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GT Advanced Technologies’ attempts to make sapphire iPhone screens for Apple may have ended in disaster, but that’s not stopping GT senior execs from asking for millions to be paid out in bonuses.

Because the company filed for bankruptcy protection back in October, any bonus program needs to have the signature of a judge in order to be legally binding. GT is requesting a hearing in January, although it admits there is likely to be opposition.

The bonus program would cover 9 unidentified senior executives, and could add up to $2.275 million if all the necessary targets are hit. A second bonus proposal would pay a total of $1.4 million to an additional 28 people.

Real estate in New York? It just ain’t cheap. In fact, it’s so expensive that even if you have a successful business you might not be able to afford it.

Case in point? Look no further than Restoration Hardware. The American chain of home furnishings, hardware, and outdoor and garden products may be worth over a billion dollars in revenue as of 2012, but Steve Jobs once had to personally bail the company out.

We’ve argued on many occasions before that 2014 was a superlative year for iOS games. But it was also a fantastic twelve months for video games in general, as the last generation’s consoles were pushed to their max, and the PS4 and Xbox 360 hit their stride.

So now that the dust has settled what are our picks for games of the year? Check out our choice of the ten titles you must play after the jump.

When John Legere, T-Mobile’s weird and charismatic CEO, speaks up, we listen. He’s not always right, but he’s always compelling. And in 2015, John Legere is bullish about the Apple Watch. In fact, he thinks it’s about to turn the wearables market on its head.

A great TV commercial will often be remembered for a lot longer than the product it’s trying to sell, so it’s no wonder companies spend hundreds of millions every year in pursuit of that one ad that will be a huge success. Some of the best ads we’ve seen this year come from the likes of Budweiser, P&G, Save The Children, and of course, Apple — and you’ll find them in the roundup below.

New York residents may soon be able to pay their collective 8-10 million annual parking tickets using Apple Pay, according to a new report from MarketWatch.

Currently parking tickets can be paid online (with a 2.5% charge), via mail, on in person at a courthouse. The city’s finance department is supposedly looking at change this up, however, and could embrace Apple Pay in the process.

The roads just got a little safer for bicyclists — as long as everyone drives a Volvo.

The Swedish car company, which wants to build cars that do not crash, has teamed with helmet manufacturer POC in an attempt to solve the problem of car-bike collisions. Their solution? Wearable technology that alerts both motorist and cyclist when a collision is imminent.

Volvo, POC and smartphone manufacturer Ericsson will unveil the safety system at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

The iPhone 6 has barely been on the market for three months but the iPhone 6S rumor mill is starting to heat up with a battle brewing between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Samsung to become the main supplier of the next-gen A9 processors.

Last month a Digitimes rumor claimed Samsung already locked up A9 chip production, but according to the Taipei Times, TSMC will continue to be the main supplier of Apple’s processors slated to the next generation of iPhones and iPads in 2015.

Researchers at the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) say that while the two companies have similar capabilities, TSMC is poised to win the order thanks to it’s better yields.

Nearly 900 insanely complex shots full of live-action and computer-generated imagery were created for Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier by the geniuses at Industrial Light and Magic, the effects house created by George Lucas back in the original Star Wars days.

The movie is an action-fest full of fighting, exploding, and comic-book reality all rolled into an engaging tale of patriotism, loyalty, and the possible corruption of big government. To create the magical movie illusions that help you suspend your disbelief in superheroes, the crew of more than 300 at ILM did a ton of painstaking work.

Here’s a short reel representing only a small sample of the full work done by the effects house – it’s amazing how complicated and layered everything is in a movie like this. Check it out.

Reading that someone decided to put their MacBook Pro in the oven and then set about drilling holes in it sounds like one of those inane YouTube videos showing someone destroying a perfectly good computer for no reason whatsoever.

For iFixit employee “Sterling,” however, it was not a way to destroy his MacBook at all, but rather a means by which to extend the life of a dying machine.

“Unconventional electronics repair tools they may be, but that’s how I saved my MacBook Pro with a drill and an oven,” Sterling writes.

Here’s how he did it.

The massive success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has pushed app downloads into overdrive, according to a new report from mobile marketers Fiksu.

In the month of November, the combination of time off for Thanksgiving and new iPhones resulted in daily app download volume surpassing the 8 million mark for the first time ever. Not only is this is a significant leap from the 7.8 million daily downloads seen in October, but also a massive increase of 42 percent year-over-year, compared to November 2013.

The good news doesn’t stop there, either.

The Apple blogosphere was ablaze yesterday with reports that the ripoff artists at Xiaomi had come up with the Chinese company’s most brazen copycat product yet. A supposedly leaked image showed a MacBook Air lookalike that was virtually indistinguishable from Cupertino’s offering with the exception of a Xiaomi logo.

Well, the picture is a fake, according to a Xiaomi representative.

While it’s great to hear that Apple’s intellectual property is upheld in this instance, however, it’s still less than ideal for Xiaomi for one very simple reason: just how believable the rumor was.

We love GIFs here at Cult of Mac and 2014 did not disappoint in providing us with twelve months worth of hypnotic images that deserve to be watched, over and over and over.

We already highlighted the most GIF-able moments of 2014, but in our final GIF roundup of the year we’re busting out the best images of the year that came out of Cult of Mac’s GIF making factory (also known as Buster’s underpowered MacBook Air). We GIF’d everything from Tim Cook’s ice bucket challenge, to the hilarious Bendgate controversy that was the Internet’s joke du jour for weeks.

Here are the best Cult of Mac GIFs of 2014:

VLC, the much beloved cross platform video player, hasn’t historically had much luck on iOS. But that looks about to change, with the app reportedly coming back to the App Store early in 2015… and possibly as early as today.

It’s come a long way in recent years, but even so, Internet Explorer may be Microsoft’s most reviled product: a web browser so bad it held web standards back for years. From a Mac fan’s perspective, the best that can be said about Internet Explorer is that, for the most part, you never have to use it at all: the most up-to-date versions only run on Windows.

But that could soon change. A new report suggests that Microsoft could be rebranding Internet Explorer while giving it a radical overhaul… while simultaneously releasing it on non-Windows systems like Mac and iOS.

There were more viral videos in 2014 than you can shake a stick at, and you could spend weeks watching them all. From John Oliver to the Ice Bucket Challenge, we were absolutely inundated with stuff to watch throughout the year, and that’s a great thing.

Wishing you could relive some of the best viral video moments of 2014? We’ve collected some of the best for your enjoyment:

Apple hasn’t built a device requiring a stylus since the heyday of the Newton in the 1990s, largely because Steve Jobs hated them. But a new patent published today suggests that Apple could be changing its mind — or is making a conscious effort to lead rivals and copycats astray.

Described as a “communicating stylus,” the patent describes a stylus featuring built-in accelerometers, wireless transmission, and storage — with the aim of sending hand-written notes and drawings from one device to another.

2015 is nearly upon us, but before you pop the bubbly, listen up for the tech, apps, movies and TV shows that delighted us in 2014. You’ll get it all in this very special, far too long, last-episode-of-the-2014 … CultCast.

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.

Xiaomi just rode Apple’s coattails to the biggest startup valuation in world, but it appears the Chinese smartphone maker is ready to take its copying to new heights by getting into the laptop game with, you guessed it, a MacBook Air knockoff.

Apple’s new spaceship headquarters is poised to be one of the most futuristic corporate buildings in California once it touches down, but to help the campus stay connected to its roots, the company is painstakingly preserving a 100-year-old barn built by pioneers who settled the area.

Visitors at Apple Campus 2 will notice the bright red barn sitting next to the new fitness center as part of Apple’s effort to transform the land surrounding the campus from 80 percent asphalt and concrete, to 80 percent greenery and open space.

Pumping your gas is about to get a touch quicker, now that Chevron says it’s planning to bring Apple Pay to its gas pumps next year.

Chevron was the only gas station to officially support Apple Pay when it launched in October, but the bad news was you had to go into the store if you wanted to use your iPhone 6 to pay for petrol.  However, according to Chevron’s Twitter account, the gas giant is working alongside Cupertino to bring Apple Pay to the pump by early 2015.

The buff and beautiful lifeguard runs in slow motion down the beach, unseen winds blowing their hair in a Hollywood-made rescue fantasy. But hey, you’re drowning, there’s no time for that.

Your savior could be a group of Connecticut high school students who have developed a drone accessory that deploys an automatically inflating life ring to a swimmer in distress in under 30 seconds.

What’s cuter than a boxer puppy named Indiana Bones fighting the forces of evil (cats)? Not much, for sure.

Directors Zach King and Jadon Gauthier have created a five-minute “remake” of Indiana Jones, and it’s completely adorable. Take a look below.

Apple’s partnership with Disney goes back way further than the latter company’s recent decision to accept Apple Pay at Disney World. At the time of his death in 2011, Steve Jobs was the single biggest shareholder of Disney stock as a result of it acquiring his company, Pixar, in 2006.

Jobs got on particularly well with Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called Jobs in 2005 and asked if he could repair the damage that had been done to the Apple/Disney relationship under former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

That relationship is examined in a new Fortune profile of Iger, which describes his six-year friendship with Jobs as the “relationship that has most shaped his thinking.”