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Best Mac games of 2017

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Best Mac games 2017
2017 brought us some terrific games for macOS.
Image: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Cult of Mac's 2017 Year in Review Game developers are embracing macOS like never before, which means Windows isn’t the only place to get the greatest titles anymore. The past year brought us a ton of terrific Mac games, from intense first-person shooters to gorgeous platformers filled with charm.

Here’s our roundup of the best Mac games of 2017.

High Sierra ‘Content Caching’ turns your Mac into a local iCloud server

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iMac content caching
If you have a spare Mac, you could turn it into a local iCloud cache.
Photo: Dean Hochman/Flickr CC

When iOS update time rolls round, you probably run through all the devices in your home, downloading those multi-gigabyte updates over and over. If you have a few iPhones, plus a couple of iPads, it all adds to a lot of data, and a lot of waiting. New in macOS 10.13 High Sierra is Content Caching, which stores these downloads on a Mac, so they only have to be downloaded once.

This doesn’t only save on internet data usage. It also makes it way faster to update several devices. And it’s not just updates either. Content caching can also cache iCloud documents, your photo library, and app updates.

iMac Pro impresses in first hands-on reviews

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Apple
This is the best iMac Apple's ever made.
Photo: Apple

Apple surprised us this morning by finally revealing the launch date of the iMac Pro, but a few lucky tech reviewers have already gotten their hands on the slick new machine.

The first hands-on reviews of the iMac Pro confirm a lot of what we already knew about Apple’s machine: it’s gorgeous and insanely fast. But according to those that have tested it, the iMac Pro actually blows past the hype of being the perfect iMac for professionals.

Apple seeds first macOS 10.13.3 beta

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macOS high sierra
New beta software is here for the Mac.
Photo: Apple

Registered Apple developers just got a brand new beta build of macOS today after Apple seeded the first beta of macOS 10.13.3.

The new update comes less than a week after Apple released macOS 10.13.2 to the public bringing a host of bug fixes and performance improvements. Like the update before it, macOS 10.13.3 appears to mostly focus on under-the-hood improvements.

Clean Text tidies up messy text on iOS

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clean text
Clean Text does what it say on the... name.
Photo: Apimac

Don’t you just hate messy text? Text with extra spaces between words. Text with carriage returns inserted in the middles of lines. Text with lots of %-encodes and %nbsp mixed in. Text with > symbols at the beginning of every line. Filthy, dirty, unclean text? What you need is Clean Text, the smiter of hinky formatting, and quasher of non-smart punctuation.

Text snippets now support multiple lines, iCloud sync

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MK Mac
Keyboard snippets make your life way easier.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Text snippets are one of the most useful “unknown” features on Mac and iOS. They let you type a few letters, and have them expand into a whole word, sentence or paragraph. You can use them to type, say, aadd and have it turn into your office address, for example. Or you might set up a shortcut to generate a symbol usually hidden on the iOS keyboard: xx to type a #, for example.

Until now, though, Apple’s Text Replacement function proved a royal pain to use. It never synced properly between devices, and it didn’t support multiple-line snippets. But in an update last week, Apple fixed both those problems.

Huge security flaw leaves macOS High Sierra open to attack

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macOS High Sierra
Apple let a major security flaw slip through the cracks.
Photo: Apple

A serious security flaw in macOS High Sierra has been exposed that allows anyone to gain full access to affected Macs without knowing the computer’s administrative password.

The bug appears to let someone log into the admin account on a Mac by simply typing “root” as the username while leaving the password field blank. Attackers could potentially exploit the bug to access locked Macs and gain access to personal information.

Animal Crossing, Scrivener 3, and other awesome apps of the week

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Awesome Apps
'Appy weekend everyone!
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The long-awaited arrival of beloved Nintendo franchise Animal Crossing on iOS is just of one of the picks for this week’s “Awesome Apps of the Week.”

In addition, we’ve got a great writing app for Mac (perfect if you’re writing a book!), a popular ARPG, and a brilliant point-and-click adventure game. Check out our picks below.

Brilliant concept brings Touch Bar to the Mac mini

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Mac Mini
This Mac Mini concept is pretty crazy.
Photo: Louis Berger

It’s time for Apple to think different when it comes to the Mac mini.

Even though it’s been over 1,000 days since Apple last updated its smallest Mac machine, Tim Cook insists it’s still an important part of Apple’s product line. Apple fans are desperate for an update, but if it looks anything like this concept it’ll have been well worth the wait.

Take a closer look:

Apple drops big batch of new beta updates

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iOS 11
iOS 11.2 brings Apple TV support to Control Center.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Developers received a bunch of new beta software updates from Apple today that included the third beta of iOS 11.2 and macOS 10.13.3 beta 3 as well.

The new betas contain a number of bug fixes and performance improvements as Apple prepares to launch Apple Pay cash and other new additions to the public later this year.

Apple seeds iOS 11.2 beta 2 to developers

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Image uploaded from iOS (1)
A new iOS beta has arrived.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Developers received a fresh of beta updates from Apple today, including the second build of iOS 11.2.

The new beta build comes just one week after Apple dropped the last version of iOS 11.2. Apple also just released the second beta builds for tvOS 11.2, watchOS 4.2 and macOS 10.13.2.

7 biggest takeaways from Apple’s record Q4 earnings

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Will Apple reach its own targets for Q2?
AAPL shares are on the rise.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple surprised investors with its best Q4 earnings report ever today. The outrageous numbers dispelled doubts about the iPhone-maker’s strategy — and pushed Apple closer to becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

With the launch of the iPhone X just hours away, Apple CEO Tim Cook had a lot to be happy about during the earnings call with investors. Analysts quizzed Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri on everything from iPhone 8 sales to how Apple plans to monetize its augmented reality efforts.

Here’s what we found out:

Apple’s earnings call will be the calm before iPhone X superstorm

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Apple is worth more than the entire US energy sector combined
Apple is worth more than the entire US energy sector combined
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple will give investors their first insight into iPhone 8 sales, right on the eve of the iPhone X launch.

The final Apple earnings call of 2017 takes place Thursday, November 2, at 2 p.m. Pacific. Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter ended right after the iPhone 8 started shipping. The results aren’t expected to be record-breaking, but this first glimpse should give us a better idea of how monstrous Apple’s holiday season will be.

This is what to watch for:

How to browse all the auto-saved versions of your Mac documents

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versions twin zebras
Like these twin zebras, the Mac auto-saves versions of your files. Twins!
Photo: Marta Miguel Martínez-Soria/Flickr CC

Did you know that your Mac keeps older versions of the documents you work on, auto-saving them in the background so you can go back to a previous revision, any time you like? It’s just like Time Machine, Apple’s Mac backup feature, only it’s for individual files. It even lets you compare old and current versions of your file, side-by-side. It’s called file versioning, and it’s pretty rad.

Apple seeds fifth macOS 10.13.1 beta

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macOS High Sierra
Apple is said to be working on a fix.
Photo: Apple

Developers received a new beta build for Macs this morning after Apple seeded the fifth beta for macOS 10.13.1.

The new beta build comes just three days after Apple released the fourth macOS 10.13.1 beta alongside new betas for iOS 11.1 and tvOS 11.1.

Undisturbed takes control of your Mac’s Do Not Disturb mode

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Undisturbed
Undisturbed turns off those annoying red badges.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Do you know how to turn on your Mac’s Do Not Disturb mode? That’s right, you open up the Notification sidebar, pull down, and toggle the switch. It works great. Right up until you look at the Dock, or the app switcher, and see a bunch of big red badges hassling you to read your email or check your boss’ Slack messages.

That’s where Undisturbed comes in. It’s an app that improves Do Not Disturb, so you really don’t get disturbed.

Awesome Mac app makes managing contacts easier than ever

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Cardhop contacts app for Mac
Cardhop was created by the stellar team behind Fantastical.
Photo: Flexibits

Remember how Flexibits made managing your calendar incredibly easy with Fantastical? Now it is doing the same for your contacts with a brand new app called Cardhop.

Cardhop makes keeping your address book up to date and staying in touch with friends and colleagues quick and easy. It uses the same great natural language recognition found in Fantastical, and it’s available today on macOS.