I’m a sucker for Apple history, and I particularly enjoy hearing from the people who had an impact on shaping Steve Jobs into the incredible force of nature that he became.

In a new interview with John Sculley, the former Apple CEO sheds some light on what may have been his single biggest lasting impact on Apple: the drive toward making the experience of using an Apple product one of the company’s most important focuses.

Sculley catches a lot of flack for being the CEO who kicked Jobs out of Apple back in 1985, but after Jobs and Tim Cook he was the best of CEO Apple ever had, and someone who’s always interesting to hear talk about Apple. In this particular video he shares his thoughts on the original Macintosh ad and why Apple trumps everyone else at marketing.

More of Sculley’s thoughts after the jump.

There’s a veritible treasure trove of cool stuff available every week at Cult of Mac Deals and, best of all, none of it will cost you an arm and a leg.

Today we put a spotlight on just a few of those supremely awesome deals so be sure to check them out. Of course, you can go to the Cult of Mac Deals page and see all the deals if these don’t tickle your fancy.

This week on The CultCast: Just when you thought it was safe to close your wallet, Apple goes and announces yet another hardware event. Yessir, Oct. 16 is just days away, and if you’re eyeballin’ a new Mac or iPad, don’t miss our event-day predictions. Plus—-ever wonder what it’s like to have a brand new iPhone 6 Plus stolen right out of your hands? Well we can tell you firsthand, and we want your help to catch the crooks.

Chuckle your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.

Our thanks to lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn virtually any application at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

Cult of Mac Deals is all about bringing you the best of the best in cool gadgets and services at rock bottom prices. Unfortunately, these sweet deals can’t stick around forever.

Today we feature 4 hot deals that are ending very soon. Don’t wait to take advantage of these, or you could miss your chance.

We’ve witnessed a quick unraveling of GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), Apple’s main sapphire supplier, since the company suddenly filed for bankruptcy earlier this week.

New court filings indicate that GTAT wants to take legal action against Apple for its “oppressive and burdensome” terms. The sapphire maker also plans to shut down its Arizona plant by December 31st, which leaves Apple’s sapphire production in limbo. The Arizona plant shuttering will also result in the loss of 890 jobs.

A budding feud between Bose and Beats Electronics has ended with both sides settling out of court. Although the terms haven’t been made public, according to Bose the matter has been satisfactorily “resolved” and will no longer go to trial.

Both sides have agreed to pay their own costs and legal fees, and have asked the International Trade Commission to suspend its investigation into the disagreement.

My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle. Ponyo, Kiki’s Delivery Service. Chances are you’re thinking of these lovely, peaceful, wonderful animated films right now.

And these are just a few of the fantastic and bewitching animated films that Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have made together over the past couple of decades. Now, however, Miyazaki has retired after making one final, autobiographical film, The Wind Rises. Studio Ghibli has put its film-making on hold, as well, citing restructuring.

Independent filmmaker Pablo Fernandez Eyre was a little sad when he heard the news.

“I decided to make a tribute to show my love for movies like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away,” he told Cult of Mac in an email. Check out his moving 8-bit piece below.

“A keyboard? How quaint,” said Scotty, the USS Enterprise’s Chief Engineer, when it was suggested he use a keyboard instead of voicing commands to a computer. How quaint indeed.

Now, with Dragon Dictate for Mac 4, you can give your quaint keyboard a well deserved rest. Get this revolutionary software for your Mac at half price, just $99.99, at Cult of Mac Deals. This is your last chance to pick up this deal, so jump on this one now.

Update: Initial reports claim that China’s top three wireless carriers have already accepted 1 million iPhone 6 orders in the first six hours of availability alone.

Apple’s initial failure to secure regulatory approval for its next-gen handsets means it’s been a harder than expected slog for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to make it into China through official channels.

Today, however, marks the occasion on which the iPhone 6 family of devices officially became available for pre-order in China, ahead of the handsets landing in stores Friday, October 17.

“We are thrilled to bring iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our customers in China on all three carriers at launch,” Tim Cook said in an official Apple statement. “With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus customers will have access to high-speed mobile networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom for an incredible experience.”

Having welcomed its first Apple Store back in April, it seems that Turkey’s second brick-and-mortar Apple retail outfit is just about ready for primetime.

Whereas the first store was opened on the European side of Istanbul, in the upmarket Zorlu Shopping Center, the second store will be on the city’s Asian side, in the Akaysa Shopping center.

With GT Advanced Technologies asking permission to close down its Arizona factory after less than a year, it’s a fair question to ask where exactly Apple plans to get the sapphire displays for its forthcoming Apple Watch.

Earlier this week, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the bankruptcy filing wouldn’t affect Apple’s forthcoming wearables debut. According to a new report from Digitimes, the reason for this is that Apple has a backup plan in the form of two other sapphire cover suppliers besides GT Advanced: the South Korea-based Hansol Technics and China-based Harbin Aurora Optoelectronics Technology.

As someone who seems to care far more about the perfection of the beautiful objects he creates than about the trappings of celebrity, one word you’d be unlikely to associated with Apple’s design guru Jony Ive is “vain.”

According to a story told by Ive at yesterday’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit that’s exactly the accusation that was once levelled at him by Steve Jobs, however.

Here’s why:

GT Advanced Technologies is apparently getting out of the sapphire production game, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the start of this week.

As reported by Re/code and the Wall Street Journal, the beleaguered company is asking the court’s permission to “wind down” operations at its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona — and, yes, for those keep track, that does come less than one year after the company first announced its game-changing deal with Apple.

It’s that time of the week again — all of Cult of Mac’s best news stories and features, compiled in one place to peruse easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got heartfelt remembrances of Steve Jobs, some products we’d like to see updated along with the coming new iPads, a look at upcoming Twin Peaks in our modern era, and some hard lessons learned in running the top iPad magazine. Plus, some great new apps to look at and a reminder that the iPhone 6 continues to sell like, well, iPhones.

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine October 10 Edition, Free on iTunes

Microsoft has dropped its new Skype for Mac 7.0 update, which is now available as a free download. Requiring OS X 10.9 Mavericks or later, the update brings the popular voice and video calling service in line with the appearance of Skype’s iOS app for iPhone and iPad.

With Apple’s last keynote live stream being an utter disaster, we weren’t holding out much hope for another one in the foreseeable future. But the company has today posted a note on its website that confirms you will be able to tune into next Thursday’s iPad event via the Apple website.

While some may see Xiaomi, Samsung, and other players in the smartphone race as iPhone copycats, Jony Ive sees it as downright “theft.” That was the clear takeaway from Ive’s interview at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit today.

Apple has made it obvious that it’s making a big fashion play with the Apple Watch.

After inviting the fashion industry press to the product’s unveiling and staging a one-day showing during Paris Fashion Week, the Apple Watch is getting its own Vogue cover. Well, Vogue China, to be specific.

A young girl gets out of jail and is given back her paltry few belongings. A baseball cap, some gum, and a pin. The pin? Isn’t hers.

“What if there was a place, a secret place,” says the voiceover in this new teaser trailer for Disney’s Tomorrowland, “where nothing was impossible. A miraculous place, where you could actually change the world.”

As she touches the pin, the world around her changes. She freaks out.

Says the man in the voiceover, “You wanna go?”

If this would have happened to me when I was a young kid, enthralled with the idea of sci-fi-themed Tomorrowland as the best place to go when visiting Walt Disney’s happiest place on earth, I would have grabbed the pin in a heartbeat. Check out the trailer below.

Today Apple seeded the third golden master of OS X Yosemite to registered developers. The update is available in the Mac App Store for those already on the Yosemite GM and through the Dev Center.

It’s been only two days since the second Yosemite GM, which is curious given that Apple has typically saved the GM label for OS versions that are ready for public release. That wasn’t the case for last year’s Mavericks release, however, as it also underwent multiple GM updates.

Apple is expected to announce the public availability of Yosemite at next week’s media event, and these GM updates indicate that the company has needed to make last minute changes to the OS.

It’s been one month since Apple blasted U2’s loud, proud, and totally free new album, Song of Innocence, onto every iTunes account in the world, and now the the complaints have died down, Eddie Cue has revealed how enormously successful the free album has been.

Over 81 million iTunes users have ‘experienced’ Song of Innocence Cue told Billboard, and further divulged that downloads of the album in its entirety have topped 26 million.

First of all Microsoft announces plans for a flagship Fifth Avenue Store to compete with Apple’s iconic glass cube, and now Amazon apparently wants to get in on the brick-and-mortar game, too.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon plans to open its first physical retail store in time for Christmas on Manhattan’s 34th Street.

While that might seem counter-intuitive for a company which essentially dealt the death knell to many brick-and-mortar stores, it’s designed to be an extension of the online experience — offering customers the ability to pick up orders placed online, or return and exchange products.

We’ve known that Apple Pay is coming sometime in October, but now more details have to come to light about when banks will start supporting the service.

It’s likely that Tim Cook doesn’t exactly look forward to hearing from Carl Icahn, but it’s difficult to argue that the activist investor isn’t a massive cheerleader for Apple.

As promised, Icahn published his open letter to Tim Cook today and the big surprise (spoiler alert!) is that he feels his 45 million shares of AAPL stock are grossly undervalued.

In a message entitled “Sale: Apple Shares at Half Price,” Icahn explains why he believes Apple stock is currently trading at half its true value, instead claiming it should be priced at $203 per share — based on growth forecast for the next two years, alongside the company’s massive cash reserves.