Apple is expected to announce its new iPad lineup at an event next week, but manufacturers in Vietnam have leaked a hands-ons on video of a high-quality iPad Air 2 dummy unit, that reveals all the subtle design tweaks coming to the world’s most popular tablet.

One of the biggest changes is addition of Touch ID as well as the disappearance of the the mute-switch, which has been completely removed from the left side of the iPad Air 2, while the volume buttons are a bit more recessed.

Check out the hands-on video below to see some of the other changes:

Within hours of Apple seeding its second iOS 8.1 beta to developers, dev Hamza Sood has discovered several pertinent pieces of information related to Apple Pay — including the setup screen within the Passbook app, the setup screen in the iOS 8.1 setup, and the setup screen on the iPad.

Sood previously discovered references to Apple Pay in the first iOS 8.1 beta.

Quanta Computer has reportedly started production on Apple’s ultra-thin 12-inch MacBook Air notebooks — although production challenges may mean that it doesn’t hit shelves under after Christmas.

Citing sources in Taiwan’s supply chain, the Digitimes report states that the new MacBook Air is slimmer than both the existing 11.6- and 13.3-inch models, and may well sport Retina displays.

This ambitiously slim form factor is pushing component makers to the limit, however, and currently yield rate is not satisfactory, which has resulted in low output. It is hoped that this will increase from November onwards, although this may not be enough to see the notebooks arrive for the holiday season.

The iPad may be more popular than ever among young people, but according to one analyst that same level of excitement doesn’t carry over to the forthcoming Apple Watch.

In a research note to clients, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster describes reaction to the Apple Watch among teens as “tepid,” despite the fact that Apple remains an incredibly popular brand.

According to Munster, interest in the Apple Watch actually fell over the past year — starting out at 17% interest from teens in spring, and lowering to 16% just prior to Apple’s September 9 unveiling of its wearables device.

We all know that Apple’s advertising is a cut above the competition, but sometimes Cupertino’s competitors stoop so low that all you can do is just shake your head in embarrassment.

That’s certainly the way I feel about Toshiba’s racist new ads. Released in Croatia, they feature a couple of slanted tablets that have been placed to look like squinty eyes, just like the way Asians have been stereotypically portrayed in Western media for centuries. Face palm!

New details have emerged about the surprise bankruptcy protection filing of GT Advanced Technologies, a.k.a. the company that was supplying Apple with its sapphire.

As per the Wall Street Journal, Apple agreed to lend GT Advanced a total of $578 million to help get its large sapphire factory in Arizona up and running, only for Cupertino to withhold the final $139 million payment it was due to make, for reasons which aren’t yet clear, but likely relate to the company’s failure to deliver sapphire to Apple’s satisfaction.

Which weighs more? An iPad filled with media and apps, or an iPad with no media or apps installed?

It sounds like a trick question — the digital age equivalent of “What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of rocks?”

But surprisingly, an iPad without anything installed on it does weigh less than an iPad that is full.

Ready for your next nerdy dose of Star Wars awesomeness? Lucasfilm Animation and Disney have put together an all-new animated adventure that takes place 14 years after the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (the third and final prequel in the Star Wars saga) and five years before Star Wars: A New Hope (the original movie that came out in 1977).

If you have an Apple ID, you can check out the first regular episode of the series right now on iTunes for free. How’s that for a deal?

Check out the extended trailer for the Star Wars: Rebels series below.

It’s not that Apple’s emoji keyboard is necessarily bad, but it could be better. If you’re a hardcore emoji user, you know that it’s a pain to scroll through and find the perfect emoji in the moment.

Maybe you’re looking for the perfect funny face or food item for the conversation. To take your emoji game to the next level, you need a third-party keyboard called Emoji++.

Nestled among the vintage globes, surgical drawings and reflecting telescopes at Bonhams New York’s upcoming “History of Science” auction are spectacular several Apple-related goodies.

Most impressive of all of these is an Apple 1 motherboard, circa 1976. Described as being in “superb overall condition,” this is the first computer ever built by Steve Wozniak under the Apple banner, prior to the far more successful and mainstream Apple II.

Only 200 units of the Apple I were ever made, although just 63 are thought to still survive — and only 15 of these are documented as having worked since 2000.

This is one of them.

Will the Apple TV become a hub for controlling your smart home in the near future? Signs are pointing to yes.

Apple is quietly testing HomeKit support for its TV set-top box with developers. The functionality can turn an Apple TV into an always-conntected bridge device for communicating between hardware peripherals that support Apple’s HomeKit framework.

Apple has seeded a second Gold Master candidate of OS X Yosemite to developers this afternoon, following the release of iOS 8.1 beta 2 earlier this morning.

OS X 10.10 Yosemite GM Candidate 2 is now available in the Mac Dev Center and the Mac App Store to members of Apple’s developer program. Xcode 6.1 GM seed 2 was also released this morning, along with an Apple TV Software beta update.

The idea that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus would have a sapphire display was one of the most widely reported errors leading up to the unveiling of Apple’s next gen iPhones.

But while plenty of time was spent discussing the possibility, very few people made any money through the speculation — except for Tom Gutierrez, CEO of sapphire manufacturer GT Advanced Technologies, which just filed for bankruptcy protection.

According to the Wall Street Journal, one day before Apple revealed its new iPhones wouldn’t feature sapphire screens after all, the boss of the struggling company cashed in more than 9,000 shares of GT stock for an average price of $17.38 — bringing in a total of $160,000.

Since February this year, Gutierrez has sold close to 700,000 shares in his company, valued at more than $10 million.

Got three minutes? Then you can travel Turkey, north to south, through this shifting and cunningly edited short film, called Watchtower of Turkey, by Leonardo Dalessandri.

He traveled over 3500 kilometers in 20 days, filming the lush landscapes and varied peoples of this middle eastern land, across eight different regions and cities in the Republic of Turkey, a land that has been inhabited since the paleolithic age.

“I’ve crossed Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Ephesus, Istanbul, Konya; and tasted baklava, kunefe, doner, the turkish tea; and got the chance to meet the soul of Turkey, its people,” writes Dalessandri on the video page, “and got their smiles and their hospitality.”

You’ve got to see this short film below.

If you’ve always wanted to own a dilapidated bungalow on Detroit’s East Side, but all you have is an iPhone 6, today is your lucky day: A Motor City homeowner is so desperate to get rid of his house that he’ll trade it to you for an iPhone 6.

Just about everything in the brick colonial listed for sale needs to be demolished, but the house does feature a basement, garden and city views from the second-floor balcony. The seller of the house lives overseas, and after failing to sell the home for months, he’d gladly accept the greatest smartphone on Earth as payment for his nearly worthless property.

Take a look of the 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath residence below:

Facebook has drawn criticism for its mandated use of real names on its social network, but to satisfy demands of anonymity – and take on Snapchat – the New York Times reports that the company plans to release a stand-alone app that lets you chat without using your real name.

In the ultra-competitive world of mobile payments, Square Cash continues to set itself apart as the quickest and easiest way to send and receive money.

Now money transfers are easier than ever. Thanks to a new feature called Nearby Payments, you can use the app to send and receive cash over Bluetooth.

Apple has seeded the second beta of 8.1 to developers today, ahead of its rumored public release later this month. A new beta build of Xcode 6.1 has also been released on the iOS Dev Center, along with Apple TV software beta 2 that includes support for Family Sharing and can be used to test AirPlay and HomeKit in iOS apps.

Apple’s release notes  for iOS 8.1 beta 2 don’t mention the addition of new feature – though Apple Pay was discover in the last build –  but it does list a number of bug fixes.

We’ll let you know what type of new goodies we find once we get it install on our devices. The new beta can be download from the iOS Developer Center or via the direct download links below.

Here are the direct download links:

Three out of four drivers in America believe that using hands-free technology like Siri is a safer way to cruise the highway than fiddling with buttons and knobs, but a surprising study from AAA found that using Siri on the road is actually dangerously distracting.

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety tested the distraction levels of a number of hands-free solutions from auto-manufacturers that allow drivers to compose messages, change the radio, and navigate complex menus with voice commands, and found that trying to chat with Siri while driving is more distracting that composing a text.

Most of us take videos from time to time. You know, the kind of videos that are repeatedly taken from boring, ground based, vantage points. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the freedom to take high definition videos from any angle or elevation?

Meet the DJI Phantom FC40 drone. Using its on-board Smart Camera, you can record just about any event from one stunning perspective after another. Now, the DJI Phantom FC40 can be yours for the very low price of $499 at Cult of Mac Deals. As an added bonus, use the promo code PHANTOM35 to get an additional $35 off!

Popcorn Time makes it ridiculously easy to “freely” stream almost any movie you want to your iOS device, but unless you have a jailbroken iOS device, actually getting it on the iPhone 6 is impossible, unless you know of a little loophole that allows you to install the banned app.

Adventurous iPhone owners can finally get Popcorn Time by utilizing the same time-hack loophole that allowed others to install Nintendo game emulators and other apps, no jailbreaking required. Popcorn Time isn’t strictly legal, but that’s not stopping thousands from pirating the app onto their iPhones and iPads by simply rolling back the clock on their device.

Here’s how to get ‘the Netflix of torrents’ on your iPhone right now:

A neat trick that allows old console emulators and other unapproved apps to be installed on iOS devices without jailbreaking is set to be wiped out with iOS 8.1. Apple has finally taken action against the “date trick” many users have long been taking advantage of, and it’s going to make playing your favorite SNES and Game Boy games much harder.

It’s official: kids love the iPad more than they do Oreo cookies. According to the “2014 Young Love” study — an annual survey carried out by leading youth and family research firm Smarty Pants — the iPad beat out 255 other brands (including Disney, Nickelodeon, Toys”R”Us, McDonald’s and YouTube) to be named the #1 brand among children aged 6-12.

The survey was conducted among a representative sample of U.S. households, with a total of 256 consumer brands evaluated as part of a three-month study of 6,661 children and their parents. Scores were based on a composite scale of 0-1,000 based on brand awareness, love, and popularity.

The top ten brands can be seen below:

AT&T has a confirmed that it suffered a data breach back in August, carried out by one of its own employees.

The now-former employee accessed personal information relating to an unspecified number of users (thought to be in the region of 1,600), such as their Social Security and driver’s licence info, along with customer metadata — including time, duration and destination of phone calls.