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Why you should use Night Shift mode in iOS 9.3

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iOS 9.3 Night Shift
Night Shift mode is a must in iOS 9.3.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

iOS 9.3 might not look like much of an upgrade, but there’s one feature you should definitely be excited about. It’s called Night Shift, and it makes using your iPhone or iPad before bed more comfortable, more enjoyable and healthier by banishing blue light.

Here’s why you should use it once iOS 9.3 becomes available.

iPhone-hugging leather case won’t go soft around the edges

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This one should last and last without dropping your cards out.
This one should last and last without dropping your cards out.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Best List: Leather Wallet Case 80° for iPhone 6s Plus by Mujjo

If there’s one thing about leather iPhone cases, it’s that while they wear nicely and look great when distressed, they tend to get a little floppy. The last leather iPhone case I put on my iPhone 6 Plus went all soft and let my ATM card and driver’s license fall out, forcing me to take a trip to the DMV and the bank to get replacements.

That won’t be the, well, case with this upgraded leather wallet case from Mujjo. Its molded-plastic base snuggles my iPhone 6 Plus, while its stiff, stitched pocket keeps my cards safely ensconced without too much give.

How to play retro arcade games on your Apple TV

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Play classic arcade games right on your Apple TV.
Play classic arcade games right on your Apple TV.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Want to play your Mega Man 2 ROM on your new fourth-generation Apple TV? How about Super Mario Bros. 3?

It’s a ton of fun to play classic console arcade games, especially if you have a few ROMs lying around on your hard drive and would like to play them on the big screen.

Here’s how to get your new Apple TV all set up to rock some retro games.

Double your MacBook’s hard drive with quick ‘one-click upgrade’

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The tiny TarDisk Pear slides into your MacBook's SD card slot and doubles your storage almost instantly.
The tiny TarDisk Pear slides into your MacBook's SD card slot and doubles your storage almost instantly.
Photo: Lewis Wallace/Cult of Mac

Cult of Mac CES 2016 full coverage LAS VEGAS — The makers of a tiny new device called the TarDisk Pear promise to permanently double your MacBook’s hard drive space in a matter of moments.

Simply slide the Pear into your MacBook’s SD card slot, run a quick setup (called “pearing”), and your hard-drive capacity will be permanently doubled.

“Pear is a one-click option for upgrading,” TarDisk’s Pierce Schiller told Cult of Mac at CES 2016.

Why most New Year’s resolutions fail (and how iPhone can help you succeed)

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The secret to losing weight and getting fit with iPhone in 2016
An expert reveals the secret to losing weight and getting fit with iPhone.
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

If you’re feeling guilty about your festive overindulgence, you may be planning to lose some weight and get fit in the new year. Well, sorry to be a Grinch, but research suggests that only 8 percent of New Year’s resolutions are successful.

The good news is that there is a better way. One that involves steadily building healthy habits over time. There are some handy iPhone apps that can help with this, but you won’t find them in the Health & Fitness section of the App Store.

Pro Tip: How to get iTunes to ignore iPhone while charging

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Disconnect  your iPhone while still connected via USB and charge without iTunes bugging you.
Disconnect your iPhone while still connected via USB and charge without iTunes bugging you.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugSometimes you just want to plug your iPhone into your Mac without having to deal with all that iTunes stuff, like synchronizing or backing up.

Or, maybe a friend of yours needs to sip off your Macbook’s power and you don’t want to have iTunes sync their iPhone.

Either way, you can eject the connected iPhone, thereby avoiding all the iTunes stuff but still letting the physically connected iPhone pull power from the USB port. Even better: when you’re done charging, just pull the USB cable out from your Macbook without any worry.

Here are three different ways to do just that.

Pro Tip: Use Apple Watch to send friends your exact location

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Sending your location is just a tap and a press away.
Sending your location is just a tap and a press away.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Pro_Tip_Cult_of_MacOne of the cooler features of having a pocket computer like the iPhone is being able to send a friend your location via Messages. Just a couple of taps on the iPhone and you can let anyone know where you’re at. It’s easy and super useful when you need to get a group together at a specific location.

The Apple Watch has a similar feature, which lets you do the very same thing without ever having to pull your iPhone out of your pocket.

Here’s how.

5 Apple accessories every bit as crappy as the iPhone battery case

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Smart case
Help! My iPhone 6s has eaten my iPhone 4.
Photo: Apple

The consensus view of Apple’s newly launched hunchback iPhone battery case is that it should ideally be hidden from human view, spending its life in isolation ringing bells in Notre Dame.

Immediately upon release, the Internet filled with loud, angry protesters saying this kind of thing would never have happened in Steve Jobs’ day (and accusing Jony Ive of snoozing on the job). While I’m definitely no fan of Apple’s $99 Smart Battery Case, this isn’t the first time the company has released a less-than-stellar piece of design work amidst its usually gorgeous offerings.

Check out the list below for five of the worst pieces of design to come out of Cupertino since … well, yesterday, actually.

Pro Tip: Access your Apple Music playlists anywhere

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Apple Music
Great playlists deserve to be on all my devices.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Pro_Tip_Cult_of_MacI made an Apple Music playlist of Paste’s top 50 albums of 2015 via iTunes on my Mac. I was able to share it out on Facebook and to my friends via Messages, but I wasn’t able to see the playlist on my iPhone.

I made sure that I was logged in to my iTunes account on both my Mac and my iPhone, I signed in and out of iCloud, and I even force-quit Apple Music on my iPhone to try and fix the issue. None of these options worked.

After a bit of searching on the internet, I figured out what the problem was.

Here’s what you can do if you’re having the same issue.

Drive your guitar to new places with this mighty Moog effects pedal

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Moog's MF Drive packs a lot of sonic punch in a small package.
Moog's MF Drive packs a lot of sonic punch in a small package.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Best List: MF Drive guitar pedal by Moog

The magic of what Moog has done with this analog stompbox isn’t completely evident until you plug an expression pedal into it.

Certainly the drive tones are exceptional and the controls provide a myriad of useable and inspirational tones, but the expression pedal unlocks Moog’s industry-leading love of sonic experimentation.

Pro Tip: Max out your iPhone battery life with this extreme trick

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battery
This reminds me a lot of the iPhone throttling controversy.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

My iPhone 6 Plus is a battery hog. I routinely get around 12 hours off of one full charge. I carry around external battery packs to make sure I’m not short when it matters.

I’d do pretty much anything to increase the amount of battery I have left at the end of the day, including the following fairly extreme trick.

Pro Tip: iPad Pro uses same keyboard shortcuts as your Mac

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Use your new iPad Pro with these familiar keyboard shortcuts.
Use your new iPad Pro with these familiar keyboard shortcuts.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugIf you’re one of the lucky ones to get your hands on a big, beautiful iPad Pro, you might be surprised that many of the same OS X keyboard shortcuts, like the ones for cut, paste, find, etc., are available right on your new giant laptop replacement.

The iPad Pro keyboard has a Command key on it, as do several third-party keyboards.

If you’re already a Mac user (and you should be), you’ll feel right at home when you need to create a new document in Pages, make your text bold or italic, or even show the word count in a document. Here are several key combinations you can use right out of the box.

10 October iOS games that will shock you with delight

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10 best ios games October 2015
Spooky month; awesome games.
Photo: Evan Killham/Cult of Mac

Every month, the App Store fills up with countless iOS games of varying quality. You want to have something to do on your iPhone or iPad while you’re on the bus or enjoying the quiet solitude of your bathroom. But who has time to figure out which titles are worth your valuable time?

Apparently, we do. So if you’re searching for the best iOS gaming treats from the past month, look no further than Cult of Mac as we find the 10 best that you should be playing right now — no tricks.

Here they are, in no particular order.

Mac dev uses Klingon to make app pirates walk the plank

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How do you say
How do you say "Payback's a bitch" in Klingon?
Photo: Edward Brawer

When a Klingon says bortaS bir jablu’DI’reH QaQqu’ nay,’ it’s not good. It means “Revenge is a dish best served cold” and what is likely to follow is some sort of death blow.

So when Edward Brawer, the developer of the dock replacement software uBar, had pirates of his Mac app in sight, he set his phaser to amusement. Users who ripped him off soon saw the titles on apps and folders switched to the Klingon language.

One of our favorite headphones goes Bluetooth

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Bowers & Wilkins' P5 Wireless headphones make us believe in Bluetooth.
Bowers & Wilkins' P5 Wireless headphones make us believe in Bluetooth.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Best List: Bower & Wilkins P5 Wireless Headphones

Damn, I love Bluetooth.

Crap, I hate Bluetooth.

Bluetooth is the Jekyll and Hyde of technology. One minute it is your best friend and confidante; the next it is the most evil of evils. Actually, it is the other way around. As you are trying to find the device, and pair the device, and make sure the device stays paired, Bluetooth is some super-annoying technology. Then, once your devices have made nice, the relationship is repaired.

How to pin Safari tabs in El Capitan

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Keep your important tabs active in the background for easy access.
Keep your important tabs active in the background for easy access.
Screen: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Let’s be honest: there are a handful of sites that you visit a lot, open in tabs in Safari.

If you want to keep these tabs ready to go in every Safari window you open, even after you’ve quit Safari and re-launched it, you can use El Capitan’s new tab pinning feature to keep pages “open, up to date, and easily accessible.”

The sites you pin will stay active in the background, pinned to the left side of your tab bar. Here’s how to create (and get rid of) pinned tabs in Safari.

Beware this ‘fix’ for nasty iOS 9 Game Center bug

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Game Center is causing some problems for iOS 9 updaters.
Game Center is causing some problems for iOS 9 updaters.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

If you’ve been having trouble with Apple’s Game Center after upgrading to iOS 9, you’re not alone.

Read Apple’s discussion forums and you’ll find 14 pages of comments from disgruntled gamers complaining about — and trying to solve — this rather massive issue.

How to master iOS 9’s killer new features

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20150814_siri-music_0024
iOS 9 is loaded with new features. Here's how to use them.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

We’re all going to be diving into the deep end with iOS 9. While many of the changes are subtle, there are a fair number of differences in both the visual style and the under-the-hood workings of Apple’s new mobile OS.

That means this a perfect time to take a deeper look at all the killer stuff you don’t want to miss. These iOS 9 tips will help you make the most of all the great new features.

Swipe your way to iOS 9’s suggested contacts

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There they are! Hello, contacts!
There they are! Hello, contacts!
Screen: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

iOS 8 introduced the idea of showing your most-contacted contacts in the multitasking screen. You’d simply double click on the Home button to see the list of the most recent apps as well as a row of the folks you contacted the most across the top.

If you’re looking for that feature in iOS 9, you might have noticed that the contacts are no longer in the multitasking screen. Never fear, though, they’ve just moved.

Save your battery with iOS 9’s Low Power Mode

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Keep your iPhone humming for up to three hours until your next charge.
Keep your iPhone humming for up to three hours until your next charge.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

iOS 9 brings a bunch of battery-boosting features, most of which work right out of the box. But there’s one battery-saving feature you’ll have to enable yourself.

Called Low Power Mode, this new feature should prove super-useful when you need to eke out just a bit more time with your device — provided you’re not doing anything intense.