The iPhone X comes 10 years after the original iPhone. Even the name itself could be a not-so-subtle homage to this: Apple used X, the Roman numeral for 10, for years to name the Mac’s OS X operating system. But there is another 10th anniversary reference in the new iPhone X: It comes with an updated version of the original iPhone’s iconic wallpaper.
iOS 11.0 has had ten beta versions. That’s more betas than any version of iOS before it: Only iPhone OS 2.0, and iOS 10.0 come close, tying with eight beta versions apiece. Now that the iOS 11 gold master has been leaked, we can safely guess that there will be no more iOS 11 betas until Apple starts testing iOS 11.0.1.
Over the weekend, a massive leak revealed pretty much all the details of the new iPhone 8 and “iPhone X.” The details came from a leaked gold master (GM) of the new iOS 11 operating system, which contains mentions of new features like Face ID, and photos of new products like the Apple Watch Series 3.
But where did the leak come from? According to independent reports from Daring Fireball and the BBC, a rogue Apple employee deliberately sent to the links to 9to5Mac and MacRumors.
Bookmarklets are those little bookmarks you click to run mini “apps” in your web browser. You might have one that saves the current page to your Instapaper account, or one that launches a Google search focused only on the current site. Bookmarklets can translate highlighted text on a page, send something to your to-do list, or pretty much anything. On the Mac, installing a bookmarklet is easy. You just drag it to the bookmarks bar in Safari and you’re done. On iOS, though, it’s still a real pain.
So, bookmark this how-to (in the usual way), and have it handy for those times you need to install a bookmarklet on an iPhone or iPad.
Renaming a single file in the Finder isn’t too bad. You can click on its name and type in a new one. But what if you want to rename a whole bunch of files at once? Maybe you want to add the same text to the beginning of every file, or add a number to the end of a folder full of MP3 recording to keep them in the right order. Do you have a folder full of photos named IMG_00xx.JPG that need to be called dads_wedding_00x.jpg instead? Or perhaps that intern spelled the company name wrong on every single one of a hundred files, and you need to correct that word on every file?
In the olden days, you would have to either a) research, download, buy, and learn to use a new bulk-renaming app or b), punish your intern by making them correct everything by hand, before finally resorting to a) anyway because the intern screwed it up again. Now, the Finder has powerful bulk-renaming tools built in, so you can just take care of it all in a couple of minutes, and have your intern make you a coffee instead. If they can be trusted to do it, that is.
You’ve all been there. You’re sitting near a window or a lamp, reading an excellent article on your iPad — perhaps a well-written How-To from Cult of Mac — and your iPad’s screen Auto Brightness is going haywire. You slide open Control Center, and set it back where you want it, and continue reading. Then, you turn the iPad a little too far towards the light, and the screen brightness creeps up again.
In iOS 10 and prior, you’d just open the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness, and hit the switch for Auto Brightness. In iOS 11, that option has disappeared. The good news is that it hasn’t gone — the Auto Brightness switch has just moved.
If you have a lame password, then your iCloud account will eventually get hacked. You might not think a hacker is interested in you, but you’re wrong. The good news is that there are several easy steps you can take to lock your Apple ID down and make it safe.
If you don’t think it’s important, consider this: Your photos, your email, all your browsing history, your credit card information, all of the files you have in iCloud, your contacts, notes, calendars, and all your personal messages will all be open to anyone that hacks your account. Not only that, but you can then be impersonated on social media, so that all your other accounts can be hacked too.
Google’s web-hostile AMP scheme makes copies of web pages, shrinks them, and serves them instead of the original when you click on a Google search result. It renders your content in non-standard HTML, and removes the original link to the article’s source. Whenever you share the page you’re reading, it forces you to share a the Google AMP URL instead of the original.
Unless you’re using an iPhone, that is. In iOS 11, Mobile Safari strips AMP from any links you share. And iPhones running iOS 10 will load the non-AMP version (i.e. the original version) of a page if you press a link with 3D Touch.
Raindrop.io is a new bookmarking service for Mac and iOS, and the web, and Android. It lets you save your bookmarks into folders, known as Groups, and those bookmarks are then available from anywhere. The main selling point of Raindrop.io seems to be the slick interface, and the myriad beautiful ways you can arrange the bookmarks therein.
You know how on your Mac you always drag stuff to the desktop as a kind of temporary holding spot? You might be gathering together some photos, or just keeping a PDF until you work out where to put it, or until you have emailed it and can delete the original. That kind of thing isn’t possible in iOS, because a) there is no real concept of files, at least not in the Mac way, and b) there’s no desktop. But that’s about to change in iOS 11. The new Files app takes care of a), and thirdparty apps like The Shelf will be able to take to role of the desktop.
Yesterday, we saw how to set the default screenshot format on your Mac to JPEG instead of PNG, in order to make your screenshots more universally usable. You can’t change the default screenshot file type on iOS, so today we’re going to look at the next best option — converting PNG to JPEG as easily and quickly as possible.
By default, any screenshots you take on your Mac, iPad or iPhone get saved as PNG files. That’s great, because PNG files are pixel-perfect, and they support transparency (for those neat floating-window shadows).
But they’re not JPEGs, which means they’re not universally supported. Luckily, you can easily make JPEG screenshots the default, at least on the Mac.
Ever tapped an App Store link for a Mac app while browsing on your iPad, and gotten sent to a useless page telling you that the app is only available on the Mac? Like, you couldn’t possibly want to know the price, or see screenshots, or read any other information about a Mac app while you’re using your iPhone?Well,
Well, those dark, patronizing days are over. In iOS 11, clicking on a link for a Mac App takes you to the proper iOS 11 App Store entry for that app. Right there on your iPad.
You know how the Lightning cable that plugs into your iDevice has a USB plug on the other end? That’s because the Lightning port is a kind of fancy USB port itself. You already know that you can in plug a keyboard, or an audio interface, or a camera, using Apple’s Lightning to USB Camera Adapter. But did you know that you can plug in all of those at once? That’s right — by using a powered USB hub, you can hook up as many accessories as you like to your iPad at once. If you ever use your iPad to work at your desk, with a keyboard, then you can use this tip to build your own iPad docking station.
Mail app on iOS has a built-in unsubscribe feature that works great. Just a couple of clicks and Mail will attempt to remove you from unwanted future correspondence. But even that method is slow compared to the no-click unsubscribe method that we’ll share with you today.
The Roland GO MIXER is a little box that improves the audio on your movies. Aimed mostly at musicians, but usable by anyone with a microphone and the need to shoot a video, the little Lightning-powered box hooks together all your musical instruments and mixes them, live, before sending the audio to your iPhone (or Android device).
Picture the scene: You’re on a plane, and your iPhone is your entertainment hub. You may be listening to podcasts, or music, or audiobooks. You may be playing a game, or reading Instapaper, or just checking and editing your vacation photos. Whatever you’re trying to do, it will be interrupted every time you unlock your iPhone, because your stupid boarding pass is right there on the lock screen. Even hours into a transatlantic fight, the boarding pass you already used hangs around, blocking things like the now-playing feature, and lock-screen controls for any music or audio apps.
Thankfully, it’s easy to get rid of — if you know where to look.
Six new how-to videos from Apple show how to do things with your iPad running iOS 11. The minute-long episodes are engaging, informational and make iOS 11 look super-exciting, which it totally is.
If you want to get an idea of the neatest new features in iOS 11, these videos make a great place to start. Even better, you might want to send them to somebody else to show them what they will be able to do with their own iPad when Apple releases the final version of iOS 11 in a few weeks time.
If you’ve ever traveled to a foreign country with your iPhone or iPad, you may have come across the dreaded No Service error. This happens when you get off the plane and switch on your iPhone. But instead of connecting to a cellular network, your iPhone just spins its wheels and refuses to connect.
Apple offers a support page to help out, and a zillion forum pages serve up advice, but none seem to cover this particular tip, which I discovered after hours of painful futzing with settings.
Is it too late on a Saturday night to hit the hardware store for that essential dingus you need for Sunday’s DIY project? Has the local supermarket closed already, or do you still have time to buy some more beer? Does the Kanaan restaurant (“Best Humos in Berlin”) even open today? Just ask Siri.
You may be used to firing up Google Maps, searching for the store or restaurant you’re interested in, then tapping around in the app to get to the opening times. But did you know that Siri can also tell you if a local business is open, or when it will be?
Your mobile data plan takes a hammering when you travel. All the stuff you usually do while sitting in bed using your home Wi-Fi — like reading Cult of Mac and viewing cute capybara GIFs — will eat through your monthly allowance. And that’s before you get to the extra use of maps and Google to find your way around.
Today on Tech Travel Tips, we’ll look at ways to stop your iPhone and iPad from using up all your data in the first few days of your vacation.
At home, you can pretty much trust your own Wi-Fi network, and you kind of have to trust your cellular provider. But as soon as you fetch up at a hotel, airport, Airbnb rental or coffee shop, you risk everything.
Short of leaving your MacBook or iPhone out on the table while you visit the bathroom at a hacker conference, using public Wi-Fi is just about the worst thing you can do with your devices when you travel. Fortunately, there are ways to protect yourself — and they’re cheap and easy.
Welcome to Tech Travel Tips, a week of travel tips for vacationers. This week we’ll show you how to keep your devices safe while traveling, what apps to download before you go, what settings you should change before leaving the house and — kicking off the week — the best travel gadgets to take with you. Let’s get started!
If you find yourself on a mailing list that you either never signed up for, or just got sick of, then iOS Mail has you covered. The app has a built-in feature that detects emails from mailing lists, and offers to unsubscribe from them right there, without you having to visit the sender’s site and hunt for the unsubscribe option yourself, like some kind of spam-lackey.
betaIf you’re using iOS 10 in an iPhone with 3D Touch, you can press on the timer widget in Control Center and pick from one of the preset timer shortcuts. In iOS 11, on the other hand, you get a full-featured, interactive timer widget that you can adjust, pause, and resume, all without ever launching the actual clock app. Let’s see it in action.
