Prominent Hong Kong legislator and IT entrepreneur Charles Mok has warned that Apple risks becoming an accomplice for “censorship and oppression” in China.

In an open letter to Tim Cook, Mok referenced Apple’s removal of a recent app which allowed protesters to track the whereabouts of Hong Kong police. Tim Cook has defended the app’s removal, which came after Chinese state media criticized Apple for allowing it in the App Store.

Keeping your iPhone charged on the go usually means carrying at least a Lightning cable and a backup battery. But with the Nomad, you get everything you need in one accessory. And right now, you’ve got a rare chance to snag one at a massive discount.

Twitter killed off its desktop app for Mac in early 2018. Now, a year-and-a-half later, an official Twitter app has made its way back into the App Store.

And it’s all thanks to macOS Catalina’s Catalyst framework.

This week on The CultCast: Apple’s AR glasses are about to be announced! At least according to one very reliable analyst…. we discuss. Plus: Mac OS Catalina is out, but you probably shouldn’t install it—we’ll tell you why. And Final Cut Pro just got massively faster thanks to a new update, and a long awaited iOS 13 feature finally goes live.

Our thanks to Linked In for supporting this episode. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters… head to LinkedIn.com/cultcast and get a $50 credit toward your first job post.

Apple reportedly plans to deploy its own 5G modems in iPhones by 2022. This “very aggressive” timeline will require Apple to carry out development, testing and certification.

Until then, Apple will use 5G modems developed by Qualcomm. After years of legal battling, the two companies put aside their differences earlier this year. Apple will likely ship its first 5G iPhone next year.

Mac shipments fell during the third quarter of 2019 as PC sales continued to grow, according to new estimates from Gartner.

Apple’s market share declined as a result, but the company maintains its fourth spot for now. And shipments will almost certainly be boosted soon by the launch of the all-new Mac Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Clive Owen, star of movies such as Sin City and Children of Men, is the latest big-name actor to sign up for an Apple TV+ series. Owen will act opposite Academy Award winner Julianne Moore in Lisey’s Story, based on a 2006 Stephen King novel.

Brydge today pre-announced a clip-on iPad Pro keyboard that incorporates a trackpad, something that only became possible with the just-released iPadOS 13. This would create a computer like a MacBook with a removable touchscreen.

It’s not the first such accessory to be unveiled, but Brydge is bringing a patent-infringement lawsuit against a company that last month launched a Kickstarter campaign for a similar iPad keyboard case with trackpad.

Apple reportedly inked a multiyear deal with Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón to develop original content for Apple TV+.

Cuarón’s deal with Apple will see him develop multiple TV series for the streaming service, marking the director and writer’s first foray into television since he created the short-lived NBC show Believe.

As Apple draws fire for banning a mapping app that proved useful to Hong Kong protesters, CEO Tim Cook defended the company’s decision. In an email to employees, Cook explained why Apple pulled HKmap.live from the App Store.

Cook said Apple received “credible information” from Hong Kong’s tech crime and cybersecurity unit that the app “was being used to maliciously target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates our App Store guidelines barring personal harm.”

A battery test pitting the iPhone 11 Pro Max against its arch-rival, the Samsung Galaxy Note10+, found that Apple’s new flagship handset outlasted its competitor by over two hours.

In iOS 13 and iPadOS, you can easily collect a bunch of Live Photos, and combine them into a single video. It’s great for sharing, or just making a cool remix of your clips. And this isn’t another one of those (awesome) posts where we use Shortcuts to do the dirty work. Making Live Photos videos is a new feature built into the Photos app.

Here’s how to use it.

Apple TV users can finally access millions of songs, playlists and radio stations using Amazon Music.

Starting today, anyone with a 4K Apple TV or the regular HD model can go to the Apple TV App Store and download the Amazon Music app, giving Apple Music some more competition on its own platform.

Apple dropped the first full trailer for Octavia Spencer’s crime drama, Truth Be Told, which will debut on Apple TV+ in December. Spencer plays a journalist investigating whether she helped send a man to prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

Watch the trailer now:

This week, email service Fastmail added snooze to its web and iOS apps. You can now click on a button inside any email in your inbox, and make it disappear until you’re ready to deal with it.

Got a late-Friday-afternoon work email from your boss, and don’t want to see it every time you check your mail over the weekend? Worried that you’ll get so used to ignoring those great tips for your vacation that you will forget about them when you actually go away? Do you already use your email inbox as a de-facto to-do list, and would love more control?

Then Fastmail’s snooze is for you. Let’s see how it works.

The biggest iPhone emoji update of the year is finally ready for testing if you’re a developer.

Apple seeded iOS 13.2 beta 2 and iPadOS 13.2 beta 2 to developers today. The update comes just over a week after the first beta brought Apple’s Deep Fusion camera technology to the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. With this latest beta, Apple has finally added support for the Unicode 12 update that adds 59 new emoji characters.

Pixelmator Pro, one of Photoshop’s strongest competitors, is now fully compatible with macOS Catalina, including the ability to use an iPad as a second screen.

And the high-end graphics app is also ready for the next Mac Pro, the super-powerful desktop Apple has on its docket for this fall.

Apple is within 3% of hitting a record-high market cap, with a current valuation of $1.037 trillion. And it might be about to climb even higher.

“Longer term, this is one of the best stocks out there,” MKM Partners chief market technician JC O’Hara told CNBC. However, in the short term, O’Hara thinks Apple faces a few challenges.

Apple chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has hit a new record for the third calendar quarter of the year. TSMC’s revenue beat previous guidance it gave in July.

The world’s largest contract chipmaker reported consolidated revenues of $3.3 billion for the month of September 2019. That’s down slightly from its record high in August. But it’s up 21.6% on quarter and 12.6% from one year earlier.

Hipster Whale’s 2015 game Crossy Road modified the Frogger concept for a modern audience. In doing so, it raked in massive amounts of money for an indie game: around $10 million in its first 90 days.

Now the company is back with a new game, Crossy Road Castle, that’s set to debut on Apple Arcade. Check out the trailer below.

It’s no surprise that the new iPhone models are positively drool-worthy. It’s also no surprise that they’re expensive. So if you’re shelling out the cash for Cupertino’s latest mobile device, you ought to consider protecting that investment. And with this roundup of awesome cases, you can even add some extra style and utility, too.

Apple’s acquisition of music recognition AI company Shazam had a big impact on the company’s financials.

According to freshly posted financial results, Shazam’s user base hit 478 million active users in 2018. That’s up from 400 million the year before. Profits before tax hit $158.4 million, a big increase on the $19.4 million it lost in 2017.

It seems that a rumor that Apple TV+ would be moving away from the Netflix model of dumping every episode of a show out there immediately may have been wrong. At least with regards to Apple’s Dickinson series about the life of poet Emily Dickinson.

Star Hailee Steinfeld appeared on last night’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. She confirmed that all 10 episodes of the show will be available November 1 when Apple TV+ launches. “And it’s, in my opinion, very easy to binge,” she said.

Apple has reportedly removed the Quartz news app from the Chinese App Store by request of the China government. According to Quartz‘ investigations editor, this is due to their, “excellent coverage of ongoing Hong Kong protests.”

The company also banned an app that let Hong Kong protesters track Hong Kong police. This came one day after Chinese state media blasted Apple for not getting rid of it.

Apple decided to go all in on its revived Texas Hold’em game. The company brought this classic — which debuted on the iPod way back in 2006 — back to iPhone this summer, and now there’s an iPad version.