Unread 2, shoot faux 8mm footage with Rtro, and spend $20 on Tot, a notes app with just seven pages.
Ever since its launch, people have mostly been dismissive about Apple News on iPhone, iPad and Mac. One big reason is the way it interacts with links on the web, boxing users into the News app instead of letting them visit the open web.
For me, that’s actually a pretty desirable thing, because I really like the News app. It’s much cleaner-looking than many ad-bloated websites, and far less emotional and combative than getting your news on social media.
But making the News app show you the things you care about, with less clutter and noise, requires one simple trick.
Learning a new language is a precious gift to give yourself and the world around you. Apps have made it easy to carry our studies with us, so we can learn any place, and at any pace. Different language apps take different approaches, but this one might be one of the most effective.
Apple reportedly is sending care packages to its employees who are stranded in China by the COVID-19 coronavirus. And among the face masks, hand sanitizer and cookies is a slightly more expensive item: an iPad.
A facial-recognition application that has been the source of recent controversy has been taken offline by Apple. This came after a published report accused Clearview AI of evading the App Store by distributing its iPhone software to customers via tools that are only supposed to be used inside companies.
It’s been a wild decade for the “Jesus tablet.” From colorful anecdotes to surprising stats, these 10 fast facts will cast the iPad in new light.
You can read our latest #10things list, “10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPad,” in this week’s free Cult of Mac Magazine. It’s loaded with the latest Apple news stories, plus plenty of Mac and iOS how-tos and product reviews.
Finally, don’t miss your chance to get a limited-edition Cult of Mac Apple Watch band. They’re brand-new in the Cult of Mac Store, and they won’t last long.