SAN FRANCISCO — It’s not as cool as installing a gorgeous glass staircase, but Apple is definitely making its mark on the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium here.

Flags, signs, security barricades — it’s all part of the prep for Apple’s massive iPhone 6s event scheduled for next week. It’s a shabby corner of San Francisco, but Apple is totally classing up the joint.

See more pictures of Friday’s street scene below.

My family and I just got back from a too-short vacation in Italy, and we learned something important while we were there: Real vacations don’t have e-mail.

See, my wife was worried about us racking up unspeakably high bills while we were abroad, so we ended up almost completely disabling our iPhones for the entire trip. How we fared without them is the subject of this week’s Kahney’s Korner.

Imagine working on a sketch with a reference photo right next to it, or writing a paper while copying citations from an iBook. Or, heck, running YouTube in Safari while writing a post about Split View on the iPad (hypothetically).

iOS 9 brings this multitasking joy to your iPad, provided you have the latest and greatest iPad Air 2, since it’s the only device that can currently manage the power needed to run such a double screen.

So the next time you need to FaceTime with your boss in San Francisco but still take Notes on your iPad, you can easily make it happen.

Here’s how.

Apple’s getting ready to sink its teeth into original programming, according to recent reports, and there are suggestions it will launch a new video streaming service for Apple TV. The Cupertino company has already taken the fight to Spotify with Apple Music, so why not Netflix next?

The big question is, does Apple have what it takes to produce shows as good as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt all by itself? And would it really want to?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac as we battle it out over Apple’s supposed invasion on Netlix’ turf.

Tracking your activity and fitness doesn’t have to be expensive. With Nuyu, you can keep an eye on how many steps you taken, the distance you’ve traveled, how many calories you’ve burned, and even how well you’re sleeping for under $50.

We’ve been waiting years for Apple to wow us with a new Apple TV that embraces gaming, controls the home and is super-easy to use — and that appears to be just what we’re going to get.

Thanks to a steady stream of leaks from the rumor mill, we already have a pretty solid idea what Apple will show us next week when it finally unveils the new Apple TV. It’s been years in the making — here’s what to expect.

Wearing a gold Apple Watch might get a lot cheaper really soon, according to a new report that claims Apple is looking to create a less expensive gold version of its famous timepiece.

The current Apple Watch Edition currently costs between $10,000 – $17,000 but ‘people close to the product’ have told the New York Times that Apple is exploring new metal finishes for the Apple Watch, and they may even be ready in time to debut at next week’s iPhone 6s event.

A New York ad agency is begging Cupertino not to name the next Apple device the “iPhone 6s.”

6S Marketing has launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign to get Apple’s attention in hopes that the iPhone maker might be persuaded to forego the 6s moniker. The company’s written Apple an open letter, purchased billboards in Times Square and even rolled one of its giant billboards past the iconic Fifth Ave Apple Store.

Our digital lives are busy. We send iMessages while we’re browsing the web, type in phone numbers and addresses while FaceTiming, and bounce between apps on our Macs constantly.

Now, with iOS 9 and a modern iPad, you can quickly browse the web, respond to a text message, or jot something down in a note, then slide that app away so you can focus on your original app.

This feature, called Slide Over, is going to make using your iPad a lot more fun and useful.

Here’s how to make it happen, assuming you have an iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2, or iPad mini 3.

Summer’s almost over, along with all its bounty – the beautiful weather, the backyard barbecues, and Cult of Mac’s summer blowout sale. Here are three ways to take advantage of the end of season savings by decking out and protecting your iPhone. These are already heavily discounted, but with the coupon code eos5off you can get an extra 5% off.

Good news Belgian Apple fans! The country’s first brick-and-mortar Apple Store will open later this month on Saturday, September 19.

For those keeping track at home, that’s right around the time the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will arrive in stores — perhaps increasing the chance that the opening will be attended by a big-name Apple employee or two.

We’re less than a week away from Apple’s refreshed Apple TV service being announced, and a new report published by Adobe Digital Index is sure to bring a smile to faces in Cupertino.

That’s because an analysis of 1.49 billion TV Everywhere streams — referring to the paid streaming of shows through tablets, smartphones, computers and set-top boxes — suggests a whopping 61.9 percent is done via an Apple device.

We’ve all seen the adorably hilarious videos of kids making us feel old by responding with general bafflement to ancient technologies like, erm, the original iPod. But you’d hope for the good of our future that people of driving age are a little bit more educated than that.

Not according to a photo that’s currently going viral on Facebook, showing what’s claimed to be the work of a young driver who has mistaken the cassette deck in their car for an iPhone dock — with disastrous results.

There have been mixed reports about the success of Apple Music — with the project’s senior director leaving Apple, reports of declining listenership, and Apple acknowledging that the platform still needs a lot of work.

However, according to a new ComScore report, Apple Music is certainly catching the attention of users. The digital analytics company claims that Apple’s Music service was listened to by 44 million users in the U.S. during the month of July — putting it in the top 15 smartphone apps in the U.S.

Movie fans may be waiting on Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs biopic, but another Jobs-related project arrives in theaters today. And, boy, is it not a film Apple is happy about!

Titled Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, the feature-length documentary is directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney, who has previously made docs exploring the dark side of Enron and the Church of Scientology.

Yep, you can probably see where this one is going!

Playing Dungeons and Dragons as a youngster is a watershed moment of a modern adult’s formative nerd experience. Grownups, however, don’t necessarily have time to draw up characters or roll dice for strength and charisma stats, let alone spend weekends huddled around a table full of charts, oddly shaped dice and Cheetos.

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is a less-time-intensive way to recapture the dungeons (and dragons!) of yore in a cheeky, fun, self-aware way, all from the relative safety of your iPad, iPhone or select Android devices.

And now there’s an expansion for the mobile game, called Fist of +1 Fury, available as an in-app purchase for $1.99. Check out the trailer below for all the retro nerd fun.

There is now an iOS app where you could possibly see a flashy snowboarder fighting a guy who can spit ping-pong balls into distant beer cups. The best part is, you decide who wins.

Red Bull Media rolled out a free mobile app called Clashem, where users try to win fame five seconds at a time in a video battle where the community votes what wins and what loses with the swipe of the finger.

Seriously, try not to starve. That’s the entire point of Klei Entertainment’s runaway hit game Don’t Starve, a test of survival set in a darkly humorous, Edward Gorey-esque world filled with vicious hounds, creeping spiders, herds of stampeding Beefalo and slimy fish men.

Now you can get in on the action on iPhone, as the desktop game just became a universal app called Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition.

When Airbnb set out to design an app for the Apple Watch, its team did so like a master woodcarver. Whittle away until you leave what is essential.

The popular community hospitality network launched a watch app today that provides a simple messaging hub for hosts and guests. Travelers can send a host a message with name, photo and requested dates. A host can accept or decline right on the wrist and respond to messages, either through dictation or a preset response.

Modern mobile phones need a lot of power; chances are we’ve all got an external battery pack (or at least a second cable and wall plug) tucked away in a bag somewhere that will charge up our Android and iOS mobile phones while we’re on the run.

The thing is, those things need to be taken along with you when you leave the house. If you’re like me, though, that requires a heck of a lot of cognitive overhead and pre-planning.

The whole point of the Nipper, this tiny new mobile phone charger that uses two AA batteries to give you a bit of juice when needed, is to always be available.

Although the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus aren’t expected to bring major design changes to Apple’s world-beating smartphone lineup, a bevy of hardware upgrades will make the new models faster and easier to use.

Even though we’re almost a week away from Apple’s 2015 iPhone unveiling, we pretty much know all the key features that are coming. Here’s everything we think know about the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which will undoubtedly become most popular iPhones ever.

Google Street View is no longer hidden away inside Google Maps; it now has its very own app on Android and iOS, which offers immersive 360-degree imagery, and allows you to contribute your own.

Apple rolls out new products next week at the annual fall reveal, but you can’t stop thinking about the Apple IIc from 1984.

Self-taught hardware hacker and 3D printer Charles Mangin feels you. So much so that Mangin, of Raleigh, NC., creates tiny versions of classic Apple computers that encase the Raspberry Pi computers. He has even made a classic Mac that serves as a working charging dock for the iPod Nano and an SD card reader that looks an old Apple disk drive.

Traveling usually comes with anxiety over either not having access to a wall socket for all your devices, or having the wrong one for the country you’re in. Consider that problem solved with the Twist+ World Charging Station, a compact charging hub that makes sure no matter where you go, you’ve got a place to plug in all your devices. It’s a game-changer for convenience, and it’s going for just $34.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Have a spare $3,900 lying around to spend on the Apple fan in your life? If so, you could do a lot worse than splashing out on twin mice, still in their packaging, signed by none other than Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Wozniak.