While sitting in on a session at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference last year, Nick Frey, Chris Galzerano, and Veeral Patel got an itch to make something. As part of iOS 7, Apple had introduced “Multipeer Connectivity,” a framework for communicating with nearby devices.

Frey and his friends were at WWDC on student scholarships given by Apple, a tradition that provides the opportunity for hundreds of grade school and college students to attend the expensive conference for free each year.

Nearly a year later, the result of their shared itch is Audibly, a nifty iPhone app that can chain together iPhones to create a wireless sound system.

iPhones represented 48.9 percent of the UK’s smartphone-based web traffic in Q2, according to a new study by Chitika.

While Samsung came in at the expected second place, its percentage (22.8 percent) was much closer to BlackBerry’s (16.8 percent) than it was to Apple’s. The rest of the numbers were made up of HTC, Nokia, Sony, Google and Motorola handsets.

This is likely to be disappointing for the South Korea-based Samsung, which has recently been investing heavily in marketing its smartphones in the UK — including a “rebranding” of London’s Heathrow airport’s Terminal 5 in order to promote its latest Galaxy S model.

Yesterday Cult of Mac revealed that Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 smartphone was outsold by both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c during the month of May: the first month Galaxy S5 was on sale in the country.

The new Mac Pro, with its sleek cylinder design, has gotten a bad rap. While it’s light-years from the bulky, ugly first-generation Mac Pro and “built for creativity on an epic scale,” this ingenious machine, which Apple sells for between $2,999 and $3,999, looks like a common waste receptacle.

The much-trashed design recently got some love from architect Takara Maru, who carved out a spot on this sleek walnut desk for it. Some might joke that it’s to shield users from the Mac Pro’s looks, but really the aim is to reduce clutter on the desk surface so Maru can focus on home design.

Whether you believe Apple’s claim that it “invented” apps or not, there’s no doubt that the concept of downloadable mobile apps have had an enormous impact on our lives since the App Store first opened its digital doors back in 2008.

Now a new documentary Kickstarter project aims to tell that story, with the aid of the developers who helped the revolution to take place. Called App: The Human Story, the documentary has currently raised $37,769 of its stated $100,000 goal, with 28 days still to go.

I’m a massive fan of Sometimes You Die, the weirdly existential platformer with the banging soundtrack, which topped the iOS game charts earlier this year.

For those who have played and completed the game, there’s some good news today because as of this morning creator Philipp Stollenmayer released the so-called Prologue Update, which adds a whole new chapter to the game, plus new unlockables, and even a German translation.

Remember Picturelife? It was one of our top picks for online photo storage when Everpix bit it, and now it has been upgraded to version 3.0. The highlights are a new $15 per month unlimited plan, which is really truly unlimited and can be shared with up to three other family members, plus an all-new, redesigned iOS app.

Things in the online photo world are definitely heating up again. iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite will bring exciting new features for photographers and a recent update to Adobe Creative Cloud gives shutterbugs even more options for editing and storage.

But Picturelife has some pretty cool tricks up its sleeve to make it a worthy competitor to the big guns. Here’s why it deserves a shot at becoming your new super-awesome online photo library.

Shortly after updating Spotify with the ability to search for downloaded music offline, Spotify’s iOS app has just received a notable new update.

Spotify now lets users view play queues on their iPhone. This can be done by tapping the queue icon on the top right corner of the “Now Playing” screen. The update also features a new dialog box, which appears each time you try to add a song to a playlist which already includes it: a great way of avoiding duplicating songs without you realizing it.

Future Apple devices may be able to dynamically modify user interface elements, security levels, and other types of behavior based on location, according to a new patent application published Thursday.

Referred to as “Location-sensitive security levels and setting profiles based on detected location,” Apple’s application describes a setup in which both the hardware and software of your iPhone, iPad, and whatever other mobile devices Apple releases in future can seamlessly work together to automatically adjust various UI and device behavior settings.

Sometimes things aren’t as easy as they could be when you’re using your Mac to plow through the day’s tasks. Cluttered screens and excess clicking become irritating and tiresome. In today’s video, we take a look at five useful Mac shortcuts that can make using your Apple computer even more efficient.

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The iWatch is coming. No one really know what it will do yet, but Steven Milunovich, UBS’ top Apple analyst, claims that if Apple has its way, you’ll use the iWatch mostly to send voice messages back and forth with your friends, like Dick Tracy’s 2-Way Wrist Radio.

Because voice messaging is so huge among smartphone users in China, Milunovich says sending voice messages will be one of iWatch’s biggest features along with fitness. And even though it sounds a little silly that voice messages would be the main draws for iWatch, he just met with Tim Cook who couldn’t stop talking about it.

The official BBC One Twitter account had a surprise for fans of its hit show Sherlock Wednesday with a tease that the oft-delayed series about a modern Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick John Watson will be returning.

"Miss me?" #Sherlock, the hit @BBCOne drama, will return for a Special, followed by a series of three new episodes. #221back

— BBC One (@BBCOne) July 2, 2014

Apple’s first foray into wearables is expected to be revealed this October, but Apple’s not the only tech giant preparing a smartwatch for this fall: New rumors claim Microsoft has plans for its own wearable, only it won’t look anything like the big bulky bands we just saw at Google I/O.

We first got wind that Microsoft was readying its own iPhone-friendly smartwatch last month, but a report from Tom’s Hardware sheds new light on what the device will look like when it hits the market with an ungodly number of sensors.

This post was brought to you by Anvsoft, creator of M4VGear.

Do you want to copy or convert your videos, TV shows and music videos to other formats so that they can be watched on all your devices? Currently, movies purchased or rented on the iTunes store are DRM encrypted so as to restrict their viewing to Apple devices and iTunes. Moreover, if Apple pulls a video from iTunes, it can no longer be accessed even though the viewer purchased it.

M4VGear DRM Media Converter is the fastest DRM remover on the market. This software package can remove DRM from your iTunes movie library 20 times faster and converts iTunes M4V video files to unprotected mp4 format with perfect output quality for iOS. Watch the video here.

Apple has launched a new $49 Mac Pro Security Lock Adapter in its online store, giving Mac Pro owners (and Apple Stores) an easy way to secure their machines with existing Kensington locks.

Apple’s lock adapter is a straightforward metal bracket that secures the Mac Pro’s lift-off cover to the machine’s base by way of a security cable, thereby barring access to the machine’s internals. The cable lock can then be secured to make it difficult for thieves to steal the $3,000-plus machine.

Samsung’s newly-launched flagship Galaxy S5 might have hoped to capture some of the iPhone’s market dominance in Britain, but new research figures show that even in its first month it trailed behind sales of the iPhone 5s and even Apple’s so-called “flop” iPhone 5c.

The numbers were crunched by research company Kantar Worldpanel, which looked at smartphone sales in the month of May. The Galaxy S5 did manage to convert a few former iOS users to become Android fans, with 17 percent of new S5 owners being former iPhone users.

Even this news is unlikely to worry Apple (or make Samsung particularly cheerful), however:

From sledgehammer-tossing freedom fighters to misunderstood teenagers at Christmas, Apple’s TV commercials have hit us with some truly iconic imagery over the years. But when a company has been around since the 1970s, it’s no great surprise that a select few ads would slip our collective memory.

After scouring through hundreds of big-time commercials and tiny TV spots that promoted Cupertino’s products over the years, here are our picks for the Apple advertisements that time forgot. All of them are worthy of a second look — and almost all of them for the right reasons.

If you had an old iPhone you planned to trade in for a discount with Apple, you may have missed the chance to maximize your reimbursement. That’s because Apple has slashed the maximum value for old handsets on its iPhone trade-in program to $225 — representing a decrease of $45.

The change is reportedly set to come into effect at Apple Stores in the U.S. and Canada, and will likely roll out to other international retail venues after that. So far, Apple’s iPhone trade-in scheme operates at retail stores in the U.S., United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, and Italy.

Ubiquitous cloud storage and editing solutions for your photos are like buses: You wait ages for one, and then two come along at once.

Both Apple and Adobe are going all-in on allowing you to view and edit your photos on any device. Adobe has done this by bringing its Lightroom desktop app to mobile. Apple is doing it by ditching iPhoto and Aperture and starting again with the upcoming Photos app for iOS.

While the approaches are different, they both look rad. And they’ll drive a fundamental shift in the way we manage our photos.

It may be painfully average as a kart game, but the uber popular Angry Birds Go! iOS racer has just upped the ante by finally adding a much-requested multiplayer mode.

Letting you race against other players from around the world to determine the fastest bird or piggy on the track, the presence of multiplayer was first teased by developers Rovio all the way back in December, when they asked: “Who wants to see multiplayer in Angry Birds Go!? It’s coming in spring!”

As it turned out, Rovio missed the spring deadline, but hopefully the extra time to work on the update will have been well-spent.

The Los Angeles Unified School District decided to blow its entire $1 billion tech budget on an iPad for every student last year, but after security hacks and supply issues got the program off to a rocky start, the district has decided to adjust course and let on a few challengers.

Officials at the U.S.’s second-largest school district have decided to allow a group of high schools to choose between six devices instead of the iPad, effectively putting distribution of Apple’s tablet on hold district-wide.

Seven years after the Apple TV launch, Google has announced Android TV software that will work with hardware from companies like Sony and Logitech. But how does the current Apple TV stack up to the new Android TV platform?

Today’s video shows off key features of Google’s latest attempt at ruling the living room, including some advances that might spur Apple to innovate once again when it comes to television. For those interested in watching Apple TV on Android, this shift could mean more accessibility and competition in the streaming space.

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The entire country is busy watching America’s rebels take on the Belgium Red Devils at World Cup, but while everyone else is focused on the football pitch, Google is busy readying its plans to take on Beats Music with a music service acquisition of its own.

Songza, a music streaming service that specializes in finding the right music to fit your mood – kind of like Beats’ Sentence feature – announced that is has been scooped up by the folks at Google.

For a comic book character that’s been around since 1941, it’s surprising how few women (five) have written DC Comic’s biggest female protagonist. The character is as least as popular and visible as DC’s other superstars, Batman and Superman, but it’s not until recently that we’ve seen her potentially coming to the big screen, while the other two have dominated DC’s movie output in recent years.

It’s exciting, then, to hear that the comic book itself is getting some new creative energy: Meredith and David Finch, a husband and wife writer/illustrator. While David has some serious comic book cred, from Ultimate X-Men (with Brian Michael Bendis) and Batman: The Dark Knight, Meredith Finch has some chops as well, as seen in her short stories for Zenescope Entertainment. This will be her first lead comic writing gig.

Meredith reminds us that having a female writer for one of the most iconic female superheroes is important. “It makes sense if you’re going to try to attract that female market that you appeal to them on every level,” she told USA Today, “– your writing demographic reflects the demographic of your readership.”

Samsung wants to be one of the world’s top 10 places to work by 2020, but according to the latest third-party labor conditions report, working for the South Korean smartphone maker is still a horrible experience, especially if you’re one of its Chinese suppliers.

An audit of 100 of Samsung’s suppliers in China found issues like overtime, proper saftey gear and training are still prominent issues. You can read the full 69-page report on Samsung’s site, but here’s a quick rundown of the egregious conditions: