iPhone Game Mode enhances graphics and reduces controller latency automatically when you launch a game. This optimizes performance to make your iPhone gaming as fantastic as possible.
Game Mode also reduces the background activities and services running on your phone. Luckily, if you don’t want that to happen, you can turn off Game Mode from your iPhone’s Control Center.
Here’s everything you need to know about how Game Mode works.
Docking stations and USB/Thunderbolt hubs are the unsung heroes of modern Mac workstations. While flashy displays and mechanical keyboards get a lot of glory in computer setup photos, it’s often a hub or dock quietly humming away that makes the whole thing possible — connecting multiple monitors, peripheral devices, external storage and audio gear through a single cable to the host computer. Here’s a roundup of the best-connected — and most impressive — Mac workstations from Cult of Mac‘s Setups section.
Update: Perplexity said in March it would unleash Personal Computer software to work as an artificial intelligence manager for Mac, and now it’s available.
Today we're releasing Personal Computer.
Personal Computer integrates with the Perplexity Mac App for secure orchestration across your local files, native apps, and browser.
We’re rolling this out to all Perplexity Max subscribers and everyone on the waitlist starting today. pic.twitter.com/kxgFQFo7BB
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) April 16, 2026
Original post:
Artificial intelligence search engine company Perplexity just unveiled what it calls Personal Computer. It’s not a new piece of hardware, but a layer of software that transforms a Mac — specifically an M4 Mac mini in the company’s promotions — into a tireless AI employee.
It works around the clock, coordinates other artificial intelligence systems, accesses your local files and can be controlled from anywhere in the world. Mac users might be intrigued. Privacy advocates may not be so sure.
April 16, 2009: Apple hits back at Microsoft following an advertisement that criticizes Cupertino for failing to sell decent laptops for less than $1,000.
“A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Mac PR director Bill Evans tells Bloomberg. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.”
What makes the Apple ecosystem so alluring? Individually, the iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch might not be the best devices in their respective categories. Yet, when combined, they form one of the best ecosystems in the world.
It’s this Apple ecosystem — the so-called walled garden — that makes it almost impossible to ditch Apple devices. But what makes it so good?
If you’re working in an office or in the city, you’re probably inundated with noise from people chattering, cars running and nearby music. Your iPhone has a built-in feature called Background Sounds for playing rain noises or white noise to tune it all out.
Or, if you work at home and want some of that office or coffee shop ambiance, you can add some of those chatter sounds back in. You can even simulate a commute, with sounds of a bus, train, airplane or even boat.
You don’t need to download any apps or pay a cent. Background Sounds is a free feature on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Let me show you how it works.
April 15, 1981: Apple CEO Mike Markkula defends the struggling Apple III computer with a surprisingly straightforward admission. The comment comes even as the company pushes an unorthodox “fix” for the Apple III motherboard, which tends to overheat due to a questionable design.
“It would be dishonest for me to sit here and say that it’s perfect,” Markkula tells The Wall Street Journal, after critics blast the new computer for its overheating motherboard. Apple’s official solution to the problem? Ask users to drop their Apple III from a height of 6 inches to reseat the chips.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: Your old iPhone just doesn’t have the same pep it used to and you’re desperate to speed it up. Ignore the nasty iPhone conspiracy theory — the real reason for the slowdown is rooted in battery chemistry, diminishing amounts of available memory, and the evolving demands of modern iOS apps.
Fortunately, you can take steps to improve the speed of your older iPhone. Here’s what to do.
April 14, 1986: The “low-cost” Macintosh 512Ke brings hardware upgrades — and a bit of confusion — to the low end of the Mac lineup.
The Mac 512Ke is an “enhanced” (hence the “e”) model of the Mac 512K. The upgrade addresses complaints that the original Mac lacked enough memory. The 512Ke adds a double-density 800KB floppy drive and a 128KB ROM to the Mac 512K formula.
★★★★☆
The Clutch Pro is for anyone who wants a very slim power bank that magnetically attaches to their iPhone, but who doesn’t like wireless charging. This tiny 5,000mAh external battery includes a USB-C connector on a cable for easy charging.
I tested it with my iPhone 17 and my iPad too. Here’s why I like it.
The macOS Tahoe menu bar icons are one of the more universally panned changes in Apple’s redesigned Mac operating system. They clutter the interface, making it hard to find what you’re actually looking for. And on top of that, different apps use different icons for different actions — it’s not remotely consistent.
You don’t need to live your life this way, though. Developer and hacker Steve Troughton-Smith figured out a quick way to disable the icons. You need to crack open the Mac’s Terminal app, but luckily, you can paste a single command in to bid (most of) the icons adieu.
April 13, 2005: The tech world gets excited when a sketchy rumor suggests Apple is building a tablet computer.
The Chinese-language report claims Quanta will build a 15-inch touchscreen tablet PC with a detachable keyboard. Apple will supposedly ship the device in the first quarter of 2006. Things don’t turn out quite like that, but the rumor offers the first hint about Apple’s secret iPad project.
April 12, 1976: Apple’s third co-founder, a former Atari colleague of Steve Wozniak’s named Ron Wayne, cashes in his Apple shares for just $800.
Wayne, who owns a 10% stake in the company, throws in the towel after worrying that he doesn’t have the time or energy to properly invest in Apple. He later receives an extra $1,500 check to seal the deal. When he cashes it, he loses out on an investment that could have been worth billions.
“I was 40 and these kids were in their 20s,” Wayne told Cult of Mac decades later, referring to Apple co-founders Wozniak and Steve Jobs. “They were whirlwinds — it was like having a tiger by the tail. If I had stayed with Apple, I probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery.”
You can turn your iPhone, iPad or Mac into a piano teacher with Flowkey’s interactive lessons, real-time feedback and song-first approach to learning.
Flowkey is designed to meet you where you are, whether you’ve never touched a keyboard or you already know your way around one. And it costs just $69.99 for three years. A flesh-and-blood piano teacher might charge that much for a single lesson!
Anyone still dissatisfied with the amount of RAM in the MacBook Neo should be pleased to learn that the second-generation version of Apple’s hit entry-level notebook will almost certainly boast 50% more RAM.
And that’s not a guess. Apple is already making the processor/RAM combos to go into the notebook, even though the release is not expected for almost another year.
To understand why, you need to know where Apple gets the chips for this popular computer. And once you know that, you’ll realize why we can confidently say the 2027 MacBook Neo will include 12GB of RAM.
You can change out your iPhone Lock Screen buttons from the standard flashlight and camera icons to whatever you want. There’s a huge selection of buttons you can swap in their place. Just about any button you can put in Control Center is a button you can put on your iPhone’s Lock Screen.
Plus, you can assign different shortcut buttons on different Lock Screens, making them context-dependent (and tied to a Focus Mode if you like). Apple offers a standard selection, but your options will vary depending on what apps you’ve installed.
Here’s how to swap out the iPhone Lock Screen buttons to put whatever you want at your beck and call.
April 11, 1976: Apple releases its first computer, the Apple-1.
Designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak, the computers are sold wholesale by “Steven” Jobs. To finance their manufacturing, Wozniak sells his HP-65 calculator for $500, while Jobs sells his Volkswagen van.
Those who aren’t fans of Apple’s Liquid Glass have a new way to disable some of its distracting features. “Reduce Bright Effects” appeared in iOS 26.4, as well as macOS and iPadOS. As the name suggests, it is intended to minimize highlighting and flashing when pushing on-screen buttons.
Here’s how to find the toggle switch.
Update: And just like that, now Lexus enters the fray. Reports indicate the Toyota-owned luxury brand will add support for iPhone car keys in the coming months, according to references found in Apple’s backend code. It joins many others.
From a single BMW model in 2020 to dozens of brands today, Apple Wallet’s digital car key keeps gaining momentum. Could it soon become as standard as a seat belt? It looks to be headed that way, at least — and for good reason.
Apple will permanently close three of its U.S. retail locations this June — one of which made history as the first Apple Store in the country to unionize — citing deteriorating conditions at the shopping malls that house them, the company said Thursday.
The closures have drawn swift backlash from the workers’ union. It called the move a deliberate effort to undermine organized labor.
Not everyone who switched to Mac left the PC world entirely behind. Whether it’s a gaming rig they can’t give up, a work-issued Windows laptop they feel stuck with or a legacy tower they repurposed for specialized tasks, plenty of power users run both platforms side by side. Behold the top 9 Mac-and-PC setups from the Cult of Mac archives.
April 10, 1985: During a fateful meeting, Apple CEO John Sculley threatens to resign unless the company’s board of directors removes Steve Jobs as executive VP and general manager of the Macintosh division.
Sculley’s threat triggers a series of events that ultimately will result in Jobs’ exit. The marathon board meeting — which continues for several hours the next day — leads to Jobs losing his operating role within the company. However, the Apple board allows him to stay on as chairman. Things won’t exactly play out like that.
Apple’s CarPlay voice commands offer a safe way to handle dozens of tasks without lifting a finger or shifting your gaze away from the road. CarPlay’s Siri integration is one of the most underused safety tools in modern cars. However, it only works if you know what to say.
Get to know the best CarPlay voice commands for every driver with Cult of Mac’s handy roundup. Commit them to memory now so you’ll know how to employ them once you hit the road.
April 9, 2007: Apple sells its 100 millionth iPod. Coming just five-and-a-half years after the portable music player went on sale, the landmark event confirms the iPod as Apple’s most popular product of all time.
Until the iPhone arrives a couple of months later, that is!
Apple Music comes with a karaoke mode for people who love to sing along as they listen. It’s called Apple Music Sing, and it lets you turn down the lyrics in your favorite songs with just a tap.
It’s much nicer than searching out karaoke versions of songs on YouTube. Those often don’t use the original backing track, but re-create it (with varying levels of quality). Also, if you’re still learning a song, Apple Music Sing can keep some of the original vocals to guide your singing.