This post is brought to you by Bitdefender.

Macs are not immune to cyberattack and viruses. Though the threats are real, leading antivirus maker Bitdefender doesn’t use scare tactics to warn people about malware targeting Macs.

Instead, Bitdefender is running its Hug a Mac campaign this month. You could win a MacBook Air in this fun competition simply by uploading a selfie of you and your Mac, then tagging it #hugamac to enter the draw. Full details can be found on Bitdefender’s Hug a Mac campaign webpage.

Thanks to contractual obligations that are purportedly ending this year, Google’s days as Safari’s search provider could be numbered. And Yahoo wants to take its spot.

During Yahoo’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, Marissa Mayer reiterated her interest in being Safari’s main search engine. “The Safari platform is basically one of the premier search deals in the world if not the premier search deal in the world,” she said in response to a question about Yahoo’s plans for search.

Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs movie has been down a hard road on its way to production. Disasters like fickle actors and directors have plagued the project, but filming is finally underway in San Francisco as we speak, and for the first time ever, we have an official cast list.

Universal Pictures announced the official cast for the movie this week as filming has already wrapped up at Jobs’ parents garage. The logline confirms the film will be “set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 2001 with the unveiling of the iPod. The film takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.”

We already knew Michael Fassbender has been tapped to play Jobs, but the official cast list includes a few surprises — like the three different actresses that will play Steve’s daughter — and a veteran Apple PR guru we didn’t see coming.

Here’s the full cast alongside the real-life people they’ll play:

Look totally fashionable while getting superior sound quality with a pair of Beats by Dre headphones.

You could win your own pair of Studio Beats with The Beats by Dre Giveaway, which is open to all Cult of Mac Deals readers for a limited time.

Let’s face it: iPhoto sucks. It’s slow. It’s buggy. It’s hopelessly burdened by skeuomorphic elements. It’s just behind the times.

That’s why we were excited when Apple said last year it would phase out iPhoto for a brand new app with a feature set somewhere between iPhoto and Aperture. The successor app was supposed to be available in early 2015, but it appears that Photos for Mac has been delayed.

What would it be like to drop acid with Steve Jobs?

Daniel Kottke was one of Apple’s first employees, but he knew Jobs from even earlier days at Reed College. The two bonded over their love for meditation and eastern spirituality at Reed. They also did a lot of LSD.

A longtime Cult of Mac reader wrote in with a question about some odd-looking folders she sees on her Mac.

“The ‘All Pictures’ folder has a sprocket looking icon,” she writes. “Same with All PDF documents and Recently Changed documents.

Are these files located elsewhere and if I deleted a file from one of the above folders does it remove it from all my files? Don’t understand the purpose of these.”

Excellent question, for sure. Let’s take a look at what these folders are, and how to use them to their full potential.

Let’s flash back to April 2010.

That was the month that Steve Jobs penned his famous “Thoughts on Flash” memo, in which he soundly rejected any and all reasons for Apple to adopt Flash on the iOS operating system.

Jobs famously said that Flash was too battery-hungry, too unreliable, too insecure, too slow and too closed to be a wise platform for the mobile-first developers of then-tomorrow. And people scoffed at the time.

But who’s laughing now?

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a weird game. And I’m not just saying that because it’s about two members of a street gang going to hell to rescue their boss before he or she is forced to marry Satan’s daughter. Because that’s super-weird, don’t get me wrong.

Other than that, Gat is an expansion to 2013’s Saints Row IV that doesn’t require you to own the main game but doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t played it. It has a six- to eight-hour story with an additional dozen or so hours of open-world gameplay. Whether you’re new to the series or not, you’re in for its special brand of relentless fun.

When Apple releases a major update like yesterday’s iOS 8.1.3, it’s usual for the company’s coders to fix (or, in other words, break) all known jailbreak exploits.

Not so surprisingly, the latest update is no different. It fixes several exploits that are necessary to run the iOS 8.1.2 jailbreak. But in a classy move, at least Apple gave a hat tip to the jailbreak team for calling their attention to the exploits.

The iPhone has gotten considerably better over the years, but which iPhone is the loudest?

iClarified ran the numbers in a recent video, in which a decibel meter was placed beneath the speaker of every Apple handset so far while they played sound at maximum volume.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is the anti-Apple. He’s square where Apple is cool, he’s a sputtering doofus where Apple is collected, and he’s prone to hyperbole whereas Apple tends to undersell its products. For example, Schmidt said in 2013 that Android was more secure than the iPhone (LOL).

Given all that, who do you think Schmidt’s personal hero is? Boutros Boutros-Ghali? Shocker! Wrong. It’s Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, naturally. Not that many of those lessons have rubbed off on him, mind you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQehmY1M5iM

There’s no doubt that technology like iOS 8’s Continuity feature make it easier to transfer work between your Mac and your iPhone or iPad. However, nothing about Apple’s creation comes close to matching the sheer, unadulterated excellence that is Pushbullet.

Coming freshly off a $1.5 million dose of venture financing, the Pushbullet app is now freely available for Mac, iOS and Safari — providing a better way of transferring files between your devices with a simplicity we could only previously dream of.

All you have to do is install the app on both your mobile and desktop device, link the two together, and — hey presto! — you’ll never have to email yourself attachments again.

Not content with simply being the world’s third-biggest smartphone maker, occasional Apple copycat Xiaomi is also making inroads in becoming a major wearables company in its own right.

Recently, the company’s CEO Lei Jun laid out his plans to sell more than 10 million of its affordable Mi Band smart bracelets within the next 12 months.

While we obviously don’t yet know how well that will turn out, early indicators are certainly promising — with reports that in at least one minor market, Xiaomi is off to a strong start: selling 100,000 units of its smart bracelets in the Taiwan market alone in less than two months.

Recently I wondered here on Cult of Mac how much of the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic, penned by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin, was going to take place in flashback.

For those who haven’t been keeping track, until now everything we’d heard suggested that the movie would be divided into three acts, with each one taking place backstage at a major Jobs product unveiling. The first part will take place before the original Macintosh launch, the second will deal with NeXT Computer, and the third will be Jobs’ introduction of the iMac (not the iPod, as previously suggested) upon Jobs’ return to Apple.

While that all sounds well and good, recently we’ve heard about scenes for the movie taking place at Jobs’ childhood home (modified to look as it would have in 1976) and a cafeteria at U.C. Berkeley, circa 1983 — neither one fitting with the entirely backstage narrative we’d been sold on.

Apparently these suspicions were correct, as a new report suggests that the movie will also contain flashbacks to several other points in Jobs’ life. Find out what they are after the jump:

Apple closed its earnings call this afternoon after announcing an unprecedented 74.5 million iPhone sales to go along with $74.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in profits. It broke the record for the most money made by a corporation in history.

While breaking down the Q1 2015 numbers, Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri also gave us some juicy details about what’s in store for 2015 by hinting at new products in the pipeline, as well as subtly dropping the Apple Watch’s release date.

We’ve combed through the numbers and the conference call and found seven huge new revelations every Apple fan needs to know:

During today’s historic Apple earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a subtle bomb on Apple fans by revealing that the Apple Watch is slated to launch in April.

“I’m using it every day and I love it and I can’t live without it,” Cook said.

While he didn’t give a specific release date for the wearable, it’s the first time Apple’s narrowed down the launch beyond “early 2015.” Cook said Apple considers “early” to be sometime within the first four months of the year, so the Apple Watch is right on target.

The numbers are finally in for Apple’s Q1 2015 financial quarter, and just as predicted, Apple blew away its own projections with a record-breaking $74.6 billion in revenue, leading to $18 billion in net profits. Both profit and revenue topped Apple’s previous records set in Q1 2014.

Apple’s record-breaking quarter was aided in large part by unprecedented demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Total iPhone sales hit an astounding 74.5 million, while only 65 million was expected. The iPad experienced decent holiday sales, with 21.4 million sold, and Mac sales didn’t disappoint either. With 5.5 million sold, it’s no wonder Tim Cook called the quarter “simply phenomenal.”

Despite the better-than-expected performance, AAPL shares were down 3.51 percent to $109.53 per share by close of market today. Take a look at the impressive numbers in Apple’s announcement below:

The Grand Theft Auto series is known for its violence; you’re usually cast as a thug or criminal of some sort, and set loose on a rampage across an open world landscape, able to steal cars, beat up civilians, and even gun down the cops.

Watch as these older folks do just that in Grand Theft Auto V, reacting to the crazy violence with fear, loathing, and a little bit of evil joy.

Along with this morning’s iOS 8.1.3 update, Apple also has some new goodies for Mac users with the release of OS X Yosemite 10.10.2.

The update fixes a problem that caused Wi-Fi to disconnect. The latest version also includes a number of bug fixes for Spotlight, Bluetooth headphones, iCloud Drive and VoiceOver, while also improving stability and security in Safari.

The update is available now in the Mac App Store. Here’s a full list of the changes:

Apple’s latest iOS 8 update fixes a number of issues with FaceTime, Spotlight and iMessages, but the biggest addition is the giant reduction in free space you’ll need to install future updates.

iOS 8.1.3, released this morning, is available now as an over-the-air update in the Settings app of iOS or via direct download in iTunes. The new software increases stability and performance in addition to squashing a number of bugs.

Check out all the changes in the iOS 8 update below:

Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri are getting ready to announce Apple’s biggest earnings ever to investors this afternoon, and we’ll be on hand to liveblog all the action.

The results are expected to be historic, thanks to unprecedented demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in not only the US, but also China. Wall Street expects Apple to blow past its projected revenue of $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion and hit somewhere closer to an all-time high of $68 billion.

Analysts expect iPhone 6 sales to have topped more than 66 million, but Apple expert Ben Bajarin is predicting any number lower than 70 million would be a result of supply chain limitations, not demand. Mac sales are also expected to be strong, while the iPad remains the only wild card.

The call begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, but the liveblog action starts now. Keep this tab open and come back throughout the day for coverage of Apple’s biggest quarter ever.

Well, there goes Alfred.

That’s the first thought I had when I saw the new Spotlight in OS X Yosemite. I feared Apple had basically made my favorite little app launcher obsolete (we nerds call it “sherlocked”).

I was wrong.

It’s six months later, and Alfred is doing just fine, thanks largely to a vibrant community built around its power features, or workflows. Spotlight may be able to quickly launch an app from anywhere, but Alfred can tell the weather, eject attached hard drives, and control your Nest thermostat.

And now, after five years on the Mac, Alfred is making the leap to iOS with a new companion app called Alfred Remote. Released today, it’s not going to be useful for most people, but serious Alfred users will love it. If anything, it’s evidence that you can still build a great app and community around core features offered by Apple.

Everyone has computer or mobile device data. That data can contain precious information that, if lost, could be disastrous for the owner of that data.

Don’t take the risk associated with the loss of important computer data. Get the IDrive 1TB Hard Drive & 10TB Cloud Backup Bundle, sale priced at 79% off for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

The dwarf planet named after the Roman goddess of motherly relationships will soon have a new friend. And scientists and space-exploration geeks here on Earth can’t wait for that friend, the space probe Dawn, to start dishing.

Dawn, launched in 2007 to visit two bodies within the asteroid belt past Mars, is scheduled to enter an orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres on March 6. Ceres is the largest mass in the asteroid belt and has an icy mantle that may harbor an internal ocean of water under its surface. Talk of water on a planetary body always leads to questions of life.

Ceres has long been a curiosity to astronomers and space observers, and its status — is it an asteroid? a dwarf planet? — has been hotly debated ever since its discovery in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi.

Never mind all that. What’s that white spot?