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The Best of CES 2024

By Amy Spitzfaden Both

The tech world started off 2024 with a bang at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The convention bustled with life after some atypical years caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the show floor was full of hot tech and innovation of all kinds, we were on the lookout for the best gear and accessories for Apple users in particulart. Smart home products were everywhere, with vacuums and air fryers taking center stage, while wireless charger makers were keen to emphasize their adoption of Qi 2 technology. And it seemed like everyone had their own answer to othe upcoming VisionPro. Here, in no particular order, are our picks for the very best of CES 2024.

If you weren’t able to tune-in live or if you’d like to watch it again, here’s the workshop video for iCloud Photo Library versus Google Photos. This workshop focuses on giving you the information needed to make an informed decision on which cloud-based photo storage tool is right for you. Thank you to everyone who joined us and all of you who watch it now. This was our second ever workshop, and we are thrilled with your feedback. We had almost 400 of your join us live! So again, thank you! Learn more on what we covered and watch the full replay below.

I make no claims of being an amazing guitarist; I wouldn't even say I’m all that good. That said, I’ve enjoyed playing guitar for 20 years and I love it with all my heart. I find it to be both a creative outlet and a valuable form of relaxation and meditation. Back when I began my guitar playing journey, learning required paper books and teachers; nowadays, a few good apps can go a long way toward helping you learn and grow as a musician. The following are a few of my favorite, most indispensable iOS apps for guitar players.

The 29th Annual Worldwide Developers Conference is taking place June 4–8 in San Jose, and Apple enthusiasts the world over are excited to hear whether rumors about software, tech, and services will be met, or even exceeded. The annual Apple conference features over 100 seminars and hands-on labs presented by Apple engineers, as well as special events including the WWDC Bash, an epic party and concert on the final night. Only Apple developers were allowed to enter the lottery for a chance to pay $1,599 for a WWDC ticket, and a select group of 350 students and STEM teachers earn a full scholarship to the event each year. For those of us who can't make it to one of the biggest Apple events of the year, the keynote address is the highlight of WWDC. This is because the Keynote speech is when we'll all finally learn about upcoming versions of iOS, macOS, and other Apple software, as well as rumored new devices like the AirPods 2, StudioPods, and 2018 iPad Pro. Let's round up all the 2018 WWDC rumors and make some educated guesses about what the Keynote will bring this year! 

The 2018 Wimbledon Championships begin on Monday, July 2 and end on Sunday, July 15 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in London, England. Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, and the only major played on grass. The BBC owns broadcasting rights to Wimbledon through the 2020 tournament, so if you live in Great Britain, you can enjoy the all the matches. For those of us who can't access live BBC just by flipping on the television, there are other alternatives. Let's get started learning how to live-stream Wimbledon to our Apple TVs without cable, so we can catch all the matches we've been waiting for!

What Is a VPN on iPhone & How Does It Work?

You may have heard or read the acronym VPN in recent news stories about internet privacy and security and wondered, "What does VPN mean on iPhone?" VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, an extension of a private network over a public one that allows users to send and receive data safely, securely, and anonymously so that hackers, websites, and advertisers can't access it. Before picking the best VPN service for your needs, there are a few things to learn. Let's get started familiarizing ourselves with Virtual Private Networks.

Your iPhone has a variety of free ringtones to peruse, and the iTunes Store has a gigantic selection of iPhone ringtones to purchase, but what if you want to make your own custom ringtone? Good news! You can make phone ringtones free using already purchased songs from your iTunes library. All you need is your iPhone, a Mac or PC, a Lightning cable, 20–30 seconds of your favorite song, a little bit of time, and a willingness to try something new. Let's get started learning how to make your own custom free ringtones for iPhone with iTunes! 

I’ve been a loyal Apple user for decades. I’ve also been an iPhone 6 Plus user since 2014 when the device was first released, with its large 5.5-inch, high-resolution screen, its dual FaceTime-capable cameras, its more powerful battery, and so on. The iPhone 6 Plus served me extremely well, so much so that I had little interest in changing iPhones. Recently though, I upgraded to the brand new iPhone 8 Plus; and if there’s one thing that has surprised me most about Apple’s newest model iPhone, it's just how little I’m impressed by it.

Since WWDC 2018, we've been eagerly awaiting the release of WatchOS 5 this September. Now that Apple has confirmed the official date for the September announcement (that's the 12th of September for those of you keeping score) we're more excited than ever to dive into the rumors surrounding the Apple Watch. What might the new design feature, and what do we already know about WatchOS 5? Read on to dig into all the rumors leading up to the big announcement.

In the 83rd episode of the iPhone Life Podcast, the team shares highlights from Apple's Q2 earnings report and discuss why analysts' gloomy iPhone X projections were all wrong. Sarah and Donna also share their favorite high-end headphone recommendations and weigh in on whether you can use emojis in place of punctuation marks when texting

Okay, so you’ve taken the leap and handed your child or teen a smartphone. You may feel like you’ve made the biggest decision already; but if you want to keep your child safe, you have many more decisions to make ahead of you. I hear a lot of chatter about how to keep kids safe on social media (which is a critically important topic), but there’s not as much guidance when it comes to one of the iPhone’s simplest features: text messages. In addition to keeping kids and teens safe while texting, we need to make sure they understand texting etiquette. Here, I’ll touch on the five most important things you and your child need to know to stay safe, secure, and polite when it comes to texting. 

There are a lot of different apps you could use to learn a language, but not all language apps give you the tools to truly become fluent in a language. Babbel offers language learning at a classroom level from the comfort of your smart devices. The app offers fourteen different languages and more than 8500 hours of learning content across them. I chose this app to feature because of the way it engages the learner; it immediately felt different to me than the numerous other language apps I’ve tried. We’ll go over more on what it does and why we love it below.

Learn how to temporarily disconnect from a Wi-Fi network using the Control Center on your iPhone. You're connected to a Wi-Fi network with a weak signal, and you'd like to turn off Wi-Fi on your iPhone. Of course, you could open your Settings app, open Wi-Fi, disconnect from your current Wi-Fi network, and join another or switch to cellular. But did you know there's a much faster way to accomplish this task by using the Control Center? Here's how

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