The internet is a scary place where protecting your data and privacy can be a lifelong endeavor. It’s an endeavor made a lot easier by getting a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, and right now we’ve got a bundle of hundreds of dollars worth of online security and spam protection from ProXPN, that can all be yours for whatever you’re willing to pay. A part of all proceeds go to the good work of Save the Children, so you can add the good feeling of helping the needy to your newfound sense of online security.

iPhone ranks as the no. 1 consumer tech gadget on Google’s newly-released “Year of Search” list, beating Samsung’s Galaxy S6 as the smartphone we were, apparently, all looking for this year.

Apple and IBM today announced that they have hit their partnership goal of creating more than 100 IBM MobileFirst iOS enterprise apps together. These so far cover 14 different industries and 65 individual professions — ranging from wealth advisors to flight attendants, first responders, nurses and retail buyers.

And the two companies aren’t finished yet!

Australian banks including Westpac, ANZ and Macquarie have announced that they will soon accept contactless payments made via Android Pay — although would-be Apple Pay customers are still being left out in the cold.

The reason? Banks still aren’t happy with Apple’s terms for its mobile payments solution, and showing that they are willing to accept Android Pay is a way of forcing a better deal with Apple.

Apple is allegedly using its secretive new lab facilities in Taiwan to develop microLED displays which are thinner and more energy-efficient than the displays currently used in the company’s products, a new report states.

Two years after it acquired Topsy, a San Francisco-based firm offering Twitter analytics to companies, Apple has officially shut down the service.

“We’ve searched our last tweet,” Topsy has noted on its official Twitter account. Topsy’s website redirects to an Apple support page detailing how users can use search features on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Poor Jeb Bush. He can’t even discuss the Apple Watch and its shortcomings without coming off as overly exasperated.

“It’s not as intuitive as the other Apple products,” he said in a recent video interview with Business Insider. “The battery gives out too quick,” he continued, exhibiting the kind of head-bobbing body language he usually reserves for queries about his flailing presidential bid or Donald Trump’s oversimplified answers to complex questions.

Pac-Man is a touchstone of gamer nostalgia, and Hipster Whale (the dynamic duo behind runaway hit Crossy Road) has created one of the best spin-offs yet: Pac-Man 256.

Better yet, it looks like the free-to-play endless runner cum dot muncher is now available on your high-def living room screen via the Apple TV itself.

Whether you play it fast or slow, Quadrantic might become your new puzzling obsession.

The newly released game, which is available for a mere $0.99, takes the time-honored puzzle-game tradition of arranging things in groups of three and throws in some strategy and a surprisingly intense timed mode just to keep things interesting.

But the concept is simple, and once you start playing it, it’s really hard to put down.

After some controversies and embarrassing missteps, social-media giant Facebook is introducing tools to let its users go by the names they most identify with.

The tools it’s rolling out today will change up both how account owners can both report on and respond to real-name challenges.

Notification Center on OS X seems like a great idea, most of the time, until you get a ton of notifications about things you really don’t care about all at once. You’ve got to click all the little “close” boxes, or click and drag the Notification banners to the right. It can be downright disconcerting.

You can turn on Do Not Disturb for 24 hours, after which it’ll default back to “Disturb.” You can hack your way in and turn off the feature altogether, but then you wouldn’t be able to see any Notifications, ever.

If you want the best of both worlds–Notifications that you can open the Center to see but that don’t pop onto your screen all the time–check out this cool tip.

Your smart life is about to get even smarter with a new set of software development tools that will let coders include world-class speech recognition and natural language processing — the same stuff that powers Siri, Apple’s personal digital assistant — to thermostats, refrigerators, apps and, yes, even robots.

The folks at Nuance have created a new system, currently in beta, to allow any company to include code with language commands that are specific to their hardware or apps. It’s called Nuance Mix, and anyone can sign in and create their own speech-recognition code to work with their apps or connected devices.

“Any developer, big or small, can come in and define a custom set of use cases,” Nuance’s Kenn Harper told Cult of Mac during a demo of the SDK. “You’re going to start talking to everything at home and work — speech is about to get more ubiquitous.”

You no longer have to rely on third-party apps to track your fitness on a Pebble watch. Pebble is today rolling out a new update that adds Pebble Health, a new fitness and sleep tracking feature that wants to help you become fitter and healthier.

I would love a smart wallet that doubles my money. Tuck in a five spot and boom! Alexander Hamilton.

That would be a magic wallet. A good smart wallet, though, can help protect you from losing your money.

At least, that is the idea behind the ultra-thin Ekster Smart Wallet, which provides RFID blocking to keep credit cards secure and has a GPS tracking device that communicates with a smartphone app when the wallet is out of range or even lost.

With his ability to fire people up and get them motivated, Steve Jobs has been likened to a great football coach. And now to bring things full circle, a real football coach (or “soccer” to you American readers!) is using Jobs’ creation, the iPad, to help coach his players.

The coach in question is Gary Neville, who a new report claims has distributed iPads to the Valencia football team to teach them strategies on the pitch, while covering up for his lack of fluency in Spanish.

Many offices have become a den of ninjas, hiring those who are nimble and efficient in things like coding, spreadsheets, graphic design, analytics, you name it. Staying sharp along a broad range of skills is key to staying marketable, and with more than 100 lessons that’s what the eduCBA bundle is all about. It’s just in time for your new year’s resolution to up your game at the office — now you’ll be ready the time comes to choose your weapon, er, workstation. The eduCBA bundle normally goes for over $2,000, but right now you can get access for just $39.

Hit-and-miss Apple analyst Gene Munster has admitted he couldn’t have been more wrong about the likely customer uptake of Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, the $32+ per month scheme designed to get new iPhones into the hands of people happy to pay a monthly fee to Apple.

Microsoft has given its Outlook iOS app an overhaul — offering iPhone 6s owners the chance to use 3D Touch to create new emails and events, or access the calendar directly.

Apple has bought a former chip fabrication plant in North San Jose — shelling out $18.2 million for a 70,000 square-foot facility next door to Samsung Semiconductor’s new campus in the area.

Tesla CEO and all-around real-life Iron Man Elon Musk has been on quite the roll, making various verbal swipes at Apple as of late — and a new interview he gave to GQ doesn’t break the mold.

Describing Steve Jobs as “kind of a jerk,” and saying, “It’s not that I care about currying favor with Apple” before backing off his answers, the parts of Musk’s interview concerning Cupertino read like a textbook case in passive-aggressive behavior.

Whatever happened to the guy who thought an Apple Car was a “great idea?”

Apple has opened a secret production lab in northern Taiwan, developing screens for future iOS devices, a new report claims.

The company has reportedly hired talent from display makers AU Optronics and Qualcomm — the latter company having previously operated the building. By running its own display manufacturing facility, Apple hopes to reduce its reliance on third party suppliers such as Samsung, LG Display, Sharp, and Japan Display.

Androgynous English rockers Placebo just claimed the honor of landing the first “artist” app on the new Apple TV. The free Placebo app is designed to deliver an “immersive” experience for fans while they remain ensconced on their couches.

Ultimately the app, which was released Monday, lets you watch music videos, live video of the band and “exclusive content” from the Placebo archives, all in your very own home.

One of the cooler features of having a pocket computer like the iPhone is being able to send a friend your location via Messages. Just a couple of taps on the iPhone and you can let anyone know where you’re at. It’s easy and super useful when you need to get a group together at a specific location.

The Apple Watch has a similar feature, which lets you do the very same thing without ever having to pull your iPhone out of your pocket.

Here’s how.

While you’re writing that thank you note to the Santa who bought you the quadcopter you’ve always wanted, you will also want to take a moment to register your aircraft with the FAA.

The registration rule was signed into law last month by the Federal Aviation Administration and any drone weighing between .55 pounds and 50 pounds must be registered starting Dec. 21.

Samsung agreed to finally pay Apple $548 million for the patent infringement case the iPhone-maker won way back in 2012, but it appears Samsung has had a change of heart and is now taking the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The company filed a 219-page appeal to the Supreme Court today, claiming that the way U.S. courts handle patent lawsuits isn’t fair because juries aren’t given enough information on how to understand the patents. Samsung is also disputing the way patent damages are calculated, noting that if multiple firms sue a company for design patent issues, the company could have to pay multiple times the profit they actually made.