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Overhauled MacBook Pros are coming your way, this week on The CultCast

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New Apple hardware in March on The CultCast
New Apple hardware in March? Reports say yes, indeed.
Image: Cult of Mac

This week on The CultCast: New MacBook Pros, incoming! We have even more details to share on the “significant” updates coming soon to Apple’s MacBook Pro line. Plus: iPhone 7 may get a Quad HD display and pressure-sensitive home button; Apple’s plans for a “killer” new health device; and we review our favorite new hoverboards and smart scales on an all-new Under Review.

Our thanks to Casper for supporting this episode. Casper’s American-made mattresses have just the right amount of memory foam and latex, and people everywhere love them. Learn why and save $50 off your order at casper.com/cultcast.

Get a premium lens kit for your iPhone, and more [Week’s Best Deals]

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Turn your iPhone into a remote for basically any WiFi or IR enabled device in your home.
Turn your iPhone into a remote for basically any WiFi or IR enabled device in your home.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

August is humming along and it’s already time again to take a look at the best deals of the last week. This round, we’ve got an app that turns your iphone into a universal remote, a duo of apps for protecting your online identity, a set of premium glass lenses for your iPhone, and a mobile charger that’ll also help you find your car. Intrigued? Read on:

Which calorie-tracking app should you count on?

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Diet Apps - Social
A 10-mile run or a tasty bun — track your calories in and out.
Table: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Calorie-tracking apps like MyFitnessPal and MyNetDiary are no fun to use. Logging all your meals is a tedious chore, and unlike fitness apps that praise you for your hard work, diet apps tend to just tell you off for eating too much.

But when you are trying to lose or gain weight, these apps provide indispensable insights into where your calories are coming from and how you can optimize your diet to get the best results. So I’ve compared the leading calorie trackers to find out which one you should count on.

Apple may be planning huge Seattle expansion

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Apple adds 5 new vice presidents to its executive lineup
Apple wants to be the next Silicon Valley giant to tap into Seattle.
Photo: Lyle Kahney/Cult of Mac

Amazon and Microsoft could get some big competition in their own backyard from Apple soon, based on a new real estate rumor that claims the Silicon Valley titan is eyeing a huge office expansion in Seattle.

Details on exactly where Apple is planning to plant its flag in Seattle aren’t clear yet, but the company’s new offices will reportedly be “huge” with several hundred thousand square feet of space.

Get 98 percent off a lifetime of team file sharing with Droplr [Deals]

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Lifetime License

Keeping a digital collaboration humming can get expensive, especially as your team gets bigger and bigger. Making sure everybody has access to the same projects and files often takes a pricey subscription to a cloud platform like Dropbox. But right now a powerful solution is going for a huge discount of 98 percent — you can get a lifetime of Droplr for just $21.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple finally gets go ahead for Irish data center

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Irishcenter
Apple's proposed data center as it will eventually appear.
Photo: Apple

After a period of delays and an official hearing with Irish regulatory body An Bord Pleanála, Apple has finally been given permission to move ahead with its 500-acre data center site near the west coast of Ireland.

Apple’s case was heard back in May this year, but it took until recently for inspector Stephen Kay to submit his recommendations to the Irish advisory board about the $960 million project.

Darth Vader is back in new Rogue One trailer

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"The Force is strong with this one."
Photo: LucasFilms

Disney dropped a brand new trailer for the upcoming movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story during the Olympics tonight, giving fans of the Force their first glimpse at Darth Vader’s return to the big screen.

The action-packed trailer is full of new bad guys, droids, and rebels, some of which have teamed up to steal plans from the Empire right before it begins testing the dreaded Death Star. James Earl Jones is returning to provide the voice of the Chosen One who is probably not going to be happy by the end of the film that’s set before the events of A New Hope

Behold:

Cloud Raiders comes to Mac, and its high-flying action never looked better

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Cloud Raiders for Mac
Cloud Raiders, a visually stunning and endlessly addictive base-building strategy game, is now available for Mac.
Image: Game Insight

This post is brought to you by Game Insight.

If you’re a fan of base-building strategy games, there’s a good chance you’ve been playing Cloud Raiders on your mobile phones and tablets in the last few years — but you might not know that Cloud Raiders recently made the jump to the Mac App Store. We’ve been playing it on Mac, and as a geeky crew of gamers, we’re impressed.

Itching to get the iPhone 7? Sell your old iPhone to us first!

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Even if it's busted, we'll give you the best price for your old iPhone.
Even if it's busted, we'll give you the best price for your old iPhone.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Boy, iPhones sure do grow up fast. There’s a brand new model out almost every six months, while the one in your pocket gets sluggish and senile.

If you’re looking to upgrade and aren’t sure what to do with your hobbled old phone, sell your iPhone to us first! Most of the time, Cult of Mac’s Apple gear buyback program can get you more money for your outdated, used or even broken devices than Gazelle, Walmart, Best Buy, and Apple themselves.

Music Man Valentine is the only electric guitar you’ll need [Reviews]

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guitar in case
The Valentine is so versatile and addictive you'll want to take it everywhere.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

When this Valentine guitar arrived, I took a look at it, puffed out a quiet “Hmmph,” and carried on working. Even though I’d seen photos, I was still underwhelmed by the instrument’s appearance: pale, natural wood; a tortoise shell pickguard; and the kind of doughy, conservative shape that could make even an audience of meth-fueled Juggalos fall asleep.

Then I picked it up, and fell in love.

Mac design legend helps teen build ultimate Apple museum

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cult 2.0
Former Apple design chief Jerry Manock is helping Alex Jason turn his extensive Apple computer collection into the Maine Technology Musuem.
Photo: Bill Jason

Cult of Mac 2.0 bug Apple famously wants no part in a museum dedicated to its revolutionary products. However, one key contributor to Apple’s early years feels differently — and is helping a Maine teenager elevate his basement computer collection into a thriving technology museum.

Jerry Manock, Apple’s first design guru, will serve on the board of directors for the future Maine Technology Museum, which will house the collection of 15-year-old Alex Jason, who has established what many serious collectors say is one of the best Apple collections anywhere.

Our best look yet at iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

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iPhone-7-Plus-and-iPhone-7
Note the dual-lens on the iPhone 7 Plus.
Photo: Letemsvetemapplem

With the iPhone 7 just weeks away, new high-resolution pictures have popped up online revealing what appear to be the finished handsets as they’ll appear on launch day.

In terms of what we can expect from Apple’s new handset, these photos don’t reveal anything new, but instead apparently reconfirm reports like the dual-lens camera on the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus and the availability of a range of colors.

With this bundle of photo apps, who needs Photoshop? [Deals]

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This bundle of powerful photo editing apps will let you make every photo a keeper.
This bundle of powerful photo editing apps will let you make every photo a keeper.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Everyone’s taking photos these days thanks to smartphones, but unless you’re a professional photo editor you don’t need an expensive subscription to Photoshop to make your images look their best. With this bundle of photo editing apps for Mac — from noise reduction and artificial light source simulators to photo stitching, mosaic makers, image organizers and more — you’ll have everything you need to make every image a keeper. And right now you can get the whole shebang for just $29.99 at Cult of Mac Deals. Here’s what’s included:

Security firm offers $500,000 to anyone who can find iOS security flaws

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Apple takes a hacksaw to estimated trade-in values for its devices
There's money in discovering iOS flaws, it seems!
Photo: Pictures of Money/Flickr CC

Tech security company Exodus Intelligence is offering $500,000 to anyone who can discover and share with them critical holes which exist in iOS 9.3 and above — as well as smaller (but still significant) sums to anyone finding bugs in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Adobe Flash.

Apple Car may not be an articulated tank after all

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Maintenance personnel from the 5055th Range Squadron drive an M-973 small unit support vehicle through the snow.
Tank different.
Photo: Wikipedia CC

You can breath a sigh of relief: Apple’s forthcoming Project Titan apparently isn’t going to be an articulated tank, after all!

As it turns out, the patent which circulated yesterday — showing how Apple had acquired a patent for allowing an articulated vehicle to survive gunfire or harsh weather situations — should never have been signed over to Cupertino in the first place.

Apple campus burglary leads to manhunt in San Jose

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Thieves smashed a window to break into this Apple building.
Thieves smashed a window to break into this Apple building.
Photo: Matt Keller/Twitter

Three men broke into an Apple campus building in Cupertino this morning, prompting Silicon Valley law enforcement to conduct a huge manhunt for the burglars.

Sheriff’s deputies and police officers went door to door through the Cambrian Park neighborhood of San Jose in an effort to find the suspects, who were spotted by Apple security breaking a glass door of the building in the early morning hours.