Having gone “thermonuclear war” on Google after it discovered that it was following Apple into smartphones, Apple may be about to turn the tables on its Mountain View rivals — by entering the search engine business.

Apple is currently looking to hire an engineering project manager for something called Apple Search. The position would be based in San Francisco, and requires a program manager to oversee backend operations for a “search platform supporting hundreds of millions of users.”

The ad notes that the successful candidate will, “Play a part in revolutionizing how people use their computers and mobile devices.”

File this under “unbelievable,” but according to reports from the Bay Area, multiple black vans owned by Apple have been spotted driving around San Francisco with a fancy camera array on top that may indicate the company is developing a self-driving car.

The vehicles have also been spotted in Brooklyn and could be designed to create a competitor to Google Street View. But after looking at the camera array, which is much different than Street View cars, some experts are convinced it’s a self-driving car prototype.

Get a look at the vans in the video below:

The SXSW Film Festival lineup revealed today that Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney will show his latest film, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, for the first time next month in Austin, Texas.

Details on the documentary are scant, but the SXSW blurb describes Gibney’s creation as “an evocative portrait of the life and work of Steve Jobs that re-examines his legacy and our relationship with the computer.”

Here’s the official synopsis:

ARM holdings, the company behind the mobile processor architecture that powers the iPhone and iPad, unveiled its next generation processor blueprints today that it says will increase performance three fold compared to its current designs.

The new Cortex-A72 chips aimed at smartphone and tablets will make their debut next year — just in time for the iPhone 7 — and also use 75% less power while maintaining the same level of performance as today’s ARM processors, paving the way for thinner, more powerful iPhones in the future.

Almost three quarters of iOS users have upgraded to the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, according to the latest stats shared by the company.

As measured by visits to the App Store on February 2, Apple claims that 72 percent of active iOS devices are running iOS 8 — compared to 25 percent who are sticking with iOS 7, and a minuscule 3 percent using earlier iterations. It’s not quite at the 80 percent+ mark that iOS 7 was at this time last year, but next to Android’s pitiful numbers, it’s still got to be considered a runaway hit for Apple.

Read on to find out what’s driving the move.

We’ve known that a big redesign of Tweetbot for Mac has been in the works for awhile, and now Tapbots designer Mark Jardine has shared a little tease with the world.

You’ve surely seen the ultra-expensive Super Bowl commercials by now (and if you haven’t check out our round up), but I doubt you took time to recreate your favorites as stop-motion Lego animations.

That’s precisely what A+C Studios did, however, over the last 36 hours since the commercials aired.

Check it out below for some great Lego animation.

Swipe down from the top of your iPhone (or iPad) screen and you’ll see the new iOS 8 Notification Center. It’s got two sections — Notifications on the right and Today on the left. Tap on the Today button and you’ll see all the new widgets arrayed in their default order.

You can add your calendar, weather, stocks and any one of hundreds of third-party app that has widget support.

The great thing is that you’re not stuck with the default order, or even the default apps — this part of Notification Center is totally customizable. Here’s how to make it your own.

Chances are you’ve got a camera within a few feet of you at all times. Though we all have cameras built into our mobile devices, more people are choosing to purchase digital SLR cameras that rival ther equipment professional photographers use due to their increasing affordability.  With all these cameras at our disposal every single day, shouldn’t we know how to take inspiring pictures?

The quickest answer is ‘yes, we should.’  That is why Cult of Mac Deals, for a limited time only, is offering the Adobe KnowHow Photography Skills Course Bundle at an impressive 91% off so everyone can learn how to take amazing photographs like an expert.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen vast improvements to lithium-ion batteries, which power the portable gadgets we rely on today. But that’s all about to change, thanks to a company called SolidEnergy.

Born out of MIT in 2012, the startup has built a battery that stores more energy than that inside Apple’s iPhone 6, but measures half the size.

Luca Maestri controls the purse strings of the most profitable company in the world, so it’s no wonder why he was just named the most admired CFO in the world.

Apple’s money man won nearly one in four votes among top Fortune 500 CFO’s of the world in Model N’s annual rankings. His company announced last week that it made more profits in the last three months than any company in history.

HTC does some pretty terrific things — its One M8 is a prime example of that. But it does some downright ridiculous things, too, like producing its own rap videos.

Yes, you read that right: The Taiwanese company has produced a rap video that explains the many advantages the One M8 has over its rivals, and trashes competing products like the iPhone 6 and Samsung’s Galaxy S5.

Anyone holding onto the mistaken belief that Apple waited too long to launch a big-screen iPhone got their correction during Apple’s recent earnings call, when the company revealed it shipped a massive 74.5 million iPhones during the last three months of 2014 — representing more than half of Apple’s total revenue for the quarter.

iPhone 6 mania isn’t going away anytime soon, either, according to estimates provided by sources in Apple’s supply chain. Based on orders received, manufacturers reportedly expect Apple to ship more than 50 million additional iPhones by the end of March.

Have you ever had an Apple product bite the dust only a few months after its warranty or AppleCare expired? Out-of-warranty repair costs can easily soar into the hundreds of dollars for Apple products, but if you purchased your Mac using a credit card that offers extended-warranty protection, you might be able to get that money back.

Many credit cards offer purchase-protection and extended warranties, which are usually included as a free benefit for qualifying purchases made using the card. I recently had a MacBook Air die. It was over three years old, so it was no longer covered by Apple’s One-Year Limited Warranty or AppleCare. Fortunately, I purchased it using an American Express credit card and, therefore, AMEX’s extended-warranty program gave me extra coverage.

Read on to learn how Apple repaired my broken MacBook Air and AMEX reimbursed the cost — saving me nearly $300.

Apple may eventually merge OS X and iOS, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. In an interview last year, Phil Schiller dismissed the idea of combining both (exactly what Microsoft recently announced plans to do with Windows 10) as an enormous “waste of energy.”

If you’d like to see what an iOS/OS X mashup could look like, however — and you have a jailbroken iOS device, to boot — you can check out the latest tweak from jailbreak developer Evan Swick.

Called Harbor, the tweak is described by Swick as “the ultimate dock tweak” and brings the OS X Yosemite dock to any device running iOS 8 — offering you a whole new way of launching apps on your iPhone or iPad.

And you know what? It’s actually pretty great.

Like most things that come in small sizes, pico projectors have always been a big disappointment.

Called “pico” because of their portability and battery power, the diminutive projectors in this class have typically been underpowered and underwhelming. Almost by definition, projectors need to be big and bright enough to throw a lot of light at the screen.

So it’s a big surprise that Celluon’s new featherweight pocket-size PicoPro is a heavyweight champ. I was prepared for it to suck — but was surprised and delighted when it turned my living room wall into a 150-inch cinema screen.

Apple still hasn’t opened an official store in the Middle East — and in Dubai that has allowed some otherwise past-it brands to not only eke out a modest existence but to thrive, complete with upmarket retail stores in shiny shopping malls.

Posted by Twitter user Mark McLaughlin during a sojourn in the UAE, the pictures portray a tranquil tech oasis as yet undisturbed by the disruptive forces of official Apple Stores. Like an island with no natural predators, that means that BlackBerry Stores, official Nokia outlets, and others can live together in non-threatened harmony.

But maybe not for much longer.

Apple already has its in-dash operating system CarPlay, which it hopes will make its way into more than 24 million vehicles over the next five years. But if a new patent published today is anything to go by, that’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Apple’s hopes for the car-world.

What Apple describes is a way of linking your iPhone to your vehicle by way of a Bluetooth connection, thereby allowing drivers to lock and unlock car doors, start up engines, establish personalized car settings, and even shut off engines during specific time windows.

It all sounds a bit like 1997’s (underrated) James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, where Bond takes his BMW for a backseat spin, via his Sony Ericsson JB988 cellphone. Implemented correctly, it could be another massive boon for Apple — which has already made clear its home automation ambitions with the arrival of HomeKit.

But how exactly would it work?

iPhones are expensive, and leaving your new, shiny iPhone 6 or 6 Plus without a case on is akin to driving a car without insurance. Why risk it?

In today’s video, I run down my five favorite cases for Apple’s current-generation iPhones, selecting the ones that will keep your phone both safe and stylish at the same time.

The fate of GT Advanced Technologies’ failed sapphire plant in Mesa, Arizona, has been decided. After committing to repurposing the 1.3-million-square-foot facility, Apple revealed today that it will invest $2 billion in making it a global command center for all of its cloud networks.

The company plans to have 150 full-time employees based in Mesa to operate the center once it’s built, and there will be an accompanying solar farm to power the facility with 100% renewable energy.

You’ve seen it before, of course: the parting of the clouds, the nuclear-reactor-powered city of Springfield, Bart’s varying chalkboard standards, Lisa’s inability to stay in key (so jazzy!) in orchestra, skateboarding past tons of regular characters through the streets, and the final landing on the living room couch.

But you’ve never seen the iconic television show intro like this before, decked out in deliciously retro pixel art, directed and animated by Paul Robertson and Ivan Dixon, with music by Jeremy Dower.

Today Apple seeded the fifth beta of iOS 8.2 to developers. While nothing too significant seems to have been added, there are some updates to WatchKit.

We all need to get rid of photos from our iPhones from time to time, and iOS 8 makes it pretty simple to select a single or group of photos and delete. Deleting a photo at a time is all well and good, as is tapping a bunch of them and then deleting. But what if you want to just seriously delete a whole ton of them at once?

There’s a better way to bulk delete photos from your iPhone (or iPad), and it takes a lot of the tapping out of the process. Here’s how to do it.

Remote controlled quadcopters have experienced a sharp increase in popularity recently due to their new-found affordability and increasing number of options. Now, drones come in all shapes and sizes and there are models to cater to every skill level.

You will experience huge fun no matter your skill level with the small and lightweight Blade Pico QX RTF Double-Flip Drone, specially priced at just $49.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

We’ve seen a few pictures of filming underway for Sony’s Steve Jobs movie, but today we got the first look at Michael Fassbender as Jobs. Some on-set stills show the X-Men and 12 Years A Slave star in an outdoor scene with Seth Rogan as Steve Wozniak.