Commentary on the encryption battle between Apple and the U.S. government might have received its strangest metaphor yet.

Stewart Baker, who used to serve as a counsel for the National Security Agency, appeared on a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin this week. During the discussion, he said that Apple’s current, outspoken position in favor of privacy is a recent development and compared it to the sort of PR-driven whitewashing that Hollywood studios have used to promote actresses as “innocent” and “pure.”

“Who remembers Tim Cook before he was a virgin?” Baker said, paraphrasing composer Oscar Levant’s barb at ’60s everygirl Doris Day.

It got a little less polite from there.

Launch Center Pro has solved many workflow problems for me over the years. Most recently it’s been an immense time-saver when it comes to accessing Google Drive files I need often. While the Google Drive app itself is decent enough, it only acts as a hub to Google’s other apps, which is somewhat annoying.

That’s why I started using Launch Center Pro to speed up the process. Here’s how you can, too.

This post is brought to you by SmartDraw Software.

Plenty of jobs nowadays involve creating visual aids for clients, bosses and co-workers, from project flowcharts and building schematics to medical diagrams, you name it. But getting a BA typically doesn’t teach digital draftsmanship, which is why apps that make it easy to create compelling, clear graphics and illustrations have become so popular.

SmartDraw is an intuitive, powerful and fun app that’s become a contender against the big legacy software brands. More than half of the Fortune 500 and over 250,000 public and private enterprises of all sizes use SmartDraw now. But until today, SmartDraw has been available only on Windows machines. That changes with the release of SmartDraw Cloud, which lets Mac users get in on the action.

Before Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computers, he was just a super-nerdy kid who loved to operate HAM radios. In a new video interview detailing the most formative moments in his totally geeky life, Woz explains how he went from tinkering with electronics to teaching himself binary by 5th grade, and then made a machine that played tic-tac-toe in 6th grade.

Woz eventually got so good with machines that he could design a mini-computer in two days. Those skills led to his creation of the Apple II computer, which put his and Steve Jobs’ fledgling company on the map.

Watch as Woz recounts his childhood obsession with computers, during the humble beginnings of Silicon Valley, below:

Your Android apps are going to get an iOS-style makeover soon, thanks to new design guidelines from Google.

Mostly concerned with the bottom of Android apps, Google is looking to have its developers place a bar across the bottom of their apps that will let users navigate between different sections of the app, just like iOS currently does.

Google Inbox’s awesome Smart Reply feature, which was launched on mobile back in November, is now available on the web.

The feature is already being used for 10 percent of all replies on Android and iOS — and it’s just as good in your browser.

As a teenager in the 80s, I love a good boombox. The bigger, the better, like Radio Raheem’s.

That’s why I was keen to check out Nyne’s new Bluetooth Boombox, called — what else — the Rock. It’s the biggest Bluetooth speaker I’ve ever seen, promising to put out 65 watts of raw music power.

But does it rock — or not?

Apple is not quite done tinkering with OS X 10.11.4 before its public release.

The company seeded the seventh beta of OS X 10.11.4 to developers this morning, a little over a week after Apple released the last beta for the desktop operating system.

The iPhone 7 may come with a Smart Connector if photos of what appears to be an early iPhone 7 Plus unit can be believed.

Photos of the alleged iPhone 7, leaked by a Chinese website, show Apple integrating a dual-lens camera into the design of the rear case. If the case is accurate, it looks like Apple won’t be ditching its protruding camera lens this year.

If you’re a movie fan, you may well have visited the website Letterboxd at some point — giving you a fun way of tracking your movie-watching, built around a neat social network premise.

Today Letterboxd finally got around to launching its official mobile app, bringing the service to iPhones everywhere. Trust us, if you’re a cinema lover, this is a “must download!”

Samsung is already developing a Galaxy S7 mini that will go head-to-head with Apple’s upcoming iPhone SE, according to a new report — and it won’t be a disappointing version of its latest flagship like previous iterations of the Galaxy S mini series have been.

Instead, the new device is expected to pack exactly the same processor — and exactly the same punch — as its bigger brother.

Macs come out of the box with a ton of apps and functionality, but that’s just the beginning of what you can get it to do for your productivity. From hard drive maintenance to running Windows apps and doing deeper searches than Spotlight allows, this bundle of 11 top-rated apps has something useful for everybody. For a short time, you can get the whole thing for $24.99.

Here’s some of what’s included:

WhatsApp is a messaging app popular with people all over the globe, but you probably don’t want it to turn into a tracking app for your stalker.

Plus, it probably has private information in it that you’d rather not have other people know about, right?

Here’s how to lock it all down so you can keep creepers off your WhatsApp profile.

If you’re a fan of EDM (that’s “electronic dance music” for the older Cult of Mac readers out there!), Apple Music is about to become your best option for streaming music — courtesy of a new deal Apple has signed that will let it bring thousands of rare DJ mash-ups, remixes, and mixtapes to its subscription music service.

At $17k, the Apple Watch Edition is currently the most expensive product Apple sells.

But according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, that record is likely to be obliterated when the Apple Car finally ships — since his projected price tag of “around $75,000” would put it at around four-and-a-half times the cost of Apple’s high-end wearable. Or the equivalent of 100 brand new iPhones 6s handsets.

Apple will join multinationals Google, McDonald’s and IKEA in defending its European tax deals against E.U. lawmakers this Wednesday.

The hearing concerns whether or not giants like Apple are receiving illegally favorable tax deals, which give them an unfair advantage over local businesses.

Foxconn, a.k.a. one of Apple’s biggest suppliers, is fighting to piece back together its crumbling deal to take over Japanese electronics firm Sharp — and both sides may well sign a deal this week.

Beats 1 just announced its biggest dance music collaborator yet, in the form of massively-popular, 35-year-old Canadian house music producer Joel Thomas Zimmerman, a.k.a. Deadmau5.

If you’re not feeling great, it may not hurt to take a quick look at your Apple Watch. In fact, it saved one builder’s life.

62-year-old Dennis Anselmo was working last August when he suddenly “felt all over the place.” While taking a break, he checked his heart rate on his recently purchased wearable and got some pretty alarming news.

The first images of what could be the iPhone 7’s dual-lens camera leaked online today, giving fans a possible sneak peek at the future of iPhotography.

Apple is rumored to be including a dual-lens camera sensor on at least the iPhone 7 Plus. If the leaked sensor shown below is the real deal, it appears that one lens will be wider than the other to provide optical zooming.

Check it out:

It seems like iOS 9.3 has been in beta for years now, but Apple isn’t quite done fine-tuning its biggest software update of the year.

Apple released iOS 9.3 beta 7 to developers this afternoon, exactly a week after the last version was seeded to devs and public testers. iOS 9.3 adds new features such as Night Shift mode, multiple Apple Watch pairings on one iPhone, improved Apple News and Apple Music apps, and some great education features for iPad.

Developers can grab the new beta directly from the Apple Developer Center portal or via an over-the-air update if you have the previous beta installed.

Here’s a roundup of the new features to expect:

The guy that warned George Bush about an imminent al-Qaida attack before 9/11 is taking Apple’s side in the company’s fight against the FBI over whether it can be compelled to break into the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone.

Richard Clarke, who served as the senior counterterrorism official in the US for nine years, sat down for an interview this morning regarding encryption and the FBI’s efforts to hack the iPhone. Despite FBI Director James Comey’s insistence that the FBI has tried everything, Clarke says all it would take to hack the device is a call to Fort Meade.

If you’ve been itching to design the next big app in your spare time, Adobe’s just made it easier with a free trial of its user interface (UI) design tool, Experience Design (XD) CC for Mac.

Previously known as Project Comet, Adobe XD is a full-fledged design tool that lets you prototype mobile or web apps fast, and you can download a free preview right now.

You’re probably used to using your EarPods to listen to music or make hands-free phone calls, but we’ve recently discovered another cool trick they can do. If you have a headphone-compatible Xbox One controller, you can also use Apple’s standard earbuds to pump your game and chat audio directly into your head.

You’ll have to adjust a setting or two first, though. And that’s only fair considering you’re asking Apple and Microsoft products to work together. Here’s what you need to do.

Charlie Rose has become Apple’s go-to guy when it comes to mainstream media interviews, and he recently scored an exclusive conversation with none other than Apple’s design god, Jony Ive.

In a leisurely chat lasting more than half an hour, Rose asks about Ive’s relationship with Steve Jobs, the qualities Apple looks for in a would-be designer, the reason Ive doesn’t fear Apple losing its edge, and much, much more.

Check it out below.