Top stories - page 529

One of the neatest tricks you can do with a standalone camera is the long exposure trick. You may have seen it used to turn the tail-lights of a car into long streaks of red curving through the dark behind a ghostly car, or to blur turbulent waters into a peaceful, misty-looking lake. In a regular camera, you have to finagle the shutter speed to get the level of blur just right, and there’s no second chance. On the iPhone, it’s way easier.

As a popular phenomenon, Animoji will probably disappear as quickly as Pokemon Go. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, and this tip will make it even more fun. You know how when you record a little Animoji clip, and you wish you’d done it with the robot instead of the cheeky monkey? It’s easy to fix, without having to re-record your whole performances.

Whoever made the first jacket pocket never imagined it’d be used to carry something like an iPhone or even an iPad. Even now, our clothing has a lot of catching up to do with the unique lifestyle of today’s digital nomad.

Apple is quickly catching up with iPhone X demand.

Shipping estimates on its online store have dropped for the first time since the handset was made available to pre-order late last month. New customers are facing a wait of just 2-3 weeks.

Pointing out that many people spend most of their waking hours staring at screens is like pointing out that water is wet. Unfortunately, gazing at multiple backlit screens for an extended period can adversely affect your eyes.

Do you miss the home button on your from-the-future iPhone X? Then we have good news! You can either sell it on eBay for a ridiculous sum, or you can add a home button back using a long-time feature built into iOS’s accessibility settings. Let’s take a look.

Face ID is, by most accounts, an amazing technology. You pretty much set it and forget it, and the iPhone X just unlocks itself whenever you look at it.

But what if you’re too lazy to point your eyes and your face at your iPhone whenever you want to look at it? What if you prefer to give it a sidelong glance, to show it who’s boss? Then you can disable attention awareness, which speeds up the Face ID process and unlocks your iPhone X faster.

Everybody knows that a key part of any proper data backup plan includes cloud storage. When a hard drive goes kaput, it’s reassuring to know that your most important files are just a WiFi signal away. Of course, it can also be pretty pricey as the capacity goes up.

You can’t enjoy Animoji unless you buy an iPhone X, but it’s apparently not because you need the device’s fancy hardware. It looks like Apple’s latest gimmick is powered at least partly by the handset’s front-facing camera rather than relying entirely on its advanced TrueDepth sensor.

With the iPhone X finally released, now is the best time to lock-in a price to sell your old phone before it begins to depreciate. And you should use Cult of Mac’s gadget buyback program, because we pay the highest cash prices with the easiest service.

Our popular gadget buyback program pays more for used and broken Apple devices in most cases than rivals like Gazelle and BuyBackWorld.

And we can prove it…

You may be tempted to marvel at Scott Strazzante’s new book, Shooting From the Hip, simply because he made all those gritty street photographs with an iPhone.

We can’t seem to get over the fact that the little wonder device in our pockets can be used to create great work. Apple touts stunning photos on big billboards, luring us with the promise that good pictures will come pouring out if we upgrade to the latest iPhone.

But photography — good photography, anyway — isn’t that simple. And to fixate on the tool Strazzante uses would be a disservice to him, and to the collection of 150 pictures inside this hardcover coffee table book.

There are very few iOS tasks that still require a Mac. One of those is getting your own ringtones onto your iPhone. You can buy them, but you can’t add a downloaded ringtone onto your iPhone without hooking up to iTunes. Or can you? GarageBand on iOS lets you save your own creations as ringtones, to be used immediately. Here’s how.

Update: Apple added faster 7.5-watt wireless charging in iOS 11.2, which is currently in beta. We’ve updated this guide and placed compatible fast-charging pads at the top of the list.

Apple’s new iPhone lineup finally supports wireless charging. Both the iPhone X and the iPhone 8/8 Plus use the Qi standard that’s been popular for years. That means you can choose from an endless list of compatible charging pads, mats and stands already on the market.

So, which one(s) should you buy? We’ve rounded up some of the best iPhone wireless chargers to make your buying decision a little bit easier.

Apple adds support for faster 7.5-watt wireless charging in its latest iOS 11.2 beta. iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X all support the increased charging speed. You’ll need a compatible wireless charging mat to take advantage of it, however.

Did you read our guide to switching on the iPhone X’s Unofficial Battery Saver Dark Mode in order to stretch the battery life of your new iPhone X? Well, it turns out that blacking out as much of the screen as possible really can save a whole lot of juice. In testing, running the iPhone X in dark mode saves a staggering amount of battery power.

iPhone X is radically different from every iPhone that came before it. As you strive to get accustomed to life without a Home button, these iPhone X tips and tricks will come in handy.

Check out the video below to see nine iPhone X tips you need to master immediately.

The slowest way you can charge your iPad is to hook it up to a USB port on your MacBook. The fastest? Let’s just say it’s not the charger that Apple puts in the iPad’s box.

Not long ago, the idea of wireless personal audio seemed downright futuristic. Now that it’s a reality, our expectations have caught up.  We expect a set of Bluetooth earbuds to have a good mix of battery life, audio quality, and comfort.

Working with PDFs is just part of the digital day-to-day. For digital documents, they’re hard to beat. But when you suddenly need to edit a PDF, either you get the original file and the program that created it or you send it as is.

Best List: Clessant Black Barenia Apple Watch Band

When it comes to fashion, it’s hard to beat basic black. However, sometimes you want a little something extra — a design that adds subtle interest without going over the top. The Clessant Black Barenia Apple Watch band does the trick, thanks to fine off-white stitching that looks almost like racing stripes.

Welcome to another new week, and another round of great deals on gear and more at the Cult of Mac Store. This week’s best deals include an update for your Mac’s Dock, and a powerful lens attachment for iPhone. Plus, we’ve got days of coding courses and a slick car mount for your phone. Everything is discounted by a third off or more. Read on for more details:

For iPhone X, Apple did away with aluminum unibodies, chunky bezels, Touch ID and the beloved Home button. In their place, iPhone X sports polished stainless steel and smooth glass, an edge-to-edge Super Retina HD display, and Face ID. The result proves stunning. Apple just made the iPhone exciting again. But is iPhone X worth $999? Red our full review on iPhone X.

In this week’s issue, you’ll find that story and more. Find out how Apple Pay Cash proves Apple hasn’t lost its attention to detail, and learn how to send money to friends using it. Learn how to squeeze more battery life out of iPhone X, and discover all the trick and tips to mastering your new phone. Check out our review of Juuk’s brand-new aluminum Vitero bands for Apple Watch, which are now available for pre-order. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

What do you do when Face ID doesn’t recognize your face? Do you reposition your face? Reposition the iPhone? Stare a little harder at the camera, to tell it you really mean business?

Stop! Instead of acquiescing to your iPhone X’s silent demands, you should use this as a teaching moment (and show your phone who’s boss at the same time). Face ID learns how your face changes over time, but you can also teach it to recognize you better. Here’s how.

Ever since the early days of the iPhone, you have been able to tap on the status bar at the top of the screen to quickly scroll a long page back to the top. You may have been at the bottom of a long document, an epic web page or a particularly brutal Instapaper article, and one tap takes you back to the beginning. It’s a fantastic feature that really saves a lot of crazy finger-flicking, and is just plain convenient. Once you get used to it, the few apps that manage to disable the feature seem broken.

And yet now in the iPhone X, tapping the top of the screen no longer scrolls to the top. But don’t worry: There is still a way to do it. You’ll just have to learn yet another gesture.

Coding is one of the most future-proof skills anyone can learn. That’s true whether you’re mid-career, in or outside of tech, or just starting out. So why don’t more people learn this essential skill?