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- Tuesday November 19
- 04:25 pmToday in Apple history: Apple Park gets the official go-ahead
On November 19, 2013, the Cupertino City Council approved plans for Apple Park. (The ambitious new HQ was called Apple Campus 2 at the time.) (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)04:22 pmPSA: An iOS 18 bug is why our favorite ‘Apple Frames’ shortcut broke
Do you ever frame screenshots inside Apple device frames? Then you’ve probably used Federico Viticci’s ‘Apple Frames’ shortcut. Unfortunately, the shortcut has been broken in recent months, and now we know that an iOS 18 bug is the cause. more…04:02 pmApple TV+ to license its movies to other services
Apple has hired an executive to license its Apple Original Films' movies to other companies with the intent to not only increase returns… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.03:59 pmThe next big Apple TV+ comedy just dropped its first trailer
Apple TV+ has some beloved comedies among its best series, and a new show coming in early 2025 looks set to join them. It’s called The Studio, and Apple just dropped the first trailer. more…03:46 pmSnag M4 iMac at killer price in this early Black Friday deal
Apple's newest M4 iMac is available with a big $150 discount—applicable across all its variants—within a month of its launch. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)03:26 pmApp Store revenue grew more than usual in October
Apple's App Store saw a jump in revenue in October, analysts say, with downloads in the month also trending higher than usual.App Store iconLike many other areas of Apple's empire, the App Store experiences seasonality when it comes to purchases and downloads of apps. In October, analysts saw an improvement in tracked metrics that go beyond what typical seasonal figures.In the data from Sensor Tower for the month of October seen by J.P.Morgan and shared with AppleInsider, revenue from App Store purchases grew by 2.6% in concurrent months. This follows the 2.3% drop in revenue in concurrent months from August to September. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums03:25 pmApple absolutely should make a TV set, here’s why
A Steve Jobs quote once inspired a years-long fascination with the idea of Apple building a TV set. The product never came to fruition, but the dream lives on, stoked by a new Mark Gurman rumor that Apple is now ‘evaluating’ making a TV. Here are five reasons I think Apple absolutely should make its own TV. more…03:01 pmThese are Apple Podcasts’ most popular U.S. podcasts of 2024
Apple on Tuesday shared the most popular podcasts of 2024, with year-end charts localized for listeners in nearly 100 countries and regions… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.02:45 pmCreative Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds: A glimpse into portable audio’s future [Review] ★★★☆☆
Our hands-on review of Creative Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds review finds a lot to like in the xMEMS micro speaker, but they're average otherwise. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)02:45 pmCreative Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds: A glimpse into portable audio’s future [Review] ★★★☆☆
Our hands-on review of Creative Aurvana Ace 2 earbuds review finds a lot to like in the xMEMS micro speaker, but they're average otherwise. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)02:30 pmStay powered up on road trips with this high-output car charger
Meets the power demands of your devices on the road. The compact Naztech SpeedMax65 laptop car charger delivers speed and reliability. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)02:28 pmGet ready for the iPhone 17 Air, Apple’s thinnest phone ever
Macworld Apple is expected to launch an extra-thin model when it unveils the iPhone 17 line-up next year. But exactly how thin are we talking? A new report appears to confirm the figure is 6mm, which would make the iPhone 17 Air/Slim the thinnest smartphone Apple has ever released. The analyst Jeff Pu put out a research note Monday supporting a recent rumor about the device’s thickness. “We agreed with the recent chatter of [a] 6mm thickness ultra-slim design of the iPhone 17 Slim model,” he wrote in the note, seen by MacRumors. At 6mm, the Air would easily snatch the record previously held by the 6.9mm iPhone 6; the iPhone 16 is a comparatively chunky 7.8mm thick, while the 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max are a positively obese 8.25mm. Oddly enough, as MacRumors points out, you can get a thinner iPad: the 13- and 11-inch versions of the latest iPad Pro are just 5.1mm and 5.3mm respectively. And the final iPod nano came in under 6mm too, not that this is a fair comparison against a full smartphone. As ever with rumored Apple products, the iPhone 17 Air has come in for plenty of criticism long before it’s even been announced. There’s a sense among pundits that 6mm wouldn’t be thin enough to warrant an Air or Slim branding or the likely high price tag; MacRumors itself wrote a story earlier this month complaining that the device may not be much thinner than the iPhone 6, as if being thinner than the thinnest ever iPhone, which incidentally had just a 4.7-inch screen and vastly inferior components and cameras, would not be an engineering feat worth celebrating. Conversely, most of the negative discussion on Reddit argues that slimming down to 6mm goes beyond usefulness. In this thread: “Hard no for me. Gimme thicker with big battery.” “Does it really matter when most people will slap a massive case and screen protector on there? Give me a thicker phone with better battery life.” “I don’t think thinness or lightness is a huge priority.” “Why the obsession to go thin?” “I never loved the thinness of my iPhone 6s. It was just too thin.” [Editor’s note: the iPhone 6s was slightly thicker than the iPhone 6, at 7.1mm.] We’re still a long way off the launch of the iPhone 17 series, and Apple may find ways between now and then to further slim down the Air model–perhaps even rivaling the iPad Pro. But with half of the community complaining that it’s too thick and the other half complaining that it’s too thin, it feels like Apple might have got the balance about right. Catch all the latest news and rumors in our regularly updated iPhone 17 superguide. Or, if you don’t want to wait until next fall, pick up a bargain on the current range with our roundup of the best Black Friday iPhone deals.02:19 pmMeta thinks its Orion augmented reality glasses can be the AirPods of AR
It was back in September when Meta first revealed an early prototype of its Orion AR glasses, and while they are a long way from becoming an actual product you can buy, the company does believe it can achieve this. Indeed, Meta’s wearables chief thinks that Orion can in time become the AirPods of augmented reality devices … more…02:18 pmExpand your podcast library from Apple’s list of most popular ones
Discover new podcasts by finding out what other people are listening to with Apple’s list of top podcasts of 2024. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)02:00 pmNew xMEMS micro speaker brings big sound to smartwatches, AR glasses and more
Already making (sound) waves in earbuds and headphones, xMEMS unveils the Sycamore micro speaker for wearables like Apple Watch. (via Cult of Mac - Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos)01:58 pmApple offers $100 million to cancel Indonesia’s iPhone 16 ban
Apple has increased its offer to invest in Indonesia by almost tenfold in the company’s latest bid to persuade the government to lift its… The post appeared first on MacDailyNews.01:47 pmSophos Home Premium for Mac Review
Macworld At a GlanceExpert's Rating Pros Good speed and performance, runs well in the background. Very good price point, the license allowing protection for up to 10 devices. Caught a respectable amount of test malware and some phishing site activity. Cons Allows AdWind and Adobe Flash Player sample malware to be installed, AdWind having to be removed with a separate utility. Awkward Web-based dashboard interface. Functions such as quicky scanning an external or network volume feel much harder than they have to be. Our Verdict Sophos Home Premium is available for a good price, protects up to 10 devices, and caught a fair amount of test case viral software, but there are too many issues with installation and set up, and certain elements of the program are awkward. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price Sophos (first year 25% off) $44.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Price When Reviewed$59.99 first year year, $99.99 for two years, and $139.99 for three years. Best Prices Today: Sophos Home Premium for Mac Retailer Price Sophos (first year 25% off) $44.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Sometimes an application doesn’t expand to match its competitors. This is the case with Sophos Home Premium, which we last reviewed in 2021. Since then only nominal changes, outside of supporting the current macOS operating systems, have been made and many of our criticisms made then still apply. Sophos Home Premium functions as a fairly well-rounded anti-piracy/anti-malware suite, its core modules centering around antivirus protection, web protection, ransomeware protection, and malicious traffic detection. The software usually retails for $59.99/£49.95 per year, $99.99/£89.95 for two years, and $139.99/£114.95 for three years, each subscription licensing up to 10 devices. You can currently get 25% off those prices, with the first year starting at $44.99/£37.46. In the past Sophos offered a free version of its Home product with just the antivirus protection and website protection. In late 2021, the company discontinued that version, leaving Sophos Home Premium as the only option for personal use. You can freely and fully use Home Premium for 30 days via an ad-free trial, the free trial protecting up to three devices. Find out how Sophos compares to the Best antivirus software for Mac we have tested. Sophos Home Premium is easy enough to download and requires macOS 10.12 (Monterey) or later to install and run. Installing the software proved to have its own set of issues and requires an online account to be set up. While the installer program functioned correctly, with the current version installing into the Sophos folder in the Applications folder, it didn’t activate the application in the expected way. Instead, everything was essentially controlled via the Menu Bar icon and a web-based interface. Yes, the program guides you through setting up permissions to install network tools, full disk access, and kernel extensions, but everything is based around the macOS menu bar pull-down menu and a web-based dashboard. Once you’ve signed into your Sophos account, it’s easy enough to customize and configure core elements such as actions that occur when malware is found, scan scheduling, and web filtering, and elements such as accessible scan logs, network file scanning, and easy access to creating whitelists and exceptions come in handy. Examining a scan log in Sophos Home Premium for Mac.Foundry Like similar programs, you can choose between quick scans to examine areas of the hard drive that might be infected with questionable software as well as full scans, which can take several hours and cover the full extent of the hard drive. While it takes a little nosing around the dashboard, users can configure the Web Filtering options to allow blocking for categories such as general interests, social networking and computing, and adult and potentially inappropriate categories and hone their filters in from there, excluding traffic that might be centered around adult content, gambling, hate, offensive content, violence, weapons, and other categories. The filters work reasonably well and helped block going to sites from some of my Gmail’s spam folder, and it’s easy enough to create a whitelist to provide exceptions for certain websites as needed. Unfortunately, there’s considerable room for improvement. Although Sophos Home Premium functions well with macOS’s GateKeeper feature and caught and filtered a respectable amount of test malware, it allowed both the AdWind malware and an infected copy of Adobe Flash Player to be installed. While the Adobe Flash Player application later offered an uninstallation option, the AdWind malware had to be removed with another utility, which proved discouraging. Other elements of the program felt awkward, and it felt surreal in that while the scan scheduling feature worked well, it only allows you to set schedule times set to every 30 minutes (11:00 AM, 11:30 AM, 12:00 PM, etc). The Dashboard’s home screen in Sophos Home Premium for Mac.Foundry The fact that the application runs entirely from the macOS Menu Bar and a web-based dashboard takes some getting used to, as nothing appears to be running by the Dock, and outside of a small Menu Bar animation, it can be difficult to gauge whether a scan is running unless the Menu Bar item is clicked on and Sophos Home Premium is opened from there. Finally, specifying and scanning an external volume such as a thumb drive or network volume feels like a harder process than it should be, with these elements included in the overarching Full Scan option, as opposed to being able to specify what you want to scan and doing this quickly and easily without having to wrestle with a web-based dashboard. Should you buy Sophos Home Premium? Sophos Home Premium is available for a good price to protect up to 10 devices, it caught a fair amount of test case viral software, and yes, it runs well in the background of the macOS operating system, but it feels like the elements that made the software feel awkward when we last looked at it three years ago haven’t been remedied and were barely looked into. Granted, there are some powerful customization options to be had within the depths of the Dashboard, but when it comes to ease of use (such as easily scanning an external volume), Sophos Home Premium seems lost in the dark with no hope of finding a flashlight in the near future. The price might be right, but there are other applications that take on these tasks and do them better, and they’re arguably worth looking into once the 30-day trial for this is complete.01:42 pmAre your Instagram recommendations a mess? You can now start from scratch
One of the biggest problems with social media is that our feeds are full of things the algorithms think we want to see, rather than what we actually want to see. If your Instagram recommendations seem increasingly removed from your interests, Meta is now offering you the chance to start again from scratch … more…01:39 pmTop Apple Podcast charts for 2024 show what everyone's been listening to
Apple has released a list of the most popular shows listened to via Apple Podcasts in 2024, with "The Daily" taking the top spot for the year in the United States.Image credit: AppleApple regularly publishes year-end charts for its various content services, giving a hint to what the world is listening to on their iPhone and other devices. On Tuesday, Apple issued its 2024 Apple Podcasts lists.Year-end charts are offered in nearly 100 countries and regions, appearing in the Browse tab of Apple Podcasts through to the end of the year. The regional charts provide details of the top overall podcasts, top new shows, most-followed shows, the most shared shows and episodes, and the top free and subscriber channels. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums01:18 pmApple reveals the most popular podcasts of 2024, with nine different Top 10 lists
Apple has put together no fewer than nine different Top 10 lists, revealing the most popular podcasts of 2024. The lists kick off with the top shows of the year, but go on to list the most popular in a number of different categories, from new shows to those with the highest subscriber counts … more…