Reviews - page 38

There’s a party tonight on The Essex Serpent and everyone’s invited. But no one’s going to have the time they imagined. Things take a turn for the biblical this week with red paint on sinners’ homes and adultery in every hearth. Dancing leads to sex, and nobody’s in the bed they ought to be.

Apple TV+ miniseries The Essex Serpent bids a tearful farewell to good taste this week — and then enjoys the ever-loving hell out of the depraved no man’s land.

Apple TV+ is trying to kill me, specifically, the guy writing this. They’re trying to kill me. Send help. I am begging you, find someone, call the United Nations. You see, Apple TV+ bought Carpool Karaoke from The Late Late Show With James Corden — and it’s bringing the dreadful reality show back for another season.

The only saving grace is that Corden is not here, presumably because he’s harvesting the tears of children. There’s puff journalism, and then there’s treating the idea of Carpool Karaoke as some beloved cultural fixture and allowing celebrities the chance to “prove” how well they can sing and how fun they are.

Created by former Apple employee Christian Selig, Apollo for Reddit is hands-down the best Reddit reader out there. Forget the official Reddit client for iOS and iPadOS – Apollo is the app I return to day after day when it comes to exploring the fascinating world of Reddit.

In my view, the official Reddit app feels like a rehashed version of Reddit’s freewheeling website. Meanwhile, Apollo is a proper piece of mobile software — the real McCoy, if you will. It gives you a fantastically effective interface for digesting the mountain of news and topical info posted by Reddit’s millions of users.

Now don’t get me wrong. Apollo is by no means swish, flash and fancy. It’s instead the exact opposite – stripped-down and streamlined. But believe me: When it comes to browsing Reddit while on the move, this app gets the job done.

The BluShark AlphaPremier Apple Watch Band skips over the usual materials – leather or metal – and goes for seatbelt webbing. I used it for weeks with my Watch and found a lot of reasons to like it.

Read to to see why a surprising choice of materials makes for a comfortable, durable band.

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Honestly, I think we could all do with a bit of Wild Journey in our lives. Wild Journey is my favorite mindfulness app for iPhone and iPad.

When I reach the end of the day and feel the need to relax and unwind, Wild Journey is the app I turn to. I find it helps me switch off and empty my mind like no other relaxation app. Let me explain why, starting with the basics.

Apple TV+’s newest docuseries is Prehistoric Planet, which delves into the lives and habits of a host of dinosaurs. Arriving next week — just in time to get kids of all ages excited about Jurassic World Dominion — the five-part series offers all the usual pleasures of presenter David Attenborough’s nature documentaries.

Viewers can learn — and be awed by the state-of-the-art CGI creature design and gorgeous location photography — all at once.

Apple TV+ spy thriller Tehran throws a sexy and tense pool party so Mossad agent Tamar can get one over on her targets: the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and his tech bro son. She has to play a game of cat and mouse with a couple of rich, violent people to get close enough to deploy a decoy that will give her the upper hand — and maybe kill the man responsible for the deaths of her family.

Of course, she put them in danger in the first place, something the show isn’t interested in exploring anymore now that there’s a new spy game afoot. But no matter. Once more unto the breach.

New Apple TV+ series The Essex Serpent is knee-deep in conspiracy and suspicion already. The English townspeople think Naomi Banks is some kind of witch, and they don’t think much better of interloper Cora Seaborne, either.

This week’s episode, entitled “Falling,” goes to place unexpected and expected — and both are as exciting to arrive at.

MacBooks with an Apple M1 processor can handle only one external monitor, but the OWC USB-C Dual HDMI 4K Display Adapter with DisplayLink doubles the number. And Mac mini users can connect to three monitors with it.

I put the USB-C HDMI adapter through a round of testing to be sure it lived up to the claims.

Apple TV+ thriller Shining Girls takes a detour into the past to reveal the origins of serial killer Harper Curtis and the time-traveling house. It involves a broken friendship, a dead elderly couple, and more lies and betrayals.

Harper wasn’t always a maniac traveling through time killing whomever struck his fancy, though. He was once a lowly doughboy with no dreams and a crush. And then, power turned him evil.

Now and Then, the new time-hopping Apple TV+ show about a group of friends who reminisce about youthful indiscretions as new mysteries present themselves, is a noirish riff on The Big Chill and Stephen King’s It.

The bilingual series, which premieres Friday, showcases a great cast doing ruthless character work. And the creative team includes prolific and highly successful showrunners and writers Ramón Campos, Teresa Fernández-Valdés and Gema R. Neira.

With so much talent on board, it’s easy to fall into Now and Then’s lithe setting, sexy milieu and casual backstabbing.

Apple’s Reminders app has gone from strength to strength in recent years, but for a more-comprehensive task-management app on iOS, iPadOS and macOS, look no further than Todoist.

Trust me: It’s the best to-do app out there.

Apple TV+ show Tehran puts its second-season plot in motion this week, but the Israeli espionage drama keeps making bizarre missteps in its pursuit of pulse-pounding thrills, twists and turns.

Manjar steps into Farraz’s home in the perfect disguise, Tamar tries out her new character, Milad almost screws everything up for all of them.

Everybody’s tense and everybody’s guilty, as usual. And Tehran continues to benefit from good performances, tight editing and solid music and sound design, which keep every nail-biting scene running efficiently. But is that enough to save the show from an increasingly blinkered perspective?

Popular new Apple TV+ series Shining Girls keeps finding new clues to the identity of its time-traveling menace Harper. Meanwhile, Kirby and her reporter co-worker Dan get closer to breakthroughs — and further from normalcy — at every turn.

Kirby must ensure she doesn’t alienate everyone in her life just when she needs them most, even as she tightens the noose around Harper. Dan just needs to make sure Kirby doesn’t come across as an unreliable witness.

Apple TV+’s most shameless cash grab is back for a truly unearned victory lap. Gotham Chopra and Co. have crafted the thoroughly un-asked-for second season of Greatness Code, the only show on TV about how great and talented athletes are.

Oh, what’s that? There are 10 million other shows about the same thing, and they’re all more involved than 10-minute interviews with competently animated interstitials and some vague notion of what makes an athlete “great”?

Well shut my mouth. Guess there’s no reason to watch this one, is there?

The Essex Serpent is Apple TV+’s first foray into folk horror and a welcome return to BBC-style costume dramas. Based on the book by Sarah Perry, and starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston, this series holds a lot of promise in its deviously clever premise.

Shepherded by writer Anna Symon (Dark Matters: Twisted But True, Deep Water) and director Clio Barnard (The Arbor, The Selfish Giant), the series’ excellent production design and game cast make The Essex Serpent appointment television. You can watch the first two episodes Friday on Apple TV+.

When it comes to kicking back and playing a game on my iPhone, I love loading up Outlanders and seeing how long my community of villagers lasts before everything falls apart and society implodes.

It might sound a little deep, but Outlanders is far from it. This Apple Arcade title is a whole load of tactical fun and well worth a look.

Clip the Backbone One to your iPhone to get the physical buttons and sticks you’ve been missing. It has a lot in common with an Xbox controller, while being designed specifically for iPhone gaming. And a Lightning connector makes hookups easy.

I spent many hours testing the Backbone One. Here’s why I completely love it, especially for cloud gaming.

Awesome Apps is a new series highlighting the best apps around. We’ll be featuring our favorite apps as well as new and notable apps. Apps are transformative, and these are the best.

Years ago, I decided to ditch my paper Filofax diary for my iPhone, before quickly realizing that Apple’s built-in Calendar app didn’t fully meet my needs. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find the perfect third-party calendar app for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

It’s called Fantastical – let me tell you about it.

Apple’s own Calendar app might be relatively well-formed and functional – most of the time – but for anyone looking to take their personal organization to the next level, long-time favorite Fantastical from developer Flexibits is a great option. The app’s wide-ranging feature set makes it easy to add tasks, manage calendars and streamline your productivity. Let’s start with the basics, before looking at some of Fantastical’s power features.

In this week’s intense installment of Shining Girls, Kirby finds the clue to her killer’s identity and Dan dries out long enough to have an epiphany of his own. The only question is, can they stop Harper before he kills again, or fundamentally alters their reality?

The new time-traveling murder mystery on Apple TV+ finally finds it footing in an investigation-heavy fourth installment.

When Apple TV+ spy thriller Tehran returns Friday, the show picks up right where it left off after its taut first season. Mossad agent/hacker Tamar’s crimes catch up with her as she waits for extraction from Iran. And humbled Revolutionary Guards chief Faraz is still seething over his seeming defeat by Mossad, with the eyes of the Iranian government on him.

The spy-on-spy action remains good, but Tehran is playing a dangerous game in dramatizing the Iranian government as the greater of two evils. I’m hoping there’s a little more lip service paid to the idea that, though Iran is the villain on this show, Israel is the aggressor. It’s something the show forgets when convenient.

Apple TV+’s latest documentary series The Big Conn is a too-earnest, too-cute look at the biggest scandal to ever hit the Social Security Administration.

The story is fascinating and filled with interesting people. But the approach taken represents the very worst tendencies of modern nonfiction. That includes its four-episode run time, which could easily have been tightened to a single movie.

Ultimately, there’s something a little crass about making a documentary about fraud that jukes every scene until it’s two minutes too long, just to make sure it meets a series order.

The Transcend JetDrive Lite 330 is a memory card that sits flush in the SD slot in the 2021 MacBook Pro. Use it to add up to a terabyte storage to the notebook or for backups. It’s ideal for people who otherwise have no use for the SD card slot.

I put the just-released 1TB version of the memory card. Here’s why I love it.

Awesome Apps is a new series highlighting the best apps around. We will feature our favorite apps as well as new and notable ones. Apps are transformative, and these are the best.

I’ve spent years searching the App Store for the best email app – and in doing so, I’ve tried them all. Spark is my favorite because it equips users with accessible power features, which make wrangling email on iOS, iPadOS and macOS as easy as ABC.

When friends of mine bemoan the limitations of Apple’s built-in Mail app, I point them to Spark, from Ukrainian developer Readdle. Spark is by no means a new addition to the App Store. But over the years, the developer added a strong set of features – many of which found their way into other email clients for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

A year ago today, I reviewed the AirTag on launch day. I was unimpressed. Now that I’ve used Apple’s item tracker for 12 months, I can say it’s better than it seemed in my first impressions.

That said, there’s still room for improvement when Apple releases an AirTag 2 or AirTag Pro.