We’re just days away from finding out all the juicy details of the Apple Watch, but preparations are already underway at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Apple’s crew began working on the event decorations this morning by adding a giant Apple logo graphic to front of Yerba Buena. It’s still a work in progress, but it looks like Apple is using the same graphic from the event invites that went out last week. Along with the Apple signage, a giant white tent has also been constructed nearby, presumably as a press hands-on area for after the event.

Apple is making revolutionary breakthroughs in emoji technology with racially diverse emoji in iOS 8.3. For their next innovative addition, wouldn’t it be great if multiple emoji could be joined together as a single icon?

Designers Alexa Grafera and Louie Mantia teamed up to create a delicious new style of emoji called ligatures. The duo made a special set of ice cream fixins emoji that can be strung together to make the tasty-looking desserts found in Alexa’s ice cream emoji GIF above.

Sometime this month, a plane will lift off from an airstrip in the United Arab Emirates and attempt to fly around the world fueled only by rays of the sun.

How technology will keep the plane airborne, or how two pilots — taking turns during five- and six-day flights — will endure a tiny cockpit, extreme temperatures and very little sleep, have kept the company Solar Impulse busy for 12 years. Aviation history could soon be made.

Yet all anyone wants to know is how the pilots will go to the bathroom.

Apple will reveal pricing details on its long-anticipated smartwatch in less than a week, but if the stainless steel version costs upward of $700, I’m definitely going the cheap route with the Apple Watch Sport.

The $350 timepiece isn’t as fashionable as its expensive gold and stainless-steel siblings, a point Apple’s website emphasizes by only showing Sport units with Sport bands. But if you pair the Sport with pricier bands, you can barely tells its the el cheapo option.

iOS developer Nick McCardel created mockups of the Apple Watch Sport with bands for the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition. Despite its less luxe finish, the Sport’s silver and space gray aluminum cases still look great no matter what you pair them with.

Take a look at some of the configurations below:

According to sources, the mobile gaming industry accounted for more than $20 billion dollars in revenue globally in 2014 alone. That number is expected to rise dramatically in 2015 and beyond, making some game developers overnight successes.

There’s gold in them there video game hills. Want to claim your stake? With the Unity3D Game Developer Course Bundle available at Cult of Mac Deals right now, you’ll get the knowledge you need to build the next big thing in mobile gaming.

Another day, another award for Apple. This time, branding site Brandchannel has given Apple the nod in its 2015 Brandcameo Product Placement Awards for overall product placement in movies.

After three years without being the most represented company on-screen in Hollywood movies, Apple once again topped the list: appearing in 9 of the 35 movies which scored big at the U.S. weekend box office at some point in the last year, representing one quarter of all #1s.

Anyone want to argue causation over correlation?

Just look at this team. Their faces read, “Close the deal, you won’t regret it.”

A good stock photo makes you believe, a bad one makes you laugh. But when you recognize the team leader is Vince Vaughn, his smoldering confidence projects that good laughs lie ahead.

To promote his upcoming comedy Unfinished Business, 20th Century Fox used iStock by Getty Images to create a series of stock photos, featuring Vaughn and co-stars Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson, to promote the film. Unlike the bad stock photos that cost money, these are available for editorial use for free.

Android-powered games consoles are almost always a big disappointment, but gaming giant NVIDIA is confident it can change that with the Shield console, a $199 set-top box that’s determined to bring you better games.

I finally pitched the cheap plastic desk lamp I’ve had since high school and replaced it with the light I’ve always wanted: the iconic Anglepoise 1227.

If you’re looking for a classic desk lamp that won’t fade into the backdrop next to your sleek iMac, this is the one for you.

Launched in 1934, the design of the 1227 has changed astonishingly little. It still looks functional and modern, which makes perfect sense given Anglepoise started out making hard-wearing lamps for factory workers.

It’s easy to see how Samsung ripped off the iPhone with the Galaxy S6’s hardware. The metallic frame with chamfered edges, antenna bands, and very familiar port positioning is blatantly taken from the iPhone 6.

But Samsung hasn’t just copied the way the iPhone looks physically. It’s also replicated elements of iOS in a way that’s so evident it’s embarrassing.

Accusations that iOS 8 is slower than Apple’s previous mobile operating systems have circulated since the software debuted in 2014. Although it works great most of the time on my iPhone 6 Plus, you don’t have to look far to find people complaining that the latest version of iOS slows down to a sluggish crawl.

From hard resets to turning on the “reduce motion” option under Accessibility, numerous solutions can be employed to keep iOS 8 running at a good clip. One explanation for iOS 8 feeling slower than its predecessors, however, is that (much like iOS 7) its system animations take too long to complete, thereby making the interface feel slower than it should.

So peeved is Omni developer William Van Hecke that he recently compared the animation speeds in a YouTube video. Chalk it up to unnecessary nitpicking if you want, but when you see iOS 3 reacting considerably quicker than iOS 8, it definitely makes you think Apple could make improvements.

Check out the video below:

Salavat Fidai is working proof that artists need not create large pieces to make a name for themselves.

Much of what he creates is no bigger than the tip of a pencil — literally.

Under the glow of a single work light while his family sleeps, Fidai uses a craft knife and 4x magnifying glass to create tiny sculptures out of pointy pencil lead.

One out of every four smartphones sold in urban China was an iPhone during the three months ending January 2015, according to sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The impressive stats only serve to underline what we’ve been pointing out for upwards of the past year: that China is well on its way to becoming Apple’s biggest market globally.

“Leading into Chinese New Year, Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus drove sales to an unprecedented high in urban China with iOS’ share of the smartphone market reaching 25.4 percent – a 4.5 percentage point increase over the same period in 2014”, noted Carolina Milanesi, Kantar’s chief of research.

Apple has asked a Massachusetts federal judge for more time in its lawsuit with A123 Systems, suggesting that the Cupertino company wants to settle with the electric car battery maker.

Apple was first slapped with the lawsuit last month, after it reportedly began an “aggressive campaign” to poach top engineers with expertise in performing critical development and testing activities on cutting-edge electric vehicle batteries: once again hinting that an Apple Car could be in the company’s future.

The Apple Watch isn’t even out yet, and already it’s picking up major design awards. The award in question here is the prestigious 2015 iF Design Gold Award, a prize sometimes referred to as a “Design Oscar.”

The awards were first introduced in 1954, and attract more than 2,000 product entries from 37 different nations — with expert judges ruling based on outstanding design quality.

There’s no way you haven’t heard of “the dress.” The viral sensation that swept the world last week will probably go down as the most popular story of 2015, and it’s only March.

Naturally, it makes sense for you to be able to show your support for #teamwhiteandgold or #teamblueandblack with an iPhone case.

A newly discovered security bug has secretly left Safari users on both iOS and OS X vulnerable to attacks on hundreds of thousands of websites for years.

The ‘FREAK’ security flaw was exposed today by a group of nine researchers who discovered web browsers could be forced to use an intentionally-weakened form of encryption. FREAK effects iPhones, Macs, and Android browsers, but Apple’s spokesman says the company will release a fix next week.

Becoming the most funded Kickstarter in history is certainly enough to boost confidence — and if you’re Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky it’s enough to get you to take some potshots at giant-sized rival, Apple.

With Cupertino’s March 9 Apple Watch event just one week away, Migicovsky has thrown out a few barbed comments about Apple’s eagerly-anticipated debut wearable. Describing the device as “definitely lacking,” Pebble’s founder noted how he’s just not that into smartwatches that are “relegated to being an accessory to your mobile phones.”

Oh, snap!

If you need a smartphone camera that can capture a steady image even when you’re not, you’ll want to choose Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 over the iPhone 6. At least, that’s what the South Korean company hopes to prove with the strange, shaking display table it brought to MWC.

Pebble gave its latest smartwatch project an extra bump this morning with the new Pebble Time Steel model, which pushed the project over the mark to become the most-funded Kickstarter project ever.

Pebble Time has raked in $13,617,054 so far, pushing it past the Coolest Cooler for the top spot. Pebble also has the third-most-successful Kickstarter project with its original Pebble Watch in 2012. The Pebble Time project still has 24 days left, so it will likely push far past the $15 million mark.

Here are the top 10 most-funded Kickstarters of all time:

Buzz Aldrin was one of the first humans to step foot on the moon. Now he’s trying to make the big leap toward becoming an iOS developer, but Apple keeps rejecting his app, Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager, because of one tiny problem: It features too much Buzz Aldrin.

The App Store admissions team reportedly told Aldrin’s development team that the his game “contains well-known third parties.” What?!

Google’s efforts to counter the threat of the Apple Watch will begin with bringing Android Wear support to iPhone. Sources claim the search giant is now “preparing” an Android Wear app for iOS, and it could be announced at Google I/O in May.

The Apple Watch is expected to be the main attraction at next week’s “Spring Forward” event, but according to a new report, the long-rumored 12-inch Retina MacBook Air could make a surprise appearance at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

The sketchy rumor comes from the Michael Report, which claims its sources inside Apple say the company’s long-awaited update to the MacBook Air will be announced March 9.

With the White Hat Security Hacker Bundle, you will learn the skills needed to protect your online presence from those who would do you  harm. For a limited time, you can get the White Hat Security Hacker Bundle at 92% off, just $49, at Cult of Mac Deals.

From the Vulcan salute by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station to the pancake artist who created a batter likeness of Mr. Spock, the tributes to the late Leonard Nimoy have been touching and creative.

Canadians have gone as far as putting Mr. Spock on the $5 bill though the Bank of Canada is not that thrilled.

The Canadian Design Resource tweeted a request after hearing of Nimoy’s passing on Friday. They asked Canadian’s to “Spock their $5 bills to honor of the iconic Star Trek science officer played on television and in movies by Nimoy.