Kids love iPhones and iPad, but kids are also experts at doing the exact opposite of what you want them to do. That’s why Apple has built parental controls into iOS, so you can limit the mischief your kids can get up to, and even get notifications if they try to spend your money. Let’s see how you can make the App Store safe for your kids, how to choose what apps they can use, and how to control their in-app purchases.

Logitech’s new speaker system adds a new dimension to gaming: color. LEDs hidden in the front and back of the speaker bathe your desktop and the wall behind your computer in light.

That’s fine for making your room look like a disco palace while listening to music. But it’s really designed to make video games more immersive.

Music service Spotify has added a voice search feature to its iOS app that allows users to find song tracks, albums, and playlists.

The new test feature takes Siri out of the equation. With Apple trying to grow its music streaming service, it never allowed Spotify to integrate with Siri, including with Apple’s first smart speaker, HomePod.

I live in San Francisco where car crime in epidemic. Last year there were just under 30,000 reported break-ins — that’s about 85 a day! My car in particular seems to be a magnet for car thieves; it’s been broken into five times in the last couple of years, costing me thousands of dollars in repairs.

So I jumped at the chance to review the new Owl car cam, a combination dashboard cam and interior security device from one of the product design leads of the iPod and iPhone. The Owl combines two HD cameras — one pointing out, the other inwards — with bump-sensing accelerometers and an always-on LTE cellphone connection that sends alerts and live video to my iPhone.

It’s been great. Setup was the easiest of any gadget in recent memory and the video is surprisingly fantastic. Best of all, no one has broken in to steal it — yet!

Apple asked six filmmakers to create short videos that highlight the cababilities of the recently-released iMac Pro. The results debuted today: trippy, abstract films that are mesmerizing to watch.

All are quite short (under 30 seconds) and include a quick plug for the computer, and so could be turned into advertisements, either online on TV.

All the Yoga Flames, Dragon Punches and Sonic Booms of Street Fighter II spill out into the real world in a new demo that mixes classic gameplay with augmented reality.

Michigan-based software developer Abhishek Singh‘s “Real World Warrior” edition of Street Fighter II features all the familiar characters, moves and sounds of the original. But now, the game’s arena is the outside world.

“I loved playing [Street Fighter] as a kid with my sister on an actual arcade machine,” Singh told Cult of Mac. “I was thinking about multiplayer experiences and this kind of popped into my head.”

On the Mac, you can quickly open up and edit any text file using TextEdit. And while there are a ton of great text-editing apps on the iPad and iPhone, none of them is quite as simple as the Mac’s built-in app. Until now, anyway: Textor combines the iOS 11 Files app with an ultra-simple text editor, making it possibly the quickest and easiest way to quickly view, edit and even create new text files on an iPhone or iPad.

An Apple prototype of an early laptop, one of only four known to exist, sold on eBay Tuesday evening for more than $16,000.

It was the second time the owner of the Apple Macintosh Portable M5126 – fully functional and with a rare-for-its-time backlit screen – tried selling the test device on the auction site. Last month, bidding closed at just over $10,000 but the buyer backed out.

How seriously are people taking password security in your city?

Password management service Dashlane today published its 2018 City Security Rankings, revealing the state of password security in America’s most populous cities — and those that are home to some of the biggest companies and government agencies.

Apple’s home city of Cupertino ranks highly, right behind Fort Meade, MD, home of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Tim Cook won’t be at AltConf 2018, but then attendees of this alternative Apple developer conference will pay a wee bit less. The official WWDC is $1,599, while AltConf is free.

It will be held in San Jose near the official conference, and on the same dates as the WWDC: June 4-7.