The advent of iTunes 12.1 gave us a sweet new widget that lets you control iTunes from the Notification Center’s Today section, without ever having to switch to the app itself. You can even favorite songs and buy currently playing tracks if you’re listening to iTunes Radio.

Unfortunately, this widget doesn’t seem to appear by default. To enable it, you need to drop into System Preferences. Here’s how to get it up and running.

Arganalth can look at an old floppy disk drive and see in it a second act.

The 23-year-old engineer from Lille, France, uses old computer hardware long overdue for the landfill to assemble an electronic orchestra that he conducts out of a suitcase for a growing audience tuned into his YouTube channel.

Arganalth — he prefers to use his YouTube name in interviews — creates strange but recognizable music with a network of hard and floppy disk drives powered by a Raspberry Pi.

It would have been hard to don a Xybernaut Poma wearable PC in 2002 without uttering the phrase, “Resistance is futile.”

What was arguably the first wearable computer had the look of a Borg, a cybernetic villain from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Borg’s design, a menacing mashup of species and technology, was badass, but Poma users just looked awkward. The computer’s processing unit was portable enough, fitting in a pocket or clipping to a belt. But once you added the keyboard to the forearm and a clunky-looking, head-mounted optical piece, your cool crashed like a bad hard drive.

Ever wanted to run Windows 98 on your iPad Air? Uh, chances are, probably not, and even if you did, it hasn’t been possible. At least not until now. Behold, Windows 98 running on an iPad Air 2!

I’ve always found the fetishistic quality of unboxing videos to be a bit strange, if I’m honest. Even weirder, though, are the quasi-sadomasochistic videos unleashed by “stress testers” like YouTube’s seemingly damaged Ukrainian tech lover hater TechRax, whose videos watch like an Apple ad directed by the Marquis de Sade.

Fifty Shades of Space Gray, amirite?

Anyway, TechRax’s latest video shows an innocent young iPhone 6 meeting its maker at the hands of some former soda cans heated into a hot liquid using a mini-furnace. If you’ve wondered whether it’s a good idea to store your beloved Apple handset in the same drawer as a puddle of molten metal, you’ll get your answer after the jump.

It’s not pretty.

Thanks to a groundbreaking deal between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, we’re finally about to see Spider-Man rejoin his Marvel brethren Captain America and Iron Man as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But having sat through a disappointingly botched reboot, how best should everyone’s favorite web-slinger be used? Forget about another tired origin story; 50 years of Spider-Man comics have given filmmakers plenty of great stories should they choose to adapt them–stories like the ones we’re about to suggest.

Without further ado, then, here are Cult of Mac’s picks for the Spider-Man comic arcs we’d love to see spun up on the big screen. Swing out past the jump for more details:

For those of us who have long been suffering under the tyrrany of iPhoto, Photos for Mac represents a beautiful new frontier of speedy and powerful photo-editing on the Mac. But if you’re an Aperture lover, Photos for Mac represents something more bitter: the total killing of Apple’s pro photo-editing suite in favor of a more consumer-oriented product.

If you’ve been hoping for a last minute reprieve, and for Tim Cook to step in and save Aperture, sorry, we’ve got bad news. Once Photos for Mac launches, you won’t even be able to buy Aperture on the App Store anymore.

Given Apple’s tendency to only do major redesigns for its iPhones every other year, we’re most likely not going to get a bold new iPhone form factor until late 2016.

With that said, however, Jony Ive’s design team don’t take too many days off — which means that there are constantly new ideas being churned out that may well radically change how we think of an iPhone looking. A new Apple patent application published today shows off an iPhone with a wraparound display, resembling something not a million miles away from a fourth- or fifth-generation iPod nano.

Until now, Apple’s been dead-set on making every iPhone thinner than the last, but the company’s proposed “wrap-around display” makes it seem like that strategy may no longer be on the cards.

Thanks to the wonder of drones, we’ve had a few airborne glimpses of Apple’s forthcoming Apple 2 campus in Cupertino. Until now, however, ground-level pictures have been in decidedly short supply.

That changed yesterday, when Apple gave reporters from San Francisco news outlet KQED an up-close-and-personal glimpse at its flying saucer-shaped headquarters, which will eventually house up to 15,000 employees.

Along with photos showing the development, the reporters also heard a few environmentally friendly factoids about the campus — such as the fact that it will use recycled water to flush toilets, solar arrays to meet the majority of energy needs, and that the older buildings Apple inherited when it bought the land were broken down and recycled for new building materials.

You can check out the images after the jump:

I’m not what you would consider a “gamer.” I dabble in mobile titles like Monument Valley and occasionally play Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart with friends, but few games manage to grab my attention for very long.

Yet there’s a new iPhone game I haven’t been able to put down for the past two weeks.

It’s called King of Thieves, and it’s from ZeptoLab, the maker of the hit App Store game Cut the Rope.

If you’re a Pinterest user with an eye on app discovery, Apple has the perfect deal for you. The companies have partnered to create “App Pins,” allowing users to install iOS apps without having to leave the Pinterest app.

App Pins work like regular pins on Pinterest’s virtual pinboard, only with the added functionality of an “Install” button next to the regular “Pin it,” alongside an extra “view this on the App Store” option. App Pins can be spotted by way of a small “App Store” badge that incorporates Apple’s logo.

“We can be a really powerful service for app discovery, which is a problem that still really hasn’t been solved,” Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp told The New York Times. “Our specialty is really connecting people to the things they want to do.”

Some U.S. carriers have historically been more lenient about unlocking phones than others, but starting today they are all mandated to provide unlocking once a customer’s contract is up.

Legislation put in place by the Federal Communications Commission back in 2013 takes full effect today, and carriers must comply with new policies on unlocking.

What if you had to pay a month’s wages up front just to get a job?

It’s a concept that’s largely foreign to Western culture, but bonded servitude is still rampant in other parts of the world, namely Asia. That also happens to be where much of Apple’s supply chain is located, and starting today the company is cracking down on the corrupt practice.

It’s hard to truly understand Apple’s astronomical size until you put things into context. With $178 billion in cash as of last quarter, you can start easily comparing the company to the gross domestic product (GDP) of large countries.

In fact, Apple would be the world’s 55th richest country right now, according to the latest data from World Bank.

Shares of Apple stock closed at an all-time high today of $124.88, bringing the company’s marketcap to a staggering 711.59 billion. Tim Cook couldn’t be happier with his company’s performance, but according to famous billionaire investor Carl Icahn, Apple’s stock should really be worth double.

In a letter posted to his Twitter followers, Carl Icahn said his firm has increased AAPL’s forecasted earnings per share in 2015 and believe the market should value Apple at $216. That’s not a price target. That’s what Ichan thinks they should be worth today.

According to Carl, the rest of the market still hasn’t caught on because they’re giving the company a significantly discounted multiple on its P/E ratio compared to the S&P 500.

What could possibly make the treacly, soft-focus trailer for the upcoming movie Fifty Shades of Grey any better than Steve Buscemi?

Nothing, that’s what. Unfortunately, even the googly-eyed, wacky-toothed character actor can’t save the awful trailer, as we can see here in this fan-made recut of the original Fifty Shades trailer.

Called “50 Shades of Buscemi,” even a shot of Buscemi waggling a big rubber dildo at someone off-camera (below) can’t make me want to see the film.

Google-owned robotics firm Boston Dynamics is no stranger to creating robotic beasts that can do freakish feats, but their latest robotic quadruped — a 160-pound doglike machine named Spot — takes the crazy factor to an all new level with a smaller, nimbler, more-kickable form factor.

To be perfectly honest, Spot scares the hell out of me. When Elon Musk warned about the possibility of humans becoming slaves to AI, this is what I imagined — legions of weird-looking robots that can go anywhere to hunt you down and put you in your place. Spot doesn’t feature any futuristic weapons to punish his human masters, but the cybernetic canine has some serious skills when it comes to exploring difficult terrain and balancing.

If you don’t think the robot threat is real, here are six GIFs of Spot in action that might change your mind:

When Prince presented the Grammy for best album this week, he made an impassioned case for a musical format that many seem ready to write off as dead.

“Albums, remember those?” he said. “Albums still matter. Albums, like books and black lives, still matter.”

That’s how you present an award, folks.

Albums are collections of musical pieces that work together to create an auditory gestalt larger than the individual songs themselves. With the massive growth in streaming audio these days, many people might be missing out on this incredible old-school experience.

Here’s the cure: a list of amazing albums you should listen to in their entirety, even if you don’t do vinyl. iTunes might have helped kill CDs, but it’s still a great place to buy albums rather than shortchanging yourself with a bunch of singles. There are dozens of other albums you should explore, depending on your musical tastes, but this list should remind us all how awesome albums are as a concept. You can thank us later.

We still don’t know the exact launch date of the Apple Watch, but if you just can’t wait to load up on accessories for your Apple wearable, the first Apple Watch dock is already available on Kickstarter.

ChronosDock, a “luxury” bedside dock, is the first Apple Watch accessory we’ve seen launch so far. Its makers, Kickshark, say it’s “the most indulgent, opulent piece of docking jewelry” they could imagine. It only costs $99, but they insist it’s “excessive in the extreme” to satisfy all you high-end fashionistas.

We think it looks kind of boring, but take a look for yourself:

Tim Cook made a big stand for climate change yesterday by announcing Apple’s plan to invest $850 million in a solar farm that will power the company’s Cupertino campus as well as all retail operations in California.

“We know at Apple that climate change is real,” Cook said yesterday. “Our view is that the time for talk is past and the time for action is now.”

Apple has already put its money where its mouth is by powering all data centers with renewable energy, but the Monterey solar farm is the biggest thing Apple’s ever done in renewable energy, and breaks the record as the biggest-ever solar procurement deal for a company that’s isn’t a utility.

Apple has a reputation for not being afraid to move on.

Buy a new iPhone, and you’re lucky if iOS supports your device just four years down the line. Buy a Mac? Apple’s constantly making older models obsolete with every new OS X release. Heck, there’s an entire ocean of old PowerPC apps that were orphaned by Apple when they migrated to Intel.

Yet Apple isn’t without loyalty to the gadgets that once made it great. Case in point: If you plug a first-gen iPod into your modern-day Mac, iTunes 12 will still sync with it.

For many, the iMac represents computing perfection. It combines state of the art technology with a streamlined operating system that provides the user with flawless productivity that will stay flawless for years.

You could win this kind of computing perfection by entering The iMac Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals. Better hurry though, as this is your last chance to enter.

Bad news, jailbreakers. Apple has stopped signing iOS 8.1.2, the last jailbreakable version of the iOS 8 operating system. That means that unless you already have iOS 8.1.2 installed, you won’t be able to jailbreak using existing methods until another exploit comes down the pipeline.

Anyone who enjoys old-school games will most likely have experienced the crushing disappointment of finding a favorite title in the App Store — only to discover that whichever company ported the game to iOS took no care whatsoever in doing so.

Fortunately, one game series you could absolutely never throw that accusation at is the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, thanks to the remastering efforts of fans Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley. For anyone interested in game restoration and porting, their story is kind of inspirational.

It looks like we might be witnessing the end of an era. Apple is apparently taking down the iconic atom symbol signs from behind the Genius Bars of many of their Apple Stores, removing one of the most whimsical and fun branding elements from their retail presence.