Do you find some of Cupertino’s more innovative Apple Watch bands a bit ridiculous? Well, feast your luddite eyes on the Durham band from Nyloon. It’s made of nylon and comes in exactly one color: navy blue.

It’s a very traditional Apple Watch band at a lower price than any of Apple’s offerings.

At Cult of Mac we love retro Apple gear. Today’s featured setup pairs a powerful new M1 Max MacBook with a beautiful old Cinema Display plus the iconic Harman Kardon SoundSticks speaker system.

And if you love the old Cinema Displays but worry their resolution won’t cut it nowadays, read on.

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 makes Apple’s tablets act much more like a Mac. The optional multitasking system puts applications into floating, resizable, overlapping windows.

Even better, the system can also be used on external displays, greatly increasing the available space to work in.

Here’s how to get started using Stage Manager.

Although Apple killed off the iMac Pro line, it’s coming back better than ever, according to a reliable source. That means a high-end macOS all-in-one is supposedly on Apple’s product roadmap.

The company is also reportedly working on a Mac Pro desktop, also powered by Apple silicon.

Apple’s 2022 11-inch iPad Pro has dropped to its lowest-ever price ahead of Christmas. You can get the M2-powered tablet for $699, a $100 discount from its MSRP.

If you want the tablet before Christmas, Amazon promises delivery of the Space Gray mode before Christmas. However, it is available with a slightly lower $70 discount.

To a lot of people, “home for the holidays” may mean even more massive amounts of gameplay than usual. That could be the case with the owner of today’s featured computer setup. In addition to two Mac minis, the workstation sports an Xbox Series S with a couple of special-edition controllers.

And two of the three displays in the setup are curved gaming monitors. The other’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro mounted on a stand.

Fans of My Little Pony have a new game to enjoy. It’s up players to help the Mane 5 save Equestria, and they’ll do so by solving multiple puzzles.

My Little Pony: Mane Merge debuted Friday on Apple Arcade, and is playable on a wide range of Apple computers.

I’ve reviewed quite a few active noise-canceling wireless earbuds for Cult of Mac, including the magnificent new second-gen AirPods Pro. And while the high quality and excellent features of Apple’s updated ANC buds make them a favorite as well as a benchmark, there are great alternative earbuds that do a nice job for a much lower cost.

What follows isn’t a “top 5 in the world” list, which would be an assortment of mostly super-pricey earbuds. It’s my favorite earbuds among those I’ve reviewed in the past year or so, mostly focused on high-value products, considering the quality you get for the cost.

“These go to 11,” says lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel about his specially modded guitar amplifiers in music mockumentary classic This Is Spinal Tap. And today’s featured computer setup probably rocks just about that hard, too.

The Mac Studio, dual Studio Displays and array of killer audio gear in the home-basement setup belong to a working New York City-area rocker. Check out details about his chest-thumping rig, below.

While Apple is known for timeless hardware with relentlessly improving software, it’s hard to argue that it’s ahead of the curve when it comes to USB-C. That’s not a problem if all your gadgets still use Lightning, but if you have a MacBook or iPad with USB-C, you can’t share its cords with your iPhone.

A multi-connector charging cable like the InCharge X — which bundles Lightning, USB-C, USB-A and Micro USB into a single, streamlined package — can meet all your needs. And right now, it’s just $17.59 (regularly $29) with code WINTER20.

That’s not the only thing on sale, though. You can pick up more gadgets and apps for 20% off when using this coupon in our Winter Savings collection. But hurry! This event ends today.