Cult of Mac

The best ever Mac default desktop background (aka Mac wallpaper) was the blue Aqua picture that came with OS X 10.4 Tiger. It’s classy, restful and classic without feeling dated. It has enough depth to make it interesting, but is simple enough not to distract. Other Aqua-themed Mac OS X wallpapers followed, but that one remains the best. And if you want it, you can download it in beautiful 5K resolution.

But that’s not all. Over at 512 Pixels, you can download every default macOS wallpaper ever, also in 5K.

Images of Apple’s brand-new Powerbeats4 headphones have been spilled for the first time in today’s iOS 13.3.1 update.

The sporty buds look near identical to Powerbeats Pro, but like their predecessors, they won’t be completely wireless. They are expected to pack Apple’s newest H1 chip with hands-free “Hey Siri” support.

How does an autograph collector part with a favorite item? Dan Caldwell of Billionaire Collectibles sets the price high enough so that letting go is not so painful.

He has what is likely the only Steve Jobs autograph currently for sale, a signed work-anniversary certificate for an Apple employee. The $77,000 asking price on eBay is how much someone “will have to pay to peel it out of my hands.”

Pokémon catching is about to go to an all-new level with the new Pokemon Home app that’s finally set to launch on iPhone and iPad in February 2020.

Fresh details about the Pokémon Home experience were revealed by the Pokémon Company this morning showing how players will soon be able to store and manage Pokémon from games on the Nintendo Switch and 3DS and transfer them to new games.

Apple just dumped a truckload of new software updates on customers this morning, including the crucial iOS 13.3.1 update that brings an important fix to Screen Time.

Along with iOS 13.3.1, Apple also released macOS 10.15.3, tvOS 13.3.1, and watchOS 6.1.2. All four of the new updates are fairly minor and mostly focus on under-the-hood improvements.

Did you know you can force the Apple Watch to display the wrong time? You can. In fact, you can make it add up to 59 minutes to the actual time, and show that bogus data on the main display.

It’s either the most useless setting on the Apple Watch or the most useful, depending on your point of view. Here’s how to make your Apple Watch tell the wrong time.

Chargeasap Flash holds 20,000 mAh, and can transfer that power to MacBooks at up to 100W. This newly-released powerbank sports USB-C and USB-A ports, and even wireless charging for Apple Watch.

At its heart are four Tesla Lithium Polymer Graphene Composite Battery Cells.

Neil Young believes there’s a big problem with making music on a MacBook Pro. In a recent interview, the acclaimed singer-songwriter slammed the “Fisher-Price” audio quality you get with Apple’s newest notebooks.

Young also revealed that Steve Jobs knew about his concerns, but felt that MacBook audio was good enough for consumers.

Next time you’re shooting an iPhone video, be glad you’re not shooting in waist-deep snow in freezing conditions. That was the challenge posed to Joe Carlino, the intrepid videographer behind Apple’s latest “Shot on iPhone” promo.

The ad, which dropped yesterday, shows four pro snowboarders doing their thing in the wilds of British Columbia. Cult of Mac spoke with Carlino about how the ad came about, and the pros and cons of shooting on iPhone in inhospitable conditions.

A new iOS app lets users simultaneously record video using multiple iPhone cameras. DoubleTake is created by the makers of popular camera app Filmic Pro.

In the words of the app’s makers, DoubleTake transforms your phone into a multi-cam studio — although you’ll need to be running an iPhone XR, XS, or iPhone 11 to be able to use it.

Staying on top of the day to day to-dos can be more complicated than it should. Ironically, that’s partly because of the technology that’s supposed to make our lives easier. We can do more in less time, so we expect to get more done. This task manager helps keep up by merging data and task management.

Curve, the all-in-one card service, is finally rolling out Apple Pay support to customers across Europe.

Payments can be made using Apple Watch and iPhone for the first time. And the same great benefits you’re used to getting from your Curve card, including cash back on purchases, still apply.

The newest iPhone 12 rumor claims Apple will introduce four brand-new handsets this fall, including a compact “iPhone 12 mini.”

The smallest model could be different to the rumored iPhone SE 2, but not much bigger in size. It is expected to pack Apple’s latest technology — just like its larger siblings — inside the same design.

Apple reportedly wants its suppliers to manufacture more than 80 million iPhones in the first half of 2020, a new report from Nikkei claims. If those figures are accurate, it would mean ramping up iPhone production by more than 10% compared to last year.

These units would mostly be Apple’s current-gen iPhone 11 series units. However, there would reportedly also be up to 15 million of the new iPhone SE 2 low-cost device Apple will supposedly introduce in March.

Steven Sinofsky has an unusual perspective on the iPad. On the the 10th anniversary of Apple unveiling this tablet computer, the former president of the Windows Division at Microsoft looks back at his reaction to this breakthrough computer.

Boys State enjoyed standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend. And Apple liked it so much, it bought the rights to this political coming-of-age story.

Apple’s first earnings report of the decade is barely 24 hours away, and Wall Street is praying for another historic quarter.

After defying gravity for the last 12 months, Apple’s soaring stock price suffered its biggest single-day loss in more than six months today. Tuesday’s Q1 2020 earnings, which will cover sales from the 2019 holiday season, could provide the jolt AAPL shares need to start jumping up the charts again. However, certain hot topics — and what Apple says about them — could signal a downturn ahead.

Everything on Apple TV+ today was released in the past few months. But Apple is reportedly in talks to buy MGM, which would bring a catalogue of classic and modern movies to the iPhone maker’s streaming video service.

Last week’s revelation that iCloud backups can be accessed by Apple, and are regularly given to law enforcement agencies, came as a big surprise to many people. Isn’t Apple the company that claims to protect your data? While your iPhone or iPad is locked down, much of your iCloud data, including¹ your iMessages, is available to Apple. The only way to prevent Apple, and government agencies, from accessing that data is to switch off iCloud backups, and make local backups instead.

There were tablet computers before the iPad, but they were thick plastic laptops with the screens reversed, with awful, bendy TFT screens. The first iPad seems thick and clunky now, compared to the latest ultra-thin iPads Pro, but at the time it felt like a slice of the future.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad a decade ago today, some critics wrote it off as “just a big iPhone.” The only thing was, a lot of people really wanted a big iPhone. And ultimately, the iPad changed mobile computing as we know it.

Apple’s CarPlay infotainment system is finally coming to all of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) in North America thanks to a little help from Android.

Fiat Chrysler revealed its new Uconnect 5 platform for cars today that is five times faster than the previous version. FCA says Uconnect 5 was built with future growth in mind and comes with support for CarPlay along with Android Auto and Alexa. It’s basically the Swiss-army knife of in-dash infotainment systems.

Apple will be among the companies represented at a meeting today, hosted by a group that’s supporting the Department of Health and Human Services’ efforts to make it easier for patients to access and share their health data.

The organizers are nonpartisan group Carin Alliance. More than 40 people representing some of the biggest companies in the industry will attend in-person or on the phone. Apple’s representative is Ricky Bloomfield, a doctor with expertise in HealthKit and ResearchKit, who joined Apple in 2016.

Apple just dropped a brand-new trailer for its original live documentary on the Beastie Boys.

Beastie Boys Story is scheduled to hit Apple TV+ on April 24. It will feature stage shows with Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz, and is directed by Spike Jonze, who first collaborated with the band on the music video for Sabotage.

Macs are powerful tools, but they’re also weapons of mass distraction. It’s just so easy to endlessly scroll Twitter or putz around on Fortnite instead of working. This app will help you stay on task and productive.

Apple has debuted a new snowboarding “Shot on iPhone” video and, well, it’s pretty darn impressive. Photographed by sports videographer Joe Carlino, the ad depicts four snowboarders as they do their thing in British Columbia, Canada.

“Follow past and present Winter X Games snowboarding competitors Red Gerard, Danny Davis, Kimmy Fasani, and Ben Ferguson as they explore untouched powder in the backcountry of the British Columbia Interior at the legendary Baldface Lodge,” the description reads. Check out the video below. You won’t regret it.