Apple’s event on September 9th is going to be huge. Sure, iPhone announcements come around every 12 months, but this year Apple’s going bigger than ever with two product launches, a gigantic venue, and a mysterious white cube.

We investigated Apple’s mystery box ourselves last week and still couldn’t piece together what it’s for, but according to rumblings on the Internet, U2 will be the headlining act during next week’s event, and will launch their next album by pre-loading it on every new iPhone 6.

It may sound too crazy to be true, but U2 fans are already convinced Bono and The Edge will tear up the stage at the Flint Center, and there’s come compelling proof.

Here’s the evidence:

Apple and Google have resumed mediation talks with tech workers who are suing Silicon Valley’s top tech firms for an alleged anti-hiring agreement orchestrated by Steve Jobs.

Court filings indicate that Intel and Adobe are also participating in the talks as the companies attempt to reach a new settlement for the class action case, after U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected the companies’ proposed settlement of $324.5 million last month.

Apple might reveal its first ever phablet next week with the 5.5-inch iPhone 6, and while many Apple fanboys question the need for an iPhone the size of a dinner plate, IDC’s latest market projections reveal Apple is about to get in on the phablet craze at the perfect time.

Over the next four years phablet sales are expected to grow more than any other smartphone, tablet, or PC category. Worldwide phablet shipments are will pass portable PCs by the end of 2014 with 175 million units sold, but that number will to explode to 318 million units in 2015, making smartphones with screen sizes from 5.5 to less than 7 inches more popular than the tablets that spawned them.

Here’s IDC’s projections:

I’ll admit it — I’ve got a thing for these waxed canvas and leather bags from Waterfield. I’ve ended up using the impeccably designed Staad backpack and the classy Nintendo 3DS case long after my reviews of them were published. These bags and cases from the San Francisco design collective are warm, inviting and just get better with age and use.

Let’s face it, though: Sometimes you only want to carry your laptop and a couple of accessories, and that’s it. Waterfield’s latest design, the MacBook Outback Solo, is a minimalist sleeve made of the same strong canvas material and rich, thick, buttery-smooth leather as the other bags in the line. It can be paired with a carrying strap that turns the sleeve into a messenger bag. While our very own Charlie Sorrel called the iPad version of this bag a man-purse, I’m thinking of this more as a shoulder-saving device — the fewer things I end up having to carry, the better.

This little sleeve is perfect for exactly that.

We’re still six days away from the official unveiling of the iPhone 6, but a set of professional line-sitters in NYC are already setting up camp in front of the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store.

Dan Benton spotted the iPhone 6 line this morning, and while the previous record for waiting camping out for the iPhone was 18 days, this group started 19 days before the iPhone 6 is expected to hit shelves.

Most of the campers are professional line sitters and are just using it to get some free press for new apps and other services, but the true fanboys will probably start filing in any day now. The iPhone 6 is expected to be revealed at an event on September 9th followed by a public release about two weeks after.

By now you’ve probably heard about the avalanche of celebrity nude photos that slammed the Web on Labor Day. But amid the chaos of FBI investigations, celeb denials and Apple PR releases that say basically nothing, understanding how the attackers executed the hack — and how to prevent it from happening to you — hasn’t been so clear.

Apple recommended that all users enable two-step verification “to protect against this type of attack,” but the truth about iCloud’s two-step security is a little more complicated than Apple’s letting on, and turning it on probably wouldn’t have prevented the celebrities’ pics from getting hacked in the first place.

To help sort through the confusing mess, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about iCloud’s security and how you can use two-factor authentication and other security steps to keep some perv named 4chan from blasting your nips all over the Internet.

Ruby On Rails is widely considered to be one of the best frameworks for web development today. This is because it streamlines the programming process.

You can gain this knowledge and become an expert web developer with The Ruby On Rails Rookie To Rockstar Bundle at Cult of Mac Deals. Plus, at just $49, it’s available for a limited time at 92% off the regular price.

Beamdog Entertainment is a team of ex-Bioware and Black Isle developers who specialize on taking classic Infinity Engine RPGs and updating them for modern devices, like the Mac or iPad. First, they did it for Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II and now they are doing it with Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, coming soon to a Mac or iPad near you.

Jimmy Kimmel is the talk show host most likely to chime in on an Apple-related topic, but with the recent news about dozens of celebrity nude images being leaked thanks to iCloud hacking, Conan O’Brien has also chipped in with his take.

In a video posted to Conan’s “Team Coco” YouTube account, O’Brien imagines what it might be like to hire a team of computer experts to hack the iCloud account of the person responsible for doing the hacking. The result is a series of amusing images showing a variety of NSFW activities, including naked bullwhip sessions, lewd acts featuring a Super Nintendo, and begging former celebrity Jon Gosselin for an autograph.

OS X will get a new Photos app next year that will keep all your pictures in sync across all your devices. It will work with the iOS 8 Photos apps on iPhone and iPad to match up your full-res photographs, your albums and even the edits you make to your pictures.

The changes are a ways off, but fret not -– if you use Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile, you can enjoy this fabulous cross-platform photo synchronization right now.

Apple is constantly looking to improve the App Store experience, and ahead of the long-awaited release of the iPhone 6 and public version of iOS 8, it is doubling its efforts.

With these two landmark events coming up rapidly, the company has updated its App Store review guidelines to add all-new sections dealing with features such as HealthKit, HomeKit and TestFlight, extensions and more.

Martin Hajek’s incredible renders come in two equally impressive categories. The first are the realistic recreations of upcoming devices that that the artist put togethers based on leaked parts and schematics: for example, his incredible iPhone 6 render.

But Martin Hajek does another kind of concept as well: his purely conceptual imaginings of what still unrevealed Apple gadgets like the iWatch or the Apple HDTV.

This might be a first though. In his latest series of rendering, Hajek has paired both kinds of renders together: the iPhone 6, a design we know, with the iWatch, a design that is, to all of us, still a mystery. And if the real iWatch + iPhone 6 combo looks half as good in real life as Hajek’s, we’re in for an exciting year. More images after the jump.

There have been numerous companies, from Samsung downwards, willing to leap onto the smart watch bandwagon to try and beat it to market. Wellograph’s new smart watch, however, perhaps comes the closest to what many users are expecting to see from Apple — with the world’s first wellness-focused smart watch sporting a sapphire crystal display.

The 1.26-inch LCD display watch is available to ship now, and comes with various smart functions, including a Tri­-LED heart­ rate sensor, which replicates the action of a doctor using their fingers to feel for a pulse and provides real-time readings of heart signals.

Supply chain sources speaking to Digitimes claim that component production is ramping up for Apple’s next generation 9.7-inch iPad. According to the report, the tablet will be unchanged when it comes to size and resolution, but will sport an even thinner profile, enhanced processor, and improved Touch ID fingerprint recognition technology.

Piper Jaffries analyst Gene Munster: Thanks to his endless advocacy of the so-called Apple HDTV, claiming year after year that Apple’s television set is just a few months away, Munster’s a bit of a laughingstock, even amongst the shallow knowledge pool of most tech analysts.

Instead of predicting the imminent arrival of a mythical Apple device, though, in Munster’s latest note, he’s making a far more reasonable prediction: When the iPhone 6 makes its debut September 9, only the 64GB model will ship with a sapphire glass display. And he’s got a call on the iWatch as well.

SEATTLE — Tanya Short, fresh off the successful release of sci-fi-themed indie game Shattered Planet, thinks her new game has widespread appeal. For a game set in ancient Mesopotamia, that’s saying a lot.

KitFox Games’ Moon Hunters, due out next summer for Mac, PC, and PlayStation, is a one to four player action role playing game that lets you create the kind of hero you want to be remembered as. The moon isn’t rising, and you and your group of friends set out to find out why.

“Essentially,” she told us at the Penny Arcade Expo this past weekend, “you’re in mythical ancient Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age. In pantheon of the gods, the central figure is the Moon. The moon not rising is a big deal.”

If you make something private, obviously you want it to stay that way. But with hackers trying to get at your data, you need to be prepared. Following the recent iCloud hacking that leaked tons of private celebrity photos, there’s a renewed focus on security.

In today’s video, we show you how to enable two-step verification on all your Apple devices so you’ll have a better chance of keeping everything that’s near and dear to you private and secure.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

It’s been a hard few days for iCloud. Now the App Store is suffering a serious outage that’s keeping apps from downloading and updating.

Apple hasn’t announced the iPhone 6 yet, but that isn’t stopping the world’s largest carrier from opening up preorders.

In Beijing, China Mobile has begun accepting preorders for the unreleased smartphone in both 4.7 and 5.5-inch sizes.

Like a favorite ’90s song, Cultured Code’s Things is a to-do app that many remember fondly, even though they can’t deny its outdatedness.

Once an app worthy of an Apple Design Award, Things has languished in its pre-iOS 7 state for far too long. The good news is that development of Things isn’t dead, as Cultured Code has shown with a preview of its awesome iOS 8 extension.

The iPhone 6 is gearing up to replace your wallet and as part of the initiative to get its upcoming mobile payments system off to a head start, Apple is reportedly in talks with Nordstrom regarding a potential payments partnership.

Nordstrom department stores could be one of Apple’s first merchant partners for the new payments platform it will reveal next week, reports BankInnovation, stating the luxury retailer is making upgrades to its mobile point-of-sale terminals as park of a deal with Apple.

Blame for the flood of celebrity nude photos that hit the Internet has been rotating from the pervy hackers that ripped the pics, to Apple, to the creator of iBrute, but while the FBI and Apple continue to investigate the source of the leak, there’s one tool that has gone unmentioned: the police forensic tool that made it all possible.

One of the key elements behind the iCloud nudes leak is a piece of software created by Elcomsoft that allows attackers to impersonate a target’s iPhone and download its entire iCloud backup, and you don’t even have to be a cop to get it.

UK-based rock band Radiohead just updated their Polyfauna app, originally released at the end of this past January, with all new audio and visual content.

The What’s New section of the iTunes description says, simply, “Entirely new.”

If you’re a fan of the ambient tech-inspired music of Radiohead’s seminal Kid A album, you’re going to love these new tracks. Here’s a video (below) to whet your appetite.

Today Apple released the seventh update to its developer build of OS X Yosemite. With the public release of Yosemite expected to arrive around October, Apple is polishing some of the finer details to get the OS ready for prime time.

Like always, we’ve collected today’s changes in Yosemite.