Cult of Mac

To get a true appreciation for how massive Apple’s new UFO-shaped campus will be, a drone equipped with a GoPro was flown over the construction site.

We’ve seen some aerial pictures of the site beginning to take shape as work begins on Campus 2, but this is by far the coolest look yet.

After years of reports saying that NFC is coming to the iPhone for mobile payments, it looks like it will finally be a reality on September 9th.

Part leaks have indicated that Apple’s next-gen iPhone hardware will indeed be equipped with NFC to make transactions for physical goods at brick and mortar stores. Now Apple has struck a partnership with American Express, Visa and MasterCard to support mobile payments in the iPhone 6, according to new reports.

What a great week it has been at Cult of Mac Deals. We have featured some incredible bargains on tech gadgets, software, and training that make your life easier and giving you the time to do what’s most important to you.

Don’t miss your opportunity. Today, we present the best of what we have right now. Jump on these before they’re gone for good.

SEATTLE, Washington — Table top miniatures are some of the geekiest board games, coming as they do with thick rulebooks and complicated sets of play mechanics. Developer Harebrained Schemes, the folks behind video games Shadowrun Returns and the more recent Shadowrun: Dragonfall, has decided to bring this arcane, geeky gaming genre to players who might want to try it out without having to fight their way through an extreme learning curve.

With the time we spent with the game at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend, we’ve got to say, we’re pretty impressed. While there’s still quite a bit of learning that has to occur in order to fully and deeply play this fantasy-themed miniatures game, even players as young as four can grasp the basic concepts of move, battle, and conquer that the game’s iPad app and bluetooth-connected stylus allow.

“There are a lot of rules to these kinds of games,” said Harebrained Schemes’ Ray Winninger. “Sometimes there are these giant, thick rule books and that sort of thing. It’s especially hard to bring someone in who’s never played before and to just kind of plop them in the middle of it. So, we’re trying to manage all of that for you.”

SEATTLE, Washington – Walk into a comic shop, and you’ll probably see titles from publisher Dark Horse Comics. Known for its creator-owned series like Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and Sergio Aragonés’ Groo the Wanderer as well as television and movie adaptations like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or 300, the comic book publisher has a booth at the Penny Arcade Expo this weekend in Seattle to show off a different genre of comic.

The booth at the Washington State Convention Center in is full of video game-themed books of all stripe, from Mass Effect and Tomb Raider single-issue comics to larger, coffee table volumes like Hyrule Historia, which is chock full of the lore of The Legend of Zelda, and The Art of Naughty Dog, an art book that focuses on the popular game developer’s artistic output.

Dave Marshall says that video game books are the third pillar in the Dark Horse publishing strategy, and have become just as valuable a content stream as the creator-owned or media-based titles.

“We get the original writers and artists from the video games themselves to actually write or consult on these books,” he told us at the Dark Horse booth Saturday morning, “so we can come to the fans at a deeper level than just a crummy tie-in or cash grab.”

Apple could charge an upwards of $400 for its highest end iWatch, according to Recode. Apple executives have reportedly “discussed charging around $400 for the company’s new wearable device,” although there will also be different models set at lower prices.

Does that mean the top-of-the-line iWatch will actually cost $400? Not necessarily.

Have you ever cracked a Lightning connector, or — perish the thought — your iPhone itself when roughly yanking it out of a dock? Apple’s working on the problem. Cupertino’s patent department just filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a sort of super dock that will make docking your smartphone safer and easier than ever.

This week: Mark your calendars for Sept. 9th, friends, because iWatch is nigh! Plus: an insanely accurate iPhone 6 leak hits Youtube; the apps we use to send our friends and family money; why everyone’s buzzing about Hyperlapse; rumors of a 12.9-inch iPad resurface; and privileged apps that live in our menu bars.

Loudly guffaw 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.

And our thanks for Smile Software for supporting this episode! Sign a contract, fix a typo, correct a price list, or fill out a form while you’re on the go—PDFpen for iPad lets you edit PDFs anywhere you are, and it also supports popular Bluetooth styluses. Find out more at smilesoftware.com/cultcast.

Depending on who and when you ask, the iPhone 6 may or may not ship with a futuristic new Sapphire Glass display. Widely rumored to be nigh-invulnerable, Sapphire Glass is widely believed to be the technology that will make shattered iPhones a thing of the past. But will it really?

Seeking answers, the repair experts over at uBreakiFix have taken a piece of Gorilla Glass and a piece of Sapphire Glass through a series of torture tests to see which resists damage better. And the truth is that Sapphire isn’t actually as good as Gorilla Glass in one key scenario.

Last weekend, we reported that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 seemed likely to boast a 1334 x 750 Retina Display, while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6L could have a 461 PPI Super- Retina Display. Now it looks like that working iPhone 6 cobbled together may have confirmed the iPhone 6’s resolution.

Got a visual design project you’re working on but balking at paying high prices for royalty free stock photography, vector images, and videos?

If so, the folks at Cult of Mac Deals have you covered. Right now you can get $1000 worth of stock photos, vector images, and videos from Depositphotos at 90% off!

SEATTLE, Washington – Together: Amna & Saif puts you and another player on the same screen, controlling a mother and son duo of characters to solve various environmental puzzles. It’s a “couch co-op adventure puzzle game” that requires you to talk, interact, and think with another human being.

Lead designer Lyle Cox told us that he’s always wanted to make a game that benefits society in some way. “My hope is that people who play the game,” he said, “get some benefit to their relationship for having done so.”

When you start to see assembled iPhone 6 devices basically powered on, you know it’s getting late in the rumor mill cycle. Basically every part imaginable for Apple’s forthcoming smartphone has leaked ahead of its September 9th unveiling.

Now hi-quality shots of what looks like a near finished iPhone 6 hull have surfaced. They show the defined antenna lines on the back as seen in previous parts, but this time they’ve been colored to look more at home on the phone.

Every nerd loves a good Apple rumor, and late night show host Jimmy Kimmel is no exception. Jimmy has a history of pranking street walkers with fake Apple products with some hilarious results, but in his latest sketch tackling rumors of a 12.9-inch iPad, Jimmy takes to the streets again to show just how ridiculous you’re going to look when Apple’s gigantic tablet is released next year.

Check out the short skit below:

iPhone 6 components have been leaking out of China like a broken fire hydrant, and while we’ve joked that someone could probably make a working iPhone out of all them, the guys at Feld and Volk actually went and did it.

Using parts sourced from their suppliers in China, the Russian luxury iPhone modifiers have assembled an iPhone 6 using a leaked case, logic board, display, true-tone flash and camera, and then connected the hacked-together device to iTunes just to see what would happen. To their surprise the device booted up, but couldn’t connect to the software update servers.

Check out the full hands-on video below:

The iPhone 6’s NFC chip has been spotted for the first time, according to images of an supposedly leaked iPhone 6 logic board that’s been fully assembled with Apple’s next-generation A8 processor, NFC chip, and another chip from Avago Technologies.

Previous leaks have shown the iPhone 6’s bare logic board, but the images from Feld & Volk give us our first look at some of the new chips. The new 2Ghz dual-core A8 chip is expected supposed to be much faster and smaller than the A7 in the iPhone 5s.

Here’s a shot of the NXP’s tiny NFC chip that could also make an appearance on the iWatch:

Although it’s being widely reported that Apple’s mythical wearable will share the stage with the iPhone 6 on September 9th, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get your paws on it anytime soon.

Recode, the same publication that nailed the September 9th Apple event date weeks ago, is now saying that the iWatch won’t be ready to ship until early 2015.

On the 51st anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful “I Have A Dream” speech, Tim Cook has tweeted to celebrate the life of the African-American civil rights leader and activist.

Describing King’s stirring words, delivered in 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., as “the speech of my lifetime,” Cook notes that “we must recommit to achieving his vision.”

It’s Friday at last. That means the last day of the work week, start of the weekend, and time to kick back and relax. It also means it’s time for Freebie Friday at Cult of Mac Deals.

Yep, Cult of Mac Deals is offering a whole whack of cool stuff to entertain and make your life easier for absolutely zero cash. That means you can use your cash on other things, like your weekend! Better hurry though, because they can’t keep these deals around forever.

We’re huge fans of Adobe Photoshop Mix for the iPad, but as much as we like it, it had some rough edges.

Our own Charlie Sorrel called it more like a proof of concept than a proper app, that needed some work before it became truly indispensible.

A new update to Photoshop Mix has just helped polish some of the app’s rough edges. The new version adds support for a much-needed Undo/Redo function, as well as local saving, Dropbox support, swapping images, and more.

I’m a huge fan of Popcorn Time, the Mac App that lets you stream torrents to your Mac and even (if you’re a Windows user) to your Apple TV.

The one thing Popcorn Time doesn’t have is an iPhone or iPad app. But that’s all about to change, and Popcorn Time for iOS could land within the next couple of days.

As more and more of our lives are lived on social media, the importance of being able to efficiently search through content is greater than ever.

With that in mind, Facebook is currently user-testing a new feature letting mobile users sift through old posts by friends using keywords — allowing them to more easily find content that would otherwise be lost.

The feature, which only counts for posts you’re allowed to see (meaning that private posts won’t show up) has currently only been rolled out to a select few, but will likely be officially added into an update of the Facebook iOS app in the near future.