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Ulysses, one of the best writing apps on the Mac and iOS, just switched to subscription pricing. It’ll now cost you $5 per month, or $40 per year. This is fantastic news for Ulysses users. It means the app will generate enough income to support itself. And it minimizes the risk of the developers abandoning the app when the flow of new users dries to a trickle.

Yet despite this good news, the internet lost it mind after yesterday’s announcement of the pricing change. Currently the Ulysses blog is only serving a single post, the one detailing the change, because the traffic has been enough to collapse the servers. What happened?

Often, our eye is drawn to something because of its color. But sometimes we’re attracted by a pattern, or perhaps color even detracts from an image (like a row of cars in front of a beatific white building). At those times, we should shoot black-and-white images, which emphasize pattern, texture and shape.

The iPhone — with its giant screen, its great camera and its huge library of photo apps — is fantastic for shooting B&W pictures. Let’s take a look at how to shoot amazing black-and-white photos with your iPhone.

Thanks to secrets hidden inside Apple’s firmware, we’ve discovered a lot about the iPhone 8 this week. One of its biggest features — quite literally — will be a significantly larger display that leaves no room for a physical Home button or bulky bezels.

Here’s how iOS could change to take advantage of it with a sweet new user interface.

When you share a photo via email, iMessage or most other apps, you also send the location of that image. No big deal, right? You’re only sending pictures to people you know anyway. But what about when you sell something on a site like Craigslist or eBay? If you don’t manually remove location data from your pictures, anyone can see where you took your photo, which is probably your home.

Right away, anyone can see where you live, and what you have at home. You still might not care, but if you do, here’s how to remove all that information before you send a photograph. (You’ll also learn about an interesting quirk in iMessage.)

Siri often gets dinged for being stupid, but significant upgrades in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra make Apple’s AI assistant smarter than ever. With advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Siri sounds slicker and understands you better on Apple’s updated platforms.

Siri also learned a lot of new tricks, and can now offer suggestions inside other apps. Here’s a brief look at everything new with Siri in iOS 11.

It’s Runner’s Week at Cult of Mac. All this week, I’ve been reviewing the best Apple Watch running apps. So far we’ve looked at Nike+ Run Club, Runkeeper, Strava, Runtastic and MapMyRun.

Today, it’s time to put Apple’s built-in Workout app through its paces. Let’s see how it measures up against the competition.

The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.

The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.

This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.

By Chris Brantner

Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world — there are soccer fans everywhere. With all of this popularity comes a ton of potential leagues and tournaments to watch. If you’re a big fan, you’ll be glad to know there are some great ways to watch streaming soccer on Apple TV.

What an amazing week it was at this year’s Apple WWDC, which returned to San Jose, California.  It was a week packed with events, announcements, developers, Apple Fans, and sketchnotes.  Take a look back at the week in sketchnotes.

macOS High Sierra doesn’t pack as many updates as iOS 11, but Apple’s latest desktop software delivers plenty of new features worth drooling over.

After using the first High Sierra beta for the last few days, I’ve been blown away. Check out what’s new in the macOS High Sierra hands-on video below:

macOS High Sierra Hands on | What's new? (Beta 1)

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iPhone 8 leaks are dropping thick and fast ahead of its official unveiling this September. We’ve gotten our hands on some exclusive leaked schematics direct from Apple’s factories, plus new case photos that give us an idea of what the tenth anniversary upgrade will look like.

We’ve also put together some awesome 3D prints that give us a feel for the iPhone 8’s larger form factor that is expected to accommodate a new OLED display.

Exclusive iPhone X Leak! (+ 3D Prints!)

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“Sketchnotes” are an increasingly popular form of visual note-taking. By combining text and images, sketchnotes are not only beautiful, but often easier to recall than text alone. The technique is an effective way of capturing notes and ideas in the classroom, meetings and conferences.

All next week, illustrator and senior UX/UI designer Andy McNally will be sketchnoting Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) for us, starting with the big keynote on Monday.

Andy has been covering Apple’s events as sketchnotes for some time. We ran some of his sketchnotes from last year’s event, which proved very popular. He’s back again this year, and is planning to publish sketchnotes from a variety of sessions at the conference.

Before he gets started, Andy shared some tips and techniques for getting started on sketchnoting yourself. Let’s take a look:

When it comes to measuring heart rate and calories burned, not all fitness trackers are created equal, based on the findings of a scientific study that pitted the top wearables on the market against each other.

The in-depth study conducted by researchers at Stanford University was published today, revealing that Apple Watch is the most accurate wrist-worn tracker on the market, but it’s still far from perfect.

As part of some big improvements coming to Windows 10, Microsoft is stealing the iOS Control Center to give users a quick and easy way of changing display brightness and toggling settings from the desktop.

Unlike Apple’s Control Center, however, Microsoft’s will be customizable.

When legendary Mac repair shop Tekserve closed its doors last summer in New York City, Apple fans of a certain age experienced two deaths.

They bade goodbye to the original Genius Bar, technicians that had been servicing their devices for nearly 30 years. Those fans would also never again stare at Tekserve’s impressive Apple computer artifact collection, which was quickly auctioned off to an unknown bidder for $47,000.

The collection returned to a museum display today, more than 4,600 miles away in the Ukraine. Its new home is at the headquarters of software developer MacPaw.

Apple’s next iPhone refresh will be the device’s biggest in years, but some of the more dramatic upgrades could be curtailed by technical challenges.

In its report on the new iPhone 8, Bloomberg corroborates many previous rumors about the next-gen iPhone, but suggests that more “ambitious” features may be scaled back or ditched due to manufacturing problems.

Apple is expected to ditch the Home button with the iPhone 8, but that could create some new problems, like, “How will you get back to the Home screen?”

Switching between apps wouldn’t be the same without a Home button to click. An interesting new iPhone 8 concept out of Italy explores how changes within iOS could provide a seamless experience if Apple removes the only navigation button on the iPhone.

Check it out:

The Mac Pro isn’t the only device Apple is rethinking for professional users.

According to a new report, the company is also considering significant changes to the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro, one of which could see the fancy new Touch Bar biting the dust.

Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have landed, and they’re by far the South Korean company’s most exciting smartphones to date. They boast stunning curved glass designs, jaw-dropping Infinity Displays, and impressive features.

Here are five that we think Apple must steal for this year’s iPhone 8.

The new PRODUCT(RED) iPhone is the latest limited-edition Apple product to turn a crimson paint job into a pile of green, all for a worthy charity.

Apple got involved 11 years ago with The Global Fund to benefit AIDS programs in Africa. In that time, Apple has raised millions of dollars for the charity — and released some pretty sweet special-edition products to boot.

Here are our picks for the best Apple PRODUCT(RED) products (plus, the absolute worst of all time).

Scott Strazzante may have named his upcoming coffee table book of iPhone photos, Shooting from the Hip, for the way he holds his camera near his waistline to surreptitiously photograph people.

But the title is also apt because his love for shooting with the iPhone began with an itchy trigger finger.

Now that we know the date for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, it’s officially time to start dreaming of new features that should be added to iOS 11.

Concept designer Jacek Zięba kicked off the dreamfest with one of the coolest iOS concept videos we’ve seen in a while. Check it out:

Apple “may have over 1,000 engineers working on a project in Israel that could be related” to augmented reality, claims UBS analyst Steven Milunovich in a new note to clients.

Because of this, Milunovich suggests that Apple is viewing AR as one of the next big areas of tech innovation. One possible application could be, “moderate 3D mapping” which might arrive as soon as this year’s iPhone upgrade — along with an AR software development kit.

Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar may have some serious keyboard problems.

A number of 2016 MacBook Pro owners are reporting issues with the new keyboard, which features a redesign of the butterfly mechanism that Apple introduced on the super-thin retina MacBook.

Cult of Mac is stoked to reveal that we’re launching a new monthly video series called iSetups, where we indulge our love for cool Apple setups. For our preview episode, we’re giving you a look at our own video production setup.

Each month, we’ll take a look at the best Mac setups to find inspiration, give tips and suggestions, and, hopefully, be amazed by some gorgeous Apple gear. If you’d like to submit your setup, check out the video below to find out how to get featured.