If you’ve been looking to add the significant layer of VPN protection to your online life, today’s your lucky day. Hotspot Shield Elite is a top notch VPN provider that’s great for hiding your IP address, browsing securely, bypassing content restrictions, and today an already great discount gets dropped even further. As of today, you can get a lifetime subscription to Hotspot Shield Elite VPN for $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

This week on The CultCast: The reviews are in! We’ll tell you what praises and complaints reviewers have about new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Plus: The one Touch Bar feature you’ll absolutely covet; why the new Designed by Apple in California book is an artifact Apple fans will love; Apple quietly rebuilds a library of its gadgets long past; how to get the best Black Friday deals; and we review the hawt new Mavic Pro drone by DJI, then crash it into a cliff.

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With the launch of a GPS watch, and a renewed Nike partnership, Apple is getting serious about targeting runners. So is Apple Watch Series 2 the perfect running partner that Cupertino promises?

As an avid runner myself, I was keen to find out. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been training for the TCS New York City Marathon, and I took my Apple Watch Series 2 with me every step of the way — right up to the finish line in Central Park last week. Here’s how it measured up.

New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance wants the Trump administration to help create federal legislation requiring Apple and Google to remove default encryption from their smartphones.

The recommendation comes from the DA office’s second report on Smartphone Encryption and Public Safety, presented by Vance at the opening of the Manhattan DA’s new cyberlab. New York County is currently sitting on 423 iPhones it can’t break into, even with a warrant, so the DA’s office is pushing for change.

Apple’s HomeKit platform is set to power an entire community currently under construction in San Jose.

Real estate development firm KB Home revealed today that its new community, Promenade at Communications Hill, will be the first ever in the US to have HomeKit technology built-in, providing a seamless experience from the foundation up.

Apple has finished unveiling its product lineup for 2016, and yet again it appears to have forgotten about the Mac Pro. The high-end desktop will be three years old next month, and although it might look pretty on the outside, it’s way past its best on the inside.

Apple won’t tell us why the Mac Pro isn’t a priority anymore, but its focus is clearly elsewhere. This is a problem for creative professionals who rely on the extra power the machine provides. For some, the iMac just isn’t beefy enough.

Some believe Apple should license macOS to third-party computer makers that are willing to cater to the pros Apple is ignoring. It’s a move Apple would never make, but is it a good idea?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over whether Apple should let rival PC vendors build macOS machines!

Extensions can be very useful on Safari for Mac, adding functionality, and — in Apple’s words — letting users, “explore the web the way you want.” But how do you get rid of them once they’re installed?

If you have issues with extensions causing crashes, glitches, or you just don’t plain want them anymore, here’s our easy guide to removing them.

For many ugly years, manufacturers considered industrial design an afterthought. They would outsource the task to a contractor or neglect it altogether, in an effort to get products out quickly and cheaply.

The result: hideous-looking products that didn’t work well or proved difficult to use.

Nowadays, companies like Apple are changing the game when it comes to incorporating industrial design and user experience into product engineering.

On this episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk with Oliver Seil, senior design director with Belkin International’s Innovation and Design Group. Seil is Belkin’s Jony Ive, the top designer who overseas the company’s diverse array of products.

Belkin specializes in mobile accessories, from power packs and iPhone cases to WeMo home automation products

The iPhone 7 has barely been out for two months but the first concept designs of next year’s iPhone are ready to get you hyped for a future without bezels.

Early rumors for the 2017 iPhone have claimed Apple plans to make some major changes. The home button and bezels at the top and bottom could get the boot. And with a curved OLED display, Apple’s next phone may be the most beautiful one ever.

Take a closer look:

A bug in macOS Sierra is incorrectly telling some users that their MacBook Pro just got a nice graphics upgrade.

Some 15-inch units are packing Intel Iris Pro 580 graphics, according to the built-in System Information report. But in actual fact, they have Intel Iris Pro 530 graphics instead.

These days, having a mixed storage strategy is the only sensible way to consider your data ‘backed up’. The cloud needs to be part of the equation, and if the high cost of secure cloud storage has kept your storage on the ground, we’ve got good news. As of today, Zoolz is offering a terabyte of secure cloud storage for life at 10 bucks less off an already massive discount. Right now you can get a lifetime of Zoolz for just $29 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Earlier this week, Apple debuted its pricey $200-$300 Designed by Apple in California coffee table book — and, boy, has it already garnered a ton of publicity. Not all of it favorable.

In a fake ad which debuted on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Apple book is ridiculed for, well, basically being an insanely expensive book.

Check it out below.

Apple has hired a former Wall Street Journal correspondent from China to assume the post of PR Director for its Shanghai office.

Given that Apple shows such a mastery of the press, it’s no surprise to hear that it’s used to picking the cream of the tech-reporting media crop to work in its PR roster. Wei Gu falls into this category — even if her new role comes at a challenging time for Apple in China.

Apple has finally responded to the “touch disease” issue plaguing older iPhone 6 Plus units. The company this week launched a new repair program that gives users the option to get their handset fixed for a flat fee of $149.

Increasingly, some Apple fans think Jony Ive has lost it.

He’s killing ports and headphone jacks left and right. The latest MacBooks value form over function. He’s designing gold watches for the 1 percent.

And now his glossy new photo book, Designed by Apple in California, looks like a $300, linen-bound ego trip.

The indie rock band Airplane Mode does indeed get its name from the feature on an iPhone that shuts off wireless transmission.

The name and the resumes of three of the band’s musicians — well-established iOS designers — have led more than a few people to assume they have found a source of cute parody music about Apple culture.

In fact, you won’t find any iPhones, iMacs or odes to Steve Jobs in the lyrics of the tight, hard-charging synth-driven music. However, the band’s roots in Apple culture permeate everything else, from its use of technology and understanding of social engagement to its start-up energy.

And there is one other way: Airplane Mode is making money.

The new MacBook Pro finally lands in stores this week, and an awesome new Apple ad celebrates the arrival.

In the new spot, called “Bulbs,” Apple links the invention of fire, the wheel, plow and more to the creation of the Touch Bar, the thin OLED strip that completely changes how you interact with your Mac.

A secret team of Apple employees are working on a project that will turn iPhone cameras everywhere into a portal for augmented reality.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he’s bullish on the future of AR, and according to a new report the company is working on a total game changer.

Cord cutters rejoice — Sony revealed today that it is bringing its popular streaming service, PlayStation Vue, to Apple TV.

Apple will reportedly slash its 30 percent App Store fee in half for video services that support its upcoming TV app, according to a new report. The incentive should persuade more providers to support the app, which is set to be released next month.

This post is brought to you by Withings, maker of the Body Cardio smart scale.

One of the great promises of the mobile and wearables revolution was that we’d all get unprecedented insights into our personal health. Apple even built a Health app into its mobile operating system. And what icon did Apple choose for its trailblazing Health app? An unmistakable red heart.

Now a heart-healthy smart scale can capture critical data about your cardiovascular health that can provide a fresh perspective on your wellness regimen.

The dual-lens camera on the iPhone 7 Plus is set to get a big stabilization upgrade next year.

While Apple only added optical image stabilization to the wide-angle lens on the camera this year, a new report claims that Apple plans to bring the feature to the telephoto lens in 2017.

Black Friday is still a week away, but that doesn’t mean the savings are: Best Buy is already offering its Black Friday price on a MacBook Air. That, plus iPad keyboards, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro are in this week’s best Apple deals.

The iPhone may soon be made in the USA.

Donald Trump claimed during his campaign that he would force Apple to move production of its products back to America. According to a new report, Apple has already started looking into whether that would be possible.

Some rumors have warned that we might have to wait until the new year for AirPods to arrive, but a number of retailers expect them to arrive much sooner. According to one, they’ll start shipping before the end of the month.