Awesome Apple

Apple’s great-sounding smart speaker can fill a room with big sounds and learn your tastes in music, while Siri can assist with all kinds of information and home automation tasks. Now you can win one (valued at $349) from The Awesomer Shop. (Contest ends 4/3/18)

Whether or not you’re an Apple fan, you’ve got to appreciate the amazing creativity in director Spike Jonze’s “Welcome Home” promo spot for the tech giant’s new HomePod speaker. We’re dying to see a BTS of how they pulled off all the stretchy practical effects.

Taiwanese toymaker Dam Toys has released a 12″ tall action figure of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Loosely based on Sid Maurer’s portrait of Jobs, the figure depicts the businessman’s appearance in 2008. Accessories include a MacBook Air and a Macintosh.

Waltr 2 is a Mac and Windows program that lets you transfer music, video, ePub and PDF files to iOS devices over USB or Wi-Fi. No need for iTunes. It automatically grabs metadata online, and converts your music or video for playback if needed. It also supports legacy iPods.

An idiotproof way to stream videos and music from a Mac to a variety of TVs, media players and speakers. Just drag and drop files, select a destination and start playing. It works with the Apple TV and Google Chromecast, as well as devices that support AirPlay and Google Cast.

NVIDIA GeForce Now is an upcoming video game subscription service for Mac (and later for Windows as well). The beta currently supports over 100 games including Battlegrounds and The Witcher 3. You have to own the games on Steam or Battle.net to stream them.

Apple’s iPhone X has started to arrive, and one of the big questions is how well FaceID works, and how easy it is to fool it. The Wall Street Journal recently put the phone to the test and shared their results. TL;DW? Don’t buy one if you have an identical twin.

The pranksters at Improv Everywhere took advantage of Apple’s NYC glass cube store’s renovations to set up shop in another glass structure, the elevator shaft to the 23rd Street subway station, complete with throngs of fake employees and a line for the iPhone X.

Movies Anywhere gathers your movies from Vudu, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon and Blu-ray download codes into one streaming app. The app is available on iOS, Android, Roku and Chromecast devices. It works with Disney, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. films.

Funny or Die introduces us to Yarrot Benz and Wendy Wilderötter of the fictitious site AppleRumors; two people who spend their lives collecting and sharing the mundane, yet overhyped stuff that Apple may or may not be bringing to its next products.

(PG-13: Language) Apple just announced its latest $1000 wonderphone, and already the parodies are starting to roll in. We particularly enjoyed JacksFilms take on some of the phone’s more controversial and questionable design elements and features.

The iPhone “ten” has a nearly bezel-free 5.8″ OLED HDR display, dual 12mp cameras with OIS, Qi wireless charging, Apple’s most powerful mobile CPU, the A11 “Bionic,” and a facial recognition system that replaces TouchID. Pre-order on 10/27/17. Compare models here.

A wireless dongle that lets you use an iPad as your Mac’s secondary display. Unlike its competitors, Luna uses your Mac’s GPU to ensure a clean and responsive experience. Touch gestures and peripherals will still work on the iPad while it’s showing Mac OS.

Hong Kong startup PlaySomeToys is working on a line of figures inspired by product designs from the ’80s and ’90s. Their first toy is this anthropomorphic computer that looks like the original Apple Macintosh. The 3.9″ tall plastic figure comes with a font suitcase and a mouse.

Apple will be releasing dark gray versions of its keyboard, mouse and trackpad, but the peripherals will be available only with the ridiculous new iMac Pro. Fortunately, this is a trivial matter for ColorWare. You still have to pay a premium, though.

Apple replaced the 9.7″ iPad Pro with one that’s virtually the same size and weight but has a 10.5″ screen. The new iPad Pro’s display offers up to 120Hz refresh rate, increased brightness, and reduced reflectivity. It will ship with iOS 11, which has many enhancements for tablets.

Apple’s wireless speaker uses an A8 CPU to adapt its acoustics to match your room. It’s got seven beam-forming tweeters, a high-excursion woofer, eight amps, and runs Siri to control your music collection, HomeKit devices, and more. Drops 12/17 for $349.

The Rainer Hersch Orkestra performs a medley of tunes which will be awfully familiar to those of you with iPhones. Every time that marimba sound goes off we reach for our pocket. They also did something similar for Windows XP a few years back.

(PG-13: Language) Internet Historian looks at how thousands of idiots have been exposed over the years thanks to the iPhone, pranksters, and the Internet. The retrospective itself sounds too sad to be true, but they actually happened.

This clever bedside stand transforms your Apple Watch into a tiny old-school Macintosh computer while you charge it for the night. Made from soft silicone, so you need not worry about scratches. Available in classic beige or Macintosh TV black. (Thanks Johannes!)

The new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar gets its killer app – an endless loop of the classic Nyan Cat meme, leaving a trail of rainbow farts in its wake across the width of the skinny OLED touchscreen. Developer Vatsaev Aslan uploaded the code on Github to play with.

Apple’s latest pro notebook is thinner, faster, has a much larger trackpad, a new keyboard, Touch ID, and a color multitouch toolbar that replaces the function keys with customizeable and contextual controls. In 13″ or 15″ sizes with a variety of Core i5 & Core i7 CPUs.

When you see Apple’s executives showering praise on their products, they’re not bragging. They’re desperately trying to prove themselves worthy of being freed from Apple’s ultimate creation. Or so it goes in Conan‘s awesome satire.