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Don’t be scared of animation. Even you can do it. Here’s how to get started. [Deals]

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Animation bundle
Create animations using Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Incredibles 2, Hotel Transylvania 3 and The Grinch are three of the top-15-grossing movies for all of 2018. And with its stellar reviews and big word-of-mouth buzz, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse may be joining that list before year’s end.

It’s no news flash to anyone anymore. There are huge opportunities, as well as huge dollars, in creating animation and animated features. While you’re probably not going to roll out of bed and create the next Pixar masterpiece tomorrow, your journey to an artistically and financially fulfilling career as an animator can get started today with The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Animation Bundle. And it’s heavily discounted right now!

How to use your iPad Pro as a display for your Mac mini

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Luna Display gives you a touchscreen Mac.
Luna Display gives you a touchscreen Mac.
Photo: Luna Display

Even the most committed iPad user still needs a Mac occasionally. You might need to add music to your iTunes music library, or get files off an SD card, or use BitTorrent, or keep local backups of your photo library. Or you might just like using a Mac, but you don’t want a huge iMac, and what’s the point in buying a MacBook if you have an iPad already?

The obvious choice is a Mac mini. And with this tip, you can use your iPad Pro as a display for the Mac. That means you won’t need an extra monitor, but it also means that you can quickly turn your iPad into a Mac when you need to.

Thinner, lighter 2019 iPhone will be made possible by Samsung

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iPhone X
Proprietary Samsung display technology could bring improvements to a 2019 iPhone.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

A 2019 iPhone model reportedly will sport a display made by Samsung that has the touch panel integrated into the OLED, rather than layered on top. 

If true, the technology will make one of next year’s iOS handsets thinner and lighter, but not all of them.

Job listing hints at Apple-made modems coming to iPhone

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The Apple T2 chip could be the source of mysterious crashes afflicting two of Apple's newest computers.
Apple wants to bring its chip-designing skillset to modems.
Photo: IFIXIT

Qualcomm and Intel could both soon lose out on Apple’s wireless chip business completely.

After switching from Qualcomm modems to Intel modems (and causing a huge legal war in the process), Apple is reportedly looking to build more wireless chips on its own. The company is staffing up in San Diego and based on one job listing, the team is working on a cellular modem chip.

Scoshe’s iPad Pro charger is better than Apple’s [Review]

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Scoshe now makes an iPad Pro charger with two USB-C ports.
Scoshe now makes an iPad Pro charger with two USB-C ports.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Before Apple started selling the 2018 iPad Pro USB-C power charger as a stand-alone product, Scosche introduced one that’s slightly more expensive but offers significant advantages.

In addition, Scosche sells a USB-C/USB-A car charger that iPad Pro users should consider as well.

Build beautiful websites without writing a single line of code [Deals]

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Whatever you need a website for, you can build it without any previous web design skills.
Whatever you need a website for, you can build it without any previous web design skills.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

There are plenty of reasons to build a website. Maybe you’ve got a personal brand to grow, products to sell, or just need a place to show off your ideas. But if you can’t code, don’t worry, you can still build beautiful, feature-rich websites.

SEO matters, so track your site’s web ranking with this pro tool [Deals]

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Track your site's search ranking with SERPCloud Pro
Track your site's search ranking with SERPCloud Pro
Screenshot: Cult of Mac Deals

About 83 percent of big-time digital marketing companies responding to a Clutch survey said they think they’re doing a good job reaching their marketing goals. Yet, 44 percent said SEO was their “least popular” tool. But SEO drives search rankings. And since more than 90 percent of business decisions start with an online search, and first-page Google results get more than 90 percent of web traffic … well, we seem to have a contradiction here.

Apple Watch ECG already finding stealth heart problems

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Apple health care
Using the ECG on Apple Watch Series 4 is dead easy.
Photo: Lewis Wallace/Cult of Mac

Ed Dentel has become the poster child for the new ECG function of the Apple Watch. He installed the recent update that allowed this wearable to check the electrical activity of his heart and it immediately told him he had a problem.

At first he thought the new technology was faulty. Instead, the fault was his heart.

Best gifts for Mac fans [Gift Guide 2018]

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Mac gift guide 2018
Buying for a Mac fan? Start here!
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

We’ve shown you the best gifts for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users, but what if the person you’re buying for is a long-time Apple fan whose first love was the Mac? Then you should start your shopping right here!

Gift guide 2018 bugThis guide is filled with awesome accessories and gadgets that every Mac addict will enjoy. We’ve handpicked only the best — things we’ve used, reviewed, and would recommend — so that you can be sure your hard-earned cash is being well spent.

Check out our gift guide selections for Mac users below.

How to stop apps from tracking your location

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Wherever you go, your iPhone is tracking youR location
Wherever you go, your iPhone is tracking you.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Your iPhone apps can track your location. You already know that, but maybe you tell yourself that that weather app just uses your current location to give you an accurate forecast, or that your bike-routing and tracking app is just keeping a count of miles and calories.

In reality, any one of these apps may be taking that location data and selling it. One way to handle this is to keep up to date with the privacy policies of any location-aware apps you use, but that’s too much work for most of us. Instead, why not just deny them access to your location? On iOS, that’s easy, and it works.

Top iPhone suppliers give Apple investors good news

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The iPhone XS Max is 25 percent larger than any previous iOS handset. So how is it as an iPad mini replacement?
2018 iPhone sales might be a lot stronger than Apple’s share price would indicate.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

A pair of companies critical in producing the iPhone enjoyed very strong sales in November. While not definite, this is a clear hint that the recent pessimism about sales of Apple’s handsets is unjustified.

Apple’s share price has dropped about 25 percent in the past couple of months on previous equally vague but negative reports.

Mojave update hints at new AMD Vega GPUs coming to Mac

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2018 MacBook Pro
Bag a bargain MacBook Pro today only.
Photo: Apple

The most recent macOS Mojave update suggests we’ll soon see new AMD Vega GPUs coming to the Mac.

Apple recently introduced a refreshed MacBook Pro with faster Vega graphics chips, and it seems those GPU upgrades will continue in early 2019 for other machines in the company’s lineup.

Linea Sketch adds fantastic new Apple Pencil features

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Linea Sketch
Linea Sketch get a ton of great iPad-Pro ready-features.
Photo: Iconfactory

The iPad’s best simple drawing app just got a fantastic update for the new 2018 iPad Pro. Linea Sketch is a crowd favorite thanks to its clean design, its advanced-yet-simple-to-use features, and its great drawing and ink engine. And now it has been brushed up to take advantage of the new 2018 iPadPro and second-gen Apple Pencil.

Super Micro investigation reveals no Chinese spy chips

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chips
Bloomberg article made accusations about Chinese spy chips.
Photo: Intel

As promised, Super Micro Computer, the manufacturer of technology accused by Bloomberg of containing Chinese spy chips, has carried out an investigation of its hardware. And it’s apparently clean.

The company hired outside investigators to resolve the claims leveled against it. On Tuesday, it told customers that there was no evidence of malicious hardware on its current or older motherboards.

Get certified in graphic design with Adobe’s top apps [Deals]

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Adobe Creative Cloud
Master Adobe's Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator with this jam-packed bundle
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

If you’re a digital creative of any kind, at some point you’ll have to encounter Adobe Creative Cloud. Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are the industry standard for visual design tools. so they’re worth knowing for almost anybody who works at a computer.

Best gifts for Apple Watch fans [Gift Guide 2018]

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Don’t leave your holiday shopping until the last minute. With Cult of Mac’s handy gift guides, you can find the perfect presents and get them all early for a stress-free December.

Gift guide 2018 bugOur guides are filled with fantastic gadgets and accessories that Apple fans will love. We’ve handpicked only the best — things we’ve used, reviewed, and would recommend — so that you can be sure your money is being well spent.

This guide focuses on the Apple Watch owners in your life, and it features something to suit every budget.

How to lock your iPad into a single app

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Guided access ipad
Guided Access can avoid embarrassing mistakes.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

The iPad’s main trick is that it disappears when you launch an app. Fire up a piano app, and your iPad becomes a piano. Launch YouTube and it turns into a TV for pacifying children. This is part of the magic of the iPad, but it’s not quite perfect. Kids can easily leave YouTube and start reading your sexts instead. And a musician might accidentally trigger a gesture while playing on those virtual piano keys, finding themselves back at the home screen in the middle of a performance.

What you need is kiosk mode, aka Guided Access. This locks the iPad into a single app, and disables the hardware buttons. And it’s equally good for keeping you in one app, or keeping people out of all the others.

iPad Pro bug makes music apps stutter and crackle

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IPad Pro one week review
Musicians should stick to their old iPads for now.
Photo: Andrea Nepori

If you bought the new iPad Pro for making music, then you probably already discovered that it’s almost useless for the purpose. I just hope you didn’t sell your old iPad yet. The problem, which is so widespread that it probably affects all of the new 2018 iPad Pro models, causes the CPU to spike, and sound to crackle whenever you use more than a couple of music apps together.

Fortunately, a fix is apparently on the way.

Microsoft and Amazon have both overtaken Apple in market cap

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Apple is worth more than the entire US energy sector combined
Apple is now behind where it was at the start of the year.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple has done a whole lot in 2018 but, from a stock price perspective, none of it matters. That’s because Apple’s declining stock price means that the company has now officially lost money this year.

AAPL finished 2017 at $169.23. At time of writing, it is trading at $164.48. Overall, it’s now down around 1 percent year-on-year. In the process, it’s fallen behind some major rivals.

Avoid embarrassing typos with this automatic proofreader [Deals]

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WhiteSmoke
WhiteSmoke helps you send error-free emails.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

No matter how many times you proofread, typos and bad phrasings have a nasty habit of slipping by unnoticed. That can mean a lot of embarrassment over the smallest mistakes, especially in professional emails. So it’s good to know there’s a tool that can catch them before you hit send.

Best gifts for iPad fans [Gift Guide 2018]

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iPad gift guide 2018
Buying for an iPad fan? Start here!
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

The holiday shopping season has rudely crept up on us, which means it’s time to start buying for friends and loved ones who have been good this year. Fortunately for you, Cult of Mac is here to help.

Gift guide 2018 bugOur gift guides are full of great products Apple fans are sure to love. We’ve hand-picked awesome accessories and glorious gadgets that we all use and recommend, so you know your money is being well-spent.

This guide focuses on the iPad lovers in your life, and there’s something to suit every budget.

Ready, set, relax! Go deep with Apple Watch Breathe app [Cult of Mac Magazine No. 274]

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Cult of Mac Magazine No. 274
The serenely subtle Breath app has a surprisingly deep history.
Cover: Graham Bower/Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Take a deep breath and learn how to get the most out of your Apple Watch with a pair of handy how-tos. Every Apple Watch owner can take advantage of Apple’s stress-busting Breathe app. However, you’ll need a Series 4 (and this week’s watchOS update) to get in on the ECG action.

Get those how-tos and the week’s best Apple news and reviews — including an expose on Apple’s biologically bogus squid emoji — in your free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Download it now on iTunes. Or keep reading for the week’s best Apple news, reviews and how-tos. (Plus, enter to win a set of rugged iPhone XS Max cases.)

Snag awesome stocking stuffers for the Apple fans in your life [Deals]

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Pick up premium, portable tech gear for your loved ones, at massive discounts.
Pick up premium, portable tech gear for your loved ones, at massive discounts.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Just like every year, the holidays hit us before we know it. So to make sure you aren’t caught without anything to offer the Apple fans and other tech types in your life, we’ve rounded up five great deals on stocking stuffers that are sure to please.

We’ve got ultra-tough charging cables, adapters to make any headphones wireless, high-end power bricks, and plenty more. Everything is discounted by a third or more!