The best things in life aren’t always free, but sometimes they’re heavily discounted. That’s basically what’s happening with these deals on essential lessons, tools, and tech toys that’ll you’ll kick yourself for missing. Surge protectors, financial education, bluetooth headphones, and maybe most impressive, a huge discount on lifetime access to Adobe-certified training videos ending in just a couple days.

The Weeknd’s performance of “I Can’t Feel My Face” at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards was so hot, even Kanye got up to dance to the song of summer. The singer didn’t go home with a moon man last night but Apple Music debuted a two-part ad that features John Travolta and a trippy club scene.

Watch both ads below:

Although it looks like Apple is about to turn the Apple TV into a PlayStation-killing video game console, it’s not the indisputable king of the hill of streaming media boxes right now. Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast … all have their advantages over the Apple TV except for one killer feature: AirPlay Mirroring, which allows the Apple TV to stream anything running on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

If you don’t have an Apple TV, you can’t use AirPlay Mirroring, right? Actually, you can — as long you have a Raspberry Pi.

David Tovey became homeless on the streets of London after a stroke and found salvation in an unlikely place – a disposable camera.

Tovey was invited to participate in an art project giving Londoners cameras to record life on the streets for a calendar now being sold on Kickstarter. He has had photos selected for the Cafe Art calendar project two years in a row.

If your computer is like a swiss army knife, this 9-app bundle is like a blade sharpening kit. From photo editing to website building and remote file access, there’s plenty here to make your computer even more useful than you imagined possible. Plus, at a whopping 92% off, it’s a steal for $39.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Jay-Z’s Tidal hasn’t been much of a threat to Apple Music so far, but according to Tidal, that’s not stopping Cupertino from suing them. Over charity, no less!

A new report gives us our best insight yet into the radically improved Apple TV expected to be launched next month, including the fact that it will ship with a motion-sensitive controller similar to the Nintendo Wiimote — but a hell of a lot sleeker. And that’s just to start.

Want a sneak peek behind the scenes of Cult of Mac? In my tech-setup tour video below, I’ll show you where I produce and edit all the videos for the site, and what kind of equipment I use to do it.

This is one of the most-requested videos I’ve had so far, so I won’t keep you waiting any longer — let’s get to it.

From undersea virtual reality to a great Mac Instagram client, there have been plenty of interesting apps that have hit the App Store in the past seven days. But which ones to download this weekend?

Thankfully, Cult of Mac is here to help guide you through the best apps of the week. Check below to see our picks:

Our computers live and die by their hard drives, so it’s important to stay on top of their health. Drive Genius 4 is one of the best ways to keep your hard drive tuned, healthy, and even to bring it back from the dead if it crashes. Right now it’s going for almost half off, just $49.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

With Autumn rapidly approaching, marathon season is almost upon us. So if you’re planning on running a race, now’s the time to ramp up your training.

Whether you are doing a full marathon, a half-marathon or a 10K race, here are my top 10 tips for using your Apple Watch to achieve a new personal best.

It’s another week ending, which means its time for us to round up all the great content from Cult of Mac into one delightful Cult of Mac Magazine.

We’ve got all the info we could find out about the upcoming Apple event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in SF, a ton of useful and hidden tips for iOS, Apple Watch (and even OS X), and some fantastic gaming new that you don’t want to miss.

Check it all out (and more) in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, and don’t forget to look at this sneak peek at the upcoming revamp of the entire digital experience.

Here’s good news for anyone who has had to carry a heavy couch up or down several flights of stairs and/or through narrow doorways: You can now pre-order a sofa that will fit into easily portable boxes.

This is Campaign furniture, and the company’s head is Brad Sewell, a former supply base engineer for Apple who worked with the iPod and iPhone manufacturing design team and clearly picked up a few tips while he was there. And right away, the company is taking on the big names in affordable home furniture.

Upcoming sci-fi shooter Rogue Invader looks like a massive HyperCard stack in glorious motion. Currently on Kickstarter to fund the last bit of development, the roguelike game is the brainchild of Squishy Games founder Nathan Rees, who’s been making games ever since he discovered the joys of MacPaint as a kid.

If you ignore its share price, Apple is doing incredibly well under Tim Cook, thanks in large part to the success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But its newest offerings, Apple Watch and Apple Music, may be off to rocky starts.

This leads us to ask, once again, whether Apple has lost its spark without Steve Jobs. Is the company as exciting or as innovative under Cook? If Apple Watch can’t get us all to wear smartwatches and Apple Music doesn’t put Spotify out of business, does Apple have what it takes to revolutionize another industry?

Join us as we battle it out over those questions in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.

I am super-psyched to introduce you to a new app coming soon to iOS: the Cult of Mac Magazine app.

The new version of our magazine app will be published every Saturday. I think it’s a really great way to read all the stuff we publish here during the week.

Don’t let the bottle in the name fool you. The boomBOTTLE+ by SCOSCHE Industries is no place for a beverage. But your ears will quickly realize it is filled with sound.

The boomBOTTLE, rolled out today on the SCOSCHE website, is a portable Bluetooth speaker that has the height and girth of the common water bottle, thus fitting in a drink holder on a bike, boat or camping chair.

Apple’s big event on September 9th is expected to include the unveiling of a redesigned Apple TV, but if you were hoping to get a taste of the company’s long rumored over-the-top TV subscription service, you’ll have to wait a little while longer.

Negotiations between Apple and content providers have stalled according to a new report that claims the economics of the subscription TV service remain a sticking point between Apple’s and its partners. The price Apple wants to charge consumers would be much higher than a subscription to HBO Go, Hulu, Netflix or Sling, but that’s still not enough for content makers who are asking for more cash.

If you’re trying to attract viewers, readers, or users, you’d better present a user experience that looks and feels great. We’ve found a bundle of tools and resources that can bring you closer to the user experience you want, for whatever you’re willing to pay. From graphics and textures to image masking software and website templates, give your projects an upgrade with this pay-what-you-want bundle at Cult of Mac Deals.  

Who knew watching a guy get a bunch of hickeys would make interesting television?

When the affection comes from a giant Pacific octopus, you can’t help but be a little jealous of Matt Baker, a presenter for the BBC’s new Big Blue Live series.

It may be a while before we see those long-lasting hydrogen-powered batteries in our iPhones. In the meantime, the options are bulky: pack your charging cord, carry a battery charger or go the power case route.

For those who don’t like the thickness or extra heft of power cases, Spyder has just introduced a new battery case weighing in at 3 oz and measuring a relatively thin 12.5 mm.

Google relies on ads for its revenue, which is why it’s no surprise that it’s undermining Apple by telling developers how to bypass some of the security settings Apple is implementing with iOS 9.

The App Transport Security (ATS) settings requires content which arrives on your iPhone to use the “https” encryption settings — making sure that third parties can’t track what users are doing on their iPhones.

Apple is one of several companies and organizations teaming up with the Pentagon to develop high-tech wearables for the U.S. military.

The goal of the $171 million project? To develop stretchable electronics that can worn by soldiers, and eventually used for real-time monitoring of the structural integrity of ships and warplanes.

The iPhone 6s is set to be Apple’s biggest incremental “s” iPhone release of all time, but don’t expect the 16GB entry-level model to go anywhere.

A newly leaked photo appearing to show the next-gen iPhone’s user information sheet demonstrates that the 16GB base model will remain for at least one more year.

Check out the photo below:

One of the biggest criticisms of the upcoming Steve Jobs movie is that actor Michael Fassbender looks nothing like Jobs. In a new interview, Fassbender acknowledges the lack of resemblance, but says that making himself into a Steve lookalike was never part of the goal.

“We decided that I didn’t look anything like [Jobs], and that we weren’t going to try to make me look anything like him,” Fassbender says. “We just wanted to try to encapsulate the spirit and make our own thing of it.”