iOS 8 is about to be unleash on the world today after debuting earlier this summer at WWDC. Tim Cook is calling it the biggest iOS update ever and for good reason, as the new OS has been packed with hundreds of new tools for developers, as well as new features that make iOS devices, quicker, more productive, and more seamlessly integrated with Mac than ever before.

You won’t see huge visual changes like Apple made with iOS 7 last year, but there’s plenty of features for everyone to be excited about in iOS 8, whether its the new messaging tools, improved camera features, family sharing, Hand-off, or the sleek new Spotlight.

Before you jump headfirst into the biggest iOS release ever, get acquainted with the most important new features in this Cult of Mac guide to iOS 8:

The Apple Watch Sport may start at a mere $349, but the product line’s price point could well soar from there!

According to Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber, Apple’s 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition may sell for as much as $4,999.

“Most people think I’m joking when I say the gold ones are going to start at $5,000,” Gruber writes in a new blog post. “I couldn’t be more serious.”

Part two of Tim Cook’s interview with Charlie Rose recently aired on PBS. While not quite as long or revealing as the first part, it’s still definitely worth watching.

Here are six takeaways we got from part two of Cook’s interview:

Motoring experts in the UK have warned that individuals using their Apple Watch while driving will face the same penalties as those caught using a mobile phone.

The words of caution come from road safety charity the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), reportedly backed up by the country’s Department of Transport.

In the United Kingdom, this would mean that a driver caught using their Apple Watch while driving faces a £100 ($163) fine and three penalty points on their license.

“An Apple Watch has the potential to be just as distracting as any other smartphone device, indeed more so if you have to take you hand off the wheel to interact with it,” an IAM spokesperson told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

There may only have been one Steve Jobs, but a recent article from Fast Company draws some interesting parallels between Jobs and Nest CEO, Tony Fadell — previously known as the Apple employee most synonymous with the iPod.

Alongside his obsessive focus on perfection and simplicity, the article notes that Fadell even lives in the same same neighborhood that Jobs once did.

One interesting passage that stands out describes Fadell’s Jobsian approach to management at Nest:

Apple might have smashed its record for preorders with the iPhone 6, but according to a new report from Credit Suisse analysts, profit margins are actually down for the device.

The reason for this is that Apple’s quite literally giving users more for their money: an all-around bigger iPhone which still costs just $649 for its base model.

Production for Apple, however, is considerably more expensive — with the biggest costs being the larger display, improved camera, bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS chips.

I may be in the minority here, but when I think of the type of TV show I’d picture Samsung as, my mind goes to scandalous political thriller House of Cards well before it does to Glee.

Which is, of course, why it makes absolute sense that Samsung is currently in the process of creating its own Glee-style “Musicom” (that’s a sitcom meets musical) centered around the lives of two fictitious young employees. Can’t you practically hear the songs already?

Called Best Future, the series will follow male and female flatmates, and is designed to portray Samsung as the kind of trendy-yet-lovable company people in their twenties and thirties would just love to work for.

ProCam 2 – confusingly now at v3.0 – is the first camera app that allows manual focus and exposure on devices running iOS 8. You now get full manual control of ISO, shutter speed, focus and white balance, all with neat-o on-screen sliders.

Extensions are coming to iOS 8, and Omni shows us just how cool they can be with a new version of OmniFocus 2 for iPhone plus the brand new OmniFocus 2 for iPad.

Early reviews of the latest iPhones are in, and the overwhelming consensuses is that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are both killer smartphones. The 6 is the best phone out there, period. Opinions are more split on the Plus and its massive size.

If you’re having trouble wading through all of the reviews out there, have no fear! We’ve collected everything you need to know in the ultimate iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Meta Review.

Today Apple quietly expanded its use of two-factor authentication to protect iCloud users. Now those who have enabled the added security measure will be asked to verify their identity with a secondary device when logging into iCloud.com.

In the 21st century you can’t sell your sister into slavery, but you can apparently trade her for an iPhone 6.

A Saudi man is demanding a new iPhone 6 as dowry before he will consent to his sister getting married.

Apple’s massive pile of cash is about to get even bigger this weekend as the the iPhone 6 triggers an avalanche of new upgrades after shattering Apple’s record for pre-orders in a 24 hour period.

Now you can watch Apple’s wealth grow dollar by dollar in real-time, thanks to U.K.-based payments company WorlPayZinc, which built an interactive graph to show how much money the world’s top tech companies are making in real-time. Apple is by far the most profitable company, as it rakes in nearly $51,000 every 8 seconds.

Check out the interactive graph below:

The iPhone 6 won’t be available for a few more days in the United States, but in mainland China, getting your fingers on Apple’s biggest screen ever is shockingly easy — and police are starting to help Foxconn crack down on leaks.

A Foxconn employee was arrested by Chinese police, reports the Wall Street Journal, for walking six shells for the iPhone 6 out the front doors of a factory in northern Shanxi province and then selling them on the black market.

If you use OneNote to keep all your digital stuff in one place, you’ll be excited to know that Microsoft’s note-taking app is getting an iOS 8 update today.

Microsoft announced the new update on its official YouTube channel Tuesday with a fun little video showing how you’ll be able to clip bits of the web and share photos from your iPhone to OneNote.

Take a look at it below.

Microsoft today announced a good-looking tablet keyboard that isn’t designed only for devices running its own Windows platform, but those powered by Android and iOS as well. It’s called the Universal Mobile Keyboard, and it’s folding design makes it ideal for those on the go.

When the iPhone 6 was announced and iOS 8 introduced, so to was unveiled Swift, Apple’s newest app development language.  Swift is the language meant to replace Objective C in iOS app development.

iOS app designers fluent in Swift are going to be highly sought after in the months – and years – ahead. Give yourself the tools to remain in demand with the complete Swift course at 90% off the regular price, for a limited time only at Cult of Mac Deals.

If you love the look of Apple’s latest iPhones but you can’t stand the thought of ditching Android for iOS, then perhaps this shameless Chinese knockoff will get your mouth watering. It’s called the Sophone i6 and looks just like the real thing, but it runs Jelly Bean instead of iOS and it’s available at a fraction of the price.

Its specifications aren’t exactly awful, either.

Apple’s expansion into China is one of the biggest stories of 2014, which is why it’s a surprise to hear that the company’s long-awaited iPhone 6 may not be available there at all this year.

According to a Bloomberg report — citing Chinese business paper 21st Century Herald — the delay is the result of Apple failing to come to an agreement with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The New York Times had previously reported that the iPhone 6 was being held up due to lack of approval from Chinese regulators.

PayPal is feeling threatened. After Apple announced its new mobile payment platform Apple Pay last week, PayPal took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, blasting Apple’s security record in the wake of the celebrity nude scandal.

Apple supplier Foxconn Electronics is reportedly considering legal action against U.K. newspaper The Daily Mail over claims that cleaning agents used in Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory may be to blame for multiple Foxconn employees developing leukaemia.

In its recent report, The Daily Mail says that Apple is investigating Foxconn after a cluster of leukaemia-related deaths among young workers at Foxconn.

At least 13 workers in their late teens and early 20s have been diagnosed with leukaemia at the factory since 2010. Five of these employees have since died, with families and a labour welfare group claiming the disease was caused by exposure to dangerous chemicals used to clean electrical panels.

While cellphones have come a long way in a very short time — from the Wall Street bricks of the 1980s, to the gorgeous iPhone 6 devices of today — a new article from Wired argues that innovation takes place much more slowly in watch land: something that could spell trouble for Apple.

With insights from watch and clock historian Alexis McCrossen, the article notes that attempts to reinvent the watch have historically proven difficult, with a key example being the world’s very first electronic watch: the $2,100 Pulsar 1 from 1972.

Despite there being “very similar hopes to those swirling around the Apple Watch” the article points out that “a decade later, most watch-buyers were still expecting the same kind of analog features they’d wanted for years.”

What’s your iPhone made of? Just looking at it, you might dismiss it as just a slab of metal and glass, with a dose of magic inside. But our iPhones are actually portable chemistry labs, and there are an incredible number of complex chemical functions happening underneath the glass and metal shell that keep your iPhone ringing.

Tim Cook may have been on the receiving end of welcoming notes from other watchmakers now the Apple Watch has been announced, but not every note has been so friendly.

On Monday, the office of Connecticut attorney general George Jepsen revealed that he had sent an open letter to Tim Cook noting concerns about the privacy implications of Apple Watch, particularly related to the handling of health data.