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We’re a bit early this week, but wanted to make sure you got all the Cult of Mac goodness in one fine compilation in time for your four-day weekend. Dig in and enjoy a whole slew of gift guides, including those for the women in your life, that special college student, and outdoor adventurers. Plus? Pro tips on surviving that modern ordeal of American culture: Thanksgiving. All that and some of the week’s biggest Apple-related news are ready for you right now. Just download and enjoy!

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine November 28 Edition, Free on iTunes

In a marketing campaign I can only assume is some kind of meta-parody designed to go viral, BlackBerry is offering a so-called “Trade-Up” program designed to get iPhone owners to jump ship to the new BlackBerry Passport.

From December 1 until February 13, disgruntled iPhone owners can “upgrade” to the BlackBerry Passport and receive up to $400 for their iPhones, plus an extra $150 (or $200 CAD) from BlackBerry. To take advantage of the “deal” customers must pick up their BlackBerry Passports from either ShopBlackBerry.com or Amazon.

Your iPhone can send data pretty fast over a wireless network, but it’s hobbled in at least one regard: the wireless antenna design can’t send data while receiving data at the same time. That means that the data speeds of your iPhone are potentially cut in half, just by the nature of wireless technology. But a new circuit could allow future iPhones to double their data speeds without making any other changes.

This week: the next iPhone might feature a massively improved camera; Uber’s super bro culture gets bad press, but we want to party with their brogrammers; why we’re not so jazzed on Apple Watch apps; Steve Jobs drowns the first iPod prototype to prove a point; and finally, what we like and don’t about the gadgets and Apple accessories we’re reviewing—it’s an all-new Under Review.

Chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

When the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced, many Android fans laughed at the “pitiful” 1GB of RAM of Apple’s flagship smartphone, when Android flagships tended to ship with 2GB and sometimes more.

But specs don’t always — or even most of the time — tell the whole story. As it turns out, an iPhone 6 with 1GB of RAM runs much faster than a similarly specced Android smartphone with 2GB of RAM. And it all has to do with the fundamental difference in the way iOS and Android handle apps.

Anyone who travels a lot internationally has likely been stung by roaming Internet charges at some point in other. While it is possible to buy or rent a local SIM card when you’re abroad, this requires that your iPhone be either unlocked or jailbroken — and also limits users to just one mobile carrier in each country.

Trying to solve this problem is a nifty Kickstarter project which aims to build a its multi-carrier, virtual SIM-equipped iPhone case that means travelers get affordable data roaming in 100+ countries for just $2 a day.

One thing that makes iPhones so great is how each one can be so different, thanks to all the applications available, the many different ways to organize your home screen and all the other customization options that help you make Apple’s smartphone your own.

In today’s Cult of Mac video, I’ll show you what’s on my iPhone 6. You’ll find out how I keeps my iPhone organized, which apps I use most and more.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV for all our latest videos.

You’ve got a brand-spanking new iPhone 6, and boy is it beautiful. You love looking at it and holding its tender, curved edges, but you’re terrified that you’ll drop it and scratch it up. Or worse: shatter the screen into a million tiny pieces.

You need a case that’s protective, functional, and most importantly, good looking. Something minimal and preferably made of quality material. OtterBoxes are great if you’re worried about your iPhone getting run over by a tractor, but most of us want something sleeker for everyday use.

The good news is that there’s already a handful of sexy iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cases worth checking out. We’ve collected the very best:

It was once thought that Japan disliked the iPhone so much that the Apple device couldn’t be given away for free. To paraphrase Dinah Washington, what a difference five years makes!

In October, the iPhone 6 held seven of the top eight smartphone positions (and nine out of the top 14). While sales figures are lacking, the data indicates the strength of the iPhone in Japan, according to a new report from Forbes.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has long been an unabashed believer that Cupertino should release a bigger iPhone. Around the time of the iPhone 5, he said Apple should have released two different models, one “regular” and one jumbo-size, to better compete with Android superphones

Now that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are here, Woz is glad. But he’s still being hard on Apple, saying they’re three years too late with the big phones. And he’s not too crazy about the Apple Watch either.

(Updated with Apple statement below.)

A new class of malware targeted at OS X and iOS is spreading like wildfire in China, according to new research by Palo Alto Networks. Dubbed WireLurker, the trojan hides itself in apps distributed through a third-party Chinese app store for OS X and side-loads itself onto iOS devices via USB.

What sets WireLurker apart from other malware is that it is capable of infecting non-jailbroken iOS devices, and it heralds “a new era in malware attacking Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.”

Bendgate is back. A new website is spotlighting the malleability of Apple’s new super-slim smartphone by posting hundreds of pictures of bent iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units.

More than 350 images of deformed Apple phones have been posted by grassroots site One of the Nine, and the submissions keep on coming despite Apple’s claim that a bend in the iPhone 6 is “extremely rare” with normal use.

The dream of replacing all the pieces of plastic in your wallet with your smartphone got a little closer to reality today as Starwood hotels announced that its new keyless entry system – SPG Keyless – is rolling out to hotels worldwide.

Guests at Aloft, Element, and W Hotels around the globe can now use their iPhone and the SPG app to skip the hotel front desk altogether, walk straight to their room, and unlock it, no key required.

Almost two decades after Apple shuttered its Newton MessagePad platform, a new video compares the device’s handwriting recognition to today’s touchscreen-based typing on the iPhone.

The fact that you had to plug your Newton into your Mac to manually transfer information makes it seem incredibly outdated. But the handwriting recognition, which was way ahead of its time in 1993, still impresses in terms of speed, as shown in the video below

India is a huge growing market for the iPhone, but a trademark dispute brought by a local Indian company called iVoice Enterprises could throw a wrench in those plans — by attempting to bar Apple from using the handset name it made famous.

You see, as it turns out, back in early 2007 iVoice Enterprises tried to tap into what was then the start of India’s mobile revolution.

Their name for an affordable cellphone? iFon, phonetically pronounced “iPhone.”

Since Steve Jobs’ passing plenty of changes have occurred within Apple. In spite of all its differences, Tim Cook has managed to keep the essence of the company the same. With new iPhones, iPads, iMacs, Apple Watches and more more already announced, Tim Cook opened up his personal life to the public in a way we’ve never seen from an Apple CEO.

In today’s episode of Cult of Mac’s news roundup find out what exactly Cook revealed that got the world talking and every detail in-between. Hear about this story and more in this episode of the roundup.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV for all our latest videos.

On my aging 2009 iMac, one of my favorite apps is iStats Menu, which lets me see at a glance which of the various programs I have running has slowed my desktop down to a crawl. And I have to admit, it’s gotten me a little performance obsessed: I spend a bunch of time every day checking out iStats Menu, just to see if there’s something I can close to maybe drop CPU usage another half-a-percent.

Because of this, I’ve always sort of wished that there was a similar program for iPhones and iPads. And now there is.

Andy Rubin, co-founder and former head of Android, has left Google to start up a hardware incubator dedicated to building robots.

Rubin helped establish Android as the world’s most widely-used mobile operating system after it was bought by Google in 2005, before switching to run Google’s robotics business last year.

With China, India and Korea all representing growing markets, Apple’s expanding into more countries than ever here in 2014. One place you’d be forgiven for not expecting Tim Cook and co. to show up in, however, is Iran.

It seems that this assumption may be wrong, though, as according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in preliminary contact with U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, as well as Iranian distributors, about possibly entering the country should Western sanctions ease sufficiently.

iPhone owners who can’t wait for the Apple Watch can now change their home screens to a fresh interface inspired by Apple’s wearable UI, thanks to a hack for jailbroken devices.

This new tweak replaces the existing iOS look and feel — which has remained conceptually unchanged since the debut of the iPhone back in 2007 — with circular, bubble-looking icons that users can zoom in and out of to find their apps easier.

While the mod started out as nothing more than a concept, another developer has taken the idea and run with it, constructing a tweak called WatchSpring that replaces a jailbroken iOS 8 device’s SpringBoard with a working Apple Watch-style home screen.

Here’s how you get hold of it.

Particularly as Apple extends its tentacles overseas into new markets like China and India, many pundits have suggested that Cupertino needs to make low-cost iPhones to compete with lower-end Android devices.

So will it? According to Apple’s product marketing executive Greg Joswiak the answer is a resounding, emphatic “hell no!”

It’s not like bagging a burrito at Taco Bell takes a long time, but the fast-food chain’s hot new mobile app makes ordering unbelievably fast and frictionless.

The app promises that you’ll be able to order anything off the menu, pay for it, and have it prepared for you when you arrive. Not quite revolutionary, but a deliberate stab at modernizing the drive-thru experience. Order from your iPhone, and you get to skip the line.

It’s not every day that I get to write about Taco Bell, so I jumped at the opportunity to give it a test drive. Here’s my experience with the Taco Bell app from start to finish:

The top awards for the 50th Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards have been announced at London’s Natural History Museum. More than 42,000 entries from 96 countries were submitted this year, making it the biggest event in the history of the awards.

There were many incredible entries, but the one that really grabbed us was the beautiful photo you see above, taken by Marsel Van Oosten, an extraordinarily talented photographer from the Netherlands. It shows a Japanese monkey submerged in water, using an iPhone.

Tim Cook gave a rare public interview on Monday night at the Wall Street Journal’s new tech conference, WSJD. The Apple CEO touched on a range of topics, including Apple Pay’s success, a big potential partnership, why the iPod classic was discontinued, and more.

Here are the biggest takeaways from Cook’s comments: