Having previously taken a crack at the smartwatch market with its now-discontinued SPOT technology, Microsoft is looking to get back into the wearables space according to a report from Forbes, citing anonymous sources.

The watch will apparently be launched in the next few weeks and will work across a variety of platforms, which makes perfect sense since Windows Phone is a distant third compared to Android and iPhone handsets.

Its timing is an effort to capture the potentially-lucrative holiday market.

Hit TV show Family Guy followed a trajectory that’s very similar to Apple’s. The show appeared as a breath of fresh air early on, underwent a decline during which it almost vanished, then made a triumphant return.

In that way, Family Guy always seemed a perfect fit for iOS. Earlier this year, that pairing finally happened when developer TinyCo debuted Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, a mobile game that follows Peter Griffin and the rest of the Fox TV show’s colorful supporting cast as they rebuild the town of Quahog after it’s been destroyed.

Six months down the line — and with the game currently in the middle of a haunting, courtesy of its Halloween update — Cult of Mac spoke with the developers about Seth McFarlane, making games funny, and the perils of in-app purchases.

The NBA season is set to tip off on October 28th and Beats is ready to celebrate with a new epic ad all about King James’ return to Cleveland.

The long cinematic ad is similar to Beats’ incredible World Cup ad, and flashes between LeBron’s fierce workout regimen he went through this summer – while rocking the Beats earbuds of course – as well as showing spurts from his past like St. Vincent-St. Mary high school, his old Spring Hill apartments, and his mom.

Check it out:

This week has seen some pretty awesome offers at Cult of Mac Deals.

Today we put a brief spotlight on just a few of the best to make sure no one misses out on a good thing. Of course, you can go to Cult of Mac Deals to see every single deal at any time.

Fresh off the Apple event! Catch our impressions of iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 3, the big, beautiful iMac with 5K display, and the updated Mac Mini. Plus, our favorite Yosemite and iOS 8.1 Continuity features; and HBO makes a move to offer all us cable cutters the a la cart TV we’ve always wanted.

Snicker 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.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. Squarespace 7 is live, and it’s their biggest update in years. Now building a beautiful website is faster and easier than ever. Get started with a free trial at Squarespace.com and use code “CultCast” at checkout for 10% off any order.

There are dozens of hot deals on far out gizmos, software, and services at Cult of Mac Deals everyday. They are constantly on the look out to bring you new and exciting offers.

As new deals begin, other ones that have been around a while have got to go. We don’t want to see you miss out, so act fast as these limited time deals are just about done.

The folks at iFixit have already gotten their hands on a new 27-inch Retina iMac, and their teardown reveals everything you need to know about the machine’s innards.

Thanks to a rear access door, the RAM in the new iMac remains user upgradable without needing to open the case. Most of the iMac’s internal design has stayed the same from last year’s model.

OS X Yosemite packs a lot of new features inside a cleaner, flatter interface on the Mac. It’s a big upgrade, and there’s a lot to take in at first glance.

Whether you’re a Mac novice or a seasoned expert, there’s plenty to explore in the latest version of OS X. Wondering how to get started? Here are some of the best tips and tricks for getting the most out of Yosemite: 

Filmed on location at the Alyeska resort in Alaska, the Alaskan wilderness, and the Golden Alpine lodges in Canada, this incredible film of extreme skiing will light up your screens on October 19.

The 12-minute video was created to show off the color and light technology of Phillips Ambilight TV. To do so, the filmmakers created LED ski suits and let loose their pro skiers in the Alaskan and Canadian mountains.

Check out the gorgeous preview in the short teaser below.

iCloud passwords and security passwords can be guessed using social networking and various phishing techniques, and complex passwords and two-step verification are not as intuitive as they should be.

In a delightfully complete article over at TidBITS, author Rich Mogul lays out the facts behind the current spate of Apple security problems – most of which boil down to this: People are the weakest link in the chain.

As anyone who’s worked with technology in the past decade can tell you, the thorniest technical challenges aren’t typically those that deal directly with hardware and software. No, in most cases, the toughest things to troubleshoot and fix lie along the human spectrum. System administrators have long known this, coming up with acronyms like PEBCAK and ID-10T errors.

The same goes for security, which in Apple’s case affects an ever-increasing number of people who not be savvy to the ways of information security.

Apple’s latest iPhones have been shipping for a few weeks now, but many have been waiting for Google to show its hand before deciding what will be their new smartphone for the next two years. So how does the new Nexus 6 compare to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and more importantly, which is most worthy of your hard-earned cash?

Our in-depth comparison below will help you decide.

Tim Cook called the iPhone 6 the fastest-selling smartphone in history during yesterday’s Apple event. It’s set a new high-water mark for the most first-month orders ever, and if you need any more evidence, just look at this line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City today.

It’s been a month since the iPhone 6 launched and the line is still down the street. Unlike a month ago, Asian resellers can’t be blamed for the length, as China just got its fingers all over the bigger-than-big displays this morning.

Apple didn’t announce how many iPhones it sold in the first month – although we might find out during Monday’s earnings call – but with 32 countries accepting orders in the first few weeks, and another 36 getting it this month, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are poised to be Apple’s biggest cash machines ever.

Everyone loves to get something at a discount. But what if you could slash prices on your own and just decide for yourself what you want to pay? That’s the beauty of The Name Your Own Price offers at Cult of Mac Deals.

As the title suggests, you decide what you want to pay to receive part of a bundle. Beat the average price paid and you get everything in the bundle. Plus, 10% of what you pay goes to your choice of three charities: Child’s Play, World Wildlife Fund, and Creative Commons. With The Name Your Own Price offers, it’s a win for everyone. Have a look at these four Name Your Own Price bundles and get in the action today.

Apple’s new iPads are now available to pre-order through the Apple Online Store. Prices start at $399 for the iPad mini 3 and $499 for the iPad Air 2, and both will be delivered to your door next week.

Christian Bale has reportedly been tapped to don Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck in the upcoming biopic from Sony, and I got to admit I’m stoked. Bale seems like the perfect fit. He looks as much like Steve as Ashton did, only he’s actually a phenomenal actor.

Conan is pretty excited about the Dark Knight playing el Jobso too. So much so, that last night he gave us a hilarious sneak preview of how Bale’s portrayal of Jobs will probably turn out.

Check it out:

If you’re an Rdio user, great news. The official iOS app has just been updated to optimize the music-streaming service for iOS 8. And it gets even better if you happen to have an automobile with CarPlay installed.

Are you looking for a high tech, upscale beverage maker to go along with your brand new 5K 27-inch Retina iMac?

If so you could do a lot worse than this revolutionary BKON Craft Brewer, a machine that allows you to make the perfect cup of loose-leaf tea, coffee, cocktail, and a variety of other drinks from your home, without the need for an intensive training course and plenty of spare time.

How does it do it? In one word: physics.

Some of the best tech ideas come from taking two separate concepts and trying to merge them together into one device.

With all the chatter about smartwatches and smartphones as of late, it was only going to be so long before someone tried to combine the two: creating a gadget that gives smartwatch-like functionality while on the wrist, but also allows the user to take it off and use it like a smartphone when necessary.

That’s the idea behind .klatz, a Ukrainian “smartwatch/watchphone” project that’s currently raising money on Indiegogo. Its creator points out its iOS support — which means that you can pair it with an iPhone if you don’t fancy using it as your primary handset — while a promo video for the project shows it providing Pebble-style notifications, along with fitness tracking and music playing functionality.

Another week, another issue — all of Cult of Mac’s best news stories and features, compiled in one place to read through easily on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got some fantastic coverage of Apple’s iPad event, which revealed iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iMac with 5K Retinal Display, and a boosted Mac mini. Plus, read about how one cop saved a life using Find My iPhone, and the new official Reddit app. That and more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine.

Dig into Cult of Mac Magazine October 17 Edition, Free on iTunes

Tim Cook sure is picking up a lot of nicknames as of late. At the iPhone 6 keynote he was dubbed the “Zen Master of hardware and software” by U2’s Bono, and at yesterday’s iPad event he was given the codename “Chairman Honeycrisp” as part of the entertaining Stephen Colbert secrecy skit.

Taking the latter nickname as his inspiration, YouTube’s resident Apple songsmith Jonathan Mann (whose work we profiled earlier this week) put together his customary post-keynote song, highlighting the October 16 Apple media event.

The result may not quite hit the highs of Mann’s superb WWDC tribute (a song that is still stuck in my head months later), but it’s worth a watch for the repeating “Intergalactic Chancellor Chairman Honeycrisp” chorus alone.

Check out the video after the jump:

Yesterday, Apple unveiled the iPad mini 3, a slightly updated version of the second-gen iPad mini with Retina display. But even though it’s two generations old at this point, Apple still sells the original iPad mini for $249. That makes it the cheapest iPad yet, albeit for good reason: It packs the same A5 chip and other silicon guts that the iPad 2 did way back in March 2011.

That might actually seem like a good deal for consumers, but it’s turning out to be a nightmare for developers who will likely have to support the iPad mini until 2017.

Tim Cook crowed over the sales figures of the iPad during yesterday’s Apple keynote, pointing out that it has sold a whopping 225 million units since debuting in 2010.

Despite the iPad Air 2 looking like the finest iPad iteration yet, however, sources in the supply chain reckon Apple’s new flagship tablet is going to be available only in limited quantities during the remainder of 2014 — thanks to production difficulties with the devices’ new anti-reflective coating.

When Tim Cook took time out of yesterday’s iPad and iMac keynote to discuss just how excited he was about the iPhone 6 coming to China, he wasn’t kidding: the market Cook has previously said could one day overtake the U.S. has been going iPhone crazy.

Having been made available for preorder on October 10, today marks the first day in which the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are available for (authorized) sale in China, being made available on all three major networks.

Like any new Apple software release, OS X Yosemite has great third-party apps that are worth checking out.

Developers can take advantage of iOS 8-like extensions, Handoff, iCloud Drive, Notification Center widgets, and more to create a better experience. Many apps also need to be updated aesthetically to look at home in Yosemite’s cleaner, flatter design. The ones that aren’t updated stick out like sore thumbs.

We’ve collected a running list of the best third-party apps that are already optimized for Yosemite:

First launched in January 2011, the Mac App Store promised to give developers the same sort of centralized marketplace to sell their apps that had made the iOS App Store such a success. Instead of making developers rich or giving them a better place to market their apps, though, an increasing number of developers are actually leaving the Mac App Store in what Milen Dzhumerov, one of the devopers behind Monodraw, has called a “subtle exodus.”

Why? It all has to do with Apple’s Mac App Store policies.