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I recently decided it was time to get a proper desktop computer. I needed it predominantly for work, but I wanted it to be powerful enough to play the latest games in 1080p without worrying about stuttering or terrible frame rates.

The new Mac lineup didn’t offer a perfect fit — the Retina 5K iMac was too expensive, and the new Mac mini simply wasn’t powerful enough — so I set myself a goal: To build a gaming machine with a dedicated video card, capable of running OS X, for around the price of a Mac mini.

I set a budget of $650 for my build. That’s $150 more than the base model Mac mini, but $50 less than the midrange model. In this piece, I’ll take you through the components I purchased and why I chose them, and how I put them all together. Next week, I’ll show you how I installed OS X to turn my DIY gaming rig into a Hackintosh.

NASA’s spaceship of tomorrow might make a critic of skeuomorphic design cringe.

Orion, which flew successfully on an unmanned test Friday and is seen as a critical first step toward flying a crew to Mars, is guided by sophisticated computer control panels.

But instead of a modern digital interface, NASA designed the controls to look like something from the Gemini missions from the ’60s. Orion’s computer screens are full of virtual flip switches and levers that would put Yuri Gagarin at ease.

It’s a little like Apple putting a virtual rotary dial on an iPhone.

We all like our email signatures to look fantastic. Apple Mail began letting you make your special mark with an HTML-style email signature with OS X Lion back in 2011.

The process of setting up an HTML signature in Apple Mail has only gotten more complex over the years, unfortunately. Now it takes a bit of patience and a sturdy sense of adventure, but it’s not too difficult.

If you want to create your own HTML signature for Apple’s Mail app on OS X Yosemite, keep reading.

We here at Cult of Mac love bicycles almost as much as we love our iPhone 6 Pluses and iMac Retina 5Ks.

Maybe it’s the feeling of almost flying. Or the passionate design coming out of the bicycle industry. Or maybe it is just the idea of being a part of something else that drives intense passions in people. Whatever it is, we love it.

So we scoured high and low to bring you a list of crazy gift ideas for yourself or for your two-wheeled companions.
Take a look, but remember to take a deep breath before firing up your Apple Pay.

The research reads like a Surgeon General’s warning: Prolonged periods of sitting can lead to obesity, heart disease, blood clots and spinal compression, according to the latest medical studies.

To combat this modern office horror, an artist and an architecture firm from the Netherlands have re-imagined the office with all the chairs pulled out from under us. The exhibit, called The End of Sitting, is a geometric landscape of surfaces of varying heights on which to lean.

“The chair and desk are no longer unquestionable starting points,” Erik and Ronald Rietveld, partners at Dutch firm Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances, told Cult of Mac. “In our society, almost the entirety of our surroundings have been for sitting while evidence from medical research suggests that too much sitting has adverse health effects.”

The iPhone 6 Plus has only been on the market for a few months, but according to a report from Kantar, Apple’s bigger than big device captured 41% of U.S. phablet sales in the quarter ending with October 2014.

What’s even more impressive is that Apple managed to take a huge chunk of the market with only one full month of sales in the quarter. Kantar reports that among smartphones with a 5.5-inch screen or larger, Apple is absolutely dominating the trendy new category that now represents ten percent of all smartphone sales.

Steve Jobs made an appearance Monday as a key witness in Apple’s most recent antitrust lawsuit — courtesy of a video deposition taped shortly prior to his death in 2011.

The lawsuit concerns a long-running class action antitrust lawsuit dating back to 2005. It is argued by the plaintiffs that Apple gained an unfairly monopolistic position by blocking competitors from putting their music on iPods.

Jobs avoided many of the questions he was asked during the 2-hour video deposition, saying that “I don’t remember,” “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” a total of 74 times — including when he was asked if he was familiar with what the lawsuit was about.

A few typically snappy Steve Jobs moments did crop up, however. Responding to a question about the former iTunes rival Real Networks, Jobs replied, “Do they still exist?”

In a universe where things worked out a bit differently, Ronald Wayne would be a billionaire.

When Apple was incorporated on April 2, 1976, Wayne was named alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as one of three founders. Wayne owned a 10 percent stake in the company, a fact that raises questions about who owned apple.

However, just 12 days after Apple started up — feeling out of his depth because he “was standing in the shadow of intellectual giants” — Wayne threw in the towel and sold his shares for just $800.

“I was 40 and these kids were in their 20s,” Wayne told Cult of Mac. “They were whirlwinds — it was like having a tiger by the tail. If I had stayed with Apple I probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery.”

Apple is no stranger to filing lawsuits against iPhone cloners, but in a twisted turn of events, an Chinese Android manufacturer with a handset that looks suspiciously similar to the iPhone 6 is claiming that Apple ripped off its designs.

Little known Chinese smartphone maker DigiOne published a letter today that the company’s lawyers sent to Apple in September. The letter contests that “the design of Apple’s mobile device with the brand name “iPhone 6”, may infringe on one of Baili’s Chinese patents” filed in January of 2014.

Digione’s cheap handset, which is being sold by subsidiary brand 100+, was granted the patent in July. The patent in question does look similar to an iPhone, in that it features a device that is thin and rectangular shaped, with a flat back, rounded edges, and glass screen.

Check out their weird ad for the V6 see for yourself:

Well, that didn’t take long.

It’s only been four days since The Force Awakens trailer appeared on all of our computer and iPhone screens, and here we have the entire thing recreated with the ubiquitous plastic building toy.

Why did this YouTuber build his stop-motion homage?

“Made this out of boredom,” he says, “… enjoy!”

Despite never having laid their hands upon an Apple Watch, developers are feverishly crafting apps for the long-awaited wearable.

To do this, they face considerable challenges: The size of the device is unlike anything most of them have ever contemplated, and they must design for an entirely different kind of user experience. To make matters worse, the Apple Watch’s functionality will be severely limited, at least at first.

Still, the independent developers that Cult of Mac spoke with are unabashedly delighted to take on the design challenge as they seek to colonize the next frontier of computing: your wrist.

It’s ludicrous but true: How headphones look can be nearly as important as how they sound. Luckily for anybody who slides a pair of Bowers & Wilkins P7s over their ears, these high-end headphones do double duty. They will bamboozle your ears as well as your eyes.

With a stylish design and sturdy construction of gleaming metal and luxurious sheepskin leather, these aren’t a pair of big, cartoon-like plastic puffballs for your head. The P7s whisper quiet refinement rather than screaming “look at me.” If Beats Electronics’ brightly colored models are like those candy-colored iMac G3s from the ’90s, the P7s are like this year’s stunning iMac with Retina 5K display.

But really, looks are only skin deep. When it comes to music at its most intimate — when the sounds are piped straight from the source and directly penetrate your ear canals — it’s the quality of the audio that matters most.

Chances are, the first time you try your hand at Vainglory you’ll get ganked almost immediately by a crystal-toting Glaive.

If you’d rather avoid that ignominious end, you’ll want to read our guide to all things Vainglory. It’s loaded with tips and tricks on how to kick ass in this excellent iOS game, an Apple favorite that showcases the awesome fun possible in the multiplayer online battle arena genre.

You’ll find basic and advanced gameplay tips, plus a special top 10 list for every hero in the game, right from the developers themselves.

Pretty soon you’ll be the one pwning your enemies with nonchalant ease, just like Scarf Guy.

Corning’s relationship with Apple looked doomed earlier this year. Having manufactured the touchscreens for every iPhone since 2007, the Gorilla Glass bosses were all but sure they were being ditched in favor of synthetic sapphire crystal, set to be supplied by Apple’s hot new partner, GT Advanced Technologies.

But while Apple’s affair with GT has imploded spectacularly, Corning is back on Cupertino’s crush list after stepping in at the eleventh hour to create super-sized displays for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Now Corning is convinced its latest technological advance — Gorilla Glass 4, its toughest version yet — will banish sapphire suitors for the immediate future.

“Sapphire is a really, really nice material that’s very good for reducing scratches,” Dave Velasquez, Corning’s director of marketing and commercial ops, told Cult of Mac. “However, we feel very strongly that glass is the best material for touch panel cover glass. When you weigh up everything from cost to drop-testing, to the amount of energy that’s needed to make it, in our opinion Gorilla Glass is clearly the best material to use.”

AAPL shares sure have experienced a crazy roller coaster ride this year. Splitting 7-to-1 earlier in 2014, a fantastic run of product launches and announcements since then has driven Apple stock higher and higher. Earlier this month we noted that Apple was now worth more than the entire Russian stock market, and today it has hit a personal-best market cap of $700 billion.

This happened as Apple’s share price rose to the $119.65 mark, bringing it to a pre-split price of $837.13. For those keeping tabs at home, not only is this better than Apple’s last high point, when it was valued around $650 in late 2012, but it also represents a massive 50% increase since January this year.

iCloud was hailed by Tim Cook back in 2012 as “not just a product. It’s a strategy for the next decade.” Yet these days, iCloud is something of a mess: Not only has it not gained significant features since launch, but a slate of very public hacks have made it a rare black mark on Apple’s security record.

What the heck happened? According to a new report, iCloud isn’t living up to its potential because, organizationally, it’s an orphan within Apple.

You might think college students are tricky to shop for, but in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. Since they’re constantly swamped with homework and simultaneously managing a busy social life, all they want is stuff that makes their lives easier and more fun.

If you’re stressing about what to get the student in your life this holiday season, never fear. We’ve collected some great gift ideas, handpicked by college students for college students:

Apple packed the biggest display it’s ever made onto the iPhone 6 Plus, and while its 1920×1080 resolution is great for streaming 1080p videos, it turns out that Apple also secretly added 4K video support without telling anyone.

The iPad Air 2, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus all support 4K video playback out of the box, thanks to the new A8 processor added this year. Apple doesn’t list 4K video playback as one of the A8 chips features, but the discovery was made by the developers behind WALTR, who posted proof of 4K video playback on the iPhone 6 this weekend.

Going gear-shopping for your favorite outdoors-loving friend or family member can be harder than trekking up Mount St. Helens as she’s about to blow. There are so many options, but so much crap.

To help you out with your holiday shopping, Cult of Mac waded through the endless lists of camping and hiking gear and gadgets to find the stuff your special someone will love.

Whether you’re looking for something for an adventuring buddy, or picking a present for someone you’d never want to be trapped in a tent with, we’ve found gifts for everyone. From hiking clothes to campsite gadgets, we’ve got you covered.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is one of the most reliable analysts out there as relates to upcoming Apple products. Having called various things correctly in the run-up to the iPhone 6’s release (such as Apple’s sapphire manufacturing issues), he’s now forecasting numbers for the handsets over the holiday season — And they’re big!

In a new report to investors, Kuo predicts that Apple will sell a giant 71.5 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units over the 3-month holiday period. By comparison, one year ago the company sold 51 million iPhones during that same period.

Kuo’s research note also touches on several other topics, including the future of the iPhone 4s and 5c, as well as early speculation about the iPhone 7.

If you’ve installed a third-party keyboard on your iPhone or iPad running iOS 8, you might have noticed a strange omission: While you can communicate in animated GIFs or Klingon, you can’t dictate into any keyboard not made by Apple.

Reddit user 11011 sums up the puzzling situation nicely: “I can’t get myself to stick to alternate keyboards because I use dictation way too much and switching keyboards is a hassle.”

Whether you’re shopping for your sweetie or trying to find something for your mum, picking presents for the important women in your life can prove daunting. Cult of Mac is here to help with this list of the top 10 gifts we’ll be buying for the fairer sex this year.

From clothes to quirky tech, we’ve got you covered.