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BARCELONA, Spain — The best product I’ve tried out at this year’s Mobile World Congress is the Vuzix Blade AR glasses. These smart specs superimpose a sharp, high-definition display over your regular vision, making real life resemble an awesome Xbox game.

The Blade basically delivers on everything that Google Glass tried to do, but without sucking. I was skeptical about the rumors that Apple is developing its own augmented reality glasses. But what I saw through the lens of a Vuzix Blade showed me how far this technology has come — and just how cool Apple AR glasses could be.

Do you want to grab a chunk of text from Safari and put it into your Notes app? Do you want to clip sections from a long Word document and comment on them in email? Or maybe you just want to collect snippets of text for research. If so, you should try drag-and-drop text on iPad.

It’s so easy and useful to put two apps side-by-side on one screen, and drag text between them, that you’ll wonder how you got by without it.

We’d all rather that folks sent short messages via iMessage, or WhatsApp, or another civilized format that encourages brevity, but they insist on email. But what if your emails could pop up on your iPhone’s lock screen and be as easy to reply to as an iMessage. If you set it up right, your regular iPhone Mail app can do exactly that, using Push and VIP email. Let’s take a look.

Apple won’t need to throttle the performance of iPhone 8 or iPhone X so severely as they age.

Its latest devices use more advanced hardware and a different power management system that allows iOS to avoid unexpected shutdowns without having to cap processor performance.

Apple’s new HomePod speaker might be the dumbest smart-speaker on the market.

Based on early reviews and leaked info, it appears that Apple has seriously crippled Siri on the new HomePod speaker and removed some features, making it vastly different than the version of Siri that lives on your iPhone.

Apple pushed out a big batch of software updates this morning for iOS, tvOS, watchOS and macOS, bringing a host of bug fixes and performance improvements to all of its major platforms.

iOS 11.2.5 is the biggest of today’s software updates. The update for iPhones and iPads adds a couple new features, including support for Apple’s HomePod smart speaker, which opens for preorders this Friday.

With Apple facing mounting pressure, Tim Cook has revealed that a future iOS 11 update will let users disable the feature that was causing their iPhone to throttle performance.

In an interview with ABC News, Cook said that, “We’re going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery so it’s very, very transparent. This hasn’t been done before.”

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners in need of a battery replacement face a lengthy wait for Apple service.

A shortage of batteries in the United States and other regions means many will have to wait months to take advantage of the $29 replacement program.

Thanks to batterygate, the good news is that Apple will now switch out the battery in your old iPhone for $29 instead of $79, a price so cheap it would be crazy not to do it. But how do you take care of that new battery to stop it going bad? The truth is, the lithium ion batteries in phones and notebook computers have a finite life. But you can prolong that life with a few easy tricks.

When it comes to the iPhone X, facial recognition is most associated with the Face ID biometric security system, but there are other ways to use the front-facing camera on your device.

In a new game, titled Rainbrow, Washington University computer science graduate Nathan Gitter has created an innovative new game mechanic using Apple’s TrueDepth camera system — requiring players to control an on-screen character by raising or lowering their eyebrows. Yes, seriously!

Apple’s celebrated iMac Pro is finally available to buy, but it’s gonna cost you! The “basic” model will set you back only $4,999. But if you decide to shell out for the top-of-the-line version, your wallet is going to feel a whole lot lighter.

How much lighter? Checking all the boxes to upgrade the machine to its full potential brings the total iMac Pro price to a massive $13,926.98.

As rumored, Apple has finally delivered on its WWDC promise to bring Amazon Prime Video to Apple TV, with just a few weeks to spare before Apple hit its own end-of-the-year deadline.

The tvOS version of the app is available to download on Apple TV 3rd generation devices or above by searching “Amazon Prime Video” on your set-top box. It brings an end to the days of having to use AirPlay to play Amazon Prime Video on your Apple TV, via another device.

It’s Cyber Monday — the last day to get that dreaded seasonal shopping out of the way from the comfort and safety of your Mac at Watch Store’s biggest sale of the year.

In a few clicks, you’ll find incredible savings on Apple Watch bands and accessories during Cult of Mac Watch Store’s big Black Friday Weekend Sale — four days of massive savings.

We’ve rounded up some amazing brands for this huge sale including: OleksynPrannyk, Casetify, Nyloon, Ottm, E3 Supply Co., Rilee & Lo, Jack Foster, Strapple, Wood Mark, Nomad, Form Function Form, Clessant, Juuk and more. These brands are offering from 17% to 50% off regular sale prices!

Rest-assured that bands sold in our Watch Store are high-quality and recommended by Cult of Mac — we’ve touched, worn, reviewed and recommend everything we sell. So, get ahead of the holiday shopping curve and check out these screaming deals before quantities sell out. (Most brands won’t be restocking until January.) Happy shopping!

One of the most useful new features in iOS 11 is tags in the Files app. Just like in the Finder on the Mac, you can mark your files with as many tags as you like, making them easy to organize, and easy to find, even when they are scattered across different folders.

For instance, if you’re working on a song on your iPad, you could create a new tag for that song. You can add that tag to the GarageBand project, to any versions of the song you export to share with other folks, to any ideas for that song you record with the Music Memos app, and to any little samples, field recordings or sounds you create with other apps. Then, you can see all those files together in one view, even while they all stay safe in their original folders.

Even better is that Files uses the exact same tags as the Finder on your Mac, so anything you keep in iCloud Drive will be tagged in both places. Let’s see how iOS tags work.

It’s time for Apple to think different when it comes to the Mac mini.

Even though it’s been over 1,000 days since Apple last updated its smallest Mac machine, Tim Cook insists it’s still an important part of Apple’s product line. Apple fans are desperate for an update, but if it looks anything like this concept it’ll have been well worth the wait.

Take a closer look:

The iPhone X certainly looks stunning. But according to early stress tests, Apple sacrificed the phone’s durability in favor of that attention-grabbing design.

The result? iPhone X is Apple’s most breakable iPhone ever.

Apple surprised investors with its best Q4 earnings report ever today. The outrageous numbers dispelled doubts about the iPhone-maker’s strategy — and pushed Apple closer to becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

With the launch of the iPhone X just hours away, Apple CEO Tim Cook had a lot to be happy about during the earnings call with investors. Analysts quizzed Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri on everything from iPhone 8 sales to how Apple plans to monetize its augmented reality efforts.

Here’s what we found out:

Apple made iPhone X available to preorder at 12:01 a.m. Pacific today. Like many iPhone launches, it turned out a complete nightmare — and it left lot of fans feeling disappointed.

Here’s how Twitter reacted to Apple’s biggest, most frustrating iPhone launch in years.

Siri is great for setting reminders and timers, but in recent times Apple’s AI assistant has gotten a lot better at other things, too. For instance, sending iMessages to folks via your EarPods or AirPods, with your iPhone still in your pocket, works well enough that you can use it reliably all the time.

However, if Siri can’t pronounce the names of your contacts, then it’ll drive you crazy. Luckily, you can teach Siri to say these names correctly.

In iOS 11, there are four ways to switch apps on the iPad. Five, if you count the old-school way: hitting the home button to return to the home screen, and tapping an icon to launch a different app. Some of these methods have been around a while, and have changed drastically in iOS 11. Others are brand new, and exclusive to the iPad. Today, we’re going to look at them all.

The most impressive feature of Google’s new Pixel Buds might not be their audio quality. As demonstrated during the Pixel 2 event today, they work as a real-time translation tool when combined with one of Google’s new phones.

“With Pixel Buds, I can use real-time Google Translate to have a natural conversation in 40 languages,” Google hardware product manager Juston Payne said during the event. “We’re letting you connect with the world around you in a more natural way, by rethinking how a headphone should work, connecting it to cloud-based machine learning and giving you access with the touch of a finger.”

Early reviews of the Apple Watch Series 3 are now dropping ahead of its official debut on Friday, September 22. If you’re still in two minds about whether you should upgrade, they should help you make that all-important decision.

The general consensus is that LTE is a great addition to Apple’s wearable lineup. Just don’t expect a drastically different experience, and prepare yourself for some early teething troubles.

The Apple Watch is finally ready to cut the cord with your iPhone.

Apple unveiled its new Apple Watch Series 3 at the iPhone X keynote in Cupertino today and it appears to pack all the features fans have wanted in an Apple wearable since the original was unveiled over two years ago.

The Home button on your iPhone has multiple purposes — unlocking your iPhone, bringing up the multitasking menu, returning to the home screen, invoking Siri, etc. Such frequent use can take a toll on the Home button’s responsiveness. Although it is designed to last, it can become laggy or less responsive over time. Surprisingly enough, a large number of Home button issues have more to do with the software rather than the actual hardware.

If you notice that your iPhone’s Home button isn’t as responsive as it used to be, here are a few tips you can use to fix the Home button lag.

By Joey Pritikin

Over the last five years, biometrics has evolved from the stuff of crime scene investigation and science fiction movies to a broad set of technologies that make our lives easier, more personal, and more secure. Starting with the Touch ID sensor in the iPhone 5s, Apple led the way in the acceptance and adoption of biometrics.

The latest indications are that Apple is embracing a face-recognition approach that goes beyond a standard 2D, visible-light sensor. When used in a situation where there are only a handful of approved users, like a consumer mobile device, the promise is great.