There are so many new leaks and rumors about upcoming Apple gear, we’re awash in joyful speculation. There’s the new iPhone 7 just for photographers, new iPad Air 3 details, and some hidden iPad Pro firmware features, just for starters.
Add to that some fine new how-tos, some great app roundups and a look at Apple’s biggest financial quarter yet, and you’ve got a fantastic digital magazine ready for downloading right now.
Here are the top stories from this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.
Apple is finally correcting an issue with Siri that it has known about since at least 2011.
The problem has appeared when users ask the virtual assistant to show nearby facilities that offer abortion services. For years, the results have directed people toward adoption centers, which is kind of the opposite of what they were looking for.
Apple says it’s made improvements to the search algorithm since it first identified the problem, but some users are still getting the undesired suggestions.
As our digital lives converge across mobile and desktop devices like our iPhones and Macbooks, we rely on them knowing where we are at any given time. Safari suggestions, for example, count on knowing your location, as do any Maps searches or such.
You might want to know when your Location data is being used, however, for privacy reason. If you enable the Location Services menu bar, you’ll be able to see when any app is accessing your private location data, making it more possible to lock down any sources you don’t want using it.
Here’s how to get that menu bar notice working.
If you can look Atomi‘s super-cute robot hero in his single, perfectly round eye and say that you don’t want to help him get home, then you may be a monster. I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.
Atomi needs to gather atoms to repair his busted spaceship, but he has a few things in his way. Specifically, he can’t climb or jump, and some of those things he needs are on very tall platforms. But that’s where you come in. And the time you spend getting the little ‘bot where he needs to be is both fun and charming as it sounds.
If the pictures “Shot on the iPhone 6” were impressive, a dual-camera iPhone 7 could have the photography world again licking its chops.
Just how much further the technical quality could go with smartphone images is a future found in the work of an Israeli company called LinX Imaging, which happened to get purchased by Apple last year.
The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus come with the option to make any Live Photo you take a Live Wallaper on your iPhone’s Lock screen. However, if you have still images in your Camera Roll you’d like to make live, here’s how to turn any photo into a Live Wallpaper on iPhone:
Apple is finally working to bring wireless charging to iPhone, according to a recent report, but we’ll have to wait until 2017 to get it. Why? Because Apple doesn’t think the wireless charging standards we already have are good enough.
Instead, the company is said to be developing a long-range alternative that means you won’t need to place your iPhone down on a special charging pad. But is this really necessary? Will the technology be worth waiting for, or should Apple just deliver wireless charging already?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we fight to the death over this very topic. It promises to be… electrifying.
I just walked into my living room and the lamp came on, welcoming me in from a cold, dark morning at the gym.
When I leave for lunch later, it’ll turn itself off.
The home of the future is here, and it’s easier than ever to create with the Nyrius Smart Outlet, a Bluetooth wall plug that lets you turn any device with a plug into a smart device.
Flying a tiny drone, especially for first-timers, can be a tense experience — trying to avoid flying into walls, trees, tables, one’s own head. While adding more drones to the mix is a lot of fun, it just multiplies the difficulty, that is unless you have this Ultra-Stealth Nano Drone. Among a bunch of cool features, it sports a system of eight frequency points allowing it to fly in packs, while keeping safe distance from its neighbors. It adds a whole new dimension to drone-ing, and right now it’s only $19.99.
It’s a new year and a new you, and your iOS device just might be crying out for some new gaming titles to keep you fat and happy while you manage all those resolutions.
Whether you enjoy a deeper role-playing and crafting adventure to keep you tapping well into the evening over a long weekend, a musical adventure that you can create yourself, a Mad- Max-inspired demolition derby, or a quick brain-booster puzzle or two to keep your wits about you, we’ve got the five best on offer right now.
In no particular order, here are the best new iOS games that we’ve culled from a long list on the App Store.
Samsung has mocked the iPhone for its lack of wireless charging before, but Apple is reportedly looking to change the game with “cutting-edge” technology that would move its devices beyond the charging mats used by current smartphones and into true wireless charging.
And the tech could arrive as soon as 2017, with the launch of the iPhone 7s.
If you’ve got a quick bit of math to figure out on the go, why bother tapping into the Calculator app, which you’ve probably got stuffed in some sort of folder on your third page or so?
Even though we’ve been using Spotlight on the Mac for years now to figure out quick mathematical facts, it’s also included in the iOS version of Spotlight, making doing quick bits of math super easy.
Here’s how to use it.
It’s almost that time of the year again when you get really stressed out because you totally forgot that it’s Valentine’s Day. Your girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband/whatever is expecting something really great this year, and there’s just one problem: You don’t have any cash to buy something nice.
You look around and all you see are old iPhones and a first-generation iPad. Problem solved!
Apple, which lost ground to the Google Chromebook last year in the K-12 market, has acquired the education software company LearnSprout, which develops programs for schools to track student performance.
The move could give Apple a stronger foothold in the education market because LearnSprout is in more than 2,500 schools in 42 states.
Interact is a brand new contact-management app by Agile Tortoise, maker of popular notes app Drafts. It’s no secret that contact management on iPhone and iPad is lacking. Interact solves a lot of iOS’ shortcomings, adding the ability to edit and manage groups, send messages and attachments to entire groups, and even delete multiple contacts from iPhone and iPad at the same time. Here’s how:
A fairly popular group of apps for the Apple TV has been those that add a bit of scenic ambience to your living room. I’m talking live camera streams around the world or footage of gorgeous waterfalls. Even Apple’s own Aerial screensavers are stunning. One such app with a special twist is Aqua TV, which puts a customizable aquarium on your television screen. It’s beautiful to glance at in your peripheral vision, but also fun to build and personalize.
Smartphone shipments surpassed a record 1.43 billion units in 2015, according to the latest figures from IDC, and 22.7 percent of them carried the Samsung logo. Despite falling Galaxy sales, the South Korean company still shifted 93.3 million more devices than Apple.
In this day and age a few lines of code can make a meaningful difference in the way we live our lives and get things done. Case in point is the Software as a Service (SaaS) paradigm, a service that follows you and your computer or mobile device around to provide services like backups, access to virtual private networks, organizing and optimizing workflow, and lots more. We’ve found a bundle of some of the best SaaS’s in the game, and you can get access to the whole shebang for $59.
If you’re the proud owner of a two-prong Apple AC wall plug adapter, as included in the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, you may have a trip to the Apple Store in your immediate future.
That’s because Apple has announced a voluntary recall of adapters designed for use in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Continental Europe, New Zealand and South Korea, after certain models were found to break and put users at risk of electrical shocks.
I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that the Lumiére lamp is the coolest one I’ve ever used. And I have a light on my nightstand that’s shaped like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber, so you know it’s real.
The Lumiére wins out, however, due to its unique, clever design and flexibility. And I don’t just mean that the actual lamp bends and holds different shapes — which it does — but this is a single light that can do just about anything you need a light to do. It will fit in with any room in your house, and you might just end up taking it with you when you get up to do something. And that’ll be easy because it’s wireless and super portable.
It’s a really good device, is what I’m getting at.
The iPad Air 3 may boast a 4K display, as well as up to 4GB of RAM and improved battery life.
Given that the current iPad Air has a resolution of 2048 x 1536, a 4K display would come close to doubling its predecessor’s image quality.
A Twitter user has shared surprising details of the first firmware update for Logitech’s Create iPad Pro keyboard, which he was prompted to install after grabbing the iOS 9.3 beta 2 seed.
The Logitech update appears to fix a nagging keyboard lag experienced by some users, but that’s not even the coolest part: It looks like the iOS beta pushed the firmware update to the Logitech Create through the iPad Pro’s Smart Connector.
You know how it is — you get invited to a multi-person chat via iMessage with people you sort of know and it gets all kinds of awkward and annoying as the group blows up your iPhone with a ton of messages you really don’t want to pay attention to.
What’s a popular girl or guy like you to do? There are a couple of ways to get out of those iMessage group conversations so you can finally relax.
It appears we won’t have to wait much longer to see what the next-generation iPad Air will look like.
Apple plans to unveil the iPad Air 3 at a special event in March, according to a new report, which claims new Apple Watch hardware will also get some stage time during the keynote.
I don’t like spending a lot of time inside weather apps. Instead, I’d rather just swipe down and view current and impending conditions within the Today view section of Notification Center.
That’s why, when looking at weather apps to try, one of my criteria is that whatever one I choose, it comes complete with widget support. Depending on what kind of weather data you need, these weather apps currently have the best weather widgets for iPhone.