As a long-time player of console rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, I’ve had several people’s share of silly, plastic instruments laying around my house. And while they’ve all looked varying levels of authentic, none of them actually taught me anything about how to play the guitar other than the base concepts of “one hand pushes down here while the other one goes up and/or down.”

But the Jamstick+ aims to change that by being an odd-looking, toy-like instrument that actually has lessons (via apps) to show you the basics and help you learn strumming, plucking and finger assignment. It even has real-feeling strings and frets to help you translate your lessons into the real thing.

Other than those individual pieces, however, you might feel ridiculous holding it.

It’s time to dust off that virtual reality headset you bought for your iPhone. Thanks to a new YouTube update that’s rolling out now, it’s finally possible to watch any video in glorious VR.

Steve Jobs left a lasting impression on Hungarian software developer Gabor Bojar when the two met in 1984.

Today that impression stands more than 7-feet tall, in jeans and mock-neck shirt, of course, cast in bronze outside of Bojar’s firm in Budapest.

Google isn’t waiting until its I/O conference next week to put its latest app in your hands. The company today launched Spaces for Android, iOS, and the web, making it easy to share just about anything with your favorite groups of friends.

Some of the world’s biggest investors have ditched their Apple shares lately, but where others see doom and gloom Warren Buffett sees an opportunity to make some serious money. 

Warren Buffet’s legendary investment firm Berkshire Hathaway has taken a large position in Apple stock, scooping up 9.81 million shares, worth about $1.07 billion.

The MacBook Air is delightfully lean, but it’s less than pleasing when its drive space runs thin. It’s a costly hassle to upgrade the internal drive, which makes TarDisk’s 64 gig SD drive expansion a very attractive alternative. It plugs right into the SD slot on the side of your laptop and stays out of the way, for an easy expansion that you can get right now for just $99.99.

Notes on iOS is an extremely useful app, and it got more useful with the addition of password protection in iOS 9.3. Keeping bank codes, addresses, passwords and more has never been more secure from outside threats. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe from you.

If you tend to tidy up apps and notes in a rush — as I do — you may end up deleting something you need or want. And if you haven’t finished with that note yet, that becomes a big problem. But it’s one that’s easy to fix.

In this week’s Quick Tips video, I’m going to show you how to recover deleted notes and restore all those personal details you’ve jotted down to their rightful place.

Check the video out below.

Google is finally stepping up its bid to kill Flash content. Later this year, its Chrome browser will default to HTML5 wherever possible, using Flash only as a last resort.

The move should make Chrome speedier and more stable — and better on battery life when used on a MacBook.

I was an enormous fan of the puzzle game Monument Valley, and it appears that I was far from the only one.

That’s based on the look of new iOS puzzler Mekorama, which adopts a similarly surreal aesthetic for a game that looks set to dazzle, delight and downright befuddle gamers mobile gamers everywhere.

Check out the trailer — and download link — below.

The iPhone 7 is still four months away from debuting, but a new picture “leaked” online appears to give us another early glimpse of the next-gen handset — suggesting once again that this might not be a significant redesign from the current iPhone 6s.

Check it out below.

Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison gave the commencement speech at the University of Southern California late last week, and among other things he talked about a plan with his best friend, Steve Jobs, concerning a mid-1990s bid to stage a takeover of Apple.

And how Steve talked him out of it.

Tim Cook is in China again, and he marked the occasion by paying a visit to an Apple Store in Beijing on Monday — in the company of Liu Qing, a.k.a. the president of Didi Chuxing, the Chinese Uber rival Apple just invested a staggering $1 billion in.

With WWDC (and, presumably, iOS 10’s debut) weeks away, Apple has revealed that 84 percent of possible users are now upgraded to iOS 9, currently the latest version of its mobile OS.

For those keeping track at home, not only is that an extra 4 percent increase from the numbers announced at Apple’s iPhone SE launch event in March, but it also puts Android’s fragmented adoption figures to shame.

In the same week that Apple cut App Store approval wait times to just one day, here are the apps Cult of Mac was focused on. If you’re looking to find out what was rocking the App Store over the past seven days, check out our picks below.

Wow, this week we brought in a truly great haul of fresh deals. It’s all about variety — lenses to take even better photos with your iPhone, a combination smartwatch/fitness tracker that’s waterproof, a kit of custom screwdrivers for repairing electronics, and courses in product management. There’s something here for everybody, and all at massively reduced prices.

Take a look:

This week, on The CultCast: Apple aims to end music downloads; you can now live stream your aerial drone flights to iDevices worldwide; staggering facts about who’s making money in the app store; creators of Siri demo an even smarter AI; the ridiculous resale value of old Apple tech; and we reveal our Best List of the gadgets we’re currently coveting.

Our thanks to Freshbooks for supporting this episode. FreshBooks is the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. Get started now with a 30-day free trial.

Here we go again, sharing our favorites from the week’s deals on gadgets and lessons. This round we’ve got a massive expansion for iOS storage, a powerful PDF flipbook maker, and comprehensive lessons in coding and Microsoft Office.

Take a look:

But is it art? There’s a whole new way of looking at these works, in the form Steve P Jobs himself–or at least his likeness.

Learn all about these odd yet interesting portraits of the late Apple co-founder, including tattoos, technology-art, and the bubble wrap portrait you see above, as you browse this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.

Inside this deliciously digital magazine-style app, you’ll find out more about possibilities for the new Apple Watch OS, how to retrain Siri to make better sense of your verbalizations, inside the weird world of iPod collectors, and all the reviews and how-tos you need to stay up to date on tech through an Apple lens.

Here are this week’s top stories.

iTunes music downloads still rake in millions of dollars every quarter for Apple, but they’re falling fast.

According to sources who claim to be actively working with the company, it is already mulling the idea of chopping music sales completely in as little as two years, and instead placing an even greater focus on Apple Music.

Is it a good idea for Apple to boot such a popular service in the same way it massacred floppy discs and FireWire, forcing users to stream all their music? Or should it keep iTunes alive until downloads die out naturally?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over the future of the world’s most popular music store.

If you’re an iPhone user who loves Google, or you just like to keep up with the competition, then you’ll be pleased to know there’s now an official iPhone app for next week’s Google I/O conference.

You can use it to keep track of events, navigate your way around if you’re going to be there, and to watch the keynote and sessions live if you’ve been following from home.

A strange bug in Twitter’s official iOS app is allowing verified users to give other people blue ticks. The phenomenon occurs with a simple retweet, but unfortunately for those who aren’t official VIPs, the status is short-lived.

Apple Wallet is already home to your credit cards and boarding passes, and soon it could hold your driver’s license, too.

The United Kingdom’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has revealed that it is prototyping digital licenses that live on your iPhone.

Best List: Aluminum Apple Watch charging station by Satechi

I’ve got an Apple Watch problem. I need to keep it charged up, but it continually gets lost in the clutter on my dresser.

You might tell me to just clean up the top of my bedroom furniture, but I like that my new solution allows me to elevate my Apple Watch above the mess. The Satechi aluminum charging stand for Apple Watch keeps my wrist computer charged up and ready to go without getting lost in the cruft of my bureau’s disarray.

Apple fans felt a deep sense of mourning in 2011 when Apple founder Steve Jobs succumbed to cancer. With the fifth anniversary of his passing approaching, Cult of Mac looks at the artistic tributes that followed.

Artist Jason Mercier is yet another creative person to use Apple devices — and maybe the only one to literally break them into pieces for his work.

Mercier has made a name for himself around the San Francisco Bay Area by creating mosaics with trash befitting his celebrity subjects. So when his cousin commissioned him to do a portrait of the late Apple founder, Mercier knew he had to construct it with the very products and components Jobs had a hand in creating.

We get it, you like to have a good time. So do we, but we also want to make sure you get home in one piece (we’re protective like that). That’s why we’ve found three different ways for you to check your BAC before you leave the bar to get into you car. One is self-contained and two work with your phone, but each is a great tool for keeping you and your friends from turning a night of fun into a nightmare.