Apple enjoyed historic sales this holiday season, and while the company won’t reveal its official earnings until January 27th, based on the latest smartphone activation report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Apple dominated the holiday shopping season and accounted for 50% of all smartphone activations in Q4 2014.

Tim Cook is likely to announce another record breaking quarter as Apple nearly doubled the number of activations of its closest competitor Samsung, which accounted for a modest 26% of the market.

Check out the surprising graph below:

We love Sonos speakers here at Cult of Mac. In fact, we can barely make it through our Faves and Raves segment on the CultCast without Leander waxing poetic for the sleek wireless speakers.

The company just teamed up with Bruce Mau Design to create a new psychedelic logo that’s nearly as entertaining their HiFi systems that let you beam sound to any room in your house. If you scroll up and down the page you’ll notice a pulsing effect on the logo, similar to a bass thumping speaker.

There’s no mention on Bruce Mau Design’s website as to whether the optical illusion is intentional. If not it’s an awesome accident. Go ahead and wiggle the page up and down to experience the the visual effect yourself.

Via: BrandNew

I launched SimCity: Complete Edition last night at around 8 p.m. I played around with my new city, getting a feel for the controls, zoning for residences, commercial ventures and industrial centers.

I zoomed in and out to get up-close and bird’s-eye views of my own private Idaho (well, Squifton, if we’re being literal). I checked out the various data views, gave my city police buildings and power, water and fire departments. I added parks, more residential areas, roads and even created a neighboring city — a sleepy little hamlet that purchases power and water from the main city. Just a quick little foray into a game that I’ve been itching to play.

When I glanced up at the clock, it was three hours later.

Home entertainment systems are more complex than ever, often consisting of several audio visual components all tied into one another and each having its own remote control. That means constantly looking for lost remotes, changing dead batteries, and dealing with remote control confusion.

Now you can replace all your individual remotes and easily control your entire home entertainment system from your smartphone or tablet with the Blumoo Bluetooth Universal Remote, available at Cult of Mac Deals at a heavily discounted price.

At $99 a year, Amazon Prime is a killer deal — especially if you do a lot of online shopping. But it’s going to get even better tomorrow, January 24, when you’ll be able to bag a one-year subscription for just $72 — more than 25% off — to celebrate the Golden Globe Awards.

iPhoto is a free download for everyone these days, making it a basic bit of kit for anyone dealing with the deluge of photographic data we seem to collect. Still, it’s often overlooked by the best of us because of its limitations.

That’s unfortunate, because the simple program offers some pretty useful features that can quickly let you get on with enjoying your photos rather than tweaking them.

Here are five simple tips for using Apple’s built-in photo “shoebox,” letting you make your photos better and more organized even more quickly.

Artists don’t always explain themselves well.

Even acclaimed illustrator Christoph Niemann, who can articulate the mysteries of creativity better than many, doesn’t always understand the moment when the head, heart and eyes merge with skills and gifts to produce a brilliant piece. It’s like trying to put into words the act of breathing.

But every Sunday, we can behold the headwaters of his creative flow.

Fresh off his deep dive into CES, Alex takes on home automation and how HomeKit may just change everything, making the dream of an easy, ubiquitous home future a reality. Rob takes a look at a new game that turns your Apple TV into a motion-controlled gaming console, Buster shows us how the Apple Watch has already won the war for your wrist, Luke builds his own fun with a shoebox full of maker-kit for kid-friendly iPad gadgets, and Lewis spends a little time in Microsoft’s holographic future.

We’ve got all this and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, so make sure to subscribe and download your copy today.

With their rise, fall and ascent to global cultural dominance, Apple and LEGO are not entirely dissimilar as brands. I’m not sure whether their similar philosophies toward business have any bearing on my appreciation for both companies, but I do know that I absolutely loved last year’s LEGO Movie.

Having recently been robbed of an Oscar nom, fellow LEGO Movie fans can at least get some of their brick-fix today thanks to the news that The LEGO Movie Video Game has arrived on iOS — giving you a chance to play what is a very fun game on your iPhone or iPad.

Not all of us work 9 to 5’s. My wife, for example, works all sorts of shifts, working around her school schedule: 8:30 – 5:30 one day, then 1:30 to 9:30 the next. And as a guy who spends the better part of each day glued to a computer just two rooms away from his bed, it can be pretty hard to keep track just when she’s working, and when I can next expect to see her.

Shifts is an app that solves all that. A calendar app specifically designed for people who either work retail jobs, or otherwise have constantly shifting work schedules, it’s an ingenious little app that makes managing your weekly shifts -— and keeping your partner informed of them — a snap.

You may may never be able to listen to Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes live in the Star Wars cantina for yourself, but here’s the next best thing: a turntable modeled after Han Solo’s famous parsec-shattering ship, the Millennium Falcon.

New photos leaked online apparently show the display portion of the forthcoming, eagerly-anticipated 12-inch MacBook Air: a device rumored to be Apple’s first Retina MacBook Air model.

In the photos, the display is compared in size to various current Apple devices, including existing MacBook models and the iPad Air 2.

Personally, I can’t wait for it! Feast your eyes on some of the other photos after the jump:

If you’re in or around Berkeley, California, this evening, and want to be a part of Apple history, you may catch a glimpse of actors Michael Fassbender, Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet and Katherine Waterston as they shoot scenes for the Aaron Sorkin-penned Steve Jobs biopic.

Having been through numerous production difficulties en route to getting made (pretty much like any Apple product then!), the movie is shooting in and around Berkeley’s La Méditerranée restaurant at 2936 College Ave., between 6 p.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday.

Thermonuclear war may be over between Google and Apple, but that doesn’t mean that the two aren’t willing to score points against one another.

A few months after Tim Cook critiqued Google’s entire business model during his interview with Charlie Rose, and Google’s Eric Schmidt dismissed the bestselling iPhone 6 as a Samsung clone, Google has struck again with its latest act of aggression: a double billboard for Google Play positioned right next to a leading Apple Store.

Internet security has recently been a topic of much discussion, and for good reason. There have been numerous cases in the last year where hackers have caused huge problems for individuals and major corporations all over the western world that robbed people of their privacy and corporations of their data.

The point is, these hacker attacks can happen to anyone, threaten reputations, and cause irreparable damage to businesses. Take action to protect yourself against these criminal elements with internet security products available at heavily reduced prices from Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple’s stunning new store in Hangzhou China is drawing raves, even though no one has seen what it’ll actually look like. The outside of the store has been covered with a giant Apple Store sized mural during construction, only instead of throwing up another boring white box, Apple teamed up with famous calligrapher Wang Dongling to create a beautiful poem on the outside.

To celebrate the upcoming West Lake store, Apple published a video today going behind the scenes with Dongling and his creative process for creating the artwork on the store. Dongling is renowned for his experimentation in merging Western and Chinese forms to push calligraphy in a new direction.

“The lines in calligraphy need to have life in them”, Dangling says in the video. “They need to have an aesthetic feeling. They need to have a kind of magical energy endowed by nature.”

Watch the full behind the scenes clip below:

BlackBerry may be on its last legs and struggling to attract new customers, but that won’t dissuade Samsung from spending big to buy the company. While both companies have dismissed takeover reports over the past week, a new report claims Samsung really is still interested in acquiring a significant stake in the Canadian smartphone maker.

J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler’s most famous accomplishment at Apple was helping Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson design Apple’s retail stores. Today it was revealed in Apple’s SEC filing that Drexler plans to retire from Apple’s eight-person board of directors on March 10. A replacement has not been named.

Angela Ahrendts was arguably Apple’s biggest hire of 2014, and according to the company’s latest SEC filing, luring the Burberry CEO over to Apple wasn’t cheap.

In 2014, Apple’s new SVP of retail and online stores was the highest paid executive at Apple. It’s the first time in Apple history that the highest paid person at the company is a woman, and Apple gave her a transition package that made even Tim Cook’s salary look like pittance pay.

Ahrendts made her move from Burberry to Apple in May of 2014. By the end of the year Apple paid her over $64 million more than CEO Tim Cook. In fact, Cook wasn’t even in the top 4 highest paid employees at Apple last year. Eddie Cue took home the second biggest salary with $24,445,739, while Jeff Williams (aka Tim Cook’s Tim Cook) took home $24,403,235.

Check out the full breakdown of executive compensation below:

Meet the world’s worst iPad thieves: Dillian Thompson (20) and Dorian Walker-Gaines (22). From “the money team.”

Houston police arrested these two geniuses after they uploaded a celebratory selfie video from Burger King to flaunt the cash they stole, along with an iPad, laptop and a couple other items left in someone’s unlocked car. The duo took a number of selfies and even uploaded a video to Facebook showing the $5,000 in C-notes they’d just stolen.

“This, my good people, is what we get from a good night’s hustle,” Dillian says in the video, completely oblivious to the wonders of iCloud and the felony theft charges that are about to follow.

Check out their video below:

Apple has agreed to accept the Chinese government’s demands to run network safety evaluations on all Apple products before they can be imported into the country.

Tim Cook met with the country’s Internet and Information office last December to discuss Apple’s plans in China, and has since consented to the government’s demands that they be allowed screen products for the fabled NSA backdoor. According to a spokesperson who was also present at the meeting, Cook has assured Chinese officials that Apple will fully cooperate with the governments wishes to have products inspected for security concerns.

Do you think your state has a lot of iPhone users? You might be surprised to learn that you’re right – if you live in Alaska, Montana, or Vermont.

This surprising result comes from a survey conducted by mobile advertising firm Chitika, who wanted to quantify the level of iPhone usage on a state-by-state basis.

While the data doesn’t show much correlation with geographic or raw population figures, the survey did figure out that the three states had the highest percentage of iPhone users, with 65, 60 and 59 percent respectively.

During the third quarter, a referee blew the whistle to signal a timeout. What happened next, signaled the beginning of a sizemic shift in our lives.

But if you left the couch for beer and snacks at that moment of the 1984 Super Bowl, you may have missed the first run of a commercial that made more history than the game itself (sorry Oakland Raiders, 38-9 winners over the Washington Redskins).

On this date 31 years ago, Apple aired a commercial introducing the world to the first MacIntosh personal computer. It was the feature of Today in Media History on the Poynter Institute website.

Hollywood has long been the sparkling gem of entertainment in the U.S., but when it comes to making money, Apple is schooling the entertainment industry on how to bring in the cash with the App Store.

In 2014, iOS app developers earned more than Hollywood did from U.S. box office revenues, reports top Apple analyst Horace Dediu. According to Asymco’s number crunching, apps are now a bigger digital content business than music, TV programs, movie purchases and rentals combined.

Apple paid out approximately $25 billion total to developers, which means that not only is the App industry healthier than Hollywood, but also on an individual level, some developers are out earning Hollywood stars. The median income for developers is also likely higher than the median income for actors. If you’re looking to strike it rich, forget becoming the next Brad Pitt. Be the next Dong Nguyen.

Check out the chart below: