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Apple is getting ready for a 30th Mac Anniversary party at the company HQ, according to pictures that have just started showing up on Instagram.

Several pictures from Apple’s Cupertino HQ taken in the last hour or so show giant birthday banners that have been hung off buildings. “Happy Birthday, Mac,” they say.

The photos are accompanied by hashtags mentioning #party and #concert. One picture shows technicians unpacking equipment, possibly for a live music act. In 2011, the British supergroup Coldplay played a set during the tribute to Steve Jobs.

Here are some more pictures of the party preparations. There’s also pictures of the big posters around the campus quad with thousands of employee’s names.

UPDATE: The U.S. pop band One Republic played the gig that was attended by hundreds of employees. Here’s a short clip of the performance.

Apple CEO Tim Cook even tweeted about it. “Celebrating Mac’s 30th with some of my closest friends in Cupertino with OneRepublic,” he wrote. “Awesome.”

While there are a whole lot of smartphone-controlled helicopters on the market, there are surprisingly few smartphone controlled planes available. It is this niche that German toy company TobyRich is hoping to fill with its recently launched SmartPlane.

For those of us who grew up on a 1980s diet of Top Gun, this is your chance to “buzz the tower” again and again — all using your iPhone, and done from the comfort of your own home.

As part of Apple’s celebration of the Mac’s 30th anniversary, the company invited David Muir of ABC News to its Cupertino headquarters for a rare interview with CEO Tim Cook. A couple teaser clips have already aired, and the full special will premiere tonight on ABC’s World News With Diane Sawyer.

In the interview, Cook was joined by Apple executives Craig Federighi and Bud Tribble. Federighi is in charge of Apple’s software, and Tribble was a member of the original Apple Macintosh design team.

There are several juicy tidbits to be gleaned from the interview excerpts, including the confirmation that Apple’s new factory in Arizona will manufacture sapphire glass. Cook also shared his thoughts on the iWatch rumors, NSA, and more.

The Mac turns 30 today. It’s a big day for Apple, and obviously it’s a big day for every member of the Cult of Mac (that means you!).

Here’s a roundup of all our stories about the Mac’s milestone:

There are a bunch of apps out on iOS for kids, from educational apps to sports apps and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of apps on the App Store that they’re using.

This week, it’s a game about bringing rainbows of happiness to sad, grey creatures, TCHOW Rainbow from TCHOW. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter “Battle” thinks.

To celebrate the Mac’s 30th anniversary today, Apple created an amazing font set made up of tiny little Macs. It depicts every model the Cupertino company has released since the original Macintosh made its debut back in 1984, and with the right URL, you can download it for yourself.

Hiding in Apple’s slick birthday tribute to the Mac is the most common of desktop creatures — a Microsoft mouse. The out-of-place peripheral shows up in a new video that highlights the Mac’s amazing impact on the world, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The original Mac was released thirty years ago today, and to celebrate, Apple has unveiled a special “30 Years” section of its official website that allows users to scroll through a visual timeline of the Mac’s history, starting with the original all the way to the new Mac Pro.

Back in 1984, the birth of the Macintosh was not a quiet affair. Among his many talents, Steve Jobs was one of the great orators and inspiring speakers of our time. Part sage, part showman, Jobs combined the wizardry of a magician with the skills of a master salesman. The Macintosh was his baby, the intended salvation for Apple, and he wanted it launched with flair.

Many people have heard about, but not seen, one of the most influential demos of all — the actual unveiling of the Macintosh on January 24, 1984. In front of a group of Apple shareholders and VIPs, and giving a hint of Apple keynotes to come, a tuxedo-clad Jobs and his magical child stole the show. Now you can relive that glorious moment.

According to Phil Schiller, merging the OS X and iOS operating systems would be a “waste of energy.”

Schiller was giving an interview with MacWorld on the eve of the Mac’s thirtieth anniversary. Asked about the chances of such a convergence, Schiller had the following to say:

It’s the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Macintosh, and we wondered at Cult of Mac what can we do to celebrate? Then we thought, let’s dissect an original Macintosh and see what made it tick! There’s nothing like destruction in the persuit of knowledge.

In full retro spirit, we asked our friends at iFixit if they would help perform a special anniversary teardown of the 128k Mac. How does our silicon hero compare to modern Macs in terms of components, assembly and ease of repair? Of course being true geeks themselves, they jumped at the chance.

There was only one problem: where to find an original 128k Mac.

Called 5by, StumbleUpon’s new iOS app is designed to let users, well, stumble upon videos that might be of interest to them.

5by is basically a video concierge service that sifts through the mountains of videos available online, and creates custom playlists based not just on your mood and interests, but also the time of day and the length of time you have available for viewing.

Whether you’re at work and want to watch videos on your lunch break, or looking for a dinner recipe while waiting for the bus, 5by can pull up relevant content.

The KLOQE is billed as “the iPhone case for those who don’t like iPhone cases.” As a vocal member of that group, I feel qualified to judge this case. But that;s not it. The KLOQE also promises to be the only aluminum iPhone case without reception issues. So let’s get that part out of the way first.

Love chess, but don’t have the time or the sticking power to play a whole game? Then you should probably take a look at the $1 Mate in 1 Puzzle app, newly updated for iOS 7 and ready to puzzle your brain with something a little more satisfying that an other round of QuizUp.

Audio accessory maker Zoom launched its iQ5 microphone this week — providing a nifty, Lightning-connected solution for users looking to record high quality audio with their iOS devices.

You know how you really, really love your significant other? And how you like to remind him/her of just how important they are to you by sending sweet little messages to them every day? Well, now there’s an app for that, letting even the most forgetful, self-centered idiot make himself look like the most romantic person in the world. Behold, Romantimatic, probably the first app ever to combine pink and cogs into a single logo.

Popular free iOS news app Newsy has gone universal.

The app — which delivers news through engaging video bites — first launched for iPhone and iPod touch in September 2009, with Newsy for iPad following in April the next year.

The Macintosh may be celebrating its thirtieth birthday today, but three decades on it’s no longer Apple’s flagship device — coming a distant third to the iPhone and iPad (although still ahead of iTunes — for now.)

But just how many Macs did Apple sell last year?

Combing through the data, Fortune created the above infographic, which shows the Mac’s fluctuating sales throughout 2013: starting off weakly in Q1 when a missed iMac deadline signaled the end of a 26-quarter streak in which Mac sales outpaced those of the PC industry. In all, Macs generated $21.5 billion for Apple in fiscal 2013 — representing one eighth of the company’s total revenue.

Dispatch is one of the greatest email apps for the iPhone (but sadly still not the iPad). It’s purpose is to let you power through your emails and whittle down your inbox in double-quick time. And the latest update adds some welcome streamlining.

I probably wouldn’t written anything about the new Netatmo Weather Station Channel on IFTTT, but then I saw one of the sample automatic actions that it can trigger, and figured I had to show you. Once set up, you can have IFTTT send a Twitter DM to your roommate when his music is too loud. Amazing.

Most of use post our crap onto Twitter, Flickr, Instagram or – ugh – the Facebook. But creative pros have their own social network. Behance is more than just a place to hang your latest photos, motion-graphics, fashion or branding design, though. It’s kind of a mix between an online resume and and portfolio, with plenty of concept ideas thrown in for good measure. And it’s also built into some Adobe apps: Lightroom lets you publish straight to Behance, for example.

Which is a long way of getting to the point. Behance v3.0 for iOS just launched, and it brings an updated look and new features.

Thirty years ago today — January 24, 1984 — the Apple Macintosh went on sale for the first time.

Arriving in stores two days after the SuperBowl airing of the famous “1984” television commercial directed by Ridley Scott, the Macintosh 128K forever changed the way people look at personal computers. It wasn’t Apple’s first mass market computer (that would have been the Apple II), it wasn’t the company’s first machine to use a WIMP interface (windows, icons, mouse pointer), and it was pretty underpowered in its first iteration — but this was the computer that brought everything that was good and innovative about the Apple brand together: the ease of use, the focus on personal creativity, and the idea that there was something better going on in computing than the green-text-on-black-screens that were more or less ubiquitous everywhere else.

Today Apple released a slew of updates to its iWork productivity suite. On the web, iWork for iCloud has received an iOS 7-like makeover in every aspect except the editing interface. Browsing for documents on iCloud.com now looks more like it does on iOS.

An emphasis has been placed on document sharing with a new “Shared with Me” menu in each app’s toolbar. You can also share password-protected documents, presentations, and spreadsheets.

Apple didn’t just update iWork’s web apps today. Several updates have been released on iOS and OS X as well.

Microsoft announced $24.52 billion in revenue the second quarter this year, showing gains across all segments of its consumer technology business, including Surface, Xbox, and Bing search.

As a previous heavy competitor and sometime collaborator with Apple, Microsoft hasn’t been doing as well in the post-PC era. It’s interesting that the company is defying expectations on the eve of CEO Steve Ballmer’s run at the company, with growth across the board, except in PC sales, of course.

We’ve gone on and on about the merits of Flowboard, a web-based platform that lets users easily create  media-rich stories or presentations and publish them onto its servers. Until now, the service has only been available as an iOS app — but that’s about to change, as a Flowboard authoring app hits the Mac this spring.