We’re coming up to four months since the public release of iOS 8, and according to Apple’s own stats, 68 percent of users are now running the latest version of its mobile operating system. This is up five percent from one month ago — most likely buoyed by the massive number of iOS device activations which took place over the holidays.

iOS 7, meanwhile, fell 3 percentage points to 29 percent of the total active iOS user base, while earlier versions of the OS now hover around 4 percent. (Yes, we know those numbers add up to slightly more than 100 percent: it’s likely due to rounding-up the figures involved.)

Looking for an affordable smartband without the fancy bells and whistles? Razer’s new Nabu X could be exactly what you’re after. Priced at under $50, the minimalistic device connects to your smartphone and brings super simple notifications to your wrist using only three colored LED indicators.

When Apple comes up with an iconic design for an Apple Store, it often likes to replicate it elsewhere.

Just like the glass cube created for the company’s Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York has also popped up in other Apple Stores around the world, so too is the company reusing the glass cylinder entrance architecture design first created for its Pudong brick-and-mortar store in Shanghai.

The stunning 30-foot glass structure design will make a reappearance for Apple’s forthcoming Chongqing Apple Store, located in the city’s upmarket Guotai Plaza.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has been an enormous success for Apple, and a new report from Kantar Worldpanel demonstrates just how true this is.

In the month of November, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus represented 47.4 percent of all smartphones sold in the United States. For those keeping track at home, that’s a 4.3 percent increase from the same time in 2013, when the iPhone 5s and 5c were the latest iPhone models on the market.

The iPhone 6 was also the best-selling smartphone three months in a row in the U.S., with an overall market share of 19 percent. Verizon and AT&T made up 57 percent of all iOS sales during this time.

And it’s not just the U.S. where the iPhone’s taking over, either.

A game which asks you to literally throw your iPhone in the air to make it perform extreme sport-style tricks sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Nonetheless, that’s the concept behind Gyro Skate, a new $1.99 iOS title that aims to replicate the skateboarding experience by asking gamers to perform stunts like the 360 flip by physically rotating your iPhone.

Monster Inc, the company that help co-design the original Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, is suing Beats Electronics along with cofounders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine for allegedly stealing its headphone technology.

The company, known for its overpriced audio cables, filed a lawsuit this week in San Mateo California, claiming Beats and its founders screwed the it out of millions of dollars before the company was sold to Apple last year for $3 billion. According to court documents obtained by USA Today, Monster says Beats concealed its role in the designing and engineering the headphone line, as well as its part in the manufacturing, distributions and selling of the headphones.

When we first saw the new Jurassic World trailers, we were stunned and excited. Then, after it sunk in that the actor that plays doofus Andy Dwyer on NBC’s hilarious Parks and Recreation would be fighting dinosaurs, we sort of imagined a mashup of the two.

Apparently, Thanks Mom Productions had a similar thought, as they’ve taken footage of Chris Pratt from both the movie trailers and the TV show and edited them together for a funny video that’s all kinds of awesome.

Check it out.

Businesses today need a solid web-based presence. A website provides an avenue for a business to communicate with potential clients, remain in contact with the clients they already have, and allows clients to contact them easily.

With today’s Cult of Mac Deals, you can build a dynamic WordPress site that’s optimized for increased user engagement. The WordPress Plugin & Online Course Bundle and The Ultimate Design Course To Increase User Engagement are tools you need to have and, right now, they are available at huge discounts.

LAS VEGAS — With its wide base and gently sloping sides, the Archt one speaker looks a little like an egg pod from Alien or the business end of a bomb.

Its outer shell is sleek black plastic, with a flat ring around the top that gives it a space-age feel. If the killer looks aren’t enough to grab your attention, the speaker’s ground-thumping bass will.

“It gets really loud,” Archt CEO Evan Foo told Cult of Mac.

While the all-in-one wireless speaker is certainly loud — it was ballsy enough to cut through the background noise here at the International CES trade show — the goal is to deliver CD-quality sound, no matter the source of the audio.

Aww, Google TV. We barely knew you existed.

Google officially stopped supporting Google TV today with a post on Google Plus telling developers for the rarely used platform that support would focus on Android TV from now on.

“Existing Google TV devices and all of the features of these devices will continue to work,” says the post, “and so will the apps you’ve developed for the Google TV platform.”

He is an Eagle Scout, a versatile bar-band drummer and a senior GUI designer for a company that creates mobile apps for the health care industry.

But Scott Wade is famous for drawing dirty pictures.

It’s not the content that raises eyebrows but the canvas on which Wade creates. Present him with a dirty car and see why some call him the “da Vinci of Dust.”

Who hasn’t walked by a car coated in dirt and used their finger to scrawl the message, “Wash me”? Wade, inspired by the dirt roads of his home state of Texas, uses a car’s dirty window as an opportunity to create elaborate landscapes, detailed portraiture with subtle shading and re-imagined classic works like The Mona Lisa or Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

This new Android-powered ZX2 Walkman is for serious audiophiles only. Sony’s pushing the device as a high-resolution sound machine, and it’s set a price to match.

$1,119.99 seems a bit much for a portable music player, but I really can’t seem to stop wanting one. The design is gorgeous, with a black matte finish and glorious actual buttons that just beg me to touch it.

LAS VEGAS — I’ve had a standing desk for two years now, and while it’s practically the greatest piece of furniture to ever enter my life, I somehow forget to actually stand at it while working.

HumanScale is all too familiar with lazy people like me using their ergonomic desks without reaping the full benefits, so the company teamed up with Detroit startup Tome to create a standing desk solution called OfficeIQ that syncs with HealthKit to tell you when you’re being too damn lazy.

LAS VEGAS — The wait for the world’s first Lightning headphones is almost over.

Philips’ upcoming Fidelio M2L bypasses the analog headphone jack, instead sending the digital audio signal through the Lightning port used in late-model iOS devices.

“You keep the digital signal as far as possible until you have no choice,” Benoit Borette, a Philips audio engineer, told Cult of Mac.

Apple did amazing things in 2014, but when it comes to growth, the iPad wasn’t exactly a blockbuster success. In fact, they’ve been slumping. Although Cook views slowing iPad growth as a “speed bump,” iPad upgrades are inarguably closer to the upgrade rate of laptops than smartphones.

Cook’s optimistic. “Because we’ve only been in the market for four years, we don’t know how long the upgrade cycle will be for people,” Cook said during the October earnings call. “So that’s a difficult thing to call.”

So what does 2015 hold for the iPad? Sadly, it’s not clear.

Forget the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One — wouldn’t you rather play your PC games in your living room? Razer’s new Android-powered Forge TV allows you to do just that, thanks to a new technology called Cortex: Stream, which beams games from your PC to your television.

LAS VEGAS — On the surface, there’s nothing very exciting about a portable flash drive. It doesn’t excite me at all. But make that drive a sleek, Lightning-equipped, 256GB beast of a thing, and now we’re talking.

The Leef iBridge, on display here at International CES, packs the most storage of any iOS-compatible hard drive on the market. But all that space comes at a steep price.

$399.99, to be exact. Certainly jaw-dropping, but something in me, and obviously in the Leef team, believes there’s at least a few people out there who will buy it. If not, the cheaper 128GB ($200), 64GB ($120), 32GB ($80) and 16GB ($60) models should appeal to the layman.

There’s a nice companion iOS app that reads what you’ve stored and even lets you shoot photos/video directly to the drive. Not a bad thing to have for a photo adventure in the wilderness. Or if you still don’t have enough storage available to install iOS 8.

One of the biggest reasons why many app developers continue to snub Android is piracy. The platform’s “open” approach, which allows applications to be downloaded from third-party sources and installed manually, makes it incredibly easy for users to circumvent Google Play and obtain paid apps completely free.

Piracy on Android is so rampant right now that just 5 percent of installs of Monument Valley — one of the best mobile games of 2014, which is currently priced at $3.99 in the Play Store — have actually been paid for.

Throughout December, we heard a lot of rumors that said Apple might be bringing back the 4-inch iPhone form factor. My colleague Luke categorized these rumors as “unlikely,” and yet they continued, perhaps buoyed by the crossed-fingers of women and the tiny-handed. But now a new report says they were unlikely after all.

The role of Steve Jobs’ eldest daughter Lisa Jobs in the upcoming Universal movie biopic was previously described by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin as the story’s “heroine.”

Given some of the A-list names that have been associated with the project, it’s therefore something of a surprise to hear that the role has apparently been awarded to 17-year-old actress Perla Haney-Jardine.

If your reaction to that news is “who?,” you’re most likely not alone. Up until she won this part, the Brazilian-born American actress is best known for playing the four-year-old daughter of Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo and Bill in 2004’s Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Not exactly bad training for playing the daughter of the often steely tech-ninja Steve Jobs, perhaps!

Want to buy an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus without a SIM card, or locked to a specific carrier? You finally have your chance: unlocked iPhones have just gone on sale through Apple’s brick-and-mortar and online stores for the very first time.

LAS VEGAS — Taking a urine-analysis test to check your most vital and private health stats usually requires an hour-long visit to the doctor. But in 2015, you’ll be able to pee on a stick and get 12 vital health measurements without having to leave your bathroom.

Scandu, the Silicon Valley-based medtech company behind the tiny Scandu Scout analyzer, has created an at-home urinalysis device called the Scanaflo that bridges the gap between the medical community and consumers.

The iGrow Hair sounds like some kind of comical mishearing of iPad Air. In fact, the iGrow and iDerma are the latest wacky gadgets to show up at this year’s CESB — or not so wacky at all if you listen to its creators.

The fully-adjustable, FDA-approved devices boast a proprietary Low-Level Light Therapy (LLLT) technology. According to its makers, a combination of red laser and LED light diodes is used to “stimulate and energize cellular activity” to reenergize the natural function of the hair follicle.

If your hair is thinning (although you’re not yet bald), iGrow offers a 4-to-6 month process which could give you back a head of hair that is demonstrably thicker, fuller and more vibrant than ever.

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, yes, it does come with a 6-month money back guarantee.

LAS VEGAS — An iPhone battery case is kinda like insurance: You don’t really want it, but you know you need it. It’s been months since Apple started selling the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but we have yet to see any battery cases from established brands … until now.

Otterbox unveiled its Resurgence power case for the iPhone 6 at International CES this week. The case packs a 2,600-mAh battery that will charge your iPhone’s battery twice over. And, like everything Otterbox makes, it’s designed with military-grade drop protection.

The case charges itself via a micro-USB connector, and it has a button on the back that needs to be pressed when your iPhone requires more life. Otterbox is offering four colors, and the case should be available in a couple weeks for $100.

The so-called Bendgate incident might have done Apple no favors in 2014, but according to a new patent published today, Cupertino is far from done when it comes to flexible iPhones — this time, purposely so.

Apple’s newly-granted patent covers an invention related to flexible housing for future iOS devices. As described, these devices would be capable of being bent or even folded with no damage to the internal components.

To pull this off, Apple would likely ditch the milled aluminium used in current iPhones for more easily deformable materials such as soft plastics and fiber composites able to withstand repeated flexing.