Having a backup drive is key to anyone with a laptop, but lugging around an extra hard drive can take the convenience out of portable computing. Plugging into the computer adds steps to the process of getting started with work, but one Macbook slot in particular — the SD card port — can be used to immediately expand its storage by 512 gigs. The way to do it is with a HyperDrive MacBook Storage Expander, and you can get one right now for $19.95.

Apple launched its iBeacons to great fanfare back in 2013, but since then… well, they haven’t exactly taken the retail world by storm.

An interesting new article by Bloomberg digs into some of the facts and figures about Apple’s beacon technology, citing reports claiming that only 3 percent of retailers currently use beacons, and just 16 percent have plans to use them in the future.

The old Apple TV used a 6 x 7 grid of letters to let you enter text. It wasn’t QWERTY, but it was efficient, requiring a minimum of presses to enter your text.

Consequently, many people upgrading to the new Apple TV have found the new onscreen keyboard annoying. It’s a horizontal two-line strip that takes a lot more time to hunt and peck your way through.

If you love the old Apple TV onscreen keyboard, though, good news! It’s easy to bring back. Here’s how.

A nifty iPhone case-turned-VR headset has passed its $75,000 Kickstarter funding goal in just one week — promising users a snap-on virtual reality solution for their Apple handset for the low price of just $55 for early backers.

And, despite the goal having been hit, there’s still time if you want to hop on this Kickstarter bandwagon!

If you just got a new iPad or iPhone and are wondering what to do with your old one, you should think about trading it in.

We recently launched a gadget buyback program that promises to pay more for used and broken Apple devices than Gazelle, Walmart and even Apple itself.

Begun, the iOS 9 ad blockers legal wars has.

Apple might have once owned the tablet market, but Microsoft is making rapid advances in sales — and may even be approaching iPad numbers by 2019, according to a new “Tablet Operating System Forecast” report by Strategy Analytics.

Summarizing the first nine months of 2015, and extrapolating the trends to try and predict the next few years, the report reveals how sales of Windows tablets are up 58 percent compared to 2014, and are on track to sell 22 million this year. That’s 10 percent of the market, compared to Apple’s 22 percent.

Sorting through Black Friday ads can be overwhelming, so our editors have pared down the thousands of offers into a single list of only the deals that are truly great. From TVs to tablets, and everything in between, here are the things you need to be on the lookout this week.

Having previously said that he expected to receive the European Commission’s verdict on Apple’s Irish tax arrangements by Christmas, Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan now claims that an announcement is likely to be delayed util next year.

The delay in the long-running investigation is the result of regulators asking for additional information from the Irish government, which will take several weeks to gather.

If any more proof was needed that Apple TV is no longer being considered a “hobby,” check out the massive new billboard ad campaign that has been rolling out for the new fourth-generation Apple TV refresh.

Cleverly playing on a color bars motif which references both the old school Apple logo (with colors fastidiously picked out by Steve Jobs, to boot!) and a television test pattern, the billboards can be seen in both landscape and portrait orientation around the U.S.

Tim Cook has described his desire to bring Apple Pay to China as “top of the list” in terms of priorities — and now it seems like he may finally be on the verge of hitting his goal.

According to a new report, it is hoped that Apple Pay will launch in China by early February, after Apple struck deals with China’s four biggest state-run banks.

In the professional sphere, experience with project management is one of the most valuable skills you can have. Starting is harder than just deciding you’ve got what it takes to get things done — you’ll have to get certification, which is exactly what this pair of lessons offers. It’s a one-two punch of project management education and validation at a 98% discount, just $49 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple has taken a huge stand with the U.S. government, claiming they won’t – and can’t – remotely unlock encrypted devices running iOS 8 or higher. That’s the vast majority of devices.

Google takes the same sort of stand. Any document running Android 5.0 or higher has full disk encryption enabled by default, and therefore can’t be be remotely unlocked, even when ordered to do so by the federal government.

But Android also has a fragmentation problem, which means that most Android devices aren’t running Android 5.0 or higher. In fact, according to a new filing prepared by Google for the New York District Attorney’s Office, Google can remotely unlock at least 74% of Android devices.

T-Mobile is dropping unexpected gifts on users for the next 30-days, and it’s kicking things off by giving existing customers three-months of free LTE for no extra charge.

WordPress.com received a huge redesign today that has been 18 months in the making, and there’s a great new Mac app that’s coming with it.

The new native Mac app is powered with the same tech running WordPress.com. In fact, it’s pretty much the web app wrapped as an OS X, which isn’t all that bad because it creates a seamless experience that lets you focus on just the content, whether you’re using an iPhone, a browser, or the Mac app.

Check out all the new features in the intro video below:

Black Friday is held up as the ultimate shopping day, but Thanksgiving actually offers more awesome deals. Of course, there are great sales to be found throughout the Black Friday season, with Cyber Monday deals adding their fair share of savings to the mix.

However, if you’re looking for a specific type of product, it’s hard to know whether Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday will give you the best chance to score that bargain.

Because most shoppers will be looking for deals on these three days specifically, we gathered data from the past four years of Thanksgivings, Black Fridays, and Cyber Mondays to determine which day offered the best sales on any given product category. From TVs to toys to tablets, we’ve got the skinny on when you’re most likely to find a killer price low on anything.

But before we get to the results, let’s discuss the amorphous blob of time that Black Friday has become.

Seven months after its launch, we appear to be seeing a previously unheard-of Apple Watch error, but we think we’ve figured out what it means.

Wall Street Journal tech editor Joanna Stern brought the issue to attention on her Twitter account; the screen kind of looks like her Apple Watch had suddenly decided to play a round of retro game Snake. But the actual issue isn’t nearly as fun.

Every once in a while, you might have an app or two that you really don’t want to show off. Whether it’s a racy game or two or dating apps you don’t want your children seeing when you hand them your phone to keep them occupied, being able to hide those apps from general view is a handy thing.

Until now, you had to jailbreak your iPhone to make that happen. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, and you can–thanks to the fine folks over at Redmond Pie, who originally found this tip–hide apps on your own iPhone, with no jailbreak required. It’s a bit involved, and requires that you change your wallpaper to something boring, like white or grey, but it works.

Here’s how.

Best List: Super GPS bicycle computer by Lezyne

It seems silly to call something with so much technology packed into it “simple,” but this is the word I keep coming back to when describing Lezyne’s new bicycle computers.

They are simple. They are also powerful and sleek — and they just might be the perfect option for cyclists who like to have their data, but don’t need it blasted at them the entire time they are on their bikes.

You local coffee shop might finally start accepting Apply Pay this week, thanks to the official launch of Square’s new card readers that support NFC payments, as well as new chip-and-pin debit cards.

If you’ve played with one of the many palm-sized, office-friendly drones on the market, you know they can be more than a little squirrely. SKEYE has made a mini drone that’s a whole lot more stable — the trick was adding another pair of rotors. It’s a major upgrade for an already crazy fun toy, and you can get one for just $45. Get an additional 15% all drones with coupon code: DRONE15.

Destructive YouTuber TechRax is like the Tyler Durden id to our tech-loving superego — constantly wanting to destroy something beautiful because, you know, who hasn’t briefly wondered what would happen if you stuck your iPhone in a lava lamp or if you used to magnets to crush a $10,000 Apple Watch Edition?

TechRax’s latest stunt? Shoving an Apple Pencil in an electric pencil sharpener. Check it out below.

Google has teamed up with Disney and Verizon to develop a new virtual reality series in celebration of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The story ties directly into the new movie, and Google Cardboard owners can enjoy it on December 2 — but there’s more to check out today!

U.K. MasterCard customers in London can take advantage of a great Apple Pay promotion right now — with the ability to use London’s tubes, buses and trains for free for the next four Mondays, starting today.

If you’re like me, you’re playing Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 4 a lot lately. And that probably means you’ve stumbled across a lot of retro CRT monitors that have quasi-Unix systems running on them.

OS X? It’s also a quasi-Unix system. It runs off of a Unix base, which is accessible through the Terminal app.

And if you want Terminal to look like Fallout 4? Just download this app.