Updated 05/29/18:  iOS 11.4 is out today with HomePod stereo pairing, AirPlay 2, and Messages in iCloud.

iOS 11.3 was released on March 29 after more than two months of beta testing. It added several new features, including battery health and performance settings, four new Animojis, Business Chat and Health Records betas, and a bit upgrade to ARKit.

Now, iOS 11.4 delivers the rest of the features Apple spoke about at WWDC last year, just a week before this year's WWDC. The big-ticket items are Messages in iCloud, AirPlay 2, and stereo pairing for HomePod.

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Beats Solo3 wireless headphones  are among the most popular headphones on the market, and for good reason—they’ve got deep, bass-heavy sound and come in an array of hip colors. But all that coolness doesn’t come cheap. So, if you’ve been waiting for the price to drop, today’s the day to buy them. Amazon is selling the Beats Solo3 wireless headphones in numerous colors for less than $200 down from the $300 MSRP and the lowest we’ve ever seen them.

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Updated 05/29/18: A new rumor from South Korea publication Electronic Times reports that Apple will be releasing three OLED phones in the fall, contradicting a prior rumor that said the low-end phone would be LCD.

Now that we’re well into 2018, rumors about the next iPhone have started to pile up. We’ll keep track of everything that’s being said and analyze what seems feasible in this article so you can keep up with the latest iPhone gossip.

Apple to go all OLED with 2018 iPhones

Ever since the first rumor about the 2018 iPhone landed, we've been operating under the assumption that there will be three new iPhone models this year in three sizes: 5.8 inches, 6.1 inches, and 6.5 inches. But while the new 6.5-inch model will obviously be the new flagship in that scenario, the 6.1-inch model would actually be the new entry-level iPhone, despite having a larger screen than the 5.8-inch model. The reason would be the display: Rumors peg the 6.1-inch model as using an LCD display rather than OLED to keep costs down and keep the low-end iPhone in the $700 range.

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Technology addiction. You have it. Your spouse has it. Your children have it. Your dog has it. Your dog’s spouse has it.

Remember? Before you got addicted to technology, you use to do wacky things like throw dog weddings. This is why everyone was so happy when you got addicted to technology, Gail. Who wants to spend $50 buying a present for Sparky and Miffy’s wedding? Also, who registers their dogs at Sur La Table? It’s ridiculous.

Dogs can’t cook, Gail, we know you were just keeping the presents for yourself.

There’s a lot we don’t know about technology addiction, but the one thing we know for sure is that it’s mostly Apple’s fault. Apple created the modern smartphone, after all, and the modern smartphone is the source of all ills. Q.E.D. with jelly on it.

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These days, if you want to really make the best use of your laptops, tablets, and phones, you need a cloud storage service. The concept of storing files in the cloud may have started as a way for consumers to back up their data in case of disaster, but today’s best services offer so much more.

A good cloud storage solution backs up your important documents, photos, and videos, but it also helps keep all your devices in sync. It’s a great way to make sure your laptop, phone, and tablet all have instant access to all your digital content. Plus, you can access and edit documents from a web browser and easily share files and folders with others.

If you use Apple products—whether that’s just a single iPhone or you’re all-in with tons of Apple gear—we think these are the best cloud storage solutions to subscribe to.

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Updated 05/28/18: A new report from The Information claims that iOS 12 will allow developers more access to the iPhone's NFC readers, allowing iPhone to work with NFC-enabled locks, transit systems, and more.

It’s rare that Apple fans cheer a lack of new features in an upcoming product, but that may be the case with the next round of iPhone updates. After a flurry of embarrassing bugs in this year’s release of iOS, Apple is reportedly scaling back its plans for iOS 12 as it shifts its focus to quality and performance. And iPhone users should applaud this decision.

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Contrary to what you might think, Apple's iCloud isn’t a central storage system. Rather, it’s a synchronization system that requires data remain on the end points, such as your Macs and iOS devices. Deleting data off end points manually typically deletes it from iCloud’s central servers, used to manage sync, and from every other connected device.

Macworld reader Tom wrote in asking about this topic, which is extremely confusing, as some iCloud services can reduce storage required in varying ways, but you have to use their interfaces to let them manage it automatically. If you delete items manually, they’re just removed.

Tom asks:

Is there any way to create folders (or an album) in iCloud, store files in that space, but delete the files from the general Photos group?

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The new Tweetbot 3 for macOS remains fundamentally the same, though it has modest but noticeable improvements and new features that give the app a little more sparkle. For example, a new autoplay mode for animated GIFs and embedded video lets you mouse over to start the playback instead of requiring a click, though audio fortunately still requires one. (The feature can be disabled.)

IDG

Tweetbot 3: Usability

The app’s approach focuses on what would now be called “classic” Twitter: a chronologically organized timeline with the newest tweets at the top, and an option to autoscroll as new tweets appear. Like other third-party apps, Tweetbot 3 doesn't show Twitter ads.

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It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since the Essential phone was first teased, heralding an avalanche of unbridled enthusiam as pundits pointedly predicted its iPhone-killing ability.

The Verge called it an “incredibly audacious and ambitious project” before it even launched. And, to be fair, it launched almost two months late so The Verge was right because “over-ambitious” is a kind of “ambitious.”

Anyway, how’d that all turn out? Surely everyone has tossed their iPhones into the lake and is using the Essential phone now with its amazing “thing” it was going to have that no iPhone had whatever that turned out to be.

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It’s almost time for Memorial Day weekend, and it may also be time for you to finally buy an Apple Watch Series 3. Most of the deals we’ve been seeing on Apple’s popular wearable focus on the Series 1, but Best Buy is selling the Series 3 for just $279 for the 38mm version and $309 for the 42mm version as part of its Memorial Day sale.

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These days it seems like Apple is always fighting several cases in court, but it’s rare that we hear much about them. In two separate cases presided over by U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh this week, however, quite a bit of news was made. In one, Apple won a bundle of money from Samsung. In another, it may have lost some face with its customers.

In the ongoing patent battle with Samsung that reaches way back to when Steve Jobs was still alive, a jury has awarded Apple $538.6 million in damages regarding the design of its phones. The jury took five days to decide the wide-ranging case that is as much about innovation as it is about rectangular pieces of glass.

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Six Sigma is a business management and improvement methodology that uses the following constructs to make changes to any process: Defining, Measuring, Analyzing, Improving, and Controlling. Also called DMAIC, Six Sigma measures the capability of a process to perform defect-free work with a minuscule failure rate of 3.4 parts per million, or 99.9997%. Lean Six Sigma combines Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to enhance performance by eliminating waste. You can now get all three of the Lean Six Sigma—Yellow, Black, and Green—Belt Training & Certification courses for just $49.99 (formally $1,200). That's an incredible 95% off retail.

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Legal music acquisition these days seems to be all about subscription services like Apple Music or Spotify, but there are still plenty of reasons to have lots of MP3 or AAC files lying around on your hard drive. Maybe you downloaded them from Bandcamp. Maybe you own CDs and ripped them yourself. Maybe you converted some old bootleg recording. Maybe they “fell off the truck.” 

Whatever reason you have an MP3 or AAC audio file you want to listen to on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll have to first transfer it there. Here’s how you do it.

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The recent 20-year anniversary of the iMac G3 reminded many folks that “fun” is as much a hallmark of Apple design as aluminum and understatement, and we were impressed by the response to our announcement that Spigen had released a series of iPhone cased that riffed off that colorful Mac’s quirky design. So get this: We’ve got one of those cases for the iPhone X that we’ve love to give to one of you.

And it’s a cool one, too. The case we’re giving away boasts the iconic blue-green “Bondi Blue” of the original iMac, and it’s the color that’s most likely to draw attention from fellow Apple admirers. At the time of writing, Spigen is selling the case for $25 as a part of its Indiegogo campaign. As the campaign continues over the next 23 days, the price will go up to at least $40.

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It’s that time of the year when we pull out our prognosticating hats—you were issued yours, right?—and try to imagine what Apple might announce a couple of weeks hence when they take the stage at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

The main event at WWDC is generally the future of Apple’s software platforms, most crucially macOS and iOS. So, with that in mind, it’s time to whip out that old standby: features that Apple’s platforms still need.

This week we’ll start with macOS, which just celebrated an important milestone, as the current generation of macOS (formerly OS X and Mac OS X) has now been shipping as long as the classic Mac OS was when Mac OS X first arrived on the scene. Seems like only yesterday, doesn’t it? 

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And just like that, Apple has killed the the Steam Link app. Earlier this month, Valve, the owner of the wildly popular gaming digital marketplace Steam, announced that it would soon release a Steam Link app that would allow players to stream games from gaming PCs directly to their iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs (as well as Android devices). The Android app made it into the wild last week, but for the last few days we’ve been patiently waiting for the app to make it through Apple’s approval process. This afternoon, Valve sent an email to Macworld letting us know that Apple had rejected it.

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Updated 05/24/18 to reflect the inventory change in the store, including stock of the iMac Pro.

Looking for a way to save some money on the latest Apple products? Consider a refurbished MacBook, refurbished iPhone, or refurbished iPad from the Apple Certified Refurbished store. A refurbished product is just like a new, but at a lower price.

Here’s a quick guide with links to the best deals you can find on the refurb store, along with a FAQ guide if you want to know more about the ins and outs of the Apple Certified Refurbished store and buying a refurbished MacBook, desktop Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

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Best Buy is having a big sale for Memorial Day, and we’re happy to see that some of its best deals focus on Apple products. Not only are there great deals on MacBook Pros (which, honestly, we’ve kind of come to expect from Best Buy sales at this point), but you’ll even find nice discounts on the iPhone 8/8 Plus and the HomePod. 

A few of these deals have been active for a couple of days now, but it’s nice to see them lumped together. You can get the most recent 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar (Core i7) for just $1,149.99 (down from $1,299.00), for example, and you can lop off an additional $50 if you qualify for student pricing. For that matter, you can save $200 on the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, which brings the price down from $1,499.99 to $1,299.99. Other options are available as well.

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For the past several years, we’ve been reading reports about Apple’s ambitious self-driving car project. Dubbed Project Titan, the vision was once reportedly bolstered by a 1,000-plus member team tasked with building a vehicle that would be innovative and revolutionary, with an all-electric engine, luxurious amenities, and the smartest infotainment system on four wheels.

However, according to a new report by The New York Times, some things are too difficult even for Apple to conquer. For the past four years, Apple’s best engineers along with designer Jony Ive have been developing prototypes of a reimagined car worthy of the Apple name. As the Times describes it, the idea was to build a vehicle that would be “the automotive version of the iPhone.”

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High-end phones are a major investment, and a good case helps you protect that investment. If you’re looking to guard your phone from the wear and tear of daily abuse, you’re in luck—a ton of Caseology cases are on sale for up to 30% off on Amazon today.

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Anyone who spends even a few hours a week PC gaming needs a comfortable chair. While console gamers usually sprawl out on a couch, we the gamers of the PC are often stuck with office chairs unless we’re willing to shell out hundreds of dollars. Today, Amazon’s got a deal that will let you game like a pro without paying like a sucker.

The Essentials by OFM racing-style leather gaming chair in red is $68.84 right now. That’s $21 off its most recent price, and about the same amount you’d pay for a regular desk chair.

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Aura Premium uses cutting-edge AI that's designed to provide short, science-backed mindfulness meditation exercises every day, and now you can get lifetime access for $79.99.

With Aura Premium, you can choose 3- or 7- or 10-minute meditation durations depending on your availability and comfort. Once you complete an exercise, rate it, and Aura's AI will curate others like it to optimize your wellness journey. You can track your mood, learn about your mood patterns, and visually see yourself improve. Plus, Aura Premium also gives you daily reminders for mindful breathers to keep you centered.

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If you’re someone who does the writing of the things, you will eventually get on a PR mailing list or two. Or, well, more like 800. It’s closer to 800. Congratulations, you will never be alone. On the downside, your inbox will be buried with product announcements about which you could not care less. They all start something like this:

Hey, [MAIL MERGE FIELD #FIRSTNAME], hope you’re having the best day ever! I just wanted to see if you were interested in writing about the hottest new product to come out of the burgeoning field of hamster-related technologies. Starting with nothing but a loan of $1.5 million from their parents (and several subsequent runs of seed capital from angel investors) and working from a garage in Brentwood, these three techbros have created what Hamstertech Weekly called “Echo Show for hamsters”…

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As podcasts popularity continues to grow, the apps used to listen to those podcasts have matured. Apple offers its own free Podcasts app, but several freemium and paid options remain, each with their own approach and options. Supertop’s Castro stands out for its inbox approach, which allows triage for dealing with an abundance of podcast subscriptions.

The new Castro 3 adds requested features to the app, including a trim silences option (long available as Smart Speed in the competing Overcast app), as well as better chapter support, a rewritten voice enhancer, and per-podcast settings for several controls.

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Every day, Macworld brings you the essential daily news and other info about all things Apple. But staying on top of that torrent of information can be a constant challenge. One solution: the Macworld digital magazine.

In the June issue

We have the review of Apple’s new $329 iPad. Find out why the tablet is ‘pro’ enough for most of us. We also have a great roundup of all the best iPhone camera apps; which one is best for you?

Also in this month’s issue:

• MacUser: Read our 13-inch MacBook Pro battery replacement program FAQ. Plus, say goodbye to Apple's brushed-metal dinosaur, QuickTime Player 7.

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Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is coming soon, so where is iOS 11.4? There’s a movement for “sustainability in the App Store” for app developers. A new eGPU is on the market. We also talk about various other Apple news and feature your comments and questions for Jason Cross, Leif Johnson, Roman Loyola, and Dan Masaoka in the Macworld Podcast, episode 606.

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