This week we read the news with NewsBlur and Unread 2, shoot faux 8mm footage with Rtro, and spend $20 on Tot, a notes app with just seven pages.
Ever since its launch, people have mostly been dismissive about Apple News on iPhone, iPad and Mac. One big reason is the way it interacts with links on the web, boxing users into the News app instead of letting them visit the open web.
For me, that’s actually a pretty desirable thing, because I really like the News app. It’s much cleaner-looking than many ad-bloated websites, and far less emotional and combative than getting your news on social media.
But making the News app show you the things you care about, with less clutter and noise, requires one simple trick.
Learning a new language is a precious gift to give yourself and the world around you. Apps have made it easy to carry our studies with us, so we can learn any place, and at any pace. Different language apps take different approaches, but this one might be one of the most effective.
It’s been a wild decade for the “Jesus tablet.” From colorful anecdotes to surprising stats, these 10 fast facts will cast the iPad in new light.
You can read our latest #10things list, “10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPad,” in this week’s free Cult of Mac Magazine. It’s loaded with the latest Apple news stories, plus plenty of Mac and iOS how-tos and product reviews.
Finally, don’t miss your chance to get a limited-edition Cult of Mac Apple Watch band. They’re brand-new in the Cult of Mac Store, and they won’t last long.
Whatever happened this February, you can’t deny it was a great month for deals on tech. At least in the Cult of Mac Store, where there were crazy deals on massive cloud storage accounts, sleek wireless earbuds, extra laptop monitors and an intuitive website builder.
Facebook is overhauling its Messenger app on mobile to give us a simpler, more enjoyable user experience. The redesign does away with chatbots and games and makes Stories even more prominent.
Bullet journaling is a big deal. It’s a way to put your notes, lists, to-dos and calendars into any old notebook, and be able to find all of those things instantly. It’s truly the paper equivalent of an iPhone’s notes, reminders and calendar apps, only it’s all on paper. That means you can doodle and go totally free-form, instead of being constrained by an app-maker’s design.
The only thing a paper Bullet Journal can’t do is send you an alert or a notification. Today, we’ll see how to fix that, combining the paper journal with your iPhone’s calendar app.
While the iPad was arguably the purest distillation of Steve Jobs’ computing philosophy, even dyed-in-the-wool Apple fans don’t know everything about the revolutionary tablet.
Whether you’re an Apple newbie who’s just learning the differences between the iPad Air and the iPad Pro or a longtime fan who calls Cupertino products by their code names, there’s always a bit more to find out.
Here are 10 things you (probably) don’t know about the iPad.
CEO Tim Cook promises Apple is fundamentally strong and will weather the problems resulting from the coronavirus spreading around the world. He says his focus isn’t on short-term changes in Apple’s share price, despite a recent significant drop.
In a wide-ranging interview with Fox Business recorded Thursday in Birmingham, Alabama, Cook also discussed whether his company will move more device production out of China, and his relationship with President Donald Trump.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re big fans of VPNs. That’s because they not only keep us secure and private online, they also bypass annoying location-based content restrictions, so you can stream your favorite content anywhere you go. With this great deal, you can get VPN protection on all your devices for three whole years.
This week on The CultCast: Apple’s first ARM-based Mac is headed our way — we’ll tell you what we know. Plus, Apple’s new AirTags tracking tiles will be unlike anything we’ve seen, and way more powerful than we thought. We discuss! And stay tuned — we’ll tell you the weird rule Apple makes big movies follow if they want to put iPhones or Macs on the silver screen.
Out thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast, and use offer code CultCast at checkout for 10% off your first purchase.
Your iPhone is amazing. And that’s part of its problem. Every time you’re at a loose end, waiting in line, or just think that you’re bored, you pull it out and graze those Home screen icons to find something that might interest you.
This, you may not be surprised to know, is unhealthy behavior.
Apple plans to deliver a brand-new iPad Pro keyboard with a built-in trackpad, according to a new report.
The accessory is will take advantage of mouse compatibility in iPadOS, and is aimed at making iPad Pro a better laptop alternative. Foxconn, Apple’s largest manufacturing partner, is said to be preparing for mass-production ahead of a launch later this year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said he is “optimistic” that China is starting to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Cook also said device production stalled by quarantines and travels restrictions are now in “ramp mode.”
The latest generation of iPhones (the 11 and 11 Pro) contain the new U1 chip, which lets your iPhone locate other iPhones with pinpoint accuracy. Currently it is only used to show you the direction of other iPhones when you AirDrop a file. However, it will almost certainly soon be used to keep track of the rumored Apple Tags (or AirTags) tracking devices.
But what if you want to turn off UWB (ultra-wideband) tracking altogether? No problem.
Imagine easily swapping out the battery of your iPhone as you would a smoke detector.
The European Union may consider adopting a law that would regulate the design of all smartphones sold in the 27 member nations to provide consumers with easy access to the battery.
The Federal Communications Commission signed off on Apple’s next pair of headphones Thursday, without revealing many details. Still, the government agency indicated these will be part of the Powerbeats line, not the “AirPods Pro Lite” model that appears in recent rumors.
The best way to listen to music or podcasts is without external distractions. So if you’re looking for new headphones, wireless, over-ear cans are the way to go. Even better if you don’t have to break the bank in the process.
Path to Mnemosyne, an esoteric puzzle game featuring gorgeous hand-drawn grayscale art, is coming to the App Store. And it’s a doozy.
Having previously made waves on Steam in late 2018, in addition to launches on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, the critically acclaimed game’s forthcoming arrival on iOS will open it up to a whole new audience. If David Lynch made an iOS game it would probably look a lot like this.
Cloud gaming service Shadow announced Wednesday that its iOS app has been removed from Apple’s App store for what that tech-giant called a violation of its developer guidelines.
In a Reddit post, Shadow would not explain in detail those infringements or say if it even knows at this point what those are. It said it is working to resolve the issues and “bring Shadow back to every one of you mobile users as soon as possible!”
Every morning when I sit at my Mac to start writing, I open the same apps and start the same iTunes playlist. This repetitive, tedious task is what computers are supposed to do for us, so I figured I’d make my Mac open up those apps, and start that music playing, all without me having to do anything.
That dream was quickly quashed — the Mac isn’t quite able to read my mind yet. So I settled for the next best thing: An AppleScript that I can leave in the Dock, and then click once to open everything. The best part is, it’s absurdly easy to make your own.
Apple’s mission to eliminate cables could take a big leap forward this year. New code in the iOS 13.4 beta suggests the company will finally give users the ability to restore iPhone and iPad software over-the-air.
Apple hosted shareholders for an annual meeting Wednesday, and it was seemingly business as usual. CEO Tim Cook said the company will open its first Apple Store in India this year. He explained why Apple’s streaming service passed on a Friends reunion. He defended Apple’s role in FBI investigations when asked to retrieve iPhone data.
But the tech giant finds itself at an unusual moment in its history with a deadly coronavirus in China that halted business travel, crippled manufacturing, closed all 42 Apple Stores in the country and forced Cupertino to pull back on its March-quarter revenue protections.
The Up Next widget on the iPad home screen gets a handy tweak in iPadOS 13.4, showing the location of upcoming events if they’ve been specified in the Calendar. This is just one of the improvements in this version, which is still in beta testing,
But the release is getting closer, as Apple just released the third beta of iPadOS 13.4 to developers. Plus, there are new pre-release editions of macOS 10.15.4, iOS 13.4, tvOS 13.4 and watchOS 6.2.
One of the best Twitter features is the mute. You can pick any keyword, hashtag or person, and shut them up for as long as you like. This works in various Twitter apps, but if you’re using the official Twitter app, you can mute these keywords just by long-pressing them.