A decade after Apple Watch launched, WhatsApp finally launched a dedicated app for the smartwatch Tuesday — ending years of frustration for users who could only respond to notifications from their wrist. The messaging service brings full chat functionality to your wrist with support for messages, voice notes and calls, Meta said.
November 4, 1997: Apple unveils its plan to open small “store within a store” areas inside CompUSA outlets around the United States. Apple-trained employees will staff these mini-stores and sing the praises of the Mac and other Apple products.
The move gives Cupertino more control over the way its products are displayed and demoed to consumers. While ultimately disappointing, Apple’s CompUSA experiment paves the way for the flagship Apple Stores that will launch four years later and become the world’s most profitable retail outlets.
The SanDisk Extreme Fit USB-C Flash Drive packs up to a terabyte of storage, but is tiny enough that you can leave it plugged into your MacBook. SanDisk touts it as “the world’s smallest 1TB USB-C flash drive.”
Outgrown the storage capacity of your older MacBook? This drive could be just the boost you’re looking for.
The mini SSD can even be used with an iPhone, as well as an iPad.
Can you put a price on online privacy and cloud storage? We can, and it’s a remarkably tiny one.
The 2026 Cloud Storage & Internet Privacy Lifetime Subscription Bundle gives you a lifetime of storage and security for a small one-time payment. It pairs 1TB of FolderFort cloud storage with OysterVPN — and you get it all for just $59.99 (MSRP $598.97).
Slide Over, one of the best iPad multitasking features, got rescued from the rubbish heap with the new iPadOS 26.1. It’s an ideal way to keep an application that you check frequently but not constantly within easy reach — it’s offscreen but accessible with just a flick of a finger.
Here’s how to use Slide Over, and why you shouldn’t ignore the option now that it’s back in iPadOS 26.1, which launched on Monday.
The older Apple Home architecture will live for a few more months. Apple previously planned on phasing out the architecture in late 2025.
Instead, the HomeKit architecture will stop functioning on February 10, 2026.
Finding good AI tools isn’t the problem. Even the free version of ChatGPT can do a lot. The real frustration is that if you want good results for generating copy, creating images, transcribing text and doing a myriad of other AI tasks, you often need a whole pile of subscriptions, and those costs add up. The alternative is to get an all-in-one tool that brings top AI models together in one interface. Enter 1minAI.
The major benefits of 1minAI are organizational and financial. It gives you access to ChatGPT, Gemini Pro, Llama, Mistral AI and more. So you get all your AI tools in one place, and you don’t need to pay for a subscription to each one separately. For a limited time, you can get a lifetime sub to 1minAI for just $24.97.
iOS 26.1, which Apple released Monday, brings five features you should check out immediately after you install the update.
The biggest change gives you a way to customize the legibility of Liquid Glass, the major user interface overhaul Apple delivered to all its software platforms this year. But there’s plenty of other cool stuff you don’t want to miss.
Other key upgrades come to Apple Music and the iPhone’s alarm clock interface. Plus, there’s a setting that can keep your iPhone battery from draining in your pocket. And for iPad owners, there’s the celebrated return of Slide Over on iPad.
The iPhone App Store is now accessible on a Mac. And iPad users can research what macOS applications are available. Anyone can see what Apple Watch apps are available. All of these are possible now that Apple finally put the App Store on the web Monday.
It’s long overdue, and still missing a feature many users would like.
Stuck using an older version of Microsoft Office? This offer gets you a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Home and Business 2021 for Mac for just $59.97. With a low one-time payment, you can bid farewell to Microsoft 365’s pesky recurring subscription fees. You’ll never need to pay again for Microsoft’s widely used software for work and school.
And if you need Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows, you can secure a lifetime license for even less: just $39.97.
November 3, 2010: Apple prepares to launch the Mac App Store, publicly accepting app submissions from registered developers — and kicking off a gold rush among coders.
After witnessing the enormous sums of money raked in by early entrants in the iOS App Store, the easy-to-use digital storefront that revolutionized software distribution on the iPhone, developers flood Apple with new Mac apps.
Apple’s long-delayed Siri upgrade will reportedly “lean on Google’s Gemini” model to power many of its features. It will also include an AI-powered web search.
However, this Gemini integration will supposedly function differently from how Apple currently integrates ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence.
Look at your iPhone. Now look at that acoustic guitar that’s been sitting in your room for half a decade — dusty, untouched and sad. It’s time you strummed the strings as much as you text, and these online guitar lessons can help.
You don’t have to be a fan of school. In fact, it’s best if you aren’t — these video lessons are designed to be taken at your own pace, with lifetime access priced at just $29.97 for 14 courses.
With the world losing guitar heroes like Eddie Van Halen and Ace Frehley, it’s time for new players to step up!
November 2, 2012: The first iPad mini goes on sale, shrinking both the size and the price tag of Apple’s groundbreaking tablet computer.
With a reduced screen size of 7.9 inches – instead of the then-standard 9.7 inches – the original iPad mini is the fifth iPad to be released by Apple. Critics hail Apple’s most affordable iPad ever, although some people complain about the tablet’s lack of a Retina display.
Although Wi-Fi 7 is theoretically more than four times faster than Wi-Fi 6E, tests of wireless performance on newer iPhone models that support the upgraded standard show no real improvement in speed. This is reportedly because Apple did not implement the Wi-Fi 7 changes that would boost performance over iPhones with Wi-Fi 6E.
In Apple’s defense, it did implement the portion of Wi-Fi 7 intended to make wireless connections more reliable. That’s arguably the part of the standard that benefits average users the most.
A Costco Gold Star Membership can help you secure high-quality goods — including iPhones, Macs, Apple Watches and iPads — at bargain-basement prices. You can hop on the savings train now with a Costco membership deal that lets you join the warehouse club for less.
Right now, when you pick up a year-long Costco Gold Star Membership for only $65 you’ll also score an extra-satisfying $40 Digital Costco Shop Card*.
Want even more savings? Bump up to an Executive Gold Star Membership for $130 to earn more perks and receive an even larger $60 Digital Costco Shop Card.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest rumor about the 20th anniversary iPhone whets our appetite for this glorious device. It’s just over the horizon, and it sounds like an absolute stunner.
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video version, embedded below.
With Thanksgiving coming in a few weeks, it’s time to watch the beloved Peanuts special that celebrates this holiday, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. While Apple TV subscribers can watch it anytime, Apple will also make the special free for anyone to stream one weekend this month.
You do not need an Apple device to enjoy either. It’s easy on Windows and Android.
November 1, 2007: Six months after Steve Jobs showed it off, the original iPhone becomes Time magazine’s “best invention of the year.”
The iPhone stands out from the rest of 2007’s gadget pack, which includes the Nikon Coolpix S51c digital camera, the Netgear SPH200W Wi-Fi Phone and the Samsung P2 music player. Remember those? (Yeah, we thought not.)
In addition to a bunch of much-needed bug fixes, iOS 26.1 brings plenty of new features. Tweaks to Liquid Glass improve its legibility without sacrificing its cool effects. iPad multitaskers can rejoice the return of Slide Over, which returns better than before.
There are 20 new changes: A new user interface for alarms, improvements to Photos, a new gesture for quickly fast-forwarding music, a setting that fixes a long-standing problem with the Lock Screen, and much more.
Here’s the complete list. Read on or watch our hands-on video.
M. Night Shyamalan’s wonderfully dark series Servant is the creepiest horror show on Apple TV. The engrossing show, about a supernatural nanny with designs on an upper-class Philadelphia power couple and their missing baby, shines thanks to an amazing array of directorial talent and some fantastic on-screen presences.
Here’s why you should watch all four seasons of this runaway freight train of a show.
Record numbers of customers upgrading their gear helped push up Apple’s revenue into record territory last quarter, and that’s boosting AAPL’s stock price.
Here are the products that the company says are the most popular with upgraders in Q4 2025. Some you might be able to guess, but there’s a very conspicuous absence from the list.
ChatPlayground AI gives you easy access to more than 40 of the top AI models across 25 apps, all in one place — and all for one low price. It includes big names like ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, Perplexity and Gemini, and it lets you send one prompt to multiple AIs simultaneously.
That means you can compare results to find the right AI tool for the job at hand, without jumping from one AI app to another. If you’re a heavy AI user, it will save you time as well as money.
Normally $619, a lifetime subscription to ChatPlayground AI is on sale now for only $89.99.
October 31, 2005: Less than three weeks after launching video downloads with iTunes 6, Apple reveals that it has already sold more than 1 million music videos.
Apple’s dive into the online digital video market — with 2,000 music videos, Pixar short films and a selection of hit TV shows for $1.99 — looks like the logical next step after selling individual songs on iTunes. Passing the 1 million download benchmark so quickly suggests the plan is a roaring success.
Apple’s long-delayed AI-powered Siri upgrade remains on track for a 2026 debut, CEO Tim Cook said Thursday. That offers some reassurance to users after multiple setbacks pushed the originally planned 2024 release back by more than a year.
So, what can we expect from a smarter Siri voice assistant when it finally arrives?