Apple doesn't sell many Mac minis. But the small desktop computer appeals to a big, important group of buyers. Image: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Guess what percentage of Mac buyers choose the Mac mini. Whatever your estimate is, the real number is probably lower. Much lower.
Despite selling so very few of them, it seems likely Apple keeps making and updating the tiny macOS desktop because many of them go to young buyers just starting on a lifetime of buying Apple products.
Controlling the volume of Spotify Connect devices from your iPhone is getting difficult. Photo: Cult of Mac
Spotify users can no longer control the volume of Spotify Connect devices using their iPhone’s volume button. Instead, they must use the workaround: an in-app volume slider.
The company is making this change because Apple discontinued the technology behind this feature.
The new AI-powered Clean Up feature in the Apple Photos app got people raving about the magical ability to “fix” pictures — and posting examples of when things go horribly wrong. The positive experiences sound great, but the negative ones look like pure nightmare fuel.
Apple added the Clean Up feature in iOS 18.1 beta 3, released Wednesday, and users put the new photo touch-up tool to the test immediately. The results, posted on X, show a wide range of outcomes, including some hilarious misfires.
Now you can see where to ball is on the field at a glance. Photo: Apple
Sports fans can enjoy new features in the free Apple Sports iPhone app, some in time for football season and others coming soon, Apple said Thursday. The app launched earlier this year with an emphasis on simplicity to help fans easily track scores and stats.
Bot crawlers scraping website content for training AI is more controversial than other uses, like improving search functionality. Photo: Cult of Mac Deals
Many prominent news outlets and social media platforms have opted out of Apple’s AI training data collection via website scraping, according to a new report Thursday.
Apple does it through a new tool called Applebot-Extended, which the iPhone giant introduced less than three months ago. If major content websites opt out of Apple AI scraping, that could have implications for the continuing development of Apple Intelligence.
The Vagabond mobile controller from Elo Gaming kicks iPhone and iPad mini gaming up a notch. Photo: Elo Gaming Limited
The new Vagabond Mobile Gaming Controller transforms iPhone, iPad mini and Android devices into full-fledged gaming consoles, Elo Gaming Limited said Tuesday. It called the device suitable for casual and pro gamers alike.
Apple Intelligence is a powerful LLM that runs both in the cloud and on-device. Image: Apple
Contrary to popular opinion, Apple appears to be ahead in AI — and in some cases seems far in front of the competition. The revelation comes from an Apple white paper that hasn’t gotten much attention, but should.
A white paper on Apple’s Foundation Model, the company’s homegrown LLM (large-language model) that powers Apple Intelligence, reveals two important facts: it’s the safest in design and highly competitive with both Meta’s Llama and OpenAI’s GPT-4. This seems to debunk a big myth about Apple’s AI efforts: that the company’s privacy-first philosophy would hold it back.
The Apple Foundation Model is just as capable in tests of writing and summarization compared to the top LLMs by OpenAI, Meta, Mistral AI and others. And thanks to Apple’s strict guidelines for expunging harmful content, human-evaluated tests repeatedly rank its foundation model as the safest above all the rest — by a wide margin.
It looks like Apple Intelligence could be off to a good start.
The iPhone 17 Pro Max might pack some key upgrades over its other siblings. Photo: Rajesh Pandey/Cult of Mac
Apple will seemingly continue offering enhanced specs on its Pro Max iPhone to differentiate it from other models. As a part of the strategy, the company might only equip the iPhone 17 Pro Max with 12GB RAM in 2025.
Additionally, the phone will feature an upgraded cooling system. This system will use a combination of a vapor chamber and graphite sheets for better thermal efficiency.
Apple Music to YouTube Music playlist gets easier. Photo/Graphics: Apple/YouTube/Rajesh Pandey
In a surprising move, Apple is making it easier to transfer your playlists from Apple Music to YouTube Music. This is the first time the Cupertino company is offering a tool like this for Apple Music users.
If you are an Apple Music subscriber, the tool makes transferring your playlists to YouTube Music easy.