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Gold Apple Watch keeps on ticking after 9 months underwater

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jerry.rig.1
It's not a Timex, but this Apple Watch keeps on tickin'.
Photo: Zack Nelson

It wasn’t an experiment, but it might as well have been one.

YouTuber Dan Markham lost his limited-edition 24-carat gold Apple Watch Series 4 in deep water almost a year ago. After a failed attempt to find it, he and a colleague hit pay dirt at the bottom of a manmade lake along the Utah-Arizona border.

The rest is a story of resourcefulness and a little cleanup.

These are the best Apple Arcade games you can play right now

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This spunky little guy is the star of Spyder, one of the best Apple Arcade games.
This spunky little guy is the star of Spyder, one of the best games on Apple Arcade.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

There’s never been a better time to try Apple Arcade, the subscription gaming service that serves up unlimited access to more than 100 iPhone, iPad and Apple TV titles for only $4.99 a month.

With exclusive games — and a total lack of the annoying ads and in-app purchases that mar many “free” iOS games — it offers some real advantages. But it wouldn’t  be a bargain if there were no fun games. Fortunately, there are plenty. Here are some of the best you’ll find on Apple Arcade.

Defending Jacob finally justifies the existence of Apple TV+ [Review]

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Chris Evans, Jaeden Martell and Michelle Dockery portray a family fighting suspicion in Defending Jacob.
Chris Evans, Jaeden Martell and Michelle Dockery portray a family fighting suspicion in Defending Jacob.
Photo: Apple TV+

With a hot cast and a true-crime sheen, Defending Jacob is one of the most highly anticipated Apple TV+ series so far. It’s based on a best-selling novel. It’s helmed by an Oscar-nominated director. And the first three episodes arrived Friday, primed for a literally captive audience seeking its latest obsession.

Apple calls its fledgling streaming service “the new home for the world’s most creative storytellers.” And for the first time, Apple TV+ has delivered a show that lives up to the hype — at least judging by the first three episodes.

How to get six-pack abs at home with Apple Watch

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Our essential guide to building rock-hard abs (with a little help from Apple Watch).
Our essential guide to building rock-hard abs (with a little help from Apple Watch).
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Your fitness doesn’t need to suffer just because you’re stuck indoors during the coronavirus quarantine. In fact, now is the ideal time to start working on your six-pack. The lockdown won’t last forever. If you put in the work now, you’ll be looking like a ripped ex-con by the time we’re all allowed out again.

This post covers everything you need to know to build rock-hard abs. We’ll dispel a couple of myths that stop you from blasting your belly fat. And, in the video, I’ll show you the two essential types of core exercise you need to know.

5 reasons to watch Home Before Dark [Review]

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Home Before Dark
Apple's flawed but engrossing Home Before Dark makes a strong enough case that a second season is a good idea.
Photo: Apple TV+

True-ish crime show Home Before Dark, about an intrepid cub reporter who’s always late to class, is the latest Apple TV+ streaming option available to quarantined Americans. Is it any good?

Here’s a quick guide to the pleasures of the show.

Using CarPlay is more dangerous than texting while driving, study claims

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BMW could ditch its pricey annual subscription cost for CarPlay
CarPlay: good for your infotainment system, not your reaction times.
Photo: Sony

Using Apple’s CarPlay platform in its current state is worse for drivers’ reaction times than being high on weed, at the drink-drive legal limit, or texting behind the wheel, a new study claims.

IAM RoadSmart, the biggest road U.K. safety charity, analyzed the impact of various in-car distractions. While CarPlay may make the experience of using your car’s infotainment system more enjoyable, the group’s research concludes that it certainly won’t make you a better driver.

“The fundamental issue of these systems [is that they require] you to take your eyes off the road ahead,” Neil Greig, policy and research director for IAM RoadSmart, told Cult of Mac. However, Greig said steps could be taken to make systems like CarPlay safer.

How to force Safari to open tabs the way it should

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paper notebook with tabs
Tabs, just like those that Safari now messes up.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

At some point, fairly recently, Safari started opening new tabs to the right of the currently open tab, instead of opening them at the end of the tab bar, as nature intended. This means that you have to search for the newly opened tab, instead of just knowing exactly where it is. I can see the point of opening tabs next to the current one, but I don’t like it.

Happily, there’s a way to revert Safari’s behavior to the good old way — the way my grandmother, and her grandmother before her, dealt with their tabs. It’s a simple option inside Safari’s debug menu. Wait? Debug menu?

Folding iPhone concept might change your opinion on flexible phones

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Foldable iPhone concept by Iskander Utebayev
This amazing foldable iPhone concept is everything that first-gen flexible handsets aren‘t.
Screenshots: Iskander Utebayev

A concept design for a folding iPhone has none of the drawbacks of the handsets with flexible screens released so far. It shows what an iOS device using this tech might look like some time in the future.

Take a look at a short video of the folding iPhone concept in action:

How to stop your UWB-equipped iPhone 11 from tracking you

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This is not how Apple's UWB tracking works.
This is not how Apple's UWB tracking works.
Photo: Hadis Malekie/Unsplash

The latest generation of iPhones (the 11 and 11 Pro) contain the new U1 chip, which lets your iPhone locate other iPhones with pinpoint accuracy. Currently it is only used to show you the direction of other iPhones when you AirDrop a file. However, it will almost certainly soon be used to keep track of the rumored Apple Tags (or AirTags) tracking devices.

But what if you want to turn off UWB (ultra-wideband) tracking altogether? No problem.

How to stop all those App Store subscription-renewal emails

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subscription-renewal emails
This is how subscription-renewal emails used to arrive.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you have any App Store subscriptions, you will be familiar with the emails you get every time one renews. And if you subscribe to more than a few monthly plans, then maybe you even get annoyed by them. If your tolerance to this kind of thing is particularly low, we have good news for you: You can now opt out of App Store subscription-renewal emails that Apple sends.

Get your Apple Watch and Strava in sync again with this essential app

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Strava is ready to play nice with Apple
Strava is ready to play nice with Apple
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Before iOS 13, if you wanted to sync Apple Watch workout data with Strava, you had an excellent option: a brilliant third-party fitness app called HealthFit. Unfortunately, Apple’s strict new rules in iOS 13 broke the app’s syncing functionality, leaving Apple Watch-wearing members of the fitness social network in the cold.

Luckily, today’s HealthFit update brings the welcome return of this Strava-syncing capability. Cult of Mac has been testing a beta version of HealthFit 5.2.6 and can confirm that it works really well again. Strava sync is back and better than ever. Here’s what the new-and-improved fitness app can do for you.

How to make your Apple Watch tell the wrong time

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Apple Watch clock
Find out how to never ever know the actual time with this great tip.
Photo: Jon Tyson/Unsplash

Did you know you can force the Apple Watch to display the wrong time? You can. In fact, you can make it add up to 59 minutes to the actual time, and show that bogus data on the main display.

It’s either the most useless setting on the Apple Watch or the most useful, depending on your point of view. Here’s how to make your Apple Watch tell the wrong time.

How to export Apple Card transactions to a spreadsheet

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Apple Card in POS
Paying with Apple Card is easy, and now entering theses transactions into a spreadsheet is just as easy.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Transferring your Apple Card statement to a spreadsheet application just became a simple process. No third-party software is required — Apple today added the ability to export your transactions in a format that software like Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers can easily import.

This is how easy it is to add RAM to the 2019 Mac Pro

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Mac Pro ram
I want a Mac Pro, just so I can ram in some RAM.
Photo: CC iFixit

The whole point of the new Mac Pro is to make it easy to add more stuff inside it. Well, that, and to keep everything cool without sounding like a washing machine on spin cycle. The modular, standard nature of the Mac Pro’s design also means that you don’t have to pay Apple’s prices for RAM and storage upgrades. You can just buy them from somewhere like OWC or Crucial, and pop them in yourself. And I mean “pop.” It’s hard to imagine how adding RAM to the new Mac Pro could be any easier.

In fact, the hardest part might be unplugging all the cables on the back, so you can lift off the lid.

Apple takes a hacksaw to trade-in values for used iPhones and more

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Apple takes a hacksaw to estimated trade-in values for its devices
You won't get as much money for your old devices today as you would yesterday.
Photo: Pictures of Money/Flickr CC

Overnight Apple has chopped estimated trade-in values on a variety of products. It means that users will get less money for their old products when they try and trade them in with Apple.

Note to Cupertino: When people talk about wishing that Apple would cut prices on their products, this isn’t what they generally mean!

Continuity Sketch turns the iPad into a graphics tablet for your Mac

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Continuity Sketch is like having an Apple Pencil for your Mac.
Continuity Sketch is like having an Apple Pencil for your Mac.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You can sign a PDF on your Mac using the giant MacBook trackpad, and you can mark up PDFs and screenshots, too. But all that stuff is much easier on the iPad, especially if you have an Apple Pencil. The problem is getting it there. But in macOS Catalina, you don’t have to “get it” anywhere. Screenshots and PDFs magically show up on nearby iPads, where you can sign them or mark them up. Then you can return them to your Mac. These features are called Continuity Sketch and Continuity Markup, and they’re killer.

You know how the UPS guy holds up his brown scanner box for you to sign? PDF markup is like that, only on your iPad — and you never feel guilty about ordering too many parcels.

Awesome gifts for any Apple Watch fan [Gift Guide 2019]

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Apple-Watch-Gift-Guide-2019
Shopping for an Apple Watch fan? Start here!
Image: Killian Bell

It couldn’t be easier to buy holiday gifts for loved ones who own an Apple Watch. There are so many wonderful accessories out there for the best-selling smartwatch on the planet.

Gift-Guide-2019-bugAnd Cult of Mac can help you find the best. Our Apple Watch gift guide includes our favorite bands, charging stands, wireless headphones, and more. Any many of them are now on sale for Black Friday.

Now you have no excuse to leave your holiday shopping until the last minute.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Servant is unsettlingly good fun [Review]

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Apple TV+ series Servant accused of ripping off Sundance movie
There's nothing creepy about a nanny cradling a fake baby, right?
Photo: Apple

A spooky nanny. A creepy baby. And a whole bunch of crazy plot twists. It can only be Servant, M. Night Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop’s psychological horror series for Apple TV+.

The series debuted on Thanksgiving, and I’ve already hungrily snarfed down the first 30-minute episode. While I’m not yet sure if it’s enjoyable junk food or a balanced, healthy meal, I liked it a whole lot. Check out my episode one Servant review.

How to crop, straighten and unskew photos on iPad and iPhone

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Crop photos
It’s not better, but it offers a different perspective.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You’ve always been able to crop photos on your iPhone and iPad. It’s easy to “zoom” into your images, cutting out cruft and distraction at the edges of the frame to focus on what’s important. But now, in iOS 13 and iPadOS, you can do more than crop and chop. Now you also can skew images — aka correct perspective errors — all inside the Photos app’s edit mode.

You can do all kinds of things with this new Photos tool. If you snapped a picture of a painting in the gallery, and didn’t hold your iPhone parallel to the wall, you can fix that. Or you can get more radical, perhaps by “fixing” an image of a skyscraper to stop it from disappearing to a point in the distance. The good news is that these perspective tools are fun and easy to use. Let’s check them out.

Dongle-tangling: Use dark chaotic forces and never lose your headphone adapter again

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Dongle-tangling is the hottest thing since AirPods.
Dongle-tangling is the hottest thing since AirPods.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You know how headphone cables always get tangled? In the past, I have put a cable down carefully, and picked it up just moments later, and the wires have already tied themselves into knots. And you know what else is super-annoying? Apple’s stupid USB-C and Lightning headphone adapters, the kind that you have to use if you want to plug headphones or cables recent into iPads and iPhones.

But what if there was a way to take both these annoyances, and combine them into something … slightly less annoying?!? That would be amazing, obviously. Today we will see how to use the powerful dark force of tangling to stop you from losing your headphone jack dongles.

These luxury bands are the ideal Apple Watch upgrade

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Clessant-2019-lineup
Clessant's newest luxury lineup.
Photo: Clessant

Don’t settle for the basic bands that ship as standard with your new Apple Watch. These leather straps from Clessant add a dash of luxury that will separate your new wearable from all the others.

Hand-crafted from the finest materials and available in a variety of styles, they’re smart, outrageously stylish, and unlike anything you’ll find in the Apple Store.

AirPods Pro controls: How to customize & more

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Apple's AirPods Pro, and a dongle for scale.
Control your AirPods Pro by squeezing the stems to play or pause music and noise cancellation.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Your AirPods Pro controls are cleverly incorporated in the earbuds’ stems. The stems are touch-sensitive, and various squeezes or strokes will play or pause music, adjust the volume, answer phone calls, launch Siri, change noise cancellation settings and more.

Here’s how AirPods Pro controls work, and how to customize their settings.

Change these settings to make your Apple Watch battery last all day

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Keep your Apple Watch going all day long.
Keep your Apple Watch going all day long.
Photo: Alvaro Reyes/Unsplash

My Apple Watch Series 5 gets seriously good battery life. I can easily get 24 hours out of it, but I don’t really stress it by doing multiple daily workouts or by streaming audio directly to Bluetooth headphones. But what if your watch has trouble lasting the whole day? Or if you’re traveling, and not able to just stop and charge the watch whenever it needs a quick boost?

Today, we’ll check three settings that can prolong your Apple Watch battery life.