App launchers on the Mac have always been geared toward power users, and lately tools like Alfred have become even more sophisticated, with user-created scripts and extensions. When Apple debuted the new Spotlight in OS X Yosemite at WWDC, it took many of the best features from existing launchers, like the ability to find any app you have installed with a couple keystrokes.

LaunchBar was the original app launcher on the Mac, and today a brand new version was released with a themable interface and new features.

Will tools like LaunchBar and Alfred live on when millions of Mac owners start using the new Spotlight this fall? Now that Apple has capitalized on the more consumer-friendly aspects of what makes a good launcher, third-party alternatives are going after power users like never before.

Apple has a massive pile of cash sitting overseas and the U.S. Senate is now weighing options on how to entice Cupertino to bring all $138 billion of it back to American soil.

Senate Democrats and Republicans are reportedly in discussions about passing legislation that would give American companies like Apple and Google a one-time tax break if they repatriate profits stashed overseas.

Swipeable keyboards are finally coming to iOS thanks to Apple’s addition of third-party keyboards in iOS 8. We’ve already seen teasers of Fleksy’s wicked fast keyboard in development, but now TouchPal is giving us a taste of what gesture-based keyboards will be like with it’s working demo of the TouchPal Keyboard.

TouchPal’s captures texts as you slide your finger over the letters to form a word. Sliding up for numbers, or down for a symbol. It’s super fast and convenient, especially if you’re a sloppy texter like me.

Checkout the full demo:

For thrills, skills, and power, there is nothing like the SKEYE Mini Drone. It may be palm-sized, but this quadcopter isn’t small on features.

It flies with acrobatic precision and can squeak between the narrowest of nooks! With 4 coreless motors, performing flawless takeoffs, vertical climbs, 360s, figure eights, and banked turns is a breeze – whether you’re taking to the skies under a roof or out in the open. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $99 during this limited time offer.

Almost exactly one year to the day after being announced, it’s now possible to order a Mac Pro and have it ship to you within 24 hours.

Costing between $3,000 and $4,000, Apple’s gorgeous stealth powerhouse of a machine went on sale December 19, but right from the start began suffering shipping delays due to a limited production cycle. One possible explanation for this was the Mac Pro’s “Made in the USA” status, in contrast to virtually all other Apple products, which are designed in California but assembled overseas — often in China.

The Walden is the first of Pad & Quill’s top-notch cases that I would actually use. That’s because it ditches the wooden frame of the company’s usual bookbindery cases, instead offering a minimal slipcover that uses adhesive strips to hold an iPad Air in place.

The result is a case as beautiful and classic as other P & Q cases, but slim and light enough to match the slender Apple tablet it protects.

Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often than it did when your machine was new. The operating system just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.

You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or solid-state drive) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.

Is there some sort of tune-up you can do to sort it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: Yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more-efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.

Apple paid just 3.7% tax on its non-U.S. income last year — and the European Commission isn’t happy about it.

Registering its overseas business in Ireland, Apple is one of three companies being investigated for abusive transfer pricing and other forms of corporate profit shifting, with the other two being Starbucks and Fiat Finance and Trade.

The subject of corporate tax avoidance has become an increasingly hot-button issue in recent years, as the result of probes into international businesses like Apple and Google, which use convoluted structures as a means of slashing their tax bills.

Kenan Aktulun founded the iPhone Photography Awards (IPPA) the same year the smartphone launched, when the idea that taking great pics with a camera phone was still pretty optimistic.

Seven years later, iPhone photography has developed to the point of documenting New York Times war coverage and tops four out of five of the most-used cameras on Flickr.

This year’s IPPA winners cover a suitably broad range of the world (54 photographers from 17 countries) and topics ranging from kids and architecture to landscapes and food.

New photos purporting to be of the iPhone 6 have shown up. The above image was one of two posted by user dreamerjimmy on the Chinese social network Weibo. Seemingly confirming what we have heard in previous reports, it depicts the iPhone 6 as featuring curved edges, a larger display and thinner bezel to maximize the screen size. It also features a shorter gap between the display and the Touch ID Home button.

Other images reveal additional notable changes.

Unless you’re a retired British gangster gone to seed in the Costa del Sol, chances are that as a man you don’t wear chunky rings on a frequent basis. Nor, as a member of the less-fair sex, have I had the experience of missing a phone call or text message because my iPhone was buried somewhere at the bottom of my handbag.

I do, however, appreciate that neither of these are necessarily true for female readers of Cult of Mac — and that Ringly is therefore not necessarily a product aimed at me.

Ringly is a startup that creates smart rings offering customizable Bluetooth notifications, with different-colored LED lights and vibration patterns for different types of alerts. It’s designed to be a functional but also stylish notification system that connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth LE. Notifications can be tweaked on a user-by-user basis, so that it might be possible to have a red light signal an urgent email or phone call, while a blue light could notify you of, say, a retweet or a FarmVille notification.

The iMac could get a refresh next week according to a new report, which suggests that Apple is planning to update its computer line with faster processors and lower prices.

The report cites the same sources that correctly predicted the MacBook Air update back in April, and goes on to suggest that the iMacs might include Thunderbolt 2 ports, and that they will arrive later in the week than the Tuesday release day usually used for new Apple products.

Nest, which is now owned by Google, pioneered the idea of a smart thermostat. Now several years later, Honeywell has a Nest competitor that might actually do well in the consumer market.

Called Lyric, Honeywell’s new WiFi-connected thermostat costs $279 and will be available at a Lowe’s near you by August. While it may be too late for the Lyric to compete with the Nest, Honeywell sees it as just the beginning of its entry into the world of the the smart, always-connected home. And being a launch partner with Apple’s HomeKit in iOS 8 could mean that more people buy the Lyric over Nest in the months to come.

With the release of iOS 8 just months away, there is plenty for users to look forward to. While fitness fanatics have had to rely on third-party apps, the upcoming version of iOS introduces a dedicated Health app. Today’s video brings an inside look at the new app and how you can anticipate using it later this year.

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Sports fans are finally getting more love from the nerds at the mothership, just in time for the World Cup.

Starting today, iTunes Radio users will be able to stream live broadcasts of ESPN’s acclaimed radio shows for free as well local snoozcasts newscasts from the fine folks at your local NPR station.

Yesterday Skype announced a major redesign of its iPhone app that was scheduled to hit the App Store sometime next week. For some reason the update is already available. It packs several new features that are designed to make the app easier to use.

No one makes commercials like Apple. Or no one did, until the last year or so when everyone from Samsung to Google has caught up to Cupertino’s marketing genius.

In a move to retake its marketing crown in 2014, Apple is thinking different than partnering with a traditional advertising agency by assembling its own massive internal marketing team, according to an AdAge report, and it could rival the world’s top firms that have been around for decades.

Want to get your hands on a one of a kind hardware and software bundle featuring Griffin’s DJ Connect and Algoriddim’s djay for Mac? Well, Cult of Mac Deals has you covered with The DJ Connect Bundle.

For a limited time we’ve got DJ Connect – made specifically for DJs – and djay – groundbreaking mixing and recording software that will transform your Mac into a full-fledged DJ system– for only $89!

Are you based in New York City and looking to learn Apple’s new programming language Swift for free?

If so, you may be interested in participating in a tech workshop organized by software development firm TurntoTech in their offices on 5th Avenue. Close to 900 people have already RSVP’d for the how-to — which kicks off this Wednesday. Demand has been so great, in fact, that organizers have had to break the course into three different classes to accommodate all respondees.

The first Swift class will be held this Wednesday at 6:30pm ET, with the second being held the following Wednesday at the same time, and the final one to be held June 23.

Amazon today introduced Whispersync for Voice to its Kindle apps for Android and iOS, allowing users to switch between reading and listening inside just one app. The feature combines Kindle ebooks with their companion Audible titles using Amazon’s one-click Matchmaker service, and upgrades will cost as little as $0.99 per title.

These are the computers Apple never built, and never will — a water-cooled Cube; a teeny-tiny G5; a faux Mac Pro in a trash can.

Oh wait. Apple did the trash can, but not a genuine rubbish bin with a matching toilet brush, like the purple beauty in the Hackintosh gallery above.

These homemade Macs, built from non-Apple hardware, come in a thousand different shapes and sizes, built by legions of dedicated, ingenious hackers. In the nine years since Apple switched to Intel processors, a DIY subculture dedicated to building alternative Mac hardware has steadily grown. It’s not a strictly legal endeavor — Apple’s EULA forbids OS X from running on non-Apple hardware — but Cupertino turns a blind eye to hobbyists.

“You know what? We’ve never gotten anything from Apple other than a few anonymous employees asking for help :),” said Tony, who runs Hackintosh website tonymacx86.com, in an email to Cult of Mac. “It’s clear that tonymacx86.com doesn’t sell hardware. I would think that they’d understand that we are promoting the purchase of OS X and Apple peripherals and laptops, and have zero tolerance for piracy.”

SAN FRANCISCO — You created an app. You think it’s awesome. Your friends say so too. Something nags at you, though: You have zero reviews, your downloads don’t outnumber your Facebook pals, and you need to make rent.

There’s a fancy name for your problem: “discoverability.” Millions of good apps face it, gathering dust between bogus fart apps and Flappy Bird clones.

“It’s hard to make a living in the App Store,” says Michael Yacavone, founder of Individuate, which makes personal-development apps Ace It! and Affirmable.

But there is definitely money to be made in the App Store, to the tune of $15 billion Apple has paid developers so far. Apple recently vowed to improve discoverability by adding an “explore” tab to the App Store, but whether users will search for new and exciting apps remains to be seen. The basic problem remains for most developers: Nearly everyone is ignoring you. Journalists can help, but you have to know how to deal with them.

Apart from letting you quickly edit and share photos (and always sitting, ready to go, in your pocket), the iPhone camera has one other great feature: It geotags every photo and video you shoot with the place you captured the imagery. You might not care about that now, but in the future when you wonder, “Where did I take that naked self-portrait?” or decide to take a look at your old vacation snaps, you’ll love geotagging.

Hell, half the time I use a map to find a photo — I can usually remember where I was better than when I was.

Lack of geotagging is perhaps the main reason I don’t take my regular camera out as often as I’d like, so I decided to do something about that. I’m using a combination of the iOS GeoTagr app on iPhone and iPad, plus a Fujifilm X100S camera and a Garmin EDGE 500 GPS bike computer.

Let’s take a look.

Mojang has rolled out its “biggest update ever” for Minecraft: Pocket Edition, adding unlimited worlds, tons of new content, and a multitude of tweaks, fixes, and improvements. Players will be able to enjoy a plethora of new blocks, mobs, blomes — and a new AI that brings spiders, leaf rendering, drip particles, and an “immersive mode.”

Last month, a number of Apple users in Australia woke up to find that their iOS devices had been locked by an “Oleg Pliss,” and that they needed to pay a ransom if they wanted to continue using them. While a few people thought iCloud could have been hacked, Apple denied those rumors.

Now it seems that the hackers involved with the ransom demands have been detailed by authorities in Russia, according to a new report from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Aged 17 and 23, the alleged hackers are both residents of the Southern Administrative District of Moscow, and one has been previously tried for a similar case.