Remember when you’d hang out with your pals all night long, scheming and swearing and stabbing each other in the back as you played board games like Monopoly, Axis & Allies or Risk for hours on end?

The developers of upcoming mobile strategy game Subterfuge want to recapture that competitive and fun gaming magic on the iOS era’s platform of choice.

“We started with the idea of making a game that would give you a shared, epic experience with your friends,” designer Noel Llopis told Cult of Mac. “We’re hoping Subterfuge provides something like that,” Llopis says, “but in a way that meshes with people’s real lives.”

Tony Fadell might model himself after Steve Jobs, but from the sound of things he may have taken disproportionately from the bad side of Jobs’ personality rather than the good side.

A new article appearing on StrictlyVC reports on the experience of the recently Nest-acquired Dropcam — makers of an iOS-friendly Wi-Fi security camera — whose employees are apparently struggling quite a bit with dealing with a the prickly, micromanaging Fadell.

Microsoft’s been doing a stellar job promoting Apple lately, securing placement of its “iPad-like tablets” on CNN and the NFL. But it looks like Redmond has decided to give up and start pushing Apple products.

Microsoft published an ad on Facebook today that highlighted Skype’s ability to keep people in sync, but the real headliner is a huge orchestra of MacBooks — and there’s not a PC in sight.

The ad features a photo of a conductor in New York City’s Bryant Park, surrounded by an array of 11 MacBooks connected to the city’s celebrated subway musicians. Microsoft’s ad comes with the tagline, “The world’s first digital orchestra stays in sync with Skype,” but it looks like the MacBooks and iPhones (as well as the musicians using them) steal the show.

Watch the MacBook orchestra’s performance below.

You trust your mobile device to keep you in touch with your business associates, friends, and family. It also stores your vital data and apps so you can access them whenever and where ever you need. Your mobile device sure does a lot, which is why its battery tends to drain before the day is over.

You can prevent inopportune power loss with the Limefuel LP200X dual USB Battery Pack, only $34.99 at Cult of Mac Deals for a limited time.

Pre-orders for the iPhone 6 began just over two months ago, but I’m already looking forward to shelling out cash for the iPhone 8 now that Steel Drake published this glass unibody iPhone concept.

The design keeps its familiar form factor but wraps the bottom and top edges with a glass display. Given Apple’s success rate with Sapphire glass, making this thing might not be conceivable until 2018, but there’s still plenty of time for Jony to make it happen. The designer decided to swap out the rear aluminum shell with a stiffening plate on the sides. The finished look is simple, a little curvy, and drop dead gorgeous.

Check it out:

If you’re looking to get a new iPad for as little cash as possible, here’s an intriguing offer: Starting tomorrow, Sprint is letting customers lease an iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3 for as little as $17 per month.

It’s an unusual offer, and one that Sprint describes as an “industry first.” The lease itself lasts 24 months and, enticingly, doesn’t require any upfront costs.

So what are the prices for an iPad lease from Sprint?

Apple’s HealthKit app for iOS 8 is great at capturing and storing personal health data from tons of sources, but according to a Reuters report, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission wants to know what it plans to do with all of it.

The FTC has reportedly met with from, seeking assurances that sensitive health data scooped up by the Apple Watch and other apps won’t be used without users’ permissions.

Sony announced its plans to replace your cable box today with its new Playstation Vue cloud-based TV service, that offers live access to 75 of cable’s best channels, without a monthly contract. And it’s coming to iPad too.

The invite-only TV service that’s designed to replace cable will begin to roll out in November to beta testers on the Playstation 4 and PS3, but Sony says it plans to bring Vue to ‘non-Sony devices’ like the iPad, at some point in 2015.

Not all of us have the chance to head to Europe, what with the cost of airfare these days.

Luckily, we’ve got the Internet, and amazing videos like this one from filmmaker Andrew Walker at 599 Productions. He filmed the various time-lapse images while exploring Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic last September using a Canon 5D Mark III and several Canon and Ziess lenses.

Check it out, and be sure to strap on a pair of high-end cans or route the audio through your huge Bluetooth speaker to hear the epic soundtrack.

When it comes to photo-editing apps on the iPhone, VSCO Cam has pretty much been the gold standard for the last few years. But to make the experience even better, the app is finally coming to the iPad.

VSCO 4.0 was released today with a redesigned look just for the iPad. Previously, iPhotogs could use the popular photo editor/social network on their iPads as a blown-up iPhone app, but the fresh design and new features will make you want to ditch your iPhone altogether. Take a look:

Samsung just can’t leave Apple alone. When it’s not mocking the Cupertino company in ads, or pleading for its chip-making business, it’s stealing its ideas.

Today, Samsung announced two new creations rolling off its Xerox machine out of its R&D labs: an iBeacon-style proximity beacon technology, and an OS X Yosemite Continuity-inspired feature that lets users sling webpages, phone calls and much more from one device to another.

Jony Ive made a rare public appearance at the Design Museum in London yesterday, where he discussed a range of topics with museum director Deyan Sudjic. Everything from the future of design, to Jony’s work at Apple popped up in the conversation, but the most intriguing parts where the insights into Jony’s design process.

Sir Jonathan told hopeful designers that great design requires you to reject reason and comes with an enormous amount of failure, but he also shared some insights on how he’s become so successful as Apple’s Senior VP of Design.

Here are 12 secrets for designers Jony spilled last night:

Apple chipmakers are gearing up to start production of the Apple Watch, according to a new report. Orders for the chips suggest that the initial production run is likely to be between 30-40 million units.

If accurate, these figures fall in the middle of previous guesstimates regarding how many Apple Watches Cupertino plans to sell in 2015.

One recent report claimed that Apple has placed orders for shipments of up to five million AMOLED panels per month, which would suggest sales of 50+ million units next year. More conservatively, Gene Munster has predicted that Apple’s first year sales for the new device will come in at around the 10 million unit mark.

This post is brought to you by RealPlayer Cloud via Syndicate Ads.

Do you have videos on your phone that you want to share with friends? Memories you’ve been meaning to transfer to your computer for safekeeping? Or maybe you’d just like a little more free space on your device.

With RealPlayer Cloud‘s newly launched app for Mac, you can store and transfer your videos across all your devices via the cloud. All you have to do is open the app and let it find your videos, then choose to upload some or all of them.

Want to read an impartial, in-depth review of Samsung’s latest Gear S smartwatch? Why not read one from your old trusty friends at Samsung itself.

In an hilarious titled “unofficial” review, Samsung’s official blog takes a few minutes out of its busy Samsung-promoting day to, well, promote Samsung.

Describing what sounds like the world’s best ever gadget, Samsung’s Corporate Communications team try their damndest to turn out a 1,000-word review which doesn’t make the Gear S sound like Samsung just threw everything smartwatch-related at the wall and hoped something would stick.

Read on to find out what they concluded. (Spoiler: they really, really liked it.)

Cult of Mac Deals makes it their priority to offer awesome products at heavily discounted prices. Sometimes, though, they have the opportunity to present a chance for a lucky person to win something particularly breathtaking.

Today, we are featuring two such opportunities. Cult of Mac Deals presents The Golden Apple Giveaway and The Mega Dropbox Pro Giveaway.

Apple’s gigantic 12.9-inch ‘iPad Pro’ could be facing serious production issues, according to top Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who believes the tablet won’t enter mass production until the second quarter of 2015.

In a note to investors this afternoon, the KGI Securities analyst revealed that his sources say Apple will use an oxide display panel on the iPad Pro for a higher resolution, better color saturation, and quicker response, but putting that type of screen on the iPad Pro will take more time.

Apple is looking to open a flagship store in downtown Los Angeles’ historic Broadway Trade Center, reports the Downtown LA Examiner, which claims its heard whispers that Cupertino plans to invade the massive building that nearly occupies an entire city block.

The Broadway Trade Center building was recently purchased by New York real estate firm Waterbridge Capitol earlier this year for around $130 million, but it the company may have already scored its first tenant.

Apple’s introduction of widgets in iOS 8 has already created some great new tools for iPhone users, but if you’d like to add a little fun to your Notification Center, Overglide has a widget adds a widget to the boring place where you usually just get calendar and email notifications.

Overglide for iOS 8 turns your Notification Center into a game by embedding its simple paper airplane game into the Today pane, giving you instant gaming access no matter what app you’re in.

The YouTube music streaming service you’ve been hearing about for months is finally here. It’s called YouTube Music Key, and it lets subscribers stream and save high-quality music and music videos on the web and on Android and iOS devices. For now, however, you’ll need an invite to use it.

Things get weird when Samsung stops copying Apple and tries to do its own thing, and as if to remind us of that salient fact, the company tapped famed Korean rapper Mad Clown, to blast out rap on its new corporate sustainability animated rap video.

The Samsung rap video highlights the company’s positive stats on diversity on work-life, but fails to mention some of the grimmer facts that were discovered in its sustainability report that was published earlier this year.

Samsung posted its bizarre rap video this morning, boasting sick statistic-laced rhymes like “Samsung, we 280,000 humans, 40 percent 112,000 women. You don’t have to worry after giving birth.” If that sick line doesn’t make you want to sign up to build the next Galaxy S6, just listen to the rest of the catchy raps in the video above.

Beats Electronics today announced it’s releasing its first new headphones since officially Apple-owned company earlier this year. The new headphones are an updated version of the Solo2 headphones, that brings wireless capabilities to the popular headphones, so you’re no longer tethered to your iPhone when kicking out the jams.

No pun intended, but coffee is hot stuff in Silicon Valley, where overworked engineers rely on cup after cup of the black stuff to keep them focused on building amazing products.

If you too are a bit of a tech-loving caffeine fiend, you may be interested in the new Mr. Coffee Smart Coffeemaker, a gorgeous new smart coffee-making device programmed and controlled remotely from your iPhone.

Using the dedicated iOS app, users can schedule up to a week’s worth of coffee brew times — meaning that your morning pot of joe can start being brewed while you’re still asleep, so that it’s all ready for sipping the moment you arrive in your kitchen.

If you got one of those amazing new iMacs with the crazy 5K pixel resolution, you’d be crazy not to watch this stunning animation of the sun by YouTuber James Tyrwhitt-Drake. You can gaze at the star at the heart of our solar system for a full eight minutes, using YouTube’s new 4K resolution setting and that killer new Mac.

This timelapse covers about 16 days of solar activity, focusing on the largest sunspot in the last 22 years (about two solar cycles), which is cleverly named AR 2192.

Check it out and enjoy.