We have a bit of a digital-assistant war brewing in the tech world. In addition to Apple’s Siri, we have Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana and, eventually, Facebook’s MoneyPenny. Everybody’s out to provide users with the most helpful fake secretaries imaginable, and even productivity app Slack is getting in on the action.

But while touting upcoming improvements to the chat platform’s helper, Slackbot, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield had some strong words about its rival in your iPhone or Apple Watch.

Steve Jobs was notorious for cruising around Silicon Valley in a Mercedes without a license plate during his last decade at Apple, but before El Jobso upgraded to the SL55 AMG, he and his wife Laurene owned a BMW 325i convertible.

That convertible can be yours, now that its third owner is placing the unique bimmer up for sale.

Google-owned Boston Dynamics scared the bejesus out of us earlier this year with its hive-mind 160-pound robot dogs that can run on almost any terrain. Now the company is taking things to an all-new level with new video of its humanoid robot, which is the closest thing to a real-life Terminator we’ve ever seen.

Just a week after Apple patch several OS X vulnerabilities, a security researcher has already discovered two new exploits that could allow an attacker to remotely gain access to your Mac.

Ever try to go from home to the gym to the office to the party in the same day? If you have, you’ll know that move requires a lot of carrying capacity, typically across several bags.

Now try to do all that as an eco-warrior on a bicycle. You’ll want one big, waterproof bag that can hold your work stuff, your gym clothes and maybe a rain coat in case it gets wet out there. Stylish and useful, the Vitesse from WaterField Designs is a lovely, waxed-canvas messenger bag that will fit all that stuff.

If you travel a lot, iOS 9 and El Capitan have a hidden feature just for you.

Apple’s latest operating systems (both of which are currently in beta) offer a way to keep tabs on airline flights. Here’s how to access this hidden new feature.

The cycling helmet is often referred to as a brain bucket. It has kept many a melon in one piece after falls and collisions and there’s no smarter wearable for your ride.

One helmet promises to offer more smarts. It’s called the Bling Helmet by LIVALL and it is aptly named because of how it flashes.

If you’re running your business on Apple machines, it’s probably because you want to keep things clean and simple. But wrangling desktops, tablets, phones and the employees who use them isn’t as easy as syncing your calendar.

Emails, point-of-sale operations, apps, security settings — an enterprise of any size can quickly present a symphony of stresses that’s too much for any business owner to orchestrate.

With the purchase of Beats Electronics and the subsequent launch of Apple Music, Jimmy Iovine quickly became Apple’s best hope for saving the music industry. But in a new interview, the Beats co-founder says it’s just not cool to be into music anymore.

To help ignite the scene, Iovine and Dre created an Academy for Arts Technology and the Business of Innovation at USC, and while the music and tech mogul says the program has already become ultra-competitive to get into, it might not be enough to change young people’s minds from wanting to become the next Larry Page instead of the next Jimmy Page.

We don’t even know for sure what the unrevealed iPhone 6s is going to look like, but that isn’t stopping one company from opening up preorders for ridiculously expensive and extravagant custom versions of Apple’s upcoming handset.

Luxury design company Brikk will pre-sell you blinged-up versions of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and if you have $206,000 or so lying around that you’d love to spend on a phone you haven’t even seen yet, they have a model for you.

iOS 9 is coming, and from what we hear it’s going to be a game-changer. Luckily there’s still time to prepare for Apple’s newest era in mobile, and we’ve found a course that can get you totally caught up before it drops. It’s called The Complete iOS 9 Developer Course, and it’s just $99 at Cult of Mac Deals, a whopping 90 percent off the normal price.

We’re less than one month away from the iPhone 6s being announced, and carriers are tripping over themselves and each other trying to offer the best terms for customer upgrades.

The latest carrier to throw its name in the ring is Sprint, which has just launched its new iPhone Forever plan, which lets users upgrade to the latest iPhone any time they want — without having to pay an upfront fee or experience a hike in rates.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wouldn’t want to toil in the dehumanizing hellhole described in a recent report about work conditions at his company. In a memo to employees responding to the allegations, Bezos painted a picture of caring Amazonians who are “fun” and “brilliant” and “helping to invent the future, and laughing along the way.”

He also said anybody who gets treated badly by Amazon should snitch to HR — or email him directly to air their grievances.

Some stars are just too big for the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition. One of them is rapper and The Fast and the Furious actor Ludacris, who rocked up at the Teen Choice Awards on Sunday night sporting a custom Apple Watch studded with diamonds.

Apple Pay might be a while arriving in Australia according to a new report, which claims that the country’s four largest banks are stalling negotiations with Apple so as to hold on to $2 billion per year they earn from merchants for interchange fees.

Dr. Dre’s long-awaited third album, Compton, was streamed a massive 25 million times on Apple Music, and had half a million iTunes downloads in its first week, according to new figures released by Apple.

Three new Apple Music ads show off Cupertino’s creative cool, highlighting musical acts and touting the tagline, “All the artists you love and are about to love, all in one place.”

Learning is a lifelong endeavor, but even if you live to 100 you won’t have a shortage of stuff to study with this roundup of deals. Hundreds of hours of content covering marketing, IT, banking, coding, you name it.

We all know Apple has more money than a dozen Scrooge McDucks. But exactly how do the massive Apple cash reserves translate into real-world terms?

To help put this astonishing pile of cash into perspective, we crafted this handy video guide.

Beneath the keyboard of your Mac lies a vast ocean of untapped potential. We’ve assembled some of the best deals on the most powerful apps for drilling deep into those hidden reserves of functionality. From productivity-enhancing programs. to comprehensive hard-drive maintenance and unlocking hidden Mac OS functions, these app bundles are power-packed and priced to move.

This week on The Cultcast: Ever wonder what it’s like to have companies pay you to travel the world snapping their Instagram photos? Professional Instagrammer Cory Staudacher shares his workflows and favorite iOS photo apps — and you won’t believe how much some companies will pay you to make them look cool.

Plus: Neat new features coming to iOS 9; Apple quietly beefs up the iPhone 6s to prevent another #Bendgate; and don’t miss our list of new favorite apps.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Build a beautiful new website quick with Squarespace’s drag-and-drop interface. Start a free trial and save 10 percent off any first order with code “CultCast.”

Catch our favorite new apps in the show notes below.

If you compare the Apple Watch to dedicated fitness tracking devices, it comes up short, and the forthcoming watchOS 2 will do little to address these limitations. Instead, with this update Apple is focusing on helping improve third-party fitness apps.

That’s because Apple sees its wearable as the main component of a fitness platform, with the Activity app as hub. While the built-in Workout app is mostly for beginners, third-party apps will provide the missing features for hardcore users.

Yesterday’s iTunes update brought a few improvements to Apple Music as it lives on the Mac and PC. The minor tweaks and bug fixes are always welcome, but Apple Music still has a long way to go before the experience is where it should be, particularly in iTunes.

Siri typically works pretty well when you’re just sitting around at home — or at least, it can usually hear you just fine. Whether or not you get the results you need is another question, but a prototype device created by engineers at Duke University could one day help Apple’s digital assistant understand you just as well if you’re in a crowded room or a car.

It’ll just have to get a little smaller first.

This week, Apple has released a ton of new updates into the wild, including better-and-better versions of iOS 8, an iTunes that does Apple Music a bit better, and a Boot Camp that will let you run Windows 10 on your Mac. Try that on your Chromebook.

We’ve got a ton more, too, like killer tips and tricks for the public beta of iOS 9, a slick feature on trailblazer photographers who took selfies back in the day, and some ideas on how Apple Watch should track weightlifting sessions at your local gym.

All that and much, much more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine

(Note: Because of Cult of Mac’s recent redesign, some images are not displaying properly in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. We apologize in advance — and we’re working on it.)