Apple’s September 9th event is nearly here, and you know what that means: last-minute rumors galore.

The New York Times weighs in today with several new tidbits, including details about the iWatch. Not only will Apple’s wearable sport a curved sapphire glass display, but it will reportedly power up via wireless charging.

The five largest banks in the U.S. have reportedly struck a special deal with Apple for its upcoming mobile payment platform.

According to Bank Innovation, Apple has managed to negotiate a lower transaction fee with American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One, and Bank of America. How? By convincing them that Touch ID and location-aware NFC will make its mobile payments more secure.

Mikey Boots is out now for your iPhone and iPad, and it’s a rarity: a full-price iOS game without any in-app purchases or any ads. It’s a model that’s served developers Mike Meade and Mike Gaughen well with their previous Mikey games, Mikey Hooks and Mikey Shorts, both of which were chosen as one of the best games of 2012 and 2013, respectively.

I’ve played some of Mikey Boots and it’s just as fun and just as infuriatingly addictive as the last two. My kids beat my times through each level repeatedly and they lord it over me, like the little talented jerks they are. Twitch skills, indeed.

While the previous two titles had your little character, Mikey, running, jumping and grappling his way through level after level filled with crazy traps, spiky obstacles and tricky enemies, this one has him (or his female companion) flying through each level with a pair of rocket boots. How can you not love rocket boots?

Here’s a video to show you how that all plays out.

Next week’s Apple event at the Flint Center promises to be one of the biggest tech announcements of the year with both the iPhone 6 and iWatch expected to make appearances, and to make it even more exciting for fans, Apple just announced it will stream the entire keynote live.

Apple’s event will kick off on September 9th at 10 a.m. Pacific at the Flint Center in Cupertino. Fans will be able to view a live-stream of the event on Apple’s website.

To view the Apple livestream user will need to use Safari 5.1.10 or later on OS X 16.6.8 or later. The stream will also be available on Apple TV via a dedicated channel. Cult of Mac will be covering the event live from the Flint Center so make sure to stay tuned for an onslaught of hands-on goodness and coverage when the event kicks off next Tuesday.

Apple’s construction project outside the Flint Center has sprouted up a ton of wild theories. Is it for a secret U2 concert? An iWatch demo area? Or something much more boring?

We tried to get a peak inside the massive white building ourselves, but after getting turned away by security at the gates the mystery remains. Sachin Patel has taken a different approach though and used his drone to spy on Apple’s secret project from the sky.

Here’s a short drone tour of the secret building:

Apple will unveil not one, but two different iWatch sizes when it takes the stage at the Flint Center next week, and according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple’s wearable will make mobile payments as easy as a tap on the wrist.

The new device is unlikely to launch this year, but the report claims that along with tracking your health and fitness data, the iWatch will feature a battery efficient OLED display, and an NFC chip an secure enclave to store all your credit cards for mobile payments.

We’re sorry, internet, but this new Funny or Die video has figured out the way to absolutely make the new iPhone 6 completely hack-proof.

No more iCloud, no more internet. The un-hackable iPhone 6, says this short film, is just a phone. And it only calls your parents.

Watch below as the three “interviewees,” playing Apple software designers, get angrier and angrier in their explanation, which comes down to “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Warning – there are a few colorful descriptions of things members of 4chan (the group behind most of the iCloud hacking) might want on their phone, as well. If you’re easily offended, skip the video.

Another Apple supplier is facing accusations concerning violations of labor rights and lapses in workplace safety.

The supplier in question is Taiwanese company Catcher Technology, which produces the metal casings for iPads as well as parts for the iPhone, plus components for other tech companies. The allegations concern a factory in the Chinese city of Suqian.

Among the accusations raised in a Thursday report by environmental nonprofit Green America and workers’ rights group China Labor Watch are the fact that employees are made to work excessive overtime hours, and handle toxic chemicals without the proper protective clothing.

Apple fans hoping to get elevated with Bono and The Edge at the Flint Center will be disappointed to hear the band’s spokespeople have squashed the rumor that U2 will play at the iPhone 6 event.

Rumors began bubbling on the internet this week that U2 would release its album by preloading it on the iPhone 6. Reports also claimed that Apple’s mysterious white box outside the Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Cupertino is really a giant soundstage for U2 to play on.

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With every waking moment before Apple’s big Sept. 9 reveal, competing tech companies are trying to to steal the spotlight. Samsung, one of Apple’s biggest rivals, revealed its latest creations Wednesday in Berlin. Will two new smartphones, a smartwatch and a virtual reality system be enough to overshadow Apple’s upcoming news?

In today’s video we take a look at Samsung’s latest products and see exactly what the company is cooking up to challenge the iPhone 6 and the iWatch. Check out Samsung’s new Android phone with a curved display (the Galaxy Note Edge), a redesigned phablet (the Galaxy Note 4), a wild virtual-reality phone accessory called the Gear VR and more in this quick roundup.

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Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has a big research report out today with his late-minute predictions for Apple’s September 9th media event.

It’s a doozy of a note, mainly because it lays out not only juicy iPhone 6 and iWatch details, but the revelation that Apple is expected to introduce the second-gen iPad Air at the event as well.

Kuo, who nailed most of the details surrounding the iPhone 5s/5c launch last year, is saying that both 4.7 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 models will be announced. On top of that, both will have a 128GB storage option. He also makes some interesting predictions regarding Apple’s sapphire plans and iWatch specs.

Many of us use a Bluetooth keyboard with our Mac or our iPad, but using the same keyboard with multiple devices can be a real pain in the neck, since Bluetooth doesn’t elegantly let you pair one accessory with multiple devices.

For a little while now, Logitech has been trying to massage away that pain with a series of keyboards that can switch between being paired with a Mac and iOS device, but Logitech’s new Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480 makes it easier than ever. And it has a built-in stand for your iPad or iPhone to boot.

These days, most of us have no shortage of extra batteries that can juice up our iPhones and iPads in a pinch. The problem is that none of them are there when you actually need them: you’ve forgotten them at home, or they’re in that other bag.

The bKey is a new Kickstarter project that aims to make that problem a thing of the past by shrinking down an external battery to the size of a key. And if you’ve got a battery on your keychain, you’ll never be without a charge.

The smartphone unveilings continue at IFA 2014 in Berlin this week with Huawei’s new Ascend G7, an iPhone lookalike with an all-metal form factor. It’s a midrange device that has some nice specifications, including a snappy 64-bit processor, a 13-megapixel camera, and a Huawei’s new Emotion 3.0 user interface.

Los Angeles teachers union president Alex Caputo-Pear has called for L.A. Schools chief John Deasy — the man who helped orchestrate the ill-fated $1.3 billion tech deal designed to give an iPad to every student — to report to “teacher jail” while the program is under investigation.

“Teacher jail” refers to district offices which house instructors who are facing allegations of misconduct.

In Deasy’s case, the alleged misconduct relates to apparent inappropriate dealings with Apple and education publisher Pearson that may have influenced the bidding process for the massive deal, which has now been abandoned. Deasy claims there was nothing inappropriate about his relationship with either company.

Whether or not the upcoming iPhone 6 will sport a sapphire crystal display or not is something we’ll have to wait to find out for sure, but the ultra-strong material used by many high end watch manufacturers is certainly something Apple has spent a lot of time investigating.

Some of those investigations have led to a new patent application published today, revealing how Apple plans a technique for strengthening glass by using an “ion implanting” method as opposed to the kind of chemical coatings used for, say, Corning’s Gorilla Glass.

According to the application, the reason for this is that the kind of traditional chemical strengthening techniques used on glass screens might not be effective when used on materials like sapphire.

Forget Spotify, Pandora and Beats Music. I’ve tried them all, and for my money, Rdio is the best streaming music subscription service out there. It has the best app design and, for my tastes, the best music selection. But you have to pay.

An update, though, is trying to make Rdio much more palatable to free users, as well as help all users find new music faster. It’s making the service free to everyone, emphasizing ad-supported stations for free users (with up to 15 times as many tracks as competing services), and new, smart social services for paid users.

Considering that just a few short years ago Apple was scoring dead last on Greenpeace’s report on green-friendly data centres, the company has made amazing strides in order to turn around its reputation.

In a new September report from Greenpeace, entitled “Green Gadgets: Designing the Future,” the global environmental organization says that Apple is doing more than any other manufacturer to reduce the damage it does to the environment. The report notes that Apple has kept its promise to eliminate use of hazardous materials including Polyvinylchloride (PVC) and Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in its products.

I like the Lensbaby that I have for my regular camera, but I frikkin’ love the Lensbaby LM–10 for the iPhone. Like most things that make the trip from elsewhere to iOS, the little Lensbaby offers a subset of the original’s features, but they are – dare I say – a more focused set of features.

Let’s just say the iPhone Lensbaby is about the funnest iPhoneography accessory around.

Microsoft may enjoy bragging about the perceived superiority of its Windows Phone virtual assistant Cortana over Apple’s Siri, but the actress who voices Cortana apparently isn’t so convinced.

In a recent tweet, actress Jen Taylor (@jentaylortown) tweeted the message “Oh my geez Seattle is beautiful” via iOS, suggesting that while Microsoft may be helping bring in the paychecks, that money is going on Apple products.

While China is where a lot of Apple’s focus has been in terms of expanding into new territories, India is also a fast developing smartphone market where the Apple brand is doing very well.

According to a new report, Apple has sold more than 1 million iPhones in India since the start of the current financial year — representing a significant milestone for a company that wasn’t considered to be a serious contender in the South Asian market until relatively recently.

Although the sales data was not released, research agencies put the figure at 1.02 million between October 2013 and August 2014, with a total of 1.1 million units projected by the time the fiscal year ends on September 30.

Four years ago, Apple debuted the iPad with the first of what would soon become a widely parodied style of video, in which Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design Jony Ive said of Apple’s first tablet: “It’s true that when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical, and that’s exactly what the iPad is. It’s hard to see how something so simple, so thin, and so light, could possibly be so capable.”

As Apple knew it would, the video made a huge impact on people… so big an impact that it soon became a well-worn format for parody. Now, even Swedish furniture retailer Ikea is getting in on the game with their latest ad, which uses all the same beats and breathless rapture of Jony Ive talking about the iPad, but to promote the 2015 Ikea catalog instead. Well done.

See Apple’s original iPad introduction video below.

Photos: Kahney family archives and Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac