It is always exciting to capture the WWDC keynote in sketchnotes, and this year we filled up four pages with drawings showcasing the biggest new features coming in iOS 12, macOS Mojave and watchOS 5.

Side-by-side comparisons between iOS 12 beta 1 and version 11.4 show clear speed improvements.

If any other company had introduced Screen Time, the new system-wide toolset for limiting phone distractions, then it would (rightly) be dismissed as a gimmick, a sop to the increasing worries about phone addiction. But as is typical of Apple, Screen Time looks like it took a lot of work to get just right.

The just-released beta of iOS 12 can be set to partially deactivate the Lightning port after an iPhone hasn’t been used for an hour. This is a clear attempt to make useless the unlocking tools employed by law enforcement (or thieves).

The first iOS 12 developer beta debuted after today’s WWDC keynote. Intrepid souls who’ve already installed this early version on their iPhone X noticed that Face ID can be trained to recognize more than one person.

“Apple has shaken up its iOS software plans for 2018, delaying some features to next year in an effort to put more focus on addressing performance and quality issues,” reporter Ina Fried writes for Axios.

Apple will introduce a Beat-branded $250 HomePod smart speaker at WWDC, predicts Apple analyst Gene Munster.

“The knock on HomePod is its $349 price is about 2-3x the price of a typical smart speaker,” Munster writes. “We believe Apple can advance its digital assistant ambitions with a $250 Beats-branded option that does not compromise HomePod’s $349 price point.”

iOS 11.4 is finally here, bringing AirPlay 2’s multi-room audio capabilities as well as the long-awaited ability to use two HomePods in stereo.

Apple also said the HomePod will arrive in Canada, France and Germany by June 18. The speaker is currently available in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

Using HomePod as TV speakers

The press passes are out, the WWDC keynote is around the corner.  We gotta talk about it and we’ll tell a new way you can watch it live.

New details out this week show the Apple car has taken yet another sad and disappointing turn.  We’ll you where it’s at now.

It’s the 12 year anniversary of one of Apple’s best creations—we remember Apple’s incredible Get a Mac ads.

And thoroughly embarrass our ourselves in an all-new Get To Know Ur Cultist.

Press invites for the June 4 keynote were sent out today. And guess what?

Cult of Mac is on this year’s guest list, so we’ll be live blogging all of the action from ground zero at the San Jose convention center.

For the rest of you shlubs, Apple will give you a front row seat to the keynote on June 4th.

WWDC 2018 is expected to include the unveiling of iOS 12, macOS 10.14, tvOS 12 and watchOS 5. Other rumors have suggested that Apple may unveil new hardware such as new MacBook Pros, or possibly an iPhone SE 2.

As always, you’ll be able to watch it using Apple’s Safari browser, the WWDC app or Apple TV. However, for the first time Apple is also supporting Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

But does this mean you’ll be able to watch the stream on PC?  Unsure.

Apple originally began its car project — known internally as Titan and T172 — in 2014. At the time, Apple planned to build a single vehicle that would upend society and industry, in what would be the automotive version of the iPhone. The company set to work on an electric driverless car with a lush interior reminiscent of a lounge or living room, where passengers face each other instead of the road, according to two early employees of the project.

But Apple soon learned that making a car is really hard, so they tried to partner with BMW and Mercedes.  But as Apple always does, they made things difficult by insisting on controlling the car experience and customer relationship, so the

Now?  Well, they’re making an Apple Park shuttle bus.  with VW.

Apple has inked a deal with Volkswagen that will allow the iPhone-maker to turn some of its T6 vans into self-driving shuttles for employees.

Apple’s self-driving shuttle bus is behind schedule, thought, according to The New York Times. Nearly all of Cupertino’s car team is working just on the VW vans project, but the 2018 deadline will be missed.

And what happens after the shuttle bus? No one knows.

May 21, 2010: Apple quietly ends its long-running, award-winning “Get a Mac” marketing campaign.

Debuting in 2006, the ads starred actor Justin Long as the cool, youthful Mac. Comedian John Hodgman portrayed the stuffy, awkward PC. Alongside the “Think Different” and the iPod “Silhouette” campaigns, “Get a Mac” will become one of the most fondly remembered extended ad campaigns in Apple history.

The U.S. ads ran for the next few years, with 66 television spots in total. The campaign also spread to other markets, with alternate actors playing the Mac and PC roles.

Apple aired the last “Get a Mac” TV ad in October 2009, marking the beginning of the end for the campaign.

But the clever marketing continued on Apple’s website. On May 21, 2010, Apple finally replaced its “Get a Mac” page with a “Why You’ll Love a Mac” page.

The butterfly keyboard in recent MacBooks draws frequent complaints. And these have now escalated to the point where an online petition is requesting that Apple recall every MacBook Pro released since 2016.

The “butterfly” name comes from the shape of each key’s internal mechanism. In the 2015 MacBook, Apple replaced the old scissor design with one reminiscent of a butterfly.

It’s supposed to more evenly distribute the pressure from tapping on the keys. As mentioned, it’s also 40 percent thinner.

“Apple’s relative silence on this issue for existing customers is deafening. If these problems are remotely as common as they seem to be, this is an altogether defective product that should be recalled.”

“This keyboard has to be one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history. Everyone who buys a MacBook depends upon the keyboard and this keyboard is undependable.”

“Butterfly keyswitches are a design failure…. they are fatally unreliable.”

Pic on twitter with caption: what am i supposed to do when the space bar stops working. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING WITH THIS FCKING KEYBOARD

A lawsuit filed in federal court claims that the keyboard used in all the MacBook Pros and MacBooks made for several years is defective. The plaintiffs request that this be made into a class action lawsuit, and that Apple be required to replace all the affected keyboards at no cost to users.

The lawsuit also requests punitive damages because, as they claim, Apple continued to build and sell laptops with the “butterfly” keyboard even though the company knew it was defective.

Apple is secretly building a TV empire

Google’s new AI assistant has a feature you have to see to believe

Financial filings show MoviePass’s time is running out

Our favorite lesser-known iOS and Mac apps

And… why do men have nipples?  We answer your most burning questions in an all-new CultCast QnA 🔥

An updated version of Google Maps aims to keep you in-the-know about what’s going on around you. There’s a new tab called “For You” that’s designed to tell you about events in neighborhoods you care about.

You can now hold your phone up to the world in front of you and Maps will overlay walking directions that make finding your way around a new city easier.

A very human-sounding Google Assistant made a call on behalf of it’s owner to book a haircut, and the result was was magical as it was creepy. The most impressive thing was that the person on the receiving end of the call didn’t seem to suspect they were talking to an AI

After going on a spending spree in Hollywood the last eight months, Apple appears to be poised to make a huge push into original content.

Apple has 13 shows in development.

The future doesn’t look promising for MovePass

According to a recent financial filing, the company has spent an average of $21.7 million per month for the stretch between October 2017 through April 2018, but as of April 30th, MoviePass has just $15.5 million in cash

Apple to many seems to have lost its mojo for innovation. But it knows how to build a pile of cash.

This is the impression of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, who told CNBC Wednesday:

Analysts were wrong—iPhone X is a massive hit

The death of 3D Touch starts with 2018 iPhone

The world’s most famous Apple analyst may no longer be reporting on Apple

Apple’s AirPort router lineup is officially dead

And we pitch you our favorite shows, movies, and vodka in an all-new Under Review!

Apple introduced the AirPort lineup back in 2003 when it was starting to ride the high from the original iPod

Apple decided to finally put the nail in the coffin for its lineup of AirPort routers that haven’t been updated in years.

Statement: “We’re discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last.”

Apple blew analysts’ expectations out of the water this afternoon with its historic Q2 2018 earnings report that saw the company post the most revenue ever in the March quarter.

Tim Cook and Apple CFO Luca Maestri were giddy during Tuesday's call with investors. Everyone expected the iPhone X to be a bust, but even Apple was surprised by its success as it still dominates the iPhone sales charts.

A very reliable analyst predicts one of the iPhones coming in autumn won’t have this pressure-sensitive technology, and none of the 2019 devices will.

Ming-Chi Kuo says it’s all because Apple is changing the components of its displays to make them lighter and less likely to break.

The analyst says sources in Apple’s supply chain told him that the 6.1-inch LCD iPhone, expected this fall, will use a CGS (Cover Glass Sensor) process. This means the touch sensor will no longer integrated with the actual display, but will instead be part of the cover that protects the LCD underneath.

The CGS displays weigh less than the current ones, and are more shock-resistant, according to Kuo. But they also cost more. To save money, Apple is going to leave out the 3D Touch sensor.

The KGI analyst says all 2019 models will use the CGS process, even the OLED ones, and therefore they won’t have 3D Touch.

it seems that Kuo is moving on to greener pastures for a job with another firm. Unfortunately for Apple fans, this may mean focusing on non-Apple companies instead.

According to Kuo’s LinkedIn profile, he joined KGI in January 2012.

While Kuo is well known, he keeps a low profile and doesn’t do interviews. Very few pictures of him can be found online

How Steve Jobs saved Pixar, then stole all their stock

iPhone SE will steal one of iPhone X’s best features

Told ya!  MoviePass ends its unlimited movie option

Gal Gadot promotes Huawei on twitter… from her iPhone

What the heck happened to the AirPower Mat?

And we wrap with the best iPhone camera lenses, wireless security system, and the most powerful flashlight on EARTH in an all-new under review.

Gal Gadot, best known for the lead role in the Wonder Woman movie, became a ‘brand ambassador’ for Huawei earlier this year. In that role, she yesterday tweeted a glowing video about her new Huawei Mate 10 – with just one small problem

Marques Brownlee spotted, the tweet was sent from Twitter for iPhone.

Gadot’s publicist told CNET there was a perfectly innocent explanation.

iPhone SE is looking to be a real beauty.  

Reliable leaker Benjamin Geskin claims the new iPhone SE, codenamed Jaguar, will feature wireless charging just like iPhone X. To make that possible, Apple is expected to scrap the handset’s aluminum unibody first introduced with iPhone 5 in favor of a shiny glass back panel.

Hopefully it’s waterproof and gets Touch ID 2.

The new iPhone SE, with a faster A10 Fusion processor, will likely make its official debut next month, according to recent reports.

At its September 2017 event, Apple said AirPower would appear some time in 2018, but since then we've barely heard a peep about about it.

AirPower will charge multiple devices at the same time, and while other mats out there can do that too, Apple says AirPower can help devices communicate with each other to manage power consumption.

It’s been 7 months now and we haven’t heard a peep.

Will the WDDC keynote on June 4th be the day?

April 25, 1990: Steve Jobs shuts down Pixar’s hardware division (yes, it used to have one!), ending production of the pricey Pixar Image Computers immediately.

Pixar was Jobs’ “rebound” company after his departure from Apple in 1985. In early 1986, he bought a majority interest in Pixar from  George Lucas for just $5 million bucks.

When Lucas owned the company, he led the development of the Pixar Image Computer. George found existing computers too weak to handle the graphics needed to produce Pixar’s work (or to meet the demands of Hollywood studios that hired the company).

However, the computers sold poorly — and to a relatively small number of buyers.

When Pixar’s five-person Animation Group won an Oscar for its short film Tin Toy in 1989, Jobs’ interests switched to that team, which he previously planned to kill off due to its inability to turn a profit. The hardware division got canned instead.  

But then the story gets a strange twist.

Apple threatens employees to quit leaking, or go to jail!

Apple’s building new tools to help you know just how addicted you are to that iPhone of yours.  We’ll fill you in.

It looks like a new iPhone SE will be landing real soon.  We’ll tell you what we know.

And we reveal all the cool stuff we’re currently into in an all-new What We’re Into!

With Apple planning to move Macs to Arm chips, and the rumored unification of iOS and macOS apps, you might be anxious Apple might just go ahead and combine your iPhone and Mac into some God forsake combo device.

Tim Cook recently stated that merging the Mac and iPad lines would be bad for both. He told a reporter from The Sydney Morning Herald, “We don’t believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two … you begin to make trade offs and compromises.”

In a leaked memo detailing Apple’s efforts to stop leaks, the company says it caught 29 leakers in 2017. Of those caught, 12 were arrested. Apple told employees they are “getting played” by journalists and bloggers that approach them with flattery in exchange for information.

Former Apple executive, father of the iPod and current Nest CEO Tony Fadell wants Apple to do more to battle smartphone addiction.

In a newly published op-ed, Fadell argues that it would be “easy” for Apple to create a deep dashboard that could reveal exactly how much time we spend on different apps.

Fadell suggests that users could receive a regular itemized list like a credit card bill, complete with detailed information about how long they spent on each app, or even what they were doing inside each app.

It turns out Apple agrees, and has said that it plans to incorporate smartphone-monitoring features into the next version of iOS.

Apple is planning to launch its own premium subscription magazine service as part of the Apple News app, a new report claims.

Earlier this year, the company acquired magazine app Texture. Texture offers more than 200 magazines for a rolling price of $9.99 per month.

Since acquiring Texture, Apple has reportedly parted ways with 20 of Texture’s 100 employees. The remaining ones are now being integrated into the Apple News team. An app combining Apple News and Texture is expected to launch sometime in the next year.

When the iPad first launched in 2010, one of the apps Steve Jobs was most excited about was The Daily, a short-lived, iPad-exclusive newspaper that was the first subscription app Apple offered.

The Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) — which has previously leaked the iPhone 7, AirPods, and new MacBooks early — has now spilled the beans on a bunch of new handsets Apple is planning to release this year.

Given that the iPhone X and iPhone 8 launched just six months ago, they will almost certainly be new versions of iPhone SE.

Apple’s newest iPhone SE launched last March with increased storage, but the rest of the device has remained unchanged since March 2016. Current models still pack an aging A9 processor that first made its debut inside the iPhone 6 in 2014.

A new version of the iPhone SE will probably offer the same physical design, again with a 4-inch Retina display, but with more recent internals. Apple could give the device a more powerful A10 chip alongside improved cameras.

HomePod is already stumbling in sales—is it doomed?  

Apple Is the richest company on earth, so where are all its billionaires?

Face ID could replace passwords on your favorite websites

The death of Touch ID scheduled for this fall

And stay tuned for Under Review, where we go hands on with an $80 tech-packed coffee cup, a beautiful new HomeKit smart lock, and the all-new Mavic Air drone.

HomePod is already stumbling in sales—is it doomed?  

Apple Is the richest company on earth, so where are all its billionaires?

Face ID could replace passwords on your favorite websites

The death of Touch ID scheduled for this fall

And stay tuned for Under Review, where we go hands on with an $80 tech-packed coffee cup, a beautiful new HomeKit smart lock, and the all-new Mavic Air drone.

Is the HomePod toast?

According to some Apple store workers, inventories are piling up and Apple has cut orders with their manufacturer.

"At first, it looked like the HomePod might be a hit. Pre-orders were strong, and in the last week of January the device grabbed about a third of the U.S. smart speaker market in unit sales, according to data provided to Bloomberg by Slice Intelligence. But by the time HomePods arrived in stores, sales were tanking, says Slice principal analyst Ken Cassar. “Even when people had the ability to hear these things,” he says, “it still didn’t give Apple another spike.””

According to Slice Intelligence: During the HomePod’s first 10 weeks of sales, it eked out 10 percent of the smart speaker market, compared with 73 percent for Amazon’s Echo devices and 14 percent for the Google Home

Why aren’t people buying HomePods?

Did you know it wasn’t Apple that made Steve Jobs a billionaire? It was Pixar selling to Disney.  

Well it seems, as the world’s richest company, Apple would have many billionaires in its ranks.  Turns out it doesn’t, and two astute reporters at Bloomberg wondering why.

Apple Chairman Art Levinson is the only insider billionaire at Apple, and his Apple stock only accounts for $200 of his fortune.

It’s estimated that Tim Cook is only worth 600 million dollars.

Steve Jobs sold all but one of his shares when he was ousted from the company.

One theory is that large stockholders sold off their shares in 1997 when Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Apple is smart with their executive pay, tying significant parts of compensation to company performance.

Only corporate insiders or shareholders with stakes exceeding 5 percent are required to report their interests, so it’s possible there are billionaires around.

Face ID could become even more useful thanks to a newly launched Web Authentication standard, which could replace regular web passcodes with biometric identification. This is via an API created by the FIDO Alliance and W3C. It allows users to access any online service in a browser through password-free FIDO Authentication.

While Apple already allows Face ID to autofill usernames and passcodes on iOS, this could go one step further by replacing the passcode altogether. This would make it a more secure option.

The biometric services covered by the API include fingerprint readers, cameras and USB keys.

At present, the feature can be used in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge integration set to follow in the coming months. Opera integration is in the works, too, although sadly there’s no mention of Apple adopting this for Safari.

All of the 2018 iPhone models will have Face ID, according to an industry analyst.

The analyst also indicated that two of the three models coming this fall will have OLED displays. There will be one medium-size and two bigger iPhones, both larger than any before.

He’s also expecting a price drop on the iPhone X to $899, with the X Plus costing $999.

Could that mean a move to FaceID on the Mac?