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Dangerous new Mac malware fully compromises OS X

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Bitdefender
Bitdefender found a new backdoor into OS X.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s Mac systems have been exposed to a dangerous new piece of malware that allows attackers to take full control of OS X.

The new malware, dubbed Backdoor.MAC.Eleanor by security researchers, provides attackers with a backdoor into OS X systems by embedding a script into a fake file converter application that’s found on many reputable sites that sell Mac apps.

iPhone brings out the best in pro photographer

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Photographer Richard Koci Hernandez uses his iPhone for views of a city otherwise unseen.
Photographer Richard Koci Hernandez uses his iPhone for views of a city otherwise unseen.
Photo: Richard Koci Hernandez

Cult of Mac 2.0 bugAccomplished photographers tend to bristle when asked to talk about equipment. It’s not the camera that makes the picture, it’s the photographer.

Acclaimed photographer Richard Koci Hernandez would tend to agree, but he’s likely to gush about his camera anyway. That’s because some of the most interesting and satisfying work of his career has come from shooting with his iPhone.

The kind of gear that once helped Hernandez garner Pulitzer Prize nominations now rests idly in a camera bag.

4 lessons Apple Car should learn from Tesla

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Tesla
If Apple really is making a car, it should take some cues from Tesla.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

With all the recent rumors that Apple will build an electric car within the next few years, obviously Cupertino is going to be compared to the big electric car company of the moment, Tesla Motors.

Tesla sold more than 50,000 model S sedans in 2015, so I’m taking a look at four Apple Car lessons that Tim Cook and Jony Ive should learn from Tesla.

Check out the video below.

Put your fitness to the ultimate test with Apple Watch

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Get set to test yourself to the limit with your Apple Watch.
Get set to test yourself to the limit with your Apple Watch.
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

If you want to get in shape, the best way to get started is with some fitness testing. That might sound challenging, but luckily your Apple Watch is all you need to test yourself to the limit.

Fitness tests enable you to establish a baseline so you can see how your physical condition improves over time. And if you are already a fitness fanatic, regular testing enables you to identify areas of weakness and optimize your training program. Here’s how to make the Apple Watch a part of your essential fitness testing.

This slim SD card adds a huge chunk of storage [Deals]

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Nifty MiniDrive instantly adds 128 gigs of space to your Macbook, without adding a bulky external drive.
Nifty MiniDrive instantly adds 128 gigs of space to your Macbook, without adding a bulky external drive.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

If you’ve ever found yourself up against the limits of your Macbook’s hard drive, raise the limit. The Nifty MiniDrive instantly adds 128GB of storage, fitting seamlessly with the contours of the MacBook, eliminating the need for bulky external hard drives. Right now you can get a Nifty MiniDrive for $33.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Win it Wednesday: 5 Herschel bags to send your old luggage packing [Deals]

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These five bags by Herschel will put your old luggage to shame, and now's your chance to get them for free.
These five bags by Herschel will put your old luggage to shame, and now's your chance to get them for free.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Herschel is just about the top name in travel gear today, making bags and luggage that are as tough as they are good-looking. Let’s be honest — they put your suitcases and backpacks to shame. Premium bags like these go for a premium price, that is unless you enter this massive giveaway. This Herschel travel bundle includes five items that would normally cost a pretty penny, from suitcases to duffels and backpacks and more, but if you can enter today for a chance to get the whole shebang for free.

You must choose your apps, but choose wisely. [Deals]

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Choose 10 from dozens of  top-tier productivity-enhancing apps for one low price.
Choose 10 from dozens of top-tier productivity-enhancing apps for one low price.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

There’s only so much space on your computer and mobile, but an endless ocean of apps you could fill it with. With so much to choose from, it’s hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve narrowed down the best of productivity apps into this bundle of 34 top-tier apps for iOS and Mac. Pick the 10 apps you want, and pay $21.99 for the whole shebang.

Retrain Siri to make better sense of what you say

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Sorry, Alexa: Siri still the most widespread AI assistant
Siri feeling slow? Speed it up with this quick tip!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Have you ever noticed that Siri understands you less and less as the months go by? The digital assistant works great when you first set it up on a shiny new iPhone, but over time, it has a habit of becoming annoyingly inaccurate.

In this week’s Quick Tips video, I’m going to show you how to retrain Siri. By improving its recognition of your voice, you can make it work just as well as it once did.

Check the video out below.

Hack exposes millions of Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo logins

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Google-Chrome
And some hackers want less than $1 for them.
Photo: Jay Wennington/Unsplash

The usernames and passwords for over 270 million hacked email accounts are being traded on Russia’s black market.

One security expert warns that while most of them are Mail.ru accounts for Russia’s most popular email service, tens of millions of them belong to Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo Mail users.

How to use your Apple Watch to control your Apple TV

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Control your Apple TV from your Apple Watch.
Control your Apple TV from your Apple Watch.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

What a magical world we live in. We can lift our Apple Watch up to listen to music, talk to our friends, and (yes) even tell the time.

If you’re an Apple TV user, you can send your Apple Watch tunes to the big screen, and you can even control your Apple TV right from your wrist.

Simply magical. Here’s how to control your Apple TV with your Apple Watch.

How to get ripped with Apple Watch weightlifting apps

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Gymaholic plugs the gaps in Apple Watch's fitness offering
Gymaholic plugs the gaps in Apple Watch's fitness offering

Fitness is not just about walking, running and cycling, despite what your Apple Watch may have you believe. Strength training is also important. Without it, your fitness routine is like a one-hand clap. Whether you are aiming for a ripped beach body or just to improve your overall health, you need to lift some weights.

Apple Watch and iPhone do not offer built-in support for strength training, but the good news is there are plenty of third-party apps that can plug the gap. Apple Watch weightlifting apps can help in three ways: by telling you what to do; showing you how to do it; and keeping a log of what you’ve done.

6 must-know shortcuts for every Smart Keyboard owner

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`
Apple has extended service on the Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro to address "functional issues."
Photo: Ally Kazmucha/The App Factor

app-factor-logo-thumbnail Back in November, I purchased a 12.9-inch iPad Pro and a Smart Keyboard to go with it. I was so used to my Belkin keyboard paired with my iPad Air 2 that I quickly became frustrated with the Smart Keyboard’s lack of a shortcut row. Before long, I returned the Smart Keyboard (and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro).

iOS 9.3 bug turns links into iPhone crash bombs

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Safari is constantly crashing for some iOS 9.3 users.
Safari is constantly crashing for some iOS 9.3 users.
Photo: Apple

Update: Apple has released iOS 9.3.1 to fix the iPhone web links problem.

If you have an iPhone running iOS 9.3, whatever you do, do not install the Booking.com app.

iPhone users are reporting that an iOS 9.3 bug, possibly related to the Booking.com app, causes some apps to freeze and crash when tapping on links — and it’s not entirely clear what’s causing it.

6 things the Mac App Store can learn from iOS

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App Store_3
The Mac App Store could use some support.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

This is a guest post by Karthik Suroju, a digital marketer at CloudMagic.

The iOS App Store is a one-stop destination for everything consumers need on the iPhone and iPad. However, that’s not the case with the Mac App Store. At the beginning of January 2016, there were 1,234,267 apps for iPhones, 662,984 for iPads and a mere 27,011 for Macs.

5 ways the Galaxy S7 beats the iPhone 6s

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Samsung-Galaxy
Yup, water-resistance is one of them!
Photo: Samsung
Yup, water-resistance is one of them. Photo: Samsung
Yup, water-resistance is one of them. Photo: Samsung

As the iPhone’s biggest rivals, Samsung’s latest Galaxy smartphones have to be good enough to convince consumers that they’re a better buy. None do that better than the new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.

According to the overwhelmingly positive reviews published today, the duo have a number of big advantages over the iPhone 6s. Here are 7 of them.

LifePrint makes your boring iPhone photos come to life

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Robert Macauley shows off LifePrint, his app for bringing all your pictures to life.
Robert Macauley shows off LifePrint, his printer and app for bringing your pictures to life.
Photo: Traci Dauphin/Cult of Mac

SAN FRANCISCO — The idea for Robert Macauley’s “photographs for the new millennium” sprang from a camera that is totally 20th century.

“What if you could create a Polaroid experience for your phone?” Macauley said as he showed off a prototype of LifePrint, his pint-size printer that works with an augmented-reality app. LifePrint lets you print out Polaroid-size images that, when viewed through the app, can come to life on your smartphone screen.

One way to keep iPhones secure: Let Apple look inside, not the FBI

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john-sculley
Former Apple CEO John Sculley has an interesting idea about how Apple might approach the FBI's request.
Photo: Web Summit/Flickr CC

There are plenty of opposing views about how Apple should handle the FBI’s demand to create a backdoor to unlock a dead terrorist’s iPhone.

One idea we haven’t heard before, however, is a concept put forward by former Apple CEO John Sculley: Cupertino could help provide the desired information, but Apple (not the government) could be in charge of reading the messages.

How to capture long exposures and light trails with your iPhone

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A decent tripod and a few great apps can help you capture stunning light trails, motion blur, and low light photos.
A decent tripod and a few great apps can help you capture stunning light trails, motion blur, and low-light photos.
Photo: Ally Kazmucha/The App Factor

app-factor-logo-thumbnailLong-exposure photography lets you capture light trails, motion blur and better low-light shots. While the iPhone’s built-in Camera app doesn’t let you control shutter speed and light sensitivity, lots of apps do. Slow Shutter Cam is my favorite — here’s how I’ve used it to capture long exposures with nothing but my iPhone 6 and a tripod.

Watch Super Bowl 50 on Apple TV (no matter where you live)

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appletv
Apple TV's new app could give us the interface we've dreamed of.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

If you’re a cord cutter like a lot of us, you might be wondering how to get Super Bowl 50 up on your big screen at home without a cable subscription.

Luckily, if you live in the U.S., you’ve got it pretty easy. Even U.K. folks can stream it live (as long as they have a BBC account) on their iPads. If you live outside these two areas, though, you might need a little help.

Here’s how to get Super Bowl 50 on your Apple TV no matter where you live.

Here’s what photos from a dual-camera iPhone 7 might look like

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This enlarged portrait shows a difference in quality from the iPhone 5s, left, and a dual-camera system created by LinX Imaging.
This enlarged portrait shows a difference in quality from the iPhone 5s, left, and a dual-camera system created by LinX Imaging.
Photo: LinX Imaging

If the pictures “Shot on the iPhone 6” were impressive, a dual-camera iPhone 7 could have the photography world again licking its chops.

Just how much further the technical quality could go with smartphone images is a future found in the work of an Israeli company called LinX Imaging, which happened to get purchased by Apple last year.