U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh may reject a plea put forward by Apple, Google, and two other companies following a lawsuit which accused Apple of participating in anti-poaching practices.

As previously reported, Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar all stood accused by former employees, although Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar quickly agreed to settle — paying a collective $20 million.

The remaining companies — Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe — faced a possible damages payout of $3 billion, although this could potentially rise to as much as $9 billion under antitrust laws. After an appeal refusal, the companies ended up settling for the comparatively small tiny of $324.5 million.

Understandably, not everyone was pleased with the result: with plaintiff Michael Devine calling the sum “grossly inadequate,” and demanding that it be rejected. Now it seems that he could get his wish.

Apple is set to unleash multiple versions of its long-awaited iWatch this fall, according to a new report from the the Wall Street Journal.

Coming in multiple screen sizes, and boasting more than 10 sensors to track health and fitness data, Apple seems set to go way beyond the current smartphone accessory functionality seen in present generation smartwatches.

Yosemite is one of the biggest updates to OS X we’ve seen in recent years, bringing fresh looks and a slew of new features. This video takes a look at how Notification Center looks and works in OS X Yosemite, which is resembling iOS 8 more and more.

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

Every once in a while, it’s good to take a step back from the more intense flavors of gaming available on your iPhone or iPad and just play a game that’s pure fun.

Grub, sequel to the hit game from independent game studio Pixowl, Greedy Grub, is one of those purely fun experiences that just begs to be played.

Last week at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, I got a chance to try this delightful little Snake-style game out on the developer’s iPad, and was enchanted by the visuals right off the bat.

Take a look at the video below to see what I mean.

Construction of Apple’s new headquarters is still underway as Cupertino braces for the mothership to touchdown sometime in 2016, but if you want to know what the glass and aluminum ring will look like during a flyby, Technology Integration Services just published a gorgeous rendering of Apple’s campus.

Other than showing yet another render of Apple campus, the new video also gives a nice layout of the dozens of other buildings that will makeup the new campus, as well views of the surrounding streets and houses.

Take a look at the full video below:

We’ve been trudging through a toxic hellstew of iWatch rumors for more than 18 months, but if rumors are to be believed, the world is about to finally see the fabled iWatch.

Production on Apple’s first smartwatch is set to begin next month, with Taiwan’s Quanta Computer handling production, says Reuters, who says the iWatches display will be a little bigger than expected.

Apple has the best App Store on the planet. Thousands of developers.  Millions of apps. Billions of sales. But no one can find a damn thing.

Since 2008, iOS users have downloaded more than 75 billion apps. How we locate a winner from among the App Store’s 1.2 million apps hasn’t changed much, but Andy Baio thinks Apple could revolutionize the way we discover and consume apps. And he’s got a brilliant concept Apple should borrow.

In 2K’s upcoming game, Evolve, I was a monster.

It was my job to stalk the surrounding map, eating smaller creatures in order to build up my armor and get evolution points, which would let me add and strengthen my special monstrous abilities.

I had to do this while being hunted by a team of four humans, each with their own specialty: the heavily armored, damage-dealing Assault class, the crafty Trapper with her energy-field dome to fence me in, the Support class, with a variety of ranged weapons, and the Medic, who kept healing those bastards as I hit them with my own smart bombs, electric attacks and sharp claws.

It was a heady, scary time, but I persevered. I flew up to the sky, hurling furious attacks upon their heads. I ran away, hiding behind huge rock columns to avoid their deadly assault. I ate and evolved.

Then, after about 20 minutes of furious action, I died, the victim of their unwarranted greed and violence.

I loved playing Evolve, and so will you. Check out the trailer below to see the Kraken, the second monster revealed for the upcoming console and PC game.

I was all set to pull the trigger on Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography plan, which gives subscribers access to Lightroom and Photoshop as well as Lightroom Mobile for the iPad and iPhone.

After all, it’s just $10 per month, right? (or €12.29/$16.71 in the EU). That’s about what I spend on Rdio, or Dropbox, and I get Lightroom on my frickin’ camera.

But I decided to hold off and see if one huge doozy of a design problem is fixed before my 30-day trial of the service finishes up. This will also give me time to check out the amazing new Adobe Photoshop Mix, which is what Photoshop for iPad should have been all along.

And the little problem that could be a deal-breaker? You’re gonna love it…

Amazon’s new Fire Phone boasts plenty of unique features; flashy stuff like 3-D effects, the intriguing scan-to-buy app Firefly, and 24/7 tech support via Mayday. But should the Fire Phone be your next smartphone?

Here are five possibly fatal flaws you need to be aware of before you place an order for Amazon’s first smartphone.

Apple didn’t tell anyone during WWDC, but it wants iOS 8 to be the ultimate city tour guide.

Cupertino is adding a new Flyover City Tours feature to its Maps app. And even though the code has been hidden, developer Pierre Blazquez managed to unearth it from the latest iOS 8 beta release to give us a preview of the new feature that’s still in development.

Flyover tours are currently only available for Rome, Stockholm, Barcelona, New York, Paris and a few other cities, but in a video posted by Mac4Ever, we’ve been given our first glimpse of the tours in action.

Chances are you’ve heard of Tamagotchi, the little handheld virtual pets that took over the world during the first decade of the 2000s, selling more than 76 million little egg-shaped devices as of 2010.

Hatch is one of the many virtual pet apps out there, but it’s an adorable one. You may even recognize the little Fugu creature from its own Facebook Messenger sticker series.

Virtual pets aren’t anything new to the iOS ecosystem, but this new collaboration between Hatch and super-popular video game Pocket God is something new. If you’ve ever thought about doing more with that little digital pal in your pocket, now might be the time. Check out the launch video below for more.

If you’ve been searching for a means to prevent data loss and hard drive failure, then Cult of Mac Deals has an offer on a great combination of apps that will make that possible.

Techtool Pro 7 is widely considered to be the most advanced Mac repair utility ever, and Checkmate spots the small problems on your Mac before they become big problems. And for a limited time you can both of these killer pieces of software at 60% off the regular price – just $49.99 – courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

After years of work on its first mobile phone, Amazon has finally revealed the Fire Phone. Boasting an extensive recognition system known as Firefly and 3-D features powered by something called Dynamic Perspective, the device is now available for pre-order.

In today’s video we give you an overview of the flashy new device, which was unveiled Wednesday by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and compare Fire Phone to Apple’s mobile offerings (both the current iPhone 5s and the upcoming iPhone 6).

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

If you plan on buying one of Apple’s new 21.5-inch iMacs for $1,099 and then upgrading internal components yourself later on, then listen up. Upgrade experts OWC have torn down the new entry-level all-in-one and discovered that its memory is soldered to the motherboard and cannot be upgraded.

Based on the massive number of hires they’ve made in the field as of late, it’s no mystery that Apple is interested in biometrics and biosensors. However three new patent applications published Thursday shed a bit more light on what Apple has up its sleeve, and make us feel even more excited about the possibility of an iWatch (and future iPhones) later this year.

I’ve tried a lot of cases for my Mac notebooks over the years, from a dorky aluminum briefcase for my white “icebook” iBook through cheap, zip-up neoprene sleeves and on to bulky, custom-fitted, shock-absorbing monsters. But the elegant, simple and beautiful Castello Davarg York, cut from a single piece of leather, is the only one that makes any sense for my MacBook Air.

Like the MacBook Air inside, you can’t help but finger and fiddle with the York case. It’s cut from 5-ounce, full-grain leather that’s folded and then hand-stitched along two sides before finishing the edges and … well, that’s almost it. The case has no fastening or closure, and lacks a lining or padded interior, but it is shaped perfectly to fit the MacBook Air. (I tested the 13-inch size, but it also comes for the 11-incher.) It even has a little cutout on the top edge that mimics the one found on the lid of the MacBook itself.

Who’s the baddest of the bad?

Got your own favorite underappreciated supervillain? Let us know in the comments below.

With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple is finally showing us its idea of how we’ll compute in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, this pristine vision of our computing destiny — unveiled after years of secret, patient and painstaking development — aligns perfectly with how we currently use our computers and mobile devices.

The keynote at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month not only showed off a new way to think about computing, based on data not devices, but also silenced pretty much every criticism leveled at the company over the past few years.

Let’s take a look at Apple’s new way of doing things, which fulfills Steve Jobs’ post-PC plan by minimizing the importance of the Mac.

You know those ideas that are so simple you feel like you really could have come up with them yourself? Yo is one of those apps.

Launched on April Fools’ Day, it has recently become inexplicably popular — with 2 million messages sent over just the past month. If you haven’t used it, the idea behind it is simple: like Snapchat, you establish a username inside the app and can then send push notifications to friends reading “Yo” and featuring audio of a voice saying the same thing. Oh, and did I mention that it’s creator has just raised $1.2 million in funding?

Cult animated faves the Powerpuff Girls are back in a new iOS game, published by Cartoon Network in association with JoyJoy and Fluid SE developers RadianGames.

Called Powerpuff Girls: Defenders of Townsville, the game sees the Powerpuff Girls blasted with evil simian nemesis Mojo Jojo’s Disremember Gun, which leads to them forgetting how to use their superpowers. In a Metroidvania/Castleroid-style adventure shooter, you start out playing as Buttercup, before rescuing Blossom and Bubbles. Once the heroic trio is united, you get to use each of their superpowers to battle Mojo Jojo’s evil robots, and unlock and discover new areas.

There are plenty of stories about iPhone thefts causing spikes in crime statistics, but according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Apple’s introduction of an iPhone kill switch may be starting to turn around.

Measuring crime after the iPhone’s Activation Lock was first introduced in iOS 7, police in  San Francisco, London, and New York claim that San Francisco robberies fell by 38 percent, London robberies by 24 percent, and New York robberies by 19 percent — while grand larcenies in NYC including the iPhone dropped 29 percent in the first five months of 2014, compared to the same time period last year.

Looking for a little extra summer cash? It might be time to dust off your old iPhone.

Some hopeful eBay seller is hawking their “rare” mint-condition, first-generation iPhone with only 4GB of storage — and all they’re asking for is enough money for a down payment on a house.

Amazon introduced its first smartphone to the world this morning and while the jury is still out on whether its incredible Dynamic Perspective feature is a UI revolution or just another 3-D gimmick, Jeff Bezos and the Amazon team have pumped Fire Phone full of features that could make it more than just the world’s best buying machine.

From Firefly’s compulsive-purchasing features to Mayday’s instant tech-support tether, Fire Phone has a few tricks up its sleeve that we weren’t expecting. But will that be enough to convince consumers to buy one of the AT&T-exclusive phones?

Check out these six things your iPhone and Android can’t do, but Fire Phone can:

The second beta of iOS 8 upgrades Apple’s mobile platform visually as well as functionally. Along with plenty of bug fixes, iOS 8 Beta 2 delivers a number of neat tweaks that make the upcoming mobile OS even better than before. See some of the new enhancements in action in today’s quick-look video.

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