You’ll soon have Beats Music on your iOS device whether you want it or not.

Apple is planning to bake the streaming music service into iOS in early 2015, according to The Financial Times. The integration could happen “as early as March,” which would line up with the possibility of a media event to announce the rumored iPad Pro.

When it comes to the App Store, there’s rarely such a thing as a “free” app. If you’re not paying for it upfront you’ll probably get hit up with exorbitant in-app purchase offers later. So in a move to change the way apps are advertised on iOS, Apple had decided to remove the “Free” download button entirely.

Having been an avid Sim City player going back 20+ years, I will never not be excited about a new game in the franchise.

EA has just released a new trailer for its upcoming SimCity BuildIt worldwide launch, and it has to be said that it looks pretty darn fantastic.

Letting you do all the building, demolition, micro-management and, err, UFO survival the game series is known for, the mobile-only title incorporates full 360° controls, which means that you can explore your beautiful 3-D city from an angle you want.

Is there anything more punk rock than spending loads of money on in-app purchases for iPad games? If your answer is a resounding “yes, of course there is,” prepare to argue with former Sex Pistols screecher John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon.

Speaking with the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper, Lydon claims he spent “10,000 f*cking pounds” (around $15,600) during a two-year app-buying bender on his iPad.

“I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing, and I just wanted to up the ante,” he said, making downloading apps sound like the new version of throwing TVs out of hotel windows. “[L]ike an idiot I didn’t check myself. I’ve been checked now. But there’s a kid in me, see? A bit of my childhood was taken from me and I’m determined to bring it back.”

Apple plans to repurpose its factory in Mesa, Arizona, following the spectacular implosion of its relationship with sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies.

A report from Bloomberg cites Mesa City Manager Christopher Brady as the source of the information. Apple, for its part, has said that it wants to focus “on preserving jobs in Arizona” and will continue to “work with state and local officials as we consider our next steps.”

Google’s new Inbox app is a godsend for people like me who seem to teeter on the brink of inbox bankruptcy weekly, but there’s one problem with the killer Gmail manager: it’s not only available on iOS, Chrome, and Android.

The Inbox team might not be in a hurry to bring its service to Safari, but if you want don’t want to defect to Chrome just manage play with Inbox, our friend Rishi at Zinx has discovered how to access Inbox from Safari.

Here’s how to do it:

One of the first arguments that springs up in the many debates of Mac versus PC is cost. Traditionally, Apple computers come with premium price tags, which are almost always well-deserved. But there are a handful of Apple machines that were priced well above what you would normally expect to pay, even for Cupertino’s latest computer.

In today’s video, we take a look at the five most expensive Macs of all time — and tell you how much they would cost today with their price tags adjusted for inflation. You might think the new Retina 5K iMac is outrageously expensive, but compared to some of Apple’s older machines, it’s not that pricey.

It’s been decades since pagers played a central role in our tech lives, but the beeper is causing some headaches for Apple lately. A federal jury just slapped Apple with a $23.6 million fine for infringing patents related to ’90s technology.

Mobile Telecommunications Technologies sued Apple last year for violating several of its patents that govern two-way exchanges of data. Apple services such as iMessage, calendar invitations and emoji allegedly violated the patents, and after six hours of deliberation, the jury found Apple was guilty of five out of the six charges.

If you were a child of the 1980’s, you probably have a few fond memories. One of them would undoubtedly be playing rad video games on your Nintendo Entertainment System.

The NES controller was, in particular, a joy to use. It featured a simple design, which was great when paired with the simple joy that gaming provided. Now you can relive those days when you play modern games with The NES30 Bluetooth Controller available for a limited time at Cult of Mac Deals.

Another day, another app from Facebook.

That seems to be the trend lately for the social networking giant, as seemingly every aspect of its service has been siloed into its own app. The latest is Facebook Groups for, you guessed it, managing and interacting with different groups.

With the Apple Watch release still months away, plenty of details — like the timepiece’s price and battery life — remain unknown. But the release of WatchKit this morning sheds new light on Apple’s most personal product ever.

We dug through the new WatchKit programming guide and Apple Watch human interface guidelines this afternoon and found a few details that weren’t mentioned in the keynote, such as a special new font designed to look good at any size on the Apple Watch’s tiny face.

Here are five new Apple Watch details buried in the WatchKit SDK:

Sometimes it’s important to let your buddies or loved ones know your location. Whether you need to share this information for safety reasons, or because you like them knowing where you are on our beautiful planet, iOS 8 and your iPhone make it super-simple.

There are two ways to let your friends know where you are at any given time with iOS 8. You can either send your location immediately, or you can share your location details with people over a prescribed amount of time.

Both options are right in an app you use all the time anyway: Messages. Here’s how.

The mad dash to develop the first wave of Apple Watch apps has just begun, and to go along with the new WatchKit for devs, Apple has also released the first iOS 8.2 beta this morning.

iOS 8.2 beta 1 includes support for WatchKit, which allows Apple Watch apps to connect to and run processes on your iPhone in the background. In a press release announcing the update’s availability, Phil Schiller said, “With the iOS 8.2 beta SDK, developers can now start using WatchKit to create breakthrough new apps, Glances and actionable notifications designed for the innovative Apple Watch interface and work with new technologies such as Force Touch, Digital Crown and Taptic Engine.”

Release notes for the beta don’t mention other major new features, but we’ll report on any surprises we find, once we get it installed. The iOS 8.2 beta is available to registered developers in the iOS Dev Center, along with a new Xcode 6.2 beta as well.

You can also grab iOS 8.2 from the direct download links below:

As promised, Apple has given third-party developers tools to start making apps for the upcoming Apple Watch. Today the company announced the availability of WatchKit, its new SDK for creating app experiences on the wrist.

With WatchKit, developers will be able to make actionable notifications, Glances “for timely information accessible by an easy, quick look,” and eventually full-fledged apps. Early WatchKit partners like ESPN, Instagram, and American Airlines have already tested the new APIs for future versions of their apps.

We got a lot of great feedback from last week’s minimal iPhone 6 case roundup. Many of you suggested other cases to check out, and we got so many good recommendations that we decided to share them with everyone.

Not all of these cases are necessarily super slim and minimal, but they’re worth checking out if you’re in the market for something stylish and functional to cradle your precious iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

“A million dollars isn’t cool,” says Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker during one scene in The Social Network. “You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

If that’s the case, then people are going to need to come up with new words to describe Apple, because according to some of Wall Street’s best and brightest, the company could hit a trillion dollar valuation as early as next year.

Pulling up apps and finding files is super easy on OS X Yosemite thanks to the new Spotlight feature, and thanks to GitHub user slong1987, you can now use Spotlight shortcuts to shutdown, restart, logout and put your Mac to sleep.

The clever workaround uses four small apps that you can download from GitHub and then add to your Applications folder. Once installed, all you have to do is pull up Spotlight (CMD+SPACE) type in Restart, hit Enter and you Mac will reboot.

I’ve found the Sleep shortcut especially useful at coffee shops when you have to step away for quick second. Slong1987 says shortcuts for Empty Trash and Securely Empty Trash are also in the works.

Intel is losing against ARM when it comes to mobile. This is incontrovertible. In smartphones and tablets, Intel’s chips just haven’t been able to compete with the likes of Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia…. despite the billions of dollars Intel has spent trying to heavily subsidize things like Atom-powered Android phones.

Not so surprisingly, Intel’s mobile and tablet business isn’t profitable. But Intel’s about to do a little bit of creative accounting to make it’s mobile and tablet divisions profitable: merge them into the PC division.

Now that Universal Studios has decided to go the Marvel route and create its own cinematic universe built around its classic monsters like Frankenstein and The Wolf Man, we thought it might be a good time to reach back into the archives and re-watch the originals.

As the new Universal monster movies will likely be more action-adventure-oriented, it’s good to look back to see what made the original features so great, and which of the old oeuvre were just stinky cash-grabs meant to pad the studio’s bottom line.

With that, let’s get into the best and worst of the genre.

Every once in a while an anecdote comes along that so perfectly describes the late Steve Jobs’ vision, that it’s a perfect metaphor for Apple as a whole. This might be my favorite of those anecdotes.

The Mac Pro is one of the most beautiful and powerful computers ever created, but it remains beyond the reach of many small developers due to a price tag that’s bigger than a car down payment.

That could change this week when MacStadium brings the world’s first Mac Pro data center online, giving anyone the ability to rent server time on the high-performance Apple computers for just a few bucks a month.

MacStadium CEO Greg McGraw said the company originally set out to address the needs of small developers with Mac mini hosting. “We had great success with the Mac mini and we’ll continue to use it,” McGraw told Cult of Mac. “But the Mac Pro is an enterprise-class data center appliance. It’s going to open up a whole new market.”

A new Apple Store opening up is always something of an event. But over the weekend, a one-of-a-kind Apple Store opened in London, and I guarantee you’ve never been to one quite like it.

It looks like an Apple Store. It even sells various Apple products. But not the kind you’re thinking of: not Macs, but Macintosh apples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc-OQQBkbeE

If you’ve ever used Tinder, the swipe-to-reject dating app for iPhone, you know there can be a lot of a creeps on the service, especially if you’re a woman. The Grade is a new Tinder-like app that aims to change all that by booting the creeps off the service by examining their behavior in real time, and grading it.

Shopping for the gamer in your life can be more difficult than beating your way to the end of Battletoads or collecting all 121 stars in Super Mario Galaxy.

To make the holiday shopping season a little simpler, Cult of Mac searched far and wide for the best gaming gear, trying out all the major platforms and accessories.

What follows is our roundup of the finest gamer gifts, from consoles and handhelds to peripherals. And we’ve even tossed in a few must-play game recommendations.