It’s been a crazy, Apple Watch-filled week, with Apple’s Spring Forward event on Monday fueling quite a bit of energy both here at Cult of Mac an on the internet itself.

We’ve got our very own head man in charge, Leander Kahney, writing up four insightful op-eds on Cupertino’s latest foray into the luxury watch market with that stunningly high-priced Apple Watch Edition. Enjoy four long-form essays worth reading. In addition, we’ll check out what your favorite apps will look like, how the new ResearchKit may change medical research forever, what your Apple Watch purchase might get in the analog watch world, and the seven biggest shockers at the Spring Forward event itself.

All this, plus much more, in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, available for your free download and no-cost subscription right now.

Do you yearn to soar majestically above the clouds? To rise above the masses and achieve new heights? No, you don’t need a pilots’ license — all you need is a drone.

Drones are a fun and easy way for anyone to take to the skies. You could win one of your very own with The DJI Phantom 2 Giveaway, offered for a short time only at Cult of Mac Deals.

The Mickey Mouse face that ships with Apple Watch, and has twice been demonstrated by Apple at its Watch events, is now unofficially available on Android Wear — complete with moving hands and feet.

The Apple Watch isn’t available for preorder yet, but that hasn’t stopped accessory makers from proudly showcasing their wares for the upcoming device.

We still don’t know if Apple will let Apple Watch accessories connect directly into the smartwatch’s mysterious port, but there will be plenty of fancy stands and even some third-party bands.

Here are 12 Apple Watch accessories to trick out your fancy new wearable:

You know what they say about putting your iPhone 6 in a lava lamp: it’s all good fun until something explodes in someone’s eye.

The someone in question is a colleague of TechRax, the Ukrainian YouTuber who hides behind the veil of supposed tech expert to run his seemingly limitless iPhone collection through a series of oddball endurance tests; the kind of thing that would be considered Turner Prize-worthy conceptual performance art were we not convinced he’s deadly serious.

Having previously buried iPhones in snow and assaulted them with DeWalt angle grinders to see how they react, this time he gives his Apple smartphone the 1970s treatment to see what would happen if a person accidentally dropped it into an open lava lamp. You know, as you do.

Jony Ive never prepared for this.

The Black Eyed Peas’ co-founder apl.de.ap is at the top of his game in the music industry and a total Apple fan. He’s also just beginning to speak out about his journey from a young boy with a visual impairment to his current status as a star vocal coach on The Voice of The Philippines.

“I was born with my eye condition,” apl.de.ap, aka Allan Pineda, told Cult of Mac. “Today, I feel much less handicapped by my legal blindness as technology has helped me a lot…. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely tough at times, and occasionally I still feel challenged by it.”

He lives and breathes by his MacBook Pro, thinks Siri is amazing and messes about with music apps on his phone. He shared with Cult of Mac the story of his early life, the visual problem known as nystagmus, and his reliance on and use of technology and Apple products, which he says have helped him get through “a lot of things that would otherwise leave me helpless.”

Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana has been pretty vocal about bashing rival services like Apple’s Siri. But she may soon get the chance to put her money where her mouth is.

That’s because, according to a new Reuters report, Cortana is about to bust out of the Windows Phone ghetto and make her way to both Android and iOS.

The version of Cortana set to arrive on non-Windows devices is reportedly a new, improved version, using research from an artificial intelligence project called “Einstein.” This same version will also be available on Windows 10 desktops this fall.

Samsung might finally be kicked the curb when it comes to who gets the lion’s share of Apple’s chipmaking business. According to analysts Olivia and Rick Hsu from Daiwa Securities, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is likely to snap up 70 percent of all Apple’s A9 and A9X orders, leaving rival chipmaker Samsung out in the (relative) cold.

The reason for this is reportedly the “superior yield” and “manufacturing excellence in mass-production” exhibited by TSMC, which will get it a large percentage of the A9 orders, and all of the A9x orders for the next generation iPad.

All week, it’s been reported that Apple is using a “new gold” in the gold Apple Watch Edition. According to Bloomberg, Slate, Gizmodo and many others, Apple has patented a new process to create a “metal matrix composite” by mixing gold with ceramic particles.

The composite supposedly allows Apple to save on the amount of gold it uses, while making the substance super-hard and adding other amazing properties.

But according to Atakan Peker, a materials scientist and one of the co-inventors of Liquidmetal, which Apple holds an exclusive license on, it’s extremely unlikely Apple is using any kind of “new gold” for its watches.

He knows this because Jony Ive says so.

It was only ever going to be so long until this happened! Less than a week after Apple announced its insanely expensive $10,000 Apple Watch Edition and already we have the first attempt to crowdfund one of Apple’s gold timepieces.

Does that mean you’ll get to share in its oh-so-expensive glory; perhaps borrowing it for your graduation or a random night on the town? Of course not, silly rabbit.

Who knew that Tim Cook was a Mad Money fan? The Apple CEO surprised CNBC’s Jim Cramer by calling in today to congratulate the show host on his 10th anniversary of being on air.

The two men discussed ResearchKit, dealing with competition, Apple’s incredible growth on Wall Street over the last decade, and more.

It’s taken all week, but I finally think I have a pretty good idea why Apple is selling a crazy-expensive, super-exclusive gold watch.

Initially, the very idea that Apple would make something for the one percent seemed abhorrent. What makes Apple great is that it sells affordable luxury to the masses.

Apple’s well-designed and well-made products should really only be for the rich, but they are generally affordable to the middle classes. Apple pulls off the miraculous, selling us BMWs at Kia prices.

This is what makes the gold Apple Watch Edition stand out. At first glance, it’s obviously not a product for us. But even though you and I will probably never own one, the $10,000 timepiece is actually kinda democratic, because it’s all about selling $350 watches to the masses.

Apple’s design team went to extreme lengths when redesigning the new MacBook to be more portable than ever. The most drastic move was to toss out the fan and extra ports for a super-tiny logic board.

The new MacBook logic board is two-thirds smaller than any board Apple’s designed before. It’s the highest-density Mac logic board yet, but really, it’s more like a super-iPhone or iPad logic board. Put side by side with the iPhone 6 logic board, the new MacBook logic board is barely twice its size.

This comparison image might shock you:

For the first time, Apple has made it possible for those without an App Store developer membership to use iOS betas. Anyone can legitimately download and install today’s iOS 8.3 beta by joining Apple’s official Beta Testing Program.

OS X Yosemite was the first software release that could be beta tested by non-devs, and now that Apple has flung open the gates on iOS, many more people will likely opt-in to be on the cutting edge of where the operating system is headed.

I can’t wait to read Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. The upcoming biography, by veteran reporters Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, promises to be the definitive telling of Steve Jobs’ life.

The writers scored interviews with major players including Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. The result is a book loaded with interesting anecdotes and insights about the former Apple CEO.

I haven’t yet read the whole thing (it comes out March 24), but while pre-ordering my copy on Amazon, I could initially access a significant portion of the biography through the site’s “Look Inside the Book” feature. (Amazon later blocked out far more of the book’s contents.)

From what I’ve seen, some of the stories are pretty sensational — providing new details into the close relationship between Jobs and Cook, revealing Jobs’ secret plan to buy Yahoo!, and much more.

Want a few of the highlights? Check them out below.

The battle of Mac versus PC is raging strong, thanks to the new MacBook. While Apple fans are still debating whether they really want Jony Ive’s minimalist gold notebook, rival PC markers have been quick to shoot down Apple’s latest innovation on Twitter.

ASUS, Lenovo and Dell all took shots at the super-thin MacBook, quickly pointing out that while terraced batteries and gold paint are nice, these notebook companies have been selling even thinner laptops for over a year now.

Take a look at their tweets calling out the new MacBook:

A new beta build of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 has been seeded to developers this morning alongside the release of iOS 8.3 beta 3. The new update is available in the Mac Dev Center or via a software update, and comes two weeks after Apple released the second OS X 10.10.3 beta to developers.

The biggest new feature added in today’s beta is the inclusion of a new set of developers APIs that work with the Force Touch trackpad in the new MacBook and Macbook Pro. The new APIs will allow developers to add a new dimension of control and interactivity to their apps.

Here’s some of the new features developers can add:

Apple has released the third iOS 8.3 beta to developers this morning. The free download is available both in the iOS Developer Center, and as an over-the-air update for developers still running iOS 8.3 beta 2.

The release notes for iOS 8.3 beta 3 don’t mention any new features, however previous beta’s have included a new emoji pane, as well as racially diverse emoji. Two-factor authentication for Google was also added in the first beta, along with numerous bug fixes.

We’ll let you know what new features we find as soon as the update is installed on our device. Until then, you can grab a direct download from the links below:

We’re still waiting for the unbelievably gorgeous 12-inch MacBook to ship, but our friends at iFixit have already done a teardown on the updated MacBook Pro, revealing the secret sauce behind the new Force Touch Trackpad and Taptic Engine that both new Macs share.

The teardown shows that the Pro’s new trackpad is supported by four spring mounts and a panel that isn’t likely to be present on the 12-inch MacBook. It does have the same Force Touch engine, which is really just a bunch of wire coils wrapped around a ferromagnetic core to create the clicky vibrations.

Check out the full gory details below:

The nightmare of tangled wires strikes all too often when you want to listen to your favorite tunes. The Bluetooth Cloud Buds fix that by going wireless, and they offer some other great features, too.

Don’t just listen to your music; immserse yourself in it with a pair of Wireless Bluetooth Cloud Buds equipped with noice cancelling technology, available right now at Cult of Mac Deals at a great price.

Tablet sales are on the decline, and the iPad is “the weakest leak,” according to the latest report from International Data Corporation.

The organization has scaled back its five-year forecast for tablets, expecting market growth to come to a near standstill. With 234.5 million units expected to be sold in 2015, the tablet market will only gain a modest 2.1 percent year-over-year.

After years of rumors, the Apple Watch is finally shipping next month, but according to a new report coming out of China, it’s not likely to be a relaxing month for Tim Cook and pals to spend clinking champagne flutes and celebrating a job well done.

That’s because Apple Watch manufacturer Quanta apparently continues to have yield problems with the debuting wearable device, causing a defect-free rate of less than 30 percent. In other words, really, really bad.

Yesterday’s Apple outages brought digital sales for services like iTunes to a standstill, but it also caused things to grind to a halt in some brick-and-mortar Apple Stores. The down time sent retail back to the days before, well, Apple was there to shake it up.

For a window of approximately two hours, Apple Store employees in certain places were unable to check in to work, stores were unable to make sales and Genius Bar appointments were unable to be kept. Employees were apparently unable to check email for even longer.

British singer Sarah Brightman has a five-octave vocal range and millions have paid top dollar to hear her sing. But to hit the highest note of her career, Brightman is spending her own money.

Brightman is paying a reported $52 million to become the first singer to travel in space. She will board a Soyuz spacecraft on Sept. 1 for a 10-day trip aboard the International Space Station. It is the most expensive space tourist trip on record, according to the TASS Russian News Agency.

Photos of Brightman’s training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow, can be found on her website and in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, which gave a detailed account of her training.

Mitch Silverstein would have many visions of the future in 1964 and the first would appear in full-color wonder, his big 6-year-old eyes staring back at him in disbelief.

He was seeing himself on a color television at the RCA Pavilion at the World’s Fair at Corona Park in Queens, New York.

“It left such a big impression on me,” Silverstein said. “That was a first for most people because that was a pretty major technological step.”

For all the things the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 was said to get wrong, the fair showcased several technological wonders that, some 50 years later, we take for granted.