Reviews - page 44

WaterField Designs’ AirTag Leather Keychain looks a little like a squid’s head. The oval-ish leather keychain comes with a heavy-duty matte black key ring at one end. (Your keys would be the squid’s tentacles in this tortured simile.) And a metal grommet at the other end lets you attach an included steel carabiner or cable loop to expand your options.

The San Francisco company constructed this crucial AirTag accessory out of beefy full-grain leather and high-end components. It definitely looks and feels premium. And it seems built to last a lifetime.

The only real downside is size-related: This is one giant squid!

Apple TV+’s newest animated kids show is all about accessibility. El Deafo, based on the book by Cece Bell, focuses on a little girl who loses her hearing just before the start of school. She goes on misadventures as she learns to navigate the world with the help of her imaginary superhero alter ego. And she learns to love herself in the process.

The show is, if anything, a little too effective at making you feel for this young girl’s struggles. El Deafo is at times too affecting and sad for words — much to the credit of the writer, performers and animators. But it’s an open question whether kids are ready to feel so much on top of everything they’re already dealing with.

You should ring in the New Year with the first new Peanuts special since 2011. In Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, Lucy is having a party but everything is going wrong. It’s her fault but she blames everyone else. So the gang has to come together to save the day.

As a Peanuts fan going back decades, I watched the new holiday special with a skeptical eye. I found a lot to like, whether this is your introduction to Charlie Brown and his friends, or you’re a long-time watcher like me.

You can never be too thin, too rich or have too many USB ports. The EZQuest USB-C Gen 2 Hub Adapter adds four USB-C ports and three USB-A ones, making room for an array of peripherals for your Mac or iPad.

I put the USB-C hub through real-world testing. Here are its strengths and weaknesses.

Dickinson bids us farewell this week — too soon, but beautifully. What lies in store for Emily and her family in their final outing? Can she overcome history to find a happy ending denied her by fact and legacy?

The Apple TV+ alt-history show says goodbye on a sweet, lightly ambiguous note — and finds its strength in invention. Emily Dickinson we hardly knew ye.

The OWC Envoy Pro SX uses Thunderbolt to provide the super fast data transfers that professionals need. And it’s drop-proof and waterproof so it can stand up to real life.

I put the 2 terabyte external SSD through testing. I’m impressed.

Team Swagger goes to the nationals in the stunning finale of Apple TV+’s incredible show about a basketball team and its players and satellites. Reggie Rock Bythewood and the incredible team of Swagger writers are prepared to send Ike, Jace, Jenna, Crystal and the rest of the team out with a bang.

A season’s worth of innuendo and tension is about to be unearthed and made real.

Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, starring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd, mercifully comes to a close this week after eight very long episodes. Marty goes looking for the missing pieces of his life after 30 years under Ike’s care, and finds a lot of dead ends.

Can he repair his life after so long messing everything up? It’s an open question whether he, or anyone around him, will be willing to forgive him. This series finally parts ways with its central pair and lets them both off with a warning, in the grand scheme of things.

With Home Widget, it’s now possible to control your HomeKit accessories directly from your iPhone’s Home screen. Turn on and off lights or even run automated scenes with the quick push of a button. With the new app, you can make a bunch of HomeKit widgets to meet your needs.

I put Home Widget to the test in my smart house. I’m generally pleased with its usability.

Reconciliations abound and new beginnings rear their heads on the penultimate episode of Dickinson, the alt-history Apple TV+ series about the great poet and her family and friends. And the show prepares to say goodbye in fine, fine form.

Dickinson finally answers its loose-end questions about Emily Dickinson’s place in history (and, indeed, the place of art and poetry in a more general sense). The show finally explores what it means to want to create during a destructive time — and it’s a shame the showrunners won’t be able to do more after landing in such a beautiful place. There’s still some sitcom business, but that’s less important.

Elago’s brilliant Sport band has quickly become my favorite activity band for Apple Watch. It’s well-designed and built like a tank from super-sturdy materials. And it’s unbelievably good value for money at just $18.99.

Want to know more? Here’s our full review.

Just before the end of the year, Apple TV+ has one more prestige item to push. New sci-fi movie Swan Song stars multiple Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali and multiple Academy Award nominee Glenn Close.

Swan Song, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+, is a number of things: an inspirational disease drama, a sleek sci-fi parable, a clone movie, and the feature debut of an Academy Award-winning short film director, Benjamin Cleary.

Arriving so soon after Tom Hanks’ ho-hum Finch, viewers could be forgiven for preparing for the worst. Thankfully, there’s no need.

I think it was a Kickstarter campaign that first drew my attention to the Yobybo X-Boat Pro noise-cancelling earbuds, “the first open-casing true wireless stereo headphones with LDAC,” the company said, referring to Sony’s hi-res codec. Well, while the sleek “open” case is super-cool and the buds’ sound is vibrant, some earbuds just aren’t for everyone.

I have two original iPhones in my possession. One sits in a junk drawer, untouched and unloved for many years.

The other has been carefully disassembled and the parts arranged in a handsome black frame that hangs on my office wall. Made by Grid Studio, the Grid 1 is my own personal iPhone teardown in a box.

Team Swagger goes to the nationals this week on the Apple TV+ show about the star players of Baltimore’s youth basketball league. Trust is put to the test. Bodies and minds are injured. And, at the center of it all, Jace flails around when he should be flourishing.

This show heads into its final matches with a strong dramatic game.

Apple TV+’s exciting new South Korean sci-fi series Dr. Brain draws its first season to a thrilling close this week. Sewon has one last brain sync to perform — and it’s the most important operation he’s ever conducted.

He needs to get everything right in order to save his son (and redeem himself in his own heart for the job he’s done as a father and a husband). The race is on to find out if he and his cohorts can stop Myung from stealing his son’s body.

Dickinson, Apple TV+’s soon-to-be-missed show about the great poet, arrives at its moment of truth this week. The episode, titled “My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -,” is the one the entire show has been building toward — and there are still two left to go before this final season concludes.

Will Emily Dickinson become who history understands her to be, or is there some greater truth for this version of the poet? Strong performances and fearless writing guide the show into uncharted territory this week.

Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door hits the boiling point in this week’s episode. After suffering three decades of passive aggression, manipulation, bad advice, greed and sabotage, Marty finally has his fill of Ike and decides to take action.

It’s too little too late for Will Ferrell‘s character — and for this increasingly unpleasant show — which is about to wrap up on a distinctly unsatisfying note.

The STM Goods MagPod is a beefy iPhone tabletop tripod that magnetically attaches to the handset. And it can do double duty as a handle. Use it for keeping an eye on your texts or making FaceTime calls.
I put the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 accessory to the test in this review.

The aliens have been defeated … or have they? And if so, what next? Is this the first wave of a prolonged attack? The start of intergalactic war? This week on Invasion, our heroes wake up in a reality that’s been thoroughly altered for the second time since the series opened.

As the first season of the Apple TV+ alien combat show ends, it plants clues that leave us itching for season 2.

The Adonit Dash 4 is an iPad stylus well suited for writing or drawing. And it offers something the Apple Pencil doesn’t: iPhone compatibility. The stylus flips between Apple’s tablet and handset with the push of a button. Or use it with Android.

I tried the Dash 4 with a variety of devices. Here’s what I found out.

Just in time for Christmas, Apple TV+ cooked up a brand-new holiday special from the Peanuts gang. The charming show, titled Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne, debuts Friday and centers on Lucy’s attempt to pull off a New Year’s Eve party.

It will run alongside several classic Peanuts specials on the streaming service, so we don’t have to judge the new one in a vacuum. Luckily, For Auld Lang Syne pops the cork on some of that old-fashioned holiday magic that makes the Peanuts special so … special.

This week on Invasion, the humans and the aliens seem just moments away from some kind of break in their standoff, but fate is about to throw an 18-car pileup between them.

The Apple TV+ sci-fi series is about to bring back the fireworks in a big way. The Maliks are being shuffled to the Defense Department, Trevante is off to the hospital with Caspar and Jamila, and Mitsuki has to think hard about what’s floating in space.

Last Christmas, Apple TV+ made an important play for the hearts and minds of viewers: It gave Mariah Carey a Christmas special. This year, amidst a host of new original Christmas programs, Apple TV+ brings her back to sprinkle more of her magic on the holiday season.

Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues is a short but definitely stream-worthy follow-up to last year’s charmingly chintzy special. Honestly, can anyone get enough Mariah?

Dr. Brain, Apple TV+’s new series from visionary genre specialist Kim Jee-Woon, drives headlong toward answers, both disappointing and cathartic, in the second-to-last episode of the exciting first season.

Can brain-syncing scientist Sewon stop the far-reaching forces at work to destroy him before they succeed? Can Hong redeem himself after causing so much chaos and hurt? Apple TV+’s first South Korean series is poised for a strong close.