News - page 105

Seven months after its announcement at WWDC23, Apple started accepting preorders for its Vision Pro headset Friday morning — and quickly sold out. Shipping dates for the company’s first AR headset slipped within minutes of preorders opening.

The preorder also answered some questions about the Vision Pro. Plus, if you want one, you still have a chance to get one. The $3,499 mixed-reality headset — which Apple hails as the dawn of “spatial computing” — goes on sale February 2 in Apple retail stores in the United States.

Friday morning ushers in Apple’s era of spatial computing when the Vision Pro goes on sale, and the cutting-edge headset is likely to sell out almost immediately.

But that won’t be a sure indication of huge demand for the new product — Apple has reportedly produced a relatively small number of the $3,499 headsets.

Seagate unveiled the world’s highest-capacity hard drive Wednesday with its Exos Mosaic 3+ HDD platform, hitting the 30TB mark for the first time, the company said. That’s enough space to store a thousand Blu-ray movies.

The company said it used several new technologies to get there, and its road map shows the arrival of even bigger storage devices in the coming years. And while businesses will certainly go for these megadrives, they will also be available to many kinds of end users and require no special hardware to read.

As the trailer Apple TV+ dropped Thursday for documentary series Messi’s World Cup: The Rise of a Legend shows, the soccer superstar is practically a deity in his home country, Argentina. And if you don’t already worship him, you might start after watching the show, which premieres February 21.

Anyone who loves the world’s most-popular sport, soccer (aka football), probably knows a thing or two about Messi. But that just makes the new four-part documentary series all the more enticing for its “exclusive, behind-the-scenes” look at the man’s five World Cup appearances and his long-awaited 2022 win with Argentina.

Apple previewed Apple Hongdae Thursday, its seventh Apple Store in South Korea and 100th in the Asia-Pacific region, opening Saturday in a busy university neighborhood in Seoul with a daily Today at Apple Pop-Up Studio featuring hip-hop artist Beenzino.

“We couldn’t be more excited to bring our customers in Korea something special at the start of the year with the opening of the all-new Apple Hongdae,” said Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail.

With the Apple Watch sales ban back, Apple has decided to sell its latest smartwatches without blood oxygen monitoring in the U.S. The tweaked Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models went go on sale starting January 18 across the company’s online and retail stores.

The Cupertino giant is not making any hardware tweaks to the wearables. Instead, it will turn off the blood oxygen sensor feature through software.

Apple lost a court appeal Wednesday, which means Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 might once again get pulled from U.S. store shelves. The court agrees with previous rulings that the wearables are in violation of a patent held by a medical-device company.

But Apple has a workaround: it’s almost certainly going to remove the application at the center of the patent dispute.

Competing designers in World War II Nazi-occupied Paris — Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, and others — launched modern fashion and helped bring the war-torn world back to life, the trailer for upcoming The New Look drama series on Apple TV+ implies.

Who knew? And with a cast including Ben Mendelsohn (Dior), Juliette Binoche (Chanel), John Malkovich, Maisie Williams, and other familiar faces, who cares if it’s letter-perfect history? It looks like a good time. Speaking of captivating performances, check out this take on Amanda Peet hot in a compelling role.

The 10-part series The New Look premieres on Apple TV+ on Valentine’s Day, February 14.

Apple’s sleek and colorful all-in-one desktop computer, the iMac, appears in Cult of Mac‘s setups coverage less often than other Macs, but not for lack of trying. It seems people don’t flaunt iMac setups all over social media all that much. But judging by today’s warm and inviting pink-iMac setup, maybe they should.

The cozy little office space also benefits from smart lights we don’t see all that often, either.

Apple unveiled its new 2024 Black Unity Collection featuring a new Apple Watch band and face Wednesday, as well as related iPad and iPhone wallpapers. Proceeds from watch band sales help support grantees in the company’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI).

The company also profiled one of the grantees — Shout Mouse Press — saying it inspires resilience and creativity in the Black community by lifting underrepresented voices in children’s literature.

Apple revealed Wednesday that iOS 17.3 will be out “next week.” The major feature is Stolen Device Protection, a new system for protecting the personal information of users.

It’s likely new versions of iPadOS, macOS and watchOS will also debut at the same time.

Apple devices are known for their beautiful designs and user-friendly functionality — not their battery power. Apple Watch is no exception, needing daily charging. So sometimes the battery runs low when you’re not near a charger. But a brand-new gadget fixes that problem.

qCharge 2.0 Portable Apple Watch Battery, now available in the Cult of Mac Store, goes wherever you go and charges up your Apple Watch (and AirPods Pro 2) anywhere, no cable required.

Following the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear appeals in the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit, Apple is making significant changes to its U.S. App Store guidelines.

Developers can now link to an external in-app payment method. However, they still will need to pay Apple a commission of 12% to 27% on these transactions. And the mechanism for allowing such external payments might prove so onerous that developers take a pass.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney called it a “bad-faith ‘compliance’ plan” Tuesday — and vowed that his company will contest Apple’s plan in District Court.

The Apple Vision Pro headset might be a real pain in the neck, according to new reports after the latest round of demos. Three separate people reported feeling discomfort or even pain after wearing the headset for short periods.

Each of the people also expressed some level of appreciation or even amazement regarding the Vision Pro’s immersive visuals. However, if strapping the headset on for a half-hour proves uncomfortable for a majority of users, that’s going to be a serious problem that no amount of spatial computing wizardry — or even an ugly strap — can overcome.

If you’re ready to put your MacBook in clamshell mode on a vertical stand, Twelve South rolled out a nice one for you Tuesday — BookArc Flex.

The minimalist stand lets you run your closed laptop like a desktop — just plug in your external display and fire up a keyboard and mouse — while saving loads of space on your desk for other gear. And you can get it with chrome, matte-black or matte-white finishes.

The U.S. Supreme Court effectively upheld a lower court’s ruling that Apple must allow third-party iPhone app developers to point customers to their websites when making purchases. This means the company is forced to drop its “anti-steering” rule for such applications — a major change.

It’s the primary result of Apple’s long-running legal battle with Epic Games.

New entertainment experiences launching with Apple Vision Pro on February 2 should be dazzling, as users can turn any space into a personal theater, enjoy more than 150 3D movies and experience “the future of entertainment” with Immersive Video, Apple said Tuesday.

“Apple Vision Pro is the ultimate entertainment device,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing. “Users can turn any place into the best seat in the house, enjoy personal concerts and adventures with Apple Immersive Video, interact with lifelike prehistoric creatures in Encounter Dinosaurs, and even land on the surface of the moon using Environments. It’s unlike anything users have ever seen before and we can’t wait for them to experience it for themselves.”

No company sold more smartphones than Apple in 2023, according to a market-research firm. iPhone shipments grew last year and outnumbered Samsung’s Androids.

It’s a milestone Apple never reached before.

Since its launch in late October 2023, retailers have frequently discounted Apple’s M3 MacBooks. Continuing that trend, Amazon is offering hefty discounts of up to $250 on the M3 Max-powered MacBook Pros.

Thanks to the deal, you can get the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Max chip and 1TB storage for as low as $2,999, saving $200 from its $3,199 MSRP.

The first iPad Pro with a OLED display is reportedly on track to launch in April. While that’s generally good news, previous leaks predicted a release in March.

The next generation of iPad Pro is also expected to have other enhancements, like an Apple M3 processor.

For a would-be blockbuster packed with A-list Hollywood talent, the Apple TV+ spy thriller Argylle coming to theaters next month sure flew under the radar until recently. And not only is the high-concept global romp starring Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa and everyone else in Hollywood seeming to come out of nowhere. So is the developing Argylle movie franchise, which could dominate screens for years.

Turns out Argylle is based on book four of a novel series that has only just released book one. Does that mean a whopping four Argylle movies will come to Apple TV+? Or maybe even more?

Apple’s solution to evading a sales and import ban on the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 is apparently a simple one: It is reportedly prepared to delete the application at the heart of the patent dispute that caused the ban.

But this will only be necessary if Apple loses its next legal appeal, which will be made soon.

Sure, you can buy a computer monitor and set it up on the stand that came in the box. But what if you want to easily move the external display around? And what if you want to have multiple screens and move them around?

Keeping monitors up off the desk and mobile can really improve your setup. And the best way to do that is to mount your screens on arms. It takes some effort, but as today’s user points out below, it’s worth it.

As always on the third Monday in January, Apple’s homepage honors the memory of slain Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s his national holiday. And this year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day you can download a free book that collects the man’s greatest writings.

The top-of-the line iPhone 15 Pro Max makes up close to half of shipments of the iPhone 15 series, according to a trusted market analyst.

This continues a trend from last year in which Apple’s most expensive model was also its most popular.