Your Mac comes out of the box as a lean, mean computing machine. But any Mac is only as useful as the apps you put on it. That makes this bundle of Mac apps worth checking out. In addition to including various ways of improving the performance and productivity possibilities of your Mac, the Fab 5 Mac App Bundle is available for whatever you’re willing to pay. Read on for details.

An innovative new “branching narrative” TV app is being launched by HBO and Academy Award-winning movie director Steven Soderbergh, which will let audiences make active decisions that will help shape the story’s outcome.

A linear version of the show, Mosaic, is set to debut on TV in January 2018. However, the app version isn’t just a bit of advance promo, but a fully-fledged part of the experience, which reportedly took three years to develop.

Apple appears to have dropped its “Free App of the Week” promotion.

Users have been unable to find the giveaway since the introduced of the all-new App Store in iOS 11. Apple now has “App of the Day” and “Game of the Day” highlights, but unless its picks were already free, you have to pay for them.

Microsoft’s effort to compete with Android and iOS is over.

In a series of tweets, the company’s vice president of operating systems admitted that there will be no new features or hardware for Windows 10 Mobile in the future. He blamed the decision on a lack of support from third-party app developers.

Over the weekend, more than 300 people in Ireland staged a rally in support of Apple’s proposed 850 million ($960 million) euro data center in Athenry, County Galway.

The new data center was officially given the go-ahead over two years ago, although construction on it has been delayed by continuing legal issues. If built, the data center will help power Apple Music, the App Store, iMessages, Maps and Siri — while providing plenty of jobs to locals.

Major League Baseball might be all in on incorporating Apple technology wherever possible, but it has its limits.

During last week’s NL Wild Card game on Wednesday, game cameras caught Diamondbacks coach Ariel Prieto wearing an “illegal electronic device” in the dugout, which transpired to be an Apple Watch. Although the wearable was reportedly left on in error, and wasn’t being used for anything related to the game, Prieto has been fined for the incident.

Tim Cook is currently in France, where he making a variety of visits — including meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.

Cook will meet with President Macron, who assumed power in this year’s May election, later today. He has also made a number of stops, including meeting with one of Apple’s suppliers and paying his respects at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, which honors American troops who died in Europe during World War II.

A fun, appropriately retro game retelling of the first season of Netflix hit Stranger Things is just of one of the picks for this week’s “Awesome Apps of the Week.”

In addition, we’ve got a great action-packed top-down blaster, a superb upgrade to a popular iOS camera app, and… YouTube? Check out our picks below.

That feeling when you need to build a website but don’t have time to learn coding. Or you just don’t have the cash to pay for a web designer. Thankfully, it’s getting easier to build websites without any coding skills.

Can Google convince iPhone fans to jump ship for the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL?We show how Google’s Pixel lineup compares to iPhone 8 and the upcoming iPhone X.

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, you’ll find that story and more. Check out the serious internal upgrades packed into iPhone 8 Plus, and Google’s new mini speaker. We’ve got some great Mac apps for photo editors, a roundup of the best chargers and stands for Apple Watch Series 3 and a review of the iconic Speidel Twist-O-Flex band. Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

To celebrate the start of a new week, we do what we do every week: gather up some of the best deals on gear, gadgets, and more. This round, we’ve got a comprehensive course in iOS 11 coding, and a ‘Hiffecient’ USB charging hub. We’ve also got a tool for streamlining online form-filling, and an upgrade for your Mac’s calendar. Everything is discounted by more than 40 percent. Read on for more details:

This week on The CultCast: A company unlike any other, some say Steve Job’s greatest product was Apple itself. But how has it fared in the six years since his passing? We’ll share the cold, hard facts. Plus: What we love (and don’t) about the Apple TV 4K; an iOS 11 software trick doubles your iPhone storage; and we’ll wrap up our favorite minimalist cases for your iPhone 7, 8 and X.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace.com website. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10 percent off any hosting plan.

One of the neatest tricks built into the Mac, and now into iOS, is to print to PDF. In short, anything that can be printed can also be saved as a PDF. But doing so on the Mac means using the mouse to click a little drop-down picker in the print dialog. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just tap Command-P — the keyboard shortcut for printing — twice instead?

Even when your arm is stretched out as far as possible, it can be a struggle to get a finger or thumb on the shutter of your iPhone camera to take that selfie. An update to the app Camera+ trips the shutter with a smile.

Version 10 of Camera+, one of the more popular apps for iPhone photographers, announced new features this week with improvements that take full advantage of iOS 11.

Apple is a company with “a bunch of worrying individuals.”

Jony Ive shared this with a New Yorker TechFest audience Friday as an executive paid to shoulder more worries than most. The chief design officer at Apple doesn’t do many interviews, but he joined The New Yorker editor Dave Remnick onstage for a brief but insightful chat.

You probably know by now that iOS 11’s Files app can integrate services like Dropbox, and Google Drive, so that they appear and act like regular folders on your iPhone or iPad. But did you know that you can choose these third-party services at the default storage option for your apps? Take Apple’s own Pages, for instance. In the olden days, it would store files in your iCloud Drive, or locally on your iPad. Now, you can pick anything, including Dropbox, as the default location for saving.

The iPhone’s upgrade supercycle analysts have been predicting for months won’t materialize until next year.

That’s according to reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is blaming the delay on production issues affecting iPhone X supply, among other things.

A Chinese woman has gone blind in one eye after playing a hugely addictive mobile game. The 21-year-old suffered retinal artery occlusion caused by severe eye strain after playing the online battle game for up to eight hours without taking a break.

Anyone paying any attention to the news these days knows that online data security is never assured. That means we have to do as much as we can to protect ourselves. And one of the best and simplest steps you can take is to use a virtual private network to get online.

Another iPhone 8 Plus handset with an allegedly swollen battery has been discovered in China, following multiple reports of similar instances.

Chinese state media is reporting that an iPhone buyer named Liu received a newly purchased iPhone 8 Plus in the mail, which arrived cracked open on October 5. The iPhone reportedly had no signs of scorching or an explosion, and Liu says he did not charge the handset.

Apple has revealed a whole bunch of new emoji coming with iOS 11.1. They’re all based on new additions to Unicode 10, and they will join the handful of characters Apple teased back in July for World Emoji Day.

Microsoft is bringing its Edge web browser to iPhone.

Windows users will feel right at home with its design, which looks as close as possible to that of Edge on the desktop. They will also enjoy the ability to send websites to their desktop when they want to view them on a larger screen.

The episode of Carpool Karaoke: The Series featuring the late Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington will be made available next week.

While Carpool Karaoke is normally available only to paying Apple Music subscribers, this episode will be available for free on Facebook. Initially there was some question as to whether it would ever air, due to the tragic nature of Bennington’s untimely death.

Put the late Steve Jobs in your mind and chances are the iconic photograph made by Scottish photographer Albert Watson comes to mind. It’s a daring glare into the lens, a hand on the chin creating a kind of pedestal for a brain that helped to usher in the age of personal computing.

Today is the sixth anniversary of Jobs passing from cancer and Watson’s story about the day in 2006 Jobs sat in front of his lens should bring a chuckle to those who still miss him or knew his mercurial nature firsthand.

If you don’t need (or don’t want to wait for) the latest gear, this week you can score mighty deals on Apple Watches, iPhones and iPads!