After a number of delays in production, and a seemingly endless search for a leading man, Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming biopic about Steve Jobs has finally started shooting, at the garage where Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple back in 1976.

In a curious example of international geopolitics influencing the App Store, developers who have registered iTunes accounts in the Crimea are being told to stop using all Apple software, and destroy any materials related to it. Why? It all has to do with the United States imposing sanctions against Russia.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is usually dead right with his predictions on upcoming Apple products. But lately, his predictions have been whoppers. First, Kuo predicted that Apple would ditch Intel chips in the Mac for ARM by 2016, and now, he’s predicting that the upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro will be the first to ship with a stylus. If true, Steve Jobs might just roll over in his grave.

There’s some pretty amazing deals ending very soon at Cult of Mac Deals.

We’d hate to see anyone miss out on a good thing, so check out some killer offers on Mac apps, cool technological gadgets, professional photography training, and more.

Rumors that Apple might ditch Intel chips in the Mac for ARM-based chips of their own design are nothing new. Back in 2012, we reported that Apple would soon be dropping Intel chips from all their Macs. And earlier this year, ex-Apple-executive Jean-Louis Gassée claimed that he thought Apple would soon ditch Intel too. Heck, even Intel has said in the past it considered Apple switching to ARM on the desktop to be a very real and scary threat. Yet it still hasn’t happened. So far, it’s the rumor equivalent of the Apple HDTV: even though it endlessly comes up in the news cycle, it still hasn’t happened.

Even so, when usually accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI Securities issued a note last week saying that Apple would fully switch from Intel to ARM by 2016, it caused a ruckus. People took the rumor more seriously than most, just based on Kuo’s amazing track record. But according to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, he’s not worried. But he’s also not denying it’s a possibility.

The Retina iMac is a sweet, sweet machine, but starting at $2,499, it’s one of the most expensive Macs you can buy, short of the new Mac Pro. But if you’re tempted to buy one, here’s a cheaper way to do so: the Retina iMac has finally been added to Apple’s online Refurbished store.

This week: Optical zoom and Force Touch rumored for the iPhone 6s, autonomous future-cars chauffeur us about, and we’re back from Vegas with a full report on the best gadgets, technology and trends from the 2015 International CES. And for a small fee, we cover your enemies in an explosion of spectacular glitter. Seriously.

Our thanks to Harry’s for supporting this episode. Harry’s super-sharp, German-made razors ship free right to your door and for way less than the drugstore razors. Learn more at Harrys.com and save $5 off your first order with code CultCast.

Full show notes ahead!

Successful computer programmers are educated in as many coding languages as they can handle. They maintain their knowledge through professional development opportunities to stay abreast of changes in the industry and to familiarize themselves with the newest and most up to date methods. The only problem with that is professional development opportunities can be costly.

Now you can learn to deftly manipulate in-demand programming languages such as Python and Ruby like a master with the Pay What You Want Back-End Developer Course Bundle. It’s available at Cult of Mac Deals for a limited time only and, best of all, it costs far less than you’d think.

This week, Leander breaks a story about how Apple’s secret product plans could be found using a little-known Web portal for retailers, Buster calls out a respected Apple analyst for a sketchy prediction, Stephen gets the skinny on removing adware from your Mac, and Rob gives you seven things you never thought you could do with an extremely old iPhone.

All that, plus all the news you’ll want to hear about, in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, ready for you now on Newsstand in the iTunes App Store.

Keep reading for our top stories this week.

Samsung’s fingerprint scanners could be some of the worst available in today’s mobile devices; they’re so unreliable that most people don’t even bother with them. But sources familiar with the company’s plans say it is working to change that for the upcoming Galaxy S6.

How? By copying Apple, of course.

You know that scene in a horror movie where everything seems to be good, but things are just a bit too quiet?

Well, according to analyst Abhey Lamba of Mizuho Securities, Apple is there right now. With the company coming off its most profitable iPhone launch ever, exciting new devices on the horizon and a stock price that recently hit an all-time high, what else is there for the self-respecting analyst to do but predict that doom is right around the corner?

What is the metaphorical monster ready to leap out of a cupboard and savage Apple to bloody death, so soon after it hits its glorious peak? Why, the Apple Watch of course.

And according to Lamba, it could cost Apple big.

To get the fun of virtual bowling without a Wii, look no further than Bowling Central, a magical iOS app that lets you swing your iPhone around to send a virtual bowling ball slamming into all the pins at the end of the lane.

The game is powered by Rolocule Games’ motion-tracking technology, called “rolomotion,” which lets you swing your iPhone like a Wii remote. The gaming company’s two founders wanted to create a Wii Bowl-style experience, only with an Apple TV and an iPhone, and they won a 2014 Edison Award for their solution.

“We worked really hard to get the motion gaming controls right,” Rolocule’s Anuj Tandon told Cult of Mac in an email, “and getting the perfect controls took time. Not only … can you give accurate direction to the ball, but by twisting the wrist, the ball can be given a spin, just like real bowling.”

Be it John Mayer or U2, Apple’s always been a brand that’s both embraced — and been embraced by — the music world. Which is why it’s interesting to hear a legendary musician, in the form of Pink Floyd member Nick Mason, saying possibly the worst thing a creative person can say about it: that it’s passé.

Mason is talking specifically about Apple’s iTunes service, which has been on the decline for several years now, as we have seen the rise of streaming services like Spotify. Interviewed by GQ magazine, Mason’s comments offer a glimpse at how a section of the music world views Apple — and why it needs to change before its too late.

The year is 2018. After a long day at work, you pull into your driveway, whip out your iPhone 10 Plus and say, “Siri, I’m home.”

Your garage door opens silently, beckoning you to enter the ultra-connected smart home of the future.

As you walk in, your lights turn on. The wife used to get on you about leaving the lights on, but her nagging feels like a distant memory now. Your thermostat cools everything down to a comfortable 69 degrees. Knowing that you pulled into the driveway two minutes ago, your oven has started preheating itself. You usually fix dinner for yourself on Thursdays, so it’s time for frozen pizza.

It’s been a long hard slog for all involved but the 64,000-person class action anti-poaching lawsuit brought against four major tech companies, including Apple, is finally over.

The companies — which also included Google, Intel, and Adobe — reportedly agreed to pay a total of $415 million for their misdeeds.

Whether it’s fuzzy, Polaroid-style filters on Instagram or iPhone speakers disguised to look like cassette players, there’s a fascinating retro streak that runs through high tech — something that should, by rights, be as modern as it gets.

With that in mind, developers Mint Digital have come up with an intriguingly counter-intuitive app concept, which may be either genius or the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard. In an age where we can snap and view as many photos as our iPhones will store, Mint Digital’s WhiteAlbum app wants to change that, in effect turning your expensive iPhone into the equivalent of a cheap disposable camera.

You get to take just 24 photos, and you are unable to see these until the first time they arrive at your door, printed on real photo paper, at $20 per album, with free worldwide shipping.

It’s not exactly news that Samsung would like be a whole lot more like Apple. And when you compare the sales figures from Samsung’s ailing mobile division to Apple’s thriving iPhone numbers, who can blame it?

But while the South Korea-based tech giant isn’t going to be able to steal away any of the design brains behind Apple’s must-have devices any time soon, it’s trying to do the next best thing: hiring a former boss from the company Jony Ive helped start before he set sale for Apple in the 1990s.

CloudMagic has long been my favorite third-party email client on Android and iOS, thanks mostly to its excellent cross-platform support that makes managing email on different devices incredibly simple. But thanks to its latest update, some of the terrific features we’ve been enjoying for free for over a year are now going to cost $4.99 a month.

The Afterburner iPhone 6 Battery Case has a 4800mAh battery that provides an extra 150 percent of charge to your iPhone 6.

Apple surprised developers with its new programming language, Swift, at WWDC 2014 but it hasn’t taken long for the developer community to get behind what will soon be the replacement for Objective-C.

In the latest programming language popularity rankings from RedMonk, Swift has shot up from the 68th ranked language in Q3 2014, to the 22nd most popular language going into 2015. To put that growth into perspective, Google released its new language Go in 2009, but it just barely cracked the top 20 in this quarter’s rankings.

Here’s the full rankings chart:

Samsung has released six smartwatches in the past year, but now that Apple is coming out with its first timepiece in 2015, the South Korean smartphone already has plans to copy Apple’s Digital Crown with its own spin.

The first round Samsung smartwatch will hit the market in 2015, according to a report from SamMobile which also claims the company’s Moto 360-styled smartwatch will come with an Apple-like twist.

It seems like there’s a revolt among a segment of diehard Apple fans every time a new app comes preloaded in iOS. No one likes bloatware, and Apple is usually good about keeping crap out of its software. The main problem is that iOS apps can’t be deleted and phone storage these days is precious.

Yet it turns out that choosing to include iBooks as a stock app in iOS 8 was the best thing Apple’s ever done for its ebooks service.

After failing to garner consumer interest for nearly two years, the fate of Google Glass is now in the hands of former Apple executive Tony Fadell. The Glass Explorer program is also being shut down on January 19th, which means it will be impossible to buy the $1,500 headset commercially.

Fadell, whose claim to fame at Apple was leading the development of the original iPod, joined Google last February when Nest was acquired for $3.2 billion. Now Google Glass is being moved out of the experimental Google X division and placed under Fadell’s leadership.

The development of Glass hasn’t been halted, but the move signals the trouble Google has had gaining momentum with the project.

At 9, Mariah Martin already has a handle on future careers. “Veterinarian, professional figure skater, fashion model and teacher – not all at once.”

For now, she must settle for tech entrepreneur.

The Seattle fourth-grader and her father, Scott, understand learning math for many children is no joyride but they have developed an iOS game app they believe will put kids in the driver seat on a road to mastering the basics.

CarQuiz allows drivers to navigate a track with math equations along the way and a choice of three answers a little further down the road. Once the equation appears, the driver must quickly figure out the answer as three choices appear. With a finger swipe, the driver moves into the lane with the correct answer.