Rewind: Find anything you’ve seen, said, or heard. Image: Rewind AI, Inc.
Rewind is a Mac app coming soon that promises to create a searchable, rewindable index of everything you read online, write in conversation, work on or even say in meetings.
We’ve all had this happen: you remember seeing something that you want to share, but you don’t remember where you saw it nor enough details to find it on the internet. Rewind promises to make everything that you’ve “seen, said or heard” searchable.
The complaint calls for both companies to be broken up. Image: Apple/Google
Google’s deal with Apple, which ensures that it remains the default search engine in Safari across all Apple devices, is the subject of a new class-action lawsuit against both companies and their CEOs, Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook.
A lawsuit filed in California this week alleges that the two Silicon Valley giants have a non-compete agreement in internet search that violates U.S. antitrust laws and prevents Apple from launching a search engine of its own.
Super-charge your web searches with this customizable Home screen shortcut. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
This fantastic shortcut makes searching the web with your iPhone faster than ever. It places an icon on your Home screen, and you just tap it, type a search into the box that pops up, and hit enter. Your search will then open in Safari.
This customizable search shortcut proves speedier than pretty much any other method, including iOS’ built-in Spotlight search.
Files can be stored in drawers. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
The Files app is waaaaay better in iOS 13 and iPadOS. It adds external USB storage support, so you can plug in anything from a hard drive or USB-C stick to a synthesizer that can mount as a USB drive to load samples and presets.
Apple’s built-in file-management app adds column view (with a handy preview) and all the metadata you want to know about a given file. And it also benefits from a massively upgraded search feature.
Apple apps no longer dominate App Store search results. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Apple’s recently-adjusted App Store algorithm prevents too many of its own apps from dominating search results.
The change, which followed Spotify’s complaint regarding “unfair” App Store practices several months, handicaps Apple titles and has had a huge impact since being introduced.
Podcast searches are set to get way better in iOS 13. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
Apple added full transcript search to its podcast directory in iOS 13. Even though you can’t actually read the podcast transcripts, this is still huge. You can search across the content of podcast episodes the way you can search websites with DuckDuckGo (or other search engines) today.
I’m getting desperate for Safari-related images for these how-to posts. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
This tip is exhibit A in the case for Apple being really, really good at hiding features. I imagine if you went around to Apple’s house for dinner, and the company asked you to set the table, you’d have some real trouble finding the cutlery. Maybe you’d open the cutlery drawer and see only the spoons. Then you’d open the drawer below, expecting that Apple had just set things out differently, as usual.
But in that second drawer you’d find nothing but fruit. WTF Apple? And then you’d notice that the top drawer is a little thicker than it appears when open. You try the top drawer again. This time you see that if you press down on one of the wooden spoons, the others move aside — animated a little too slowly — to reveal the knives and spoons. But where the hell are the forks?
Back to today’s tip. It’s a combination of two tricks you may already know:
Google is watching, all the time. Turn it to your advantage. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
How many time have you tried to remember that site where you read that thing last week? A million, probably. And how many times have you found it? Less than a million, for sure. But did you know that you can use Google to search only sites that you have visited?
Search like a pro with Google search operators. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac
For many folks, Google is the front page of the internet. You don’t type Facebook.com into your browser. You just type “Facebook,” and then click the first Google result. Or you do a basic search by tapping in what you’re looking for.
But Google is way more powerful than that. You just have to learn a few of its secret code words, and then you can slice and dice your searches like a pro. No more wading through pages of results to find what you want. Use these tricks, and you’ll almost always get what you want on the first page. You can even ask Google to show you the weather.