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The official unveiling of iOS 8 is less than three days away and even though I’m not expecting Jony Ive to debut huge overhauls to the UI, my six-year old homescreen of boring rows of app icons are desperate for something more. Something like widgets.

After deep diving into the mechanics of iOS, Jay Machalani has developed a phenomenal concept on how Apple could add widgets to iOS 8 similar to Windows Live tiles. It’s simple, functional, and doesn’t add unnecessary crap to your homescreen thanks to its novel pinch to expand feature.

Here’s how his widgets work on an iPhone:

Cole Rise has nearly one million followers on Instagram and the hottest new photography app in the App Store. He also made seven of Instagram’s built-in filters, which explains where the name for the “Rise” filter originates.

His app, Litely, is less than a month old with over 3 million downloads. Considering he was one of the first 100 people on Instagram, he really gets mobile photography and where it’s headed. During our conversation, Rise goes behind the scenes of Litely’s development, shares his influence on Instagram during its early days, and gives some great advice on how to take better pictures.

Bart van Olphen thinks he can conquer your fear of cooking fish if you’ll just give him 15 seconds.

The seafood chef from Amsterdam uses Instagram’s relatively new video feature for Fish Tales, which is probably the world’s fastest cooking show in this golden age of refined eating.

“People really like the simplicity of the recipes,” van Olphen told Cult of Mac. “You really can learn how to cook in only 15 seconds.”

Cooking shows have been simmering since the early days of television, with pioneers like James Beard and Julia Child unraveling the mysteries of the kitchen. With the emergence of the Food Network in 1993, the format boiled over into a ratings bonanza, turning chefs like Emeril Lagasse and Rachel Ray into celebrities. Now YouTube is home to dozens of shows featuring entrepreneurial cooks seeking to cash in on the foodie craze.

In an age of Facetime, Skype and Google Hangouts, video calling is pretty much ubiquitous — an aspect of technology that we simply take for granted. But it wasn’t always this way.

Eighteen years ago today, AT&T and Intel held a May 30 meeting to announce a system that would allow personal computers to make and receive video phone calls over standard telephone lines.

“It sounds futuristic, but it’s here,” Intel noted in its annual report for 1996. “For the first time, a simple low-cost, PC-based video phone.”

Aside from the odd controlled leaks, Apple isn’t a company known for letting out too much info about advance products (or, really, anything) these days. However, recently we’ve been seeing more and more information come from Apple’s less secretive supply chain — and it seems that Apple has had enough.

Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer were competitors during their time as CEOs of Apple and Microsoft respectively, and now it seems that the Jobs vs. Ballmer competition continues in an altogether different arena.

The competition in question concerns a quest to buy the L.A. Clippers from embattled Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Ballmer has reportedly placed a $2 billion for the basketball team: an offer which would triple the record for an NBA franchise.

One of the roadblocks in his acquisition plan? None other than Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. Jobs is partnering with several other tech and entertainment magnates, including Oracle software co-founder Larry Ellison, and new Apple employee (and reported special adviser to Tim Cook) Jimmy Iovine.

Everyone is talking about vast open world hacker game Watch Dogs since its release earlier this week, and that means one inevitable thing: it was only going to be so long before the parodies started rolling in.

This Machinima.com parody of the game imagines a scenario in which Watch Dogs‘ main protagonist is forced to ditch his smartphone — which allows him to hack into various electronic devices tied to the city’s central operating system — for an iPhone. For most people, switching to iPhone is a definite upgrade. For Watch Dogs’ Aiden Pearce, however, it’s a less clear-cut decision.

The proper iOS Game of Thrones was a bit rubbish, with a whole lot of sitting and waiting around unless you were happy to shell out money for in-app purchases. Fortunately the good folks over at Vulture have created a free-to-play game, which is a whole lot more fun.

You play the “Littlest Lannister” Tyrion Lannister, and the aim is to get as drunk as you can in a great approximation of an old-school arcade game. As games go, it’s a whole lot simpler than capturing the Iron Throne. You guide Tyrion back and forth across the screen using the arrow keys of your computer (or virtual controls for your iOS device) to catch as many goblets of wine as you can.

If you’re a fan of Disney’s Oscar-winning animated smash hit Frozen, you may experience excited chills at the news that you can now sing along to all your favorite songs from the movie on your iPad using the new Disney Karaoke: Frozen app.

As apps go, it’s pretty darn (n)ice, with nine songs and music videos from the film on which you can either listen to the original vocal performances, or mute the voices to sing by yourself.

When the Microsoft Surface was first unveiled, one of its “iPad killing” features was splitscreen app support. Just by dragging an app to the edge of the screen, you could dock it, and run another app to the left or right… for example, playing a game while watching a movie in the corner.

It was a move designed to make the Surface more laptop-like… and one that Apple has been heavily rumored to copy in iOS 8, as tablet sales flatline. But don’t expect to see splitscreen multitasking at WWDC on Monday. Apparently it’s just not ready for showtime yet.

Take this with a grain of salt, but an Australian iPhone repair site with a proven history of leaking upcoming iPhone and iPad parts early has posted what they are claiming is our first look at the aluminum rear shell of the upcoming iPhone 6.

The album is dead. So dead Amazon thinks customers won’t even care if all the songs in its new music-streaming service have been spun out of tune by DJs across the country for months.

To boost its digital offerings, Amazon is planning to launch its own music service, reports BuzzFeed, but rather than stocking up on the latest hit songs, Prime Music will shun new releases in favor of a potluck offering of songs and albums that are at least six months old.

The smartwatch race is on, and Microsoft has its own contender in the works.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch lineup is widely considered a dud, and many are waiting to see what Apple has up its sleeve with the iWatch. Not to be left behind, Microsoft is gunning for the fitness market with a wearable of its own that could arrive as early as this summer..

Perhaps most surprising of all is that Microsoft’s device will reportedly be platform agnostic, meaning it would work with Android and even the iPhone.

The real reason behind Apple’s $3 billion buy of Beats may be a plan for an epic mashup of music and tech by combining the hardware of headphones and Beats Music software.

Two notable patent applications published Thursday suggest that Apple could be thinking along exactly these lines.

Rumors of Apple’s upcoming “Made for iHome” API in iOS 8 sent fanboys rocketing with excitement that Cupertino might be launching a makeover in the living room, but expectations are about to get dashed when Apple presents a much simpler system on Monday.

The move to home automation will be more about fighting fragmentation, reports GigaOm, than creating an entire home experience. Apple’s home efforts will just focus on easily connecting devices to Wifi and tossing in voice control over Bluetooth.

There will be no central control center. No asking Siri to turn off your Hues and lock the door. But the report does have some interesting details on what Apple will announce:

Apple has a proud tradition of cannibalizing its products before someone else does, but in the case of the iPad mini, Cupertino might start eating its rotting corpse as soon as the 5.5-inch iPhablet is announced.

The latest projections from IDC claim that tablet sales are starting to level off even faster than expected with only 245.5 million units forecasted to sell in 2014 – a palty 12.1% year-over-year growth rate after tech companies just feasted on 51.8% YOY in 2013.

During Apple’s last earnings call Tim Cook boasted that iPad is the fastest selling product in Apple history, but IDC gives two major reasons why that could soon change:

24 hours haven’t even passed since Apple announced it scooped up Dre’s bass-loving headphone company but that’s not stopping the Dr. and Iovine from busting out an encore to their most successful headphones yet.

This morning Beats revealed its replacing its popular Beats Solo headphones with the new Beats Solo² that not only offer better sound, they’re the most Apple-like set of cans we’ll see before Jony Ive gets his team on them.

Readdle today rolled out its biggest update yet for PDF Expert 5, one of the finest PDF editing apps for iOS. It adds support for continuous scrolling and calculations, improves performance, and makes PDF Expert a universal app — so you only have to buy it once to use it on both iPhone and iPad.

Apple is busy putting the finishing touches on WWDC before the invasion of 5,000 developers destroy the corridors of Moscone West, but even if you didn’t get a ticket to the hottest developer event in the world, you can still enjoy WWDC like you’re actually there by sporting some of this gear from the comfort of your couch.

Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple gang are coming straight out of Cupertino on June 2nd to kick off WWDC with the first keynote of the year. iOS 8, OS X 10.10, a home automation platform, new iMacs and possibly even an 8GB iPhone 5s are rumored to make an appearance.

We’ll be covering the action on our liveblog starting at 10AM PDT, Monday June 2nd and won’t let up until WWDC finishes on June 6th, but to get yourself ready for the assault, here are eight things you should buy to get your WWDC on.

With Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy in the bag, hits like X-Men: Days of Future Past ruling the box office, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy surfacing on the horizon, we’re living in a Golden Age for comic book movies.

But even with Hollywood seemingly buying up the rights to anything it can get its hands on, there are still some fantastic comic book series yet to make the transition to the silver screen.

Which comic book adaptations would we put down our hard-earned bucks to enjoy at the multiplex? Read on to find out…

Write, the distraction-free note-taking tool that’s been a great success on iOS, is ready to make writing easier on your Mac.

Whether you’re a student, a blogger, a novelist, or simply too forgetful to remember what you need to pack your holiday, Write’s incredibly simple design and clutter-free user interface can make writing a more enjoyable experience. But don’t let its minimal beauty fool you — Write is packed with handy features.

The Guardian — a.k.a. the British newspaper known for breaking news of the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013 — has just launched its new and improved iOS app.

The upgrade adds a cleaner design, alongside a more personalized user experience for iOS users. What this means is ramped-up interactivity, thanks to the integration with GuardianWitness, the newspaper’s user-generated content platform which allows readers to contribute comments, photos, and videos.

From a rare Apple Lisa computer to the original rainbow-colored signs from the Cupertino offices there have been some great Apple items up for auction as of late. Now you can add “rare Mac prototype” to that list.

A prototype model made out of painted foam, this alternate Macintosh LC model was built in 1989 by Apple’s Industrial Design Group and Matrix Product Design (which later became IDEO). Unlike the actual Mac LC that shipped it has a vertically-oriented screen: possibly targeted toward the business world, rather than the artistic, publishing and educational markets that the Mac traditionally sold to at the time.

I’m a streaming music junkie. I’ve subscribed to Rdio, Spotify and Slacker to rein in my tendency to hoard (and then not back up) music.  Putting a tenner on monthly subscriptions for an all-you-can-listen auditory buffet model appealed to me more than an album-binging approach, too.

Still, the Apple and Beats acquisition rumors (now fact) struck me as tone deaf – what does Beats bring that the other services don’t? So I decided to take the Beats app on my iPhone for good long spin.

Anyone who read my review of Jurassic Park Builder for iOS knows that I’m a fan of the Jurassic Park franchise — and like a lot of fans of the series I’m eagerly awaiting Jurassic World, the forthcoming movie sequel set to stomp into movie theatres June 12, 2015.

For those of us craving plot details like a t-rex craves human-sized snacks, director Colin Trevorrow recently shed some light in an interview for SlashFilm.