This week, we are giving away three stylish stretch-link Apple Watch bands from our friends at Rilee & Lo. Each lucky winner will receive one Rilee & Lo stretch-link Watchband and one coordinating stacking bracelet of their choice.
If you want a unisex Apple Watch band that is super-cool and easily transitions from day wear to evening, be sure to enter this giveaway.
Are you ready for the Worldwide Developers Conference? Apple’s biggest keynote of the year happens Monday, and it will give us our annual look at Cupertino’s road map for the future.
In the run-up to WWDC, Apple did a pretty good job of keeping its software secrets under wraps, but our top story will give you an idea about what to expect.
Elsewhere in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine, we’ve got some the latest rumors about upcoming Apple hardware, along with a passel of how-tos to help you get the most out of all your gear.
And don’t miss this week’s reviews of the latest Apple TV+ shows to catch our interest. The new Stephen King miniseries Lisey’s Story just landed on Apple’s streaming service. And The Mosquito Coast just wrapped its first explosive season, so you can binge the whole thing while you wait for WWDC.
Not everyone has the nerve to crack open their 2021 iPad Pro, but an iFixit teardown reveals the interesting bits inside.
It’s not just for fun — taking the tablet apart is necessary to find out the exact battery capacity because Apple doesn’t share that detail.
Plus, iFixit took a magnifying glass to the mini-LED display in the 12.9-inch version.
Apple is the world’s most valuable public company, days from unveiling new software and hardware at WWDC, in the middle of its hottest iPhone cycle in years, and having just debuted its biggest iMac redesign in years. So all is good, then?
Well, apparently not. In fact, a report Friday notes that Apple stock is currently on track for its longest weekly losing streak in more than two-and-a-half years. Because the stock market works in mysterious ways.
Update: AAPL closed at $125.89 Friday, up $2.35 (or 1.9%). So much for the losing streak.
June 7 will be the single most important day of 2021 for Apple. It’s the start of the annual Worldwide Developers Conference where the company will ceremoniously unveil fresh operating system updates for iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple Watch and more.
Big changes are anticipated for iPadOS 15, and some nice enhancements are also predicted for iOS 15. The improvements in macOS 12, watchOS 8 and tvOS 15 are likely to be more modest.
But the show won’t stop there. While WWDC is supposed to be about software, there’s a good chance we will see new MacBooks announced Monday as well.
The popular Kingdom Rush game is getting rebooted as a medieval fantasy RPG with a storyline. Legends of Kingdom Rush is coming June 11 exclusively to Apple Arcade for iPhone, Mac and more.
Choose your heroes to fight creeps and save the world.
Whether it’s the classic Peanuts holidays specials or newer series like Snoopy in Space, Apple TV+ is the home of all things Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang these days.
Debuting later this month will be a great new addition to the collection: A star-studded feature documentary that tells the story of Peanuts and its impact. Check out the trailer below.
Redditor StevenJ95 recently moved from an apartment to a house, allowing him to have a new home office. For the first time. He’s got room enough in there for his MacBook Pro, his Samsung curved ultrawide monitor and even his Tesla Model S, Cybertruck and Supercharger.
OK, those last three are two diecast model cars and a cute little desktop Tesla charger for phones and such. But he does have a real Tesla Model 3 — which he sensibly parks elsewhere — as well as a lot of enthusiasm for the brand, judging by how he decorates his setup.
Former Apple design boss Jony Ive has hired at least four of his former Cupertino colleagues to work at his LoveFrom design firm, according to The Information.
Since leaving Apple in 2019, Ive reportedly hired Chris Wilson, Patch Kessler, Jeff Tiller and Wan Si. All four worked with Ive in Apple’s design team. Wilson created GUI elements such as icons and menus. Kessler worked in product design and helped create the MacBook Force Touch trackpad. And Tiller is a communications specialist who worked for the Apple design team.
The latest hire is Wan, who designed on app icons, home screens and buttons.
What does Apple’s oft-discussed, never-shipped AirPower charging pad have in common with Baron Samedi, the voodoo priest from the 1973 James Bond movie Live and Let Die? Two things predominantly: 1) People think they’re folklore until they actually appear, and 2) They seemingly can’t die.
That’s right: After dodging death more times than Evel Knievel, a new Bloomberg report claims that AirPower is back on. Again. Or, at the very least, the project still has a heartbeat.
Apple is planning some exciting new additions for its iPad line. According to Bloomberg, Apple plans to bring wireless charging to the iPad Pro, along with the first iPad mini redesign in six years.
The wireless charging iPad will supposedly debut in 2022. The redesigned iPad mini — complete with narrower bezels and possible removed Home button — will meanwhile arrive later this year.
Apple moved to address many of the privacy concerns raised after the release of AirTags. The item trackers launched with anti-stalking features, but a new firmware update is tightening them up further.
AirTags will start more quickly warning people if they’re being used to follow someone. And an Android app that can detect these trackers is in development.
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Apple employees are expected to return to the office this autumn. A memo sent to employees says they should plan to be on the office three days a week, if not more. That includes the company headquarters.
The change comes as COVID-19 infection rates in the U.S. have fallen dramatically in recent weeks.
A simple copy-and-paste app called Paste Keyboard shot to the top of the App Store charts this week after languishing in obscurity for years.
Made by 28-year-old South Korean developer Techin Park, the keyboard app hitched a ride on TikTok’s massive success — and then dethroned it as the most popular app in the United States.
“Everyone is curious how such [a] simple idea, copy and paste, has trumped the almighty TikTok in app rank,” Park told Cult of Mac. “Copy and paste is a feature we all use at least once daily. Not many think it’s special. But in reality, increasing efficiency [when it comes to] how we copy and paste can save a lot more of our time than we possibly think.”
And, apparently, score you crazy numbers of downloads, too.
This year’s iPhones will debut in the third week of September, although that date could “push out into early October” due to “continued product model tweaks,” says Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.
In a new note to clients, Ives gives his expectations for the debut of the next-gen iPhones — as well as a forecast of Apple’s expectations for the handsets. If he’s accurate, Apple’s expecting some very big things indeed for the iPhone 13.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives thinks overhauled 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros will be among Apple’s announcements at the usually software-focused Worldwide Developers Conference next week.
Recent rumors provide a pretty decent picture of what the new MacBook Pro might look like. The updated laptops supposedly will be a pretty major rethink of the pro-grade, M1-powered notebook Apple introduced last November. Among the changes will be a redesigned chassis, built-in SD card reader and HDMI port, a MagSafe charger and a faster M2 chip. However, the next-gen MacBook Pro supposedly will not come with an LED Touch Bar.
As CEOs of Apple, both Tim Cook and his predecessor Steve Jobs pride or, in Jobs’ case, prided themselves on the ability to say “no” to ideas. For obvious reasons, most of the time the world never gets to hear what those shot-down ideas actually were.
However, emails disclosed as part of the discovery for the Epic vs. Apple trial, now adjourned, shows one of the ideas that was talked about internally — but ultimately abandoned. That ideas was for a 15-inch MacBook Air, discussed as far back as 2007, the year before Apple debuted its ultra-thin notebook.
The App Store ecosystem enabled $643 billion in billings and sales during 2020. That’s up 24% over the previous year, with much of the increase related to people taking more of their lives online during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study that examines how the App Store helps small businesses.
Apple touted these numbers as it waits for a federal judge to decide whether to order significant changes to the App Store.
The Fox family’s adventures will continue in The Mosquito Coast on Apple TV+. The streaming service committed to second season on Wednesday.
The series is adapted from the best-seller by Paul Theroux, and the story isn’t anywhere near its conclusion in the final episode of season 1, which will premiere June 4.
Update: Apple changed the status for Apple Card from “outage” to “resolved outage” Wednesday afternoon. The service was offline for almost exactly six hours.
Apple Card users may find that they’re unable to make a payment or see recent transactions. Apple reports that the software that handles these tasks for its credit card has been having problems for several hours.
Arizona-based Tyler Botha, aka theallseeingeye on Reddit, is a TV-focused copywriter for a San Francisco startup and a retired pro DJ. The setup and epic gear list he sent to our attention does triple duty with a capable “WFH Desk,” a powerful “Gaming Corner” and a remarkably complete “DJ Desk.”
Talk about “complete.” Botha’s gear list, represented in the links below, is probably the longest one ever published in a Cult of Mac Setups article. You don’t have to be a DJ to appreciate it, but it helps.
An improved display in the iPhone 13 series reportedly will force Apple to put in a larger battery, making the upcoming handsets slightly thicker.
This could mean we finally get an iPhone screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. The faster rate makes the user interface of a phone or tablet just a bit smoother and more responsive.
There’s macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS. How about homeOS, signaling a ramping up of Apple’s smart home ambitions?
That is one take-home from a new Apple Music job posting spotted online. It references a hitherto-unannounced mobile operating system called “homeOS.” While Apple rolled out its HomeKit smart home platform in 2014, it has — to date — been a part of iOS/iPadOS, rather than its own fully fledged operating system. That could change soon.