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GoodNotes 4 is the paper notebook of the future [50 Essential iOS Apps #24]

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GoodNotes 4 notebook with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro
GoodNotes 4 is perfect for writing notes, regardless of the topic.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: GoodNotes 4 The iPad has become a workhorse in the last few years. Since the introduction of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, the transition from pen and paper to digital note-taking is more feasible than ever. GoodNotes 4 is one of the best digital note-taking and document-annotation apps available on iOS.

Pick up the portable speaker of your dreams [Deals]

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Bring your favorite tunes and shows wherever you go with one of these massively discounted Bluetooth speakers.
Bring your favorite tunes and shows wherever you go with one of these massively discounted Bluetooth speakers.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Carrying your music around has never been easier. In fact, the options are almost overwhelming. So we’ve rounded up some of the best portable speakers at the best prices, from speakers you can take on a hike to speakers you can shower with. Everything is going for more than half off the usual price, read on for more details:

Stunning mobile RPG Elder Scrolls: Blades is coming to iOS this year

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Bethesda
This is going to look spectacular on iPhone X.
Photo: Bethesda

Bethesda has revealed that The Elder Scrolls: Blades, a new free-to-play RPG set in the Elder Scrolls universe, is coming to iPads and iPhones later in 2018.

A preview of the game was shown at E3 over the weekend, showcasing its astonishing graphics, massive open world, and entertaining gameplay. “You have to see this running on an iPhone X,” the company representative gushed in an on-stage demo. Check out the unveiling below.

This charging cable extends your phone’s battery life [Deals]

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This smart charging cable automatically cuts off power when your phone is charged, extending its battery life.
This smart charging cable automatically cuts off power when your phone is charged, extending its battery life.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

It’s frustrating to know that just charging your phone could be shortening its life. Leaving it plugged in too long, letting it get too hot, and other common mistakes are bad for battery’s longevity. There’s enough on our minds these days, so let this cable worry about keeping your iPhone healthy.

Cult of Mac Magazine: Apple’s most important WWDC 2018 revelations and more!

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magazine
In this week's Cult of Mac Magazine: Even though Apple didn’t have any new physical toys to show off, Tim Cook and company still managed to pull out some big surprises at this year's WWDC.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine: Apple’s WWDC 2018 keynote lasted nearly 130 minutes and was jam-packed with new software goodies for developers and regular old Apple fanboys.

Apple is doubling down on its software game. And even though they didn’t have any new physical toys to show off, Tim Cook and company still managed to pull out some big surprises.

What’s new in iOS 12, macOS Mojave, watchOS 5, tvOS 12 and ARKit 2.0? You’ll find these stories and more in this issue. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

Get a hands-on look at watchOS 5’s new Apple Watch features

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watchOS 5
We've had time to play with the developer beta of watchOS 5, here's what's new.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

WWDC 2018 bug Cult of Mac Even if you already saw the WWDC 2018 keynote where Apple showed off watchOS 5, there are tons of features that got brushed over — and some did not get mentioned at all.

As is our duty, we installed the first developer beta of watchOS 5 and gave it a full run-through so we can show you all the new features in action. Check out the video below.

How to add Apple Music albums to your Home screen

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Add any album to your iPhone's Home Screen.
Add any album to your iPhone's Home Screen.
Photo: Karl Baron/Flickr CC

Do you have an album or a playlist that you listen to over and over? Or maybe you have kids, and all they ever want to listen to is that Abba record you hate, again and again. And AGAIN. Are you sick of firing up Apple music and searching around for that record every time you want to play it? Well search no more! Today we’ll see how you can add any music to your home screen, and play it just by tapping an icon.

Amazing numbers from WWDC 2018

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wwdc 20 million developers
Did you know that 20 million people are building apps for Apple devices?
Photo: Apple

With so much to digest during Apple’s big WWDC keynote on Monday, it was easy to miss some of the finer details.

You might be aware of every new feature coming to iOS 12 this fall. You might have memorized the changes to macOS, too. But did you know that more than 20 million people are now building apps for Apple devices, or that 10 billion Siri requests are processed every month?

Here are some fascinating numbers you probably missed during WWDC.

Go the extra mile with Nike+ Run Club [50 Essential iOS Apps #23]

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Nike+ Run Club app run tracking
Nike+ Run Club offers detailed run tracking whether you're new to running or an experienced marathon runner.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Nike+ Run ClubRunning is a great form of exercise, regardless of your fitness level. Getting motivated to run is a different story. Some running apps are designed for run tracking, others offer training, or make exercise a game. Nike+ Run Club blends all three to get you started and keep you moving, from your first run to your thousandth mile, and beyond.

Team meetings don’t have to be a waste of time [Deals]

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This handy app offers a bunch of useful tools for keeping your meeting organized and on track.
This handy app offers a bunch of useful tools for keeping your meeting organized and on track.
Photo: Cult of Mac deals

If you work with other people, you know the grinding feeling of being in a meeting that’s going nowhere. Getting together with your team should be productive, not painful. And with a little help, it can be. In the case of Steve Jobs, he had three ways to running productive meetings: keep meetings small, each participant should be responsible for one specific agenda, and don’t make meetings too formal.

macOS developer explains why App Store trials are flawed

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App Store
Apple's trial solution just won't work for some developers.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s updated App Store guidelines finally give developers the ability to offer free trials for all apps — not just those that require a subscription. It’s a great move for users and creators, and something we’ve been demanding for a long time, but it has its problems.

Daniel Jalkut, developer of the MarsEdit blogging app for Mac, lists eight reasons why Apple’s approach to app trials is flawed.

We tell you all the best stuff announced at WWDC ’18, this week on The CultCast

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lisa cultcast lisa
Catch our WWDC '18 reactions and best-of-show picks on our newest CultCast.

It may not have been action-packed, but this week’s WWDC was bursting with great stuff. Don’t miss our WWDC 2018 reactions on this week’s episode of The CultCast. Then stick around for our list of all the best new iOS 12, watchOS, and macOS features announced at the keynote.

Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. Learn why Casper makes the internet’s favorite mattress, and get $50 toward select mattresses at casper.com/cultcast.

How to add sound to your iPhone or iPad screen recordings

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just-press-record
Just press record.
Photo: darkday/Flickr CC

iOS 11 added screen recording to the iPhone and iPad, letting you make movies from whatever is running on then screen. I use it to make video clips for how-tos, or to capture video and then create animated GIFs. But did you know that you can also use screen recording to copy a YouTube video? Or to make a screencast complete with a live voiceover? Here’s how.

How to get macOS Mojave’s shifting Dynamic Desktop on any Mac

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Mojave-shifting-Dynamic-Desktop
Get a Mojave-like shifting Dynamic Desktop on your own Mac today.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Here’s an easy way to get macOS Mojave’s constantly-changing Dynamic Desktop on any Mac. Dynamic Desktop wallpapers slowly fade through a set of photos throughout the day. The default set of images is of a pile of sand, presumably in the Mojave desert, showing the same view as the light changes throughout the day.

We already showed you where to download those wallpapers. Now we’re going to see that your Mac can already turn these images into a Mojave-style Dynamic Desktop slideshow.

Stubborn inventor reels in unruly MacBook cords

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Side Winder
Logan Bailey left Brigham Young University with a degree and a hit product.
Photo: Fuse

Logan Bailey’s first commercial invention is the Side Winder, a reel that neatly coils a MacBook charging cord to keep it tangle-free.

But the Side Winder isn’t his first Eureka! moment. That came in the fourth grade when he built a better toenail clipper.

Apple approves blatant Zelda: Breath of the Wild clone for iOS

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The Nintendo Switch's flexible Joy-Con controllers work just fine with a Mac (but not an iPhone).
Nintendo’s newest console was by far the hottest product.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

We’re still eagerly anticipating Nintendo’s first The Legend of Zelda game for mobile. iOS users in China may have briefly believed the wait was over this week when Breath of the Wild landed in the App Store — except it wasn’t actually Breath of the Wild.

It turns out Apple approved a shameless Zelda clone that, unsurprisingly, doesn’t deliver everything its description promises.

Sign up for the Netflix of stock vector images [Deals]

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Get lifetime access to more than half a million royalty-free stock vector graphics.
Get lifetime access to more than half a million royalty-free stock vector graphics.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Any designer knows that one of the best resources is a solid library of images and assets. But building up a big library can take time, and a lot of money. So s no wonder the Netflix style subscription model has come to the world of design assets.

Valve makes controversial decision to ‘allow everything’ in Steam Store

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Valve Steam
Enjoy Remote Play Together today.
Photo: Valve

Valve is making a huge change that’s going to have a massive impact on the content you see in the Steam Store. The company is doing away with human curation and allowing everything to be sold through its platform.

Valve says it should be up to players to decide what kinds of games they play, while developers should have the freedom to choose what kinds of games they make. However, it will be creating new tools that give shoppers greater control over what appears in their Steam Store.

How to switch on Safari favicons in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave

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google chrome favicons
Chrome has managed to display favicons since, like, forever.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

It’s 2018, and yet Safari still wouldn’t show you website icons, aka favicons, in its tabs. But that has — finally — changed. In both iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, Safari can now display favicons. All you need to do is toggle one setting.

Who cares? Well, favicons make it much easier to identify the site you want among a whole mess of open tabs. You can simply look for a site’s colorful logo icon, instead of squinting at a few letters of truncated text when trying to find the right tab.

Theoretical improvements: The status of Siri in iOS 12

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The iPhone's home button could be going away.
Siri should be a lot smarter.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

WWDC 2018 bug Cult of Mac In the battle of digital voice assistants, people often mock Siri for lagging behind competing products from Amazon and Google. During Monday’s WWDC 2018 keynote, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, glossed over those failings, calling Siri the “world’s most-used digital assistant.”

What he neglected to mention was the increasing frustration of Siri users expecting more from a voice assistant. From simple requests returning inaccurate results to the inability to performthat he compound actions, Siri was in desperate need of attention going into WWDC. But will the Siri upgrades in iOS 12 do the trick?

macOS Mojave changes spell doom for indie Mac games

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Steamcrate game subscription offer
Apple is making life a lot harder for smaller game studios.
Photo: Cult of Mac

A big change Apple is making with macOS Mojave could make it more difficult for indie developers to build cross-platform games.

Apple is pushing game creators to drop OpenGL in favor of its own Metal API, which isn’t supported by third-party platforms. It may mean smaller game development teams are forced to choose between releasing on macOS or other operating systems.

Avoid road hazards and slowdowns with Waze [50 Essential iOS Apps #22]

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Waze on iPhone in a car GPS mount
Waze provides clear turn-by-turn navigation and alerts you to potential hazards.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Waze map and navigation All across the country (and the world), people depend on cars to get from place to place. Unfortunately, not knowing where traffic is slow, or where a police officer is hiding, can cause serious delays. The Waze navigation app takes out the guesswork.

It tells drivers where traffic, construction or the 5-0 might turn a drive into a total bummer. Better yet, the navigation app’s huge user base means real-time data that lets you change course to avoid slowdowns.

We have the wireless charger you’re looking for [Deals]

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CoM - Zendure 40W Max A-Series 4-Port USB Wall Charger
Liberate your iPhone with these wireless charging solutions.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Wires are out, wireless charging is in. Now pretty much every new phone can juice up without being plugged in, which is as convenient as it is cool. There are many options out there, so we’ve rounded up awesome deals on six different wireless charging solutions. Each is discounted by half off or more, read on for more details: