I don’t do a whole lot of up-close computer-based gaming, but when I do, I prefer to have a decent set of headphones to keep the sound to myself so that the rest of the household doesn’t need to hear the full complement of explosions and combat sounds that typically accompany gaming on my Mac. There are an array of headsets out there with gaming microphones built in, many of them in the $300 and up range.

Not everyone can afford this sort of luxury, so most brands have less-expensive versions of their headsets to appeal to a more budget-conscious gamer. The HyperX Cloud is just such a set of headphones aiming for the entry-level gamer who may not have much more than $100 to spend on their gaming audio gear.

Every week, we highlight deals on tech, software, and training that we believe will improve your life in some way. Though these deals are pretty special, they unfortunately can’t be offered forever.

Today we put the spotlight on 4 deals that are ending soon. We don’t want to see anyone miss out, so have a look and jump on these deals now before they’re gone forever.

Pictures of what is allegedly a working iPhone 6 have surfaced on the Chinese social network Weibo. While tons of parts have leaked up to this point, this is the first time we’ve seen what appears to be the device powered on and running iOS 8.

The 4.7-inch device looks legit, although it’s authenticity cannot obviously be confirmed. On the screen, there’s a new Passbook icon. This hints towards the mobile payments platform Apple is expected to unveil at next week’s event.

As much as Apple wants the tech press on its side, tech writers aren’t the only journalists being invited to Cupertino’s September 9 event, where it’s heavily rumored the iWatch will be unveiled for the world to see.

Lending even more credence to the idea that Apple is set to announce its entry into the world of wearables, the company has reportedly been inviting unprecedented numbers of fashion editors and bloggers to the event.

“I assume it’s because they are unveiling a wearable,” Lea Goldman, features and special projects director for Marie Claire magazine told Reuters. “This suggests Apple is serious about tapping into the fashion world, which often sits on the sidelines.”

The iPhone 6 may be currently filling your newsfeed, but there’s somewhere else it’s filling too: the skies.

According to several sources, Apple is currently shipping so many new devices from its factories to sales outlets that it’s causing big delays for even “top tier” rival manufacturers.

Apple shipments via FedEx and UPS are said to be “incredibly high” for the holiday season, largely based on the new iPhone 6 and iPad refresh. It was previously reported that Apple had ordered an “unprecedented” number of iPhone 6 devices — more than twice that of the initial iPhone 5 order.

You’re most probably familiar with the expression “out of the frying pan into the fire.”

Having seemingly settled its e-book price-fixing lawsuit by agreeing to pay $450 million, Tim Cook and other top Apple execs are now being sued by Apple shareholders, claiming that the incident has damaged the company.

As per a complaint filed at the end of last week, Cook and other Apple executives were told that they should accept “responsibility for ensnaring Apple in a multi-year anticompetitive scheme.”

Trusting the Internet can be one of the silliest things you can do, especially when it comes to private matters. While what you do within the comfort of your own circle deserves to stay within its parameters, sometimes things don’t play that way.

Some celebrities found that out the hard way this week when their “personal” photos were hacked from their iCloud accounts and leaked online. With the world frantically sharing the photos left and right, this has turned all eyes toward Apple and the security of its cloud operation.

Apple is looking to replace your wallet with a new mobile payments platform, and according to Recode it will get a big head start by signing up two of the biggest pharmacy stores in the country.

Walgreens and CVS are both partnering with Apple to be a part of its mobile payments platform that will be revealed next week, allowing customers to pay for items at the counter by whipping out their iPhone, or tapping an iWatch.

Apple just lured one of the top designers in the world onto the mothership, and it just so happens that he’s a genius at designing timepieces.

Marc Newson created the luxury watch company Ikepod in the mid-’90s, pushing out gorgeous timepieces with unique, simplified form factors and made from unconventional materials. It took other watchmakers years to catch up with his work. Newson hasn’t been involved with the company for more than two years, but he’s also dabbled in jewelry design, with a necklace based on fractal theory, as well as Atmos clocks bigger than a Mac Pro.

In a rare interview with Dezeen, Newson offers insight into his career of building time pieces, from sketching concepts in the ’80s to setting trends that watchmakers are still emulating today. This is the future of Apple design.

Check out the full interview below:

Apple could be less than one week away from unveiling its long-awaited iWatch, and surprisingly for an industry as competitive as tech, pretty much everyone is rooting on it to succeed.

The reason? Because once Apple cracks open a market and shows how it can be done, everyone else can dive in and make more money.

Famed designer Marc Newson is joining his BFF Jony Ive to serve as part of Ive’s famed design team, reports Vanity Fair, filling a hole at Apple vacated by Steve Jobs: someone brilliant enough for Ive to bounce ideas off.

Ive and Newson have been close friends for years, but rather than joining him at the mothership, Newson plans to still live in the U.K. where he’s earned fame as an industrial for working on projects for Ford, Nike, Qantas Airways, but he’ll make frequent trips to Cupertino.

Jony Ive had the following to say about Apple’s new hire:

Days after China Mobile, aka the world’s largest mobile carrier, started taking preorders for the iPhone 6, rivals China Telecom and China Unicom (the second- and third-largest carriers in the country) have pointed out that they too will be selling Apple’s eagerly anticipated next-gen handset.

Referring to the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 as the “iPhone Air” and the 5.5-inch variant as the “iPhone Pro,” China Unicom has put up a pricing list for the devices, showing how cost will vary according to storage capacity and form factor.

Throughout the summer I’ve been fortunate enough to follow iOS 8 through its beta versions. Every update is better than the last, but still iOS 8 could be better. With Apple’s big reveal just days away, the world is hoping for new products — but we can’t forget the software they’ll be running.

In today’s video, I’ll run down the top five things I’d like to see Apple add to iOS 8 to put it over the top. A better Control Center is just one of the items on my wishlist.

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

“Attention, female nerds,” begins this satirical YouTube video, “learn how to hack.”

If you’re tired of all the recent news about the iCloud nude selfies hack , or finding it difficult to trust your mobile devices with your own pictures due to the inherent vulnerabilities of storing data in the cloud, these ladies have the solution.

The CotillionGirlsComedy group feels your pain, and want to encourage (straight) women everywhere to learn how to hack. Because Ryan Gosling nudes, right?

Check out this hilarious video below for some on-target social satire, including a funny bit about Pinterest, the iPad case you can have sex with, and ridiculous Grand Theft Auto mods.

Warning – this is really NSFW, even with the pixellated genitalia.

Details of the iWatch’s features have been trickling out the rumor mill in the lead up to next week’s event shedding light on the new fitness, homekit, and payments features Apple’s first wearable will include, but according to a report from The Information, all those special features are going to take a big toll on the iWatch’s battery.

After speaking with sources inside Apple, Jessica Lessin writes that iWatch battery life might be “disappointing.”

Developers logging on to iTunes Connect to update their apps this morning got an eyeful of its new iOS 8-influenced design — and many didn’t like what they saw.

Instead of the past’s squat, flat look dominated by dark gray, the main view at the developer website now opens up with acres of white space and a cheery, sky-blue font we’ve all become accustomed to since iOS 7. Apple warned devs of the coming overhaul at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, but it wasn’t clear exactly when the new design would roll out.

The pretty new look was hard to appreciate, though, when trying to push out a new release or version of your app — as we discovered trying to publish the latest edition of Cult of Mac magazine.

Beta testing apps is about to get ridiculously easy for developers and users alike now that Apple’s new version of TestFlight has landed on the App Store.

Testflight has been used by developers for years, but the app has never been available on the App Store until today because it violated app review guidelines. Adding it as an official app should increase the popularity of beta testing among iOS users by letting you sign up with just your email address, rather than forcing devs to manage UDIDs for you.

From alleged wireless charging to circuit boards the “size of a postage stamp,” there are plenty of rumors about the features Apple is supposedly cramming into its eagerly-anticipated wearables debut, the iWatch.

Unlike the iPhone 6, however, which has seen enough leaked parts that you could practically build your own working model, the lack of clues regarding the actual design of the iWatch has left everyone none the wiser.

That’s why talented graphic designers are stepping into the breach, to show us what they at least hope Apple has up its sleeves.

One such designer is Fuse Chicken‘s Jon Fawcett, whose concepts blur Pebble-style notifications and health tracking with a classic rounded watch face.

More pictures after the jump.

Apple will reveal the full details of the iPhone 6 in just 4 days, but a set of leaked images from Feld & Volk appear to confirm that Apple’s biggest iPhone will come with optical image stabilization.  5.5-inch iPhone 6 will come with optical image stabilization.

The luxury Russians iPhone modders – who have already built a ‘working’ iPhone 6 out of spare parts – managed to get their hands on the image sensor destined for Apple’s 5.5-inch iPhone, and while Apple has thinned down the module’s thickness, it appears to be larger than that on the iPhone 5s.

Your Mac is a formidable machine. You can get the most out of it by supplying it with useful Mac apps that simplify your life and open new doors that you didn’t even know existed.

Today we highlight 3 such Mac apps that will transform your life: DSP-Quattro 4, Live Interior 3D Standard Edition, and TextExpander 4. All three are available for a limited time at 50% off their normal retail prices at Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple’s iPhone 6 is supposed to be a big secret in this part of the world, but in China, parts are readily available.

Although the iPhone 6 hasn’t been announced and won’t be in stores for a couple of weeks, everything from the new aluminum case to the sapphire-covered LCD screen is available on the Chinese gray market.

Cult of Mac has been contacted by a U.S. smartphone repair company that offered to sell us a bunch of iPhone 6 components — almost enough to assemble our own device.

“I can get all the parts except the motherboards are very rare and very expensive to purchase,” said the owner of the repair company, who asked to remain anonymous. “The display assemblies alone are $500 per piece right now.”

The repair company owner claims iPhone 6 parts — especially for the upcoming 4.7-inch model — are readily available in China from suppliers to the repair industry.

“All the parts needed for repairs they acquire shortly before release — this is normal,” he said. “Usually they have no need to sell the parts because there’s no demand this early but I’ve bought samples from them … so I can buy parts in the future.”

Remember your desk from the ’80s? If you were even alive back then it probably featured an old Macintosh surrounded by a disgusting mess of books, letters, a telephone, a fax machine and probably even a Rolodex. But thanks to the rapid pace of technology, you’d be hard-pressed to find any of those items on the modern college student’s desk.