President Obama might not be allowed an iPhone for security reasons, but an iPhone 6 Plus did make into the White House recently — to photograph the Presidential Christmas decorations.

“If you are looking to capture something candid, people are so used to seeing mobile devices that their reaction time is slower,” said photographer Brooks Kraft in an interview with TIME magazine. “You have a better chance of getting the shot, and that was the case at the White House.”

Because the pre-Christmas event is less formal than many occasions at the White House (the President isn’t there for one thing), Kraft said he seized the opportunity to “try out new gear that I might use later in more news-oriented environments.”

And what better gear to try out than an iPhone 6 Plus?

Foxconn has been working to replace its human workforce with robotic “Foxbots” for some time now, but it seems that a 2011 promise by CEO Terry Gou to unleash an army of production robots by the end of 2014 won’t be coming true after all.

According to the Chinese financial publication Jiemian, Foxconn is facing numerous difficulties building robots capable enough to carry out the kind of precision needed for constructing Apple devices. First and foremost is the fact that the bots are simply too clunky to do the work required of them — primarily because they were designed for automotive work rather than for assembling iPhones.

The current crop of bots reportedly have a production accuracy of 0.05mm, making them a little shy of the 0.02mm accuracy needed to build Apple products.

Christmas is still a few weeks away, but Apple is getting into the holiday spirit by activating a number of its festive-themed curated iTunes Radio stations — ranging from collections of country Christmas songs, to stations featuring the kind of Christmas standards we all know and love.

The ten stations include Children’s Christmas Holiday Sing-Along, Country Holiday, Classical Holiday, Holiday Classics, Holiday Hits, Latin Holiday, Rockin’ Holiday, Soulful Holiday, Swingin’ Holiday and The Sounds of Christmas.

Of all the big companies that would interested in buying their employees the Apple Watch when it comes out, fashion brands like Louis Vuitton and Fendi come to mind first. What doesn’t come to mind is BuzzFeed.

But that’s exactly what BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is doing for his 700+ employees. As a reward for reaching 200 million unique visitors and 750 million video views in one month, every BuzzFeed staffer gets an Apple Watch.

Besides a $75 million gym for employees, Apple’s massive new campus will have a number of nice perks, including a state-of-the-art theater for future product unveilings. The 1,000-seat venue will likely be where Apple holds the majority of its media events, and so the company is willing drop some serious cash on the space.

The internet is a fantastic resource, but one that is filled with perils and pitfalls. Even the most seasoned tech professional can fall prey to the dangers that await in the shadows of the net.

The only way to fully protect your internet experience is with help: The kind of help that Cult of Mac Deals is offering today. Get Sticky Password Premium for half price, and the VPN Unlimited Premium Plan for 70% off. Read on for details.

Apple was forced by major record labels to implement digital rights management technology in iTunes, according to testimony in an ongoing class-action lawsuit that accuses Cupertino of stifling competition with competing music services.

Apple contemplated licensing its DRM, called FairPlay, to other companies, “but we couldn’t find a way to do that and have it work reliably,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services.

If size does matter, being too big can get you laughed at, too.

Such is the case with Samsung’s 105-inch curved UHD TV. With a price tag approaching $120,000 — the cost of a few cars or a small house in most ZIP codes — the reviews on Amazon are pure comedy gold.

A visit to Amazon’s listing for the gigantic TV, which includes FREE Prime shipping, by the way — might leave you disappointed at first because the item is not in stock. But scroll through the reviews and you will find the many hilarious ways shoppers express sticker shock.

Have you been noticing some weird problems with your Instagram feed today, like pictures not showing up? You’re not alone, says Instagram, which notified users this morning that it is experiencing some issues, but a fix is in the works.

Instagram users have reportedly been experiencing issues where their main photo feed isn’t updating with new pictures, even though Instagram users they’re following are still able to upload and share new pictures.

Apple announced today that in support of Computer Science Education Week, anyone can come to an Apple Store on December 11th for a free-introductory course on how to become the next great iOS developer.

The free coding workshops are part of Code.org’s Hour of Code initiative, that seeks to make coding a little less intimidating by educating people of all ages on the basics of computer programming, because like Steve Jobs once said, every American should learn how to code.

Apple Computers was recently named the 10th most disruptive idea of the last 85 years  by Businessweek. To celebrate the historic impact of the Apple I and Apple II computer had on the digital revolution, the magazine interviewed Steve Wozniak to talk about the early days of Apple.

Wozniak talked about working with Steve Jobs in high school and how the two founded the company with Ron Wayne, but Woz says that while he realized the world was on the verge of a huge computer revolution, it took Jobs a little longer to see the impact computers would have on the average Joe.

Thinking about finally signing up for Spotify Premium? There couldn’t be a better time to do it. For a limited time only, Spotify is offering new customers three months of access for just $0.99 a month — that’s $9 off its normal price.

Many people haven’t even gotten their iPhone 6 devices yet, and already the rumors are starting up about what Apple has planned for its next generation handsets.

One slightly sketchy rumor, citing sources in the Apple supply chain in China, suggests 2015’s iPhone lineup could include a 4-inch model, in line with the size of the iPhone 5 and 5s. According to the report, the idea would be to appeal to “female users” who are put off by the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

The rumor doesn’t elaborate on whether Apple would create a new 4-inch iPhone from scratch, or refresh a previously launched model instead.

We’re not convinced!

My team slid in under cover of night over at Harfeld Manor, an easy run into a low-security data vault that my old shadowrunner pal Monica promised would be an easy in and out.

It wasn’t, of course, but it took the death of our mutual friend, the mage Deitrich, to really wake us up to that fact.

Sure, we hit that place hard, but there was a ton of security both on the ‘Net and in the premises themselves, and we paid dearly for our hubris.

It would take us another several runs to really figure out what was going on in the dark shadows that we came across in our shadowy dealings, but I think we’re getting somewhere. If only we knew where this will finally lead.

This, then, is Shadowrun: Dragonfall in the special Director’s Cut edition, out now from Harebrained Schemes for your iPad. Check out the game trailer below to get a sense of how it all plays out.

As part of its Apps for (RED) AIDS initiative, Fall Out Boy singer-songwriter Patrick Stump will make a special musical appearance at Apple’s SoHo brick-and-mortar retail store in New York City later today. Kicking off at 8pm Eastern, the December 4 performance is part of what Apple has called its “biggest fundraising push yet” to battle HIV.

Stump won’t just be playing, however. In addition, he’ll talk about Apple’s GarageBand app, and how he uses it as part of his creative process.

For almost a decade, between 1985 and 1994, award-winning documentary photographer Doug Menuez photographed Steve Jobs — focusing particularly on his work at NeXT, but also getting some fascinating snaps of what was happening at Apple at the time.

Menuez was recently interviewed by the BBC World Service about his time with Steve Jobs, with the photographer telling a few of the stories behind some of his iconic images. The resulting short video, which shows off a few of Menuez’s rarer images alongside his best known ones, can be seen after the jump.

For anyone who enjoys hearing stories about Steve Jobs (including how he wooed investor Ross Perot, and his dream that one day someone would use one of Jobs’ computers to cure cancer) it’s well worth checking out:

We here at Cult of Mac love bicycles almost as much as we love our iPhone 6 Pluses and iMac Retina 5Ks.

Maybe it’s the feeling of almost flying. Or the passionate design coming out of the bicycle industry. Or maybe it is just the idea of being a part of something else that drives intense passions in people. Whatever it is, we love it.

So we scoured high and low to bring you a list of crazy gift ideas for yourself or for your two-wheeled companions.
Take a look, but remember to take a deep breath before firing up your Apple Pay.

An anti-discrimination bill designed to protect LGBT employees is set to be named after Tim Cook, according to a new report from Reuters.

The bill was put forward by Alabama’s only openly gay lawmaker, Democratic state Representative Patricia Todd. Given Cook’s status as not only the head of the world’s most valuable company, but also an Alabama native, the suggestion to put his name on the bill was first made by Todd “in jest” — only for the comments to be taken seriously and published.

Soon after, she heard from Apple, which was initially hesitant about Cook’s name being associated so publicly with such a politically sensitive issue. However, Apple apparently reconsidered, and Todd received a positive call from Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, saying Cook was happy to lend his name to the cause.

In a statement, Apple said that, “Tim was honored to hear that State Rep. Todd wanted to name an anti-discrimination bill after him, and we’re sorry if there was any miscommunication about it. We have a long history of support for LGBT rights and we hope every state will embrace workplace equality for all.”

Tim Cook and U2 just got roasted for forcing music onto customers’ iPhones, but from 2007 to 2009, Steve Jobs’ Apple was allegedly playing a different tune, and deleted music off of iPods that was purchased on rival music services.

That wouldn’t have been so bad if it were just your embarrassing Nickelband albums, but attorneys for consumers at the ongoing antitrust lawsuit, say iTunes deleted all rival files without ever giving users a warning that they were about to lose their tunes.

The holidays can be a stressful time.  Not only do you try to buy everything on your list, but you also get to fight the crowds for your trouble. Why bother with all that nonsense when you can find something for everyone at Cult of Mac Deals?

Today we highlight 6 deals currently being offered for less than $50 with free shipping.   Now that’s stress free and what Cult of Mac Deals is all about.

GQ Magazine has named Apple exec and Beats cofounder, Jimmy Iovine, as one its Men of the Year. To go with the annual honors, the music legend sat down for an interview to discuss how he went from sweeping floors in a New York recording studio at 19, to creating the iconic Beats brand at 55.

Apple acquired Iovine’s company for a record $3 billion earlier this year, but according to Jimmy, it took him about two years to convince Apple that they needed him to plug the musical hole Steve Jobs left when he died in 2011.

In what seems to be a new pattern of movie promotion, the next entry in the Terminator film series, Genisys, got a teaser trailer Wednesday for the official trailer coming the following day.

Take a look at this tiny trailer, which features a liquid-metal Terminator that looks a lot like ex-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The research reads like a Surgeon General’s warning: Prolonged periods of sitting can lead to obesity, heart disease, blood clots and spinal compression, according to the latest medical studies.

To combat this modern office horror, an artist and an architecture firm from the Netherlands have re-imagined the office with all the chairs pulled out from under us. The exhibit, called The End of Sitting, is a geometric landscape of surfaces of varying heights on which to lean.

“The chair and desk are no longer unquestionable starting points,” Erik and Ronald Rietveld, partners at Dutch firm Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances, told Cult of Mac. “In our society, almost the entirety of our surroundings have been for sitting while evidence from medical research suggests that too much sitting has adverse health effects.”

The iPhone 6 Plus has only been on the market for a few months, but according to a report from Kantar, Apple’s bigger than big device captured 41% of U.S. phablet sales in the quarter ending with October 2014.

What’s even more impressive is that Apple managed to take a huge chunk of the market with only one full month of sales in the quarter. Kantar reports that among smartphones with a 5.5-inch screen or larger, Apple is absolutely dominating the trendy new category that now represents ten percent of all smartphone sales.