SACRAMENTO — The state where the iPhone was born came a step closer to a law that might help keep it in your hands.

State Sen. Mark Leno’s Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (Senate Bill 962) passed the state legislature this morning with a 51-18 vote. Now it will move on to the Senate for a vote on amendments.

California won’t be the first state to flip the kill switch – that distinction goes to Minnesota, which heeded the call from consumers in May. If the law passes in the most populous state in the U.S. and the birthplace of the iPhone, it may mark a sea change in similar legislation. California’s law will affect any smartphone manufactured on or after July 1, 2015.

In four years, Instagram has gone from having one million to over 150 million users. The app’s reach as a platform for sharing photos is incredible, but for many, the value of what’s posted maxes out at a number of likes.

Many photographers with tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram have little-to-no prior professional experience. Yet they’ve managed to gather huge followings around the photos they take and share from their smartphones.

“My God, these guys have no idea how talented they are,” Chad Newell remembers saying to himself during Instagram’s early days. “We could sell this stuff.”

The lack of commercial opportunity for a new class of mobile photographers led Newell, a veteran of the stock image industry, to create a startup for buying and selling photography called Snapwire. Think of it like 99designs and 500px combined with Shutterstock.

While still in its early days, Snapwire is already drawing big-name advertisers to its growing of library premium stock photography. And it’s filling that library with the kinds of shots you would normally see in your Instagram feed.

We’ve all been there: Losing an opportunity to meet someone new socially or in business because we don’t speak the same language as that person. These days it happens more and more often and, as we become more multi-national, the frequency will only increase. Just think how many opportunities for social and business success are squandered because we don’t know someone else’s language.

Now you can stop missing those opportunities and start learning a new language today. Get up to $270 off, with a coupon, on select Rosetta Stone language sets at Cult of Mac Deals now.

Godus, the much-anticipated video game from god-game specialist designer Peter Molyneux and 22cans, is available now for iOS devices. Godus will let you play as your own private deity, letting you create and nurture a little island paradise on your iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone.

You’ll get to carve out landscapes with the touch of a finger, placing mountains, rivers, and flora wherever you like. You’ll also have the care and feeding of devout, worshipful followers of your very own.

“In Godus your hands will sculpt the mountains and carve rivers,” said Molyneux in a statement. “Your touch will create pastures for your people. You will be loved by tiny worshipers that need your help to grow and your direction to progress through the ages of civilization.”

Let’s face it. None of us are all that jazzed about having to plug our iPhones into the wall to charge them. We’re all yearning for the days in which wireless charging comes to the iPhone, iPad, and even Mac.

And when it does, furniture like this simple side table are going to become our de facto chargers.

Apple’s EarPods aren’t too bad for gaming, what with their in-line microphone capabilities, but they’re really not the best for long game sessions; honestly, they just end up hurting the inside of my ears.

And as far as gaming mice are concerned, you really do need one with a second button at the very least.

While you’re at it, of course, you want your gaming peripherals to match your Apple style. Razer’s Taipan ambidextrous gaming mouse and matching Kraken-pro headset are exactly that – quality peripherals that make your gaming life easier and your style just that much more put together.

It seems like a strange thing, but people who write about iOS apps on the web are often ashamed of their status bars. When they post screenshots of an app, they feel embarrassed by the fact that they don’t have a full signal from their cellular carrier, or a clear connection to WiFi, or 100% battery life. It’s an expression of the pursuit of perfection that marks Apple and its fans as a whole.

You wouldn’t think this is a pathology that Apple would really care about. But apparently, it does. And in OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, they’ve figured out a way to fix it.

A year ago, I heard about an intriguing potential game in the making, a possible hybrid of games like Mass Effect and Heavy Rain, two of my all-time favorite console games. This alone was enough to pique my interest, but once I found out it starred a crack black ops team of lycra-clad ladies like Charlie’s Angels, I was sold.

Ambitious and innovative, Revolution 60 offers an iOS experience like no other. With gorgeous 3D animations, bold interactive gameplay and intriguing plot, Giant Spacekat brings to life a team of four futuristic female operatives assigned a mission to re-establish control of a compromised space station. As the sharp-tongued and strong-willed protagonist Holiday, you’ll find yourself balancing your decision-making between the needs of two of your subordinates – the compassionate Amelia and authoritarian Minuet.

Kicking off June 2, this year’s WWDC was the most eventful Apple developer’s conference in years, bringing us massive refreshes for both iOS and OS X.

But the blogosphere is nothing if not forward-looking, and already people are talking about what next year’s event will hold. While we may not have an answer for that just yet, there may be a few clues as to when it will take place, courtesy of the Moscone Center’s calendar of upcoming events.

Having shut down Justin.tv on the back of a reported $1 billion Google acquisition, live video game streaming service Twitch is now blocking copyrighted music.

Twitch uses software called Audible Magic which scans videos for music that is owned or controlled by Audible Magic clients. This could take the form of either in-game or background music. Live broadcasts will not be scanned.

“The Audible Magic technology will scan for third party music in 30 minute blocks,” reads a blog post from Twitch. “[I]f Audible Magic does not detect its clients’ music, that portion of the VOD will not be muted. If third party audio is detected anywhere in the 30-minute scanned block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted.”

Originally released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013, Capcom has dropped the fifth instalment of its superb Ace Attorney series into the Japanese App Store, seemingly without any warning.

The game (which was heavily praised upon its release) follows the story of attorney Phoenix Wright who returns to action after his premature retirement in the game’s previous instalment, set one year earlier. Going up against former death-row-convict-cum-prosecutor Simon Blackquill, Wright is able to draw on the help of fellow legal eagles Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes.

The game features five cases, with a sixth one downloadable via in-app-purchase. Other IAPs allow users to add extra costumes or access a special mini-quiz.

We think we know a lot about the iPhone 6. How big the display is (4.7-inches and 5.5-inches). How thin it will be (really thin).What kind of processor it will be packing (an A8). And when it will be unveiled (September 9th). But do we know everything?

VentureBeat doesn’t think so. The well-respected publication says that a well-informed source has confirmed to them that in addition to all of the above, the iPhone 6 will feature 802.11ac Wi-Fi, NFC capabilities, a non-sapphire screen, and a 2.0GHz A8 processor.

I use OS X’s Dictation feature all the time while I’m working, but a new patent application published Thursday suggests that Apple’s looking to go much further when it comes to having users talk to their Macs.

The Intelligent Digital Assistant In A Virtual Environment application was filed February 4 this year, and describes a Mac-based Siri every bit as smart as its mobile iOS counterpart.

The patent application depicts a future OS X dock featuring an icon for Siri, which could be available to use for dictation or commands from inside various different programs.

The Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Ave has become nearly as iconic as the other shiny glass and aluminum beauties it sells, and now Microsoft is ready to take on Apple in the Big Apple with a Fifth Ave store of its very own.

Microsoft is in negotiations to open its first ever NYC store on Fifth Ave, reports the Daily News, which says the new shop will go up a mere six blocks away from Apple’s famous store.

Each second wasted during a 911 call could be the difference between life and death, making precise location data crucial to the whole lifesaving process, but according to the top U.S. cellphone carriers, getting that exact location to responders is just a little too expensive on 911 calls from a smartphone.

AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are fighting back on an FCC proposal that aims to save lives by making it easier to locate 911 callers. The government proposal calls on carriers to upgrade their networks so that tracking callers indoor is easier, but AT&T says the project would be a waste of scarce resources.

Services like Lyft and Uber made summoning a ride with your iPhone a reality, and now they’re going to make sharing that ride even easier.

Both startups have announced new features that will make rides cheaper, providing that you’re willing to share a car with total strangers.

Foursquare pioneered the location check-in phenomenon that Facebook and so many others now offer. But the reality is that Foursquare just hasn’t been that popular for quite a while. It put out a flashy new check-in app called Swarm earlier this year, and that failed to catch on.

Now the main Foursquare app has received its most significant overhaul to date. Available today in the App Store, Foursquare 8.0 does away with a lot of the social aspects it had before and instead focuses on finding you just the best places to eat.

Over time when using your Mac it’s common to find your desktop in scattered disarray. With photos here and documents there, in the midst of this jumble mess completing further tasks seems trivial. Luckily there’s a number of tips that you can use if you find yourself trapped in Mac disorganization.

In today’s video take a look at some tips that will help you tidy up how you use your Mac and in return clean up your experience. See how to start tagging your files, use smart-apps and other great ways to get your Mac in structural order.

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

Scrolling to the bottom of every spam email in search of that tiny “unsubscribe” link is among my least favorite Internet chores, but Google is finally making it a lot easier to never receive spammy emails from all the brands, social networks, and Nigerian princes you’ve courted over the years.

To bring you one step closer to a clutter free inbox, the company announced on its blog this morning that Gmail users will now see a new “unsubscribe” link anytime they receive a bulk email.

ABC News launched its live news channel on Apple TV just over a month ago, but the media giant has already made some pretty surprising discoveries about the platform, like the fact that users are more likely to watch live ABC News on their Apple TV than their Mac or iPhone.

Apple fanboys with a sense of humor and few hundred bucks to spare can own a piece of the thermonuclear history between Apple and Samsung, by throwing down on an eBay auction by the guy who had the worst name for an Apple Store specialist ever.

No matter what kind of business you are in, it pays to have a well constructed website. Well constructed websites are designed using content management systems like WordPress and and Drupal and consider important things like search engine optimization and web security.

For a limited time, you can learn how to design websites like a pro with OSTraining: Lifetime Training To Become An Expert Web Developer for 96% off the regular price, just $79, at Cult of Mac Deals.

As revealed by Steven Levy in his great book In The Plex, in the early days of Google one of the founders’ ideas for advertising the new search engine was to project a lazer image of the Google logo on the moon.

That idea obviously didn’t happen, but a new Easter Egg for Google Maps on PC does at least let users explore the surface of the moon, alongside that of Mars, to celebrate the second anniversary of the Curiosity rover touching down on the Red Planet’s surface.