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Apple’s Contacts app is the worst. It’s slow, it has a hard time working with services like Google or Exchange, and it just plain doesn’t connect with Calendar. Even though it integrates into all our other apps, most of us would be super-happy to replace it.

BusyContacts, a new app from the folks behind BusyCalendar, is that replacement app, whether you’re an average consumer, a busy office manager or an entrepreneur looking to wrangle your contacts and busy schedule.

“Many people are frustrated with the shortcomings of the built-in OS X Calendar and Contacts,” said John Chaffee, president and co-founder of BusyCal, “which are very basic and don’t work well when syncing with non-iCloud services.”

BusyContacts (and BusyCal) are powerful alternatives to these built-in apps, giving users greater control and flexibility along with better compatibility with Google and Exchange, while still playing nice with iCloud.

Apple often uses the word “magical” to describe the iPad. That’s usually dismissed as hyperbole, but watch this magician’s appearance on Ellen, and you might change your mind: He’s able to pull actual objects from his iPad’s screen!

An Apple Car? Yep, you know it! Cupertino is all abuzz with latest evidence that the fruit-flavored computing company is taking a run at the highway with a possible new iCar, and we’ve got Lewis with the features we’d like to see there. Plus, Luke spends some time with the exhaustive New York Times post on Jony Ive, design genius, Alex dives deep into your new favorite iPhone game (Alto’s Adventure), David chats about one auteur’s thoughts on the film completely shot on an iPhone 5s, and Luke gets the inside scoop on one 25-year-old who’s made 600 iOS apps without even knowing how to code.

All this, plus a ton more (see below) in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, ready for download at your pleasure.

With all the talk of the Titan project, it’s easy to forget that when it hits in 2020, it will hardly be the first Apple vehicle to take to the road. There have been predecessors, after all.

For example? The Behemoth, a 105-speed bike from 1991 that was powered by a hacked Macintosh computer!

Apple may be about to invest $1.7 billion in a new factory for Japan Display, primarily dedicated to building smartphone screens for Cupertino.

The proposed plant would be located in Ishikawa, Japan, and is set to start operations in 2016. While it will reportedly also produce panels for other companies, its main purpose (hence the Apple investment) would be to produce iPhone displays.

That iPhone in your hands? It’s been compromised by the National Security Agency through its SIM card, and government spies can access your phone through a backdoor installed on it without even needing a court order.

Sound scary? It is, and it’s the latest bombshell to be dropped by American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Right from the start, Apple has had one foot firmly in the education market. Today the conversation tends to be about getting iPads into schools around the world, but as far back as the 1980s Apple was cultivating relationships in the higher-education market — where it picked up some of its most loyal evangelists.

A newly published interview Steve Jobs gave to the Chronicle of Higher Education back in 1998 offers some pretty intriguing tidbits about Jobs’ approach to learning and his plans for Apple going into the new millennium.

If you’re interested in Jobs interviews (and what Apple fan isn’t?), this was recorded at an interesting time — shortly after Jobs returned to Apple, before it had released the iMac, aka the product that helped start turning the company around. It’s definitely worth a listen.

Always dreamed of playing Apple’s lovable cofounder Steve Wozniak on-screen, but think you missed out on the chance when Hollywood comedian Seth Rogen was cast in the role for the upcoming Aaron Sorkin/Danny Boyle Steve Jobs biopic? Well, there may be time yet — provided you’re based in the Bay Area and are available for filming next Tuesday, February 24.

According to a casting call posted on the industry website projectcasting.com, Rogen is in need of a body double for anyone who bears a physical resemblance to the funny man actor. You could even pick up a cool $162 plus overtime for doing so.

The ad reads as follows:

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If you believe the rumors, Apple is working on an electric car.

Apple hopes to start making said car by 2020, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Exactly how an Apple vehicle will be made is anyone’s guess, but the company has been aggressively hiring automotive talent to make it a reality.

Does your MacBook Pro freak out with distorted graphics or randomly restart? Then you’ll want to take advantage of Apple’s new repair program.

After deeming that a “small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts,” Apple will start fixing parts for free on select MacBook Pro models.

Energy gels are so 2014. When it comes to winning races, modern marathon runners need a robot that straps to their back and force-feeds them tomatoes.

Luckily, Japan has already delivered this technological wonder. Wait till you see it in action!

Apple Watch isn’t just a techie gadget. It’s a fashion item.

To drill that point into everyone’s heads during launch, it looks like Apple is setting up a special booth at one of the fanciest high-end department stores in Paris: Galeries Lafayette Haussmann.

Construction on a special booth at Galeries Lafayette began a few weeks ago, according to Mac4Ever. There’s no official word that the structure is for the Apple Watch, but the timing, location and large white walls all point to Apple.

Take a look at the site:

Tim Cook is heading out to Israel in a few days to inaugurate what will be Apple’s biggest overseas R&D center in Herzliya, but before the place gets Cook’s official visit, Apple is already looking to expand its staff.

Apple announced that its hiring 49 more positions for the Herzliya headquarters as wells as posts at its Haifa office. The 12,500 square-meter Herzliya offices are scheduled to open this week includes a gourmet restaurant, a fish pond and green surroundings.

Some of the new job posts include the following:

Thanks primarily to the memories of its botched sapphire production efforts, Apple’s not had the best of luck so far with Mesa, Arizona — although politicians in the state are desperate to keep it there.

Under a new Senate Bill put forward this week, Apple could receive between one and two decades’ worth of tax breaks for its planned Mesa data center. The tax breaks, introduced by State senator Jeff Dial, would relate to Apple primarily because of its plans to power the facility with 100 percent renewable energy.

The Year of the Goat is finally upon us and to celebrate the start of the Chinese New Year, Apple has curated a special section in iTunes full of apps, movies, books, and music to mark the special occasion.

Some journalists remember the day the future arrived: We felt like James Bond on special assignment when our editors, playing the part of provision master Q, handed us the portable device that would allow a story to be written in the field and transmitted back to the office.

So when Radio Shack said earlier this month it would file for bankruptcy, more than a few of us flashed back to the TRS-80 Model 100, one of the first notebook-style computers.

Released in 1983, it set portable computing in motion. The TRS-80’s liquid-crystal display showed eight lines of text. The computer came in 8K and 24K versions and weighed just over 3 pounds. A later version, the Model 200, boasted a flip-up screen that showed even more text, but the original model was by far Radio Shack’s most popular, with more than 6 million sold.

Anyone wanting to see what productivity tools would look like on an iPad with stylus need look no further than Microsoft’s updated OneNote iOS app.

Having just updated its OneNote app for Mac, the iPad app adds OCR scanning of text within images, alongside the neat ability to add handwritten notes — either using your finger or, better still, a third-party stylus. While this feature has previously been available for the Windows and Android versions of the OneNote app, this is the first time iPad users can get in on the fun.

IFTTT is ready to become more than just a standalone service in 2015. Hoping to transition to a company with multiple products, IFTTT revealed today that it has created three entirely new ‘Do’ apps — Do Button, Do Camera, and Do Note — that let you personalize and execute your favorite IFTTT recipes with one tap.

To go along with the new apps that make it simply to automate your most common Internet tasks, IFTTT has rebranded its original app to just IF. The three new apps are kind of a mixture between Yo and Workflow, giving you a new level of control for favorite services and applications.

Here’s a quick look at each new app.

Given their focus on gorgeous design and parallel rise, fall and ascent to global dominance narratives, it’s perhaps no surprise to hear that I love Lego almost as much as I do Apple products. With hundreds of sets in total — and a reported 62 bricks for every single person on Earth — picking out the greatest Lego sets of all time is tough to do.

Not all of the ones on the list below are easy to get hold of (eBay is your best bet!), but if you’re looking for a fun challenge and great way of gobbling up your spare cash before the Apple Watch arrives, you can’t do any better.

Ready to get building?

One of Ryan Cash’s favorite games growing up was GoldenEye on the N64. “One thing I remember so clearly is that the game was hard,” he recalled. “You couldn’t just beat the game on its toughest setting if you weren’t amazing.”

Luckily for Cash, his friend Bruno was a master at GoldenEye, and he would come over to unlock cheats. “He was the guy,” Cash remembered.

Most of us probably had a Bruno growing up. Back when you couldn’t pay $1.99 with Touch ID to unlock more gems or coins. Back when games were just as fun as mobile games are now, but also challenging and dependent on skill.

With Alto’s Adventure, out today in the App Store for $1.99, Cash and the rest of his team drew from the games they love to make something unique. They’ve created a game that’s not only really fun to play, but beautiful to behold. And unlike GoldenEye, there are no cheat codes to help you get ahead.

Despite attracting the absolute best talent, the Aliens franchise has been on a bit of a rough patch for the last, oh, 30 years or so.

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus prequel? It sucked. Alien: Resurrection, a joint written by Joss Whedon and filmed by the director of City of Lost Children? It blew. Alien 3, directed by multiple Academy Award winner David Fincher? Well, I’ve personally always thought it got a bum rap, but the general consensus is: It’s terrible.

Now Neil Blomkamp, the talented South African director behind District 9 and the upcoming Chappie, has been hired to film the next Alien movie. And thanks to Blomkamp, we have a pretty good idea what the movie will be about.

Here’s a small detail you might have missed about the Apple Watch. In pictures for the Apple Watch Edition, the 18-karat solid gold version of Cupertino’s upcoming wearable, the Digital Crown has a small dot at the end that matches the color of the watch strap. But here’s a question for you: Is Apple going to allow users to customize the Digital Crown as easily as they can swap out Apple Watch wristbands?

There was the buzz going into Sundance and the applause of satisfied audiences at the end of the movie’s screening. But there was also a collective gasp as the last line of the credits rolled past.

Shot on the iPhone 5s.

Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the story of two transgender sex workers in Hollywood, was a break-out hit at the renowned film festival in January. The Hollywood Reporter said the film stands out as “crisp and vigorously cinematic.”

Oft-praised for the rich fringe characters in his independent films, Baker did not set out to change the filmmaking landscape by shooting with a cellphone. Like most indie filmmakers, he had no money.

In Ian Parker’s excellent New Yorker profile of Apple’s Jony Ive, the Apple design maestro is mentioned to be disparaging of an unnamed competitor who allows customers to make their devices into “whatever you want.”

Apparently, Motorola thinks the comment was about them, and Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh is now firing back, calling Apple’s pricing “outrageous” and taking issue with Ive’s comments.

Apple hasn’t yet announced prices for its 18-karat-gold Apple Watch Edition timepieces, but if you think the top-of-the-range wearable is going to cost anything under $5,000, you’ve got another thing coming.

Greg Koenig, co-founder of Luma Labs, recently performed a calculation to find out an approximate figure for the gold content of the forthcoming 42mm gold Apple Watch. While Koenig notes that his guess is a “very rough estimate,” it still makes for interesting eye-watering (iWatering?) reading.

His guess? 29.16 grams — which translates to $853.82 at today’s gold prices. And that’s without even taking the electronics into account.