Sookie, Bill, Jason, LaFayette, Sam, and Jessica are back in the final season of True Blood, HBO’s killer vampire drama that’s in its seventh and final season.

We’re here to watch the writers and actors raise the stakes for the residents of Bon Temps as they try to make sense of a world terrorized by infected Hepatitis V vampires and the human bigotry of the small southern town in the series inspired by Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries novels.

If you missed the first six seasons, be warned: there’s a ton of spoilers here. If you want to catch up on the basics, though, head over to our monstrous six-season recap and then come on back, y’all, hear?

Sookie Stackhouse is a waitress and telepath who can read your every thought. This hasn’t made her feel welcome in the tiny Southern town full of bigots and racists where she lives. Worse yet, she’s fallen for a vampire, Bill Compton, who’s a champion for other vamps to “come out of the coffin” and live peacefully alongside humans. Oh, and werewolves, shape-shifters, witches and fairies are real, too.

HBO’s True Blood is a fun, sexy romp through an engaging universe of characters and supernatural goings on. Based on the best-selling novels of Charlaine Harris, True Blood heads into its seventh and final season tonight, and we don’t want to miss a minute.

If you’re a New York-based coder or wannabe coder looking to learn Apple’s new programming language Swift, you may want to check out an upcoming evening tech workshop organized by software development firm TurnToTech.

With the next session taking place Monday at their 5th Avenue offices, the number of spaces available has just been upped to allow more people to attend.

There’s a fire in the Amazon! I’m so sorry. Bad jokes aside, on this week’s CultCast we’ll tell you what we love and don’t about Amazon’s much-buzzed debut mobile phone. Plus: the iMac just got a lot cheaper… and slower; another Weibo leak reportedly shows a huge 5.5-inch iPhone 6; the cool additions to iOS 8 and Yosemite’s 2nd betas; this summer’s hottest mens’ bathing suit attire; plus, you asked, we answer—it’s an all-new CultCast Q&A!

Our thanks to TextExpander for supporting this episode! TextExpander for Mac saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text, pictures, code blocks, and more, and it’s an application we use every single day. Try it out for free at Smilesoftware.com/cultcast.

Click on for the show notes.

It’s been a great week of offerings at Cult of Mac Deals, with promotions that are sure to satisfy anyone.

If you’re looking for a great software package, then The Name Your Own Summer Blockbuster Mac Bundle (featuring Path Finder 6 and Fantastical) is going to be right up your alley. The Doxie One will give you one of the world’s most innovative scanners for only $99, and The Karma 4G Hotspot provides you with pay-as-you-go wifi that will keep you connected for just $69. Want to rip and convert movies, DVDs and videos to a ton of different devices? Then The MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack – priced at $19.99 – is another deal that is one of the best we’ve offered this week.

LOS ANGELES — Free-to-play games don’t enjoy the same cache as games that cost money right out of the gate. Sure, they’re at the top of the “making money” charts, as gamers download freebies by the bucketful (and apparently purchase loads of virtual stuff from them), but ask any gamer what they think of them and they’ll typically give you a blank, slightly annoyed stare.

So I honestly didn’t hold out much hope that I’d see anything super-interesting at an Electronic Entertainment Expo luncheon sponsored by free-to-play mobile game maker DeNA last week.

However, the developer showed off a couple of pretty damn good games at the event. We saw the recently released Transformers tie-in game and several others, including Peter Molyneux’s latest effort, Godus. But what really stuck out for me were Royal Defenders and WARP.

A cheaper iMac that proves you get what you pay for, fresh beta updates for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, and a “rare” iPhone with a $15,000 price tag. You’ll get these stories and more in Cult of Mac’s video rundown of the week’s biggest Apple news.

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

Custom keyboards are landing on iPhones and iPads this fall after Apple finally decided to give users more options than Jony Ive’s horrible shift key.

We’re still a few months away from finished keyboards being ready for the public, but this morning we got our first taste of using a custom keyboard on iOS 8 thanks to the guys at TouchPal. My fingers still need a lot of training before I’m able to sweep words together faster than an Android user, but the future of iOS keyboards promises to be swift, swipeable and super-simple.

Here’s what it’s like to install and use iOS 8 custom keyboards:

As we head into the weekend, Cult of Mac Deals has a slew of offers worth exploring…especially for those designers out there that want to take their Adobe know-how to new heights.

The Adobe Certified Training Bundle puts you in the position to master photography and Photoshop Creative Cloud using over 200 lectures and 27 hours of content. And you can get all of this education for 85% off the regular price – just $34.99!

When Microsoft announced its Surface Pro 3 back in May, everyone expected a new Surface Mini tablet to accompany it. Although we didn’t get one, it seems the device was (still is?) definitely a part of Microsoft’s plans. The Surface Mini is mentioned numerous times in an official Surface Pro 3 user manual that was published online.

Logitech’s updated Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad Air replaced its predecessor mere months after the original’s launch. The most obvious difference between the two is the flip-out hinge that joins the keyboard to the iPad like a cover to a book, but in reality the two devices are completely different.

Is the new one better? In one way yes. In others? Nope.

SAN FRANCISCO — James Armstrong might be one of the few iOS engineers who loses weight while on a coding bender.

Armstrong is lead developer at The Orange Chef Co., the company behind a smart kitchen scale called Prep Pad. It weighs your food and, based on the nutritional profile you set, gives you a more accurate idea of how much you should eat. While working on a companion iPad app called Countertop, Armstrong beta tested his meals and realized how super-sized they were. So he cut the portions and shed 30 pounds.

“I had to buy new clothes twice,” he says.”I bought a bunch of clothes, then I had to buy ’em again — it’s made that much difference.”

Yesterday we wrote about Yo, the messaging app which has become inexplicably popular over the past month, and has netted $1.2 million in venture funding.

Less than 24 hours later it seems that Yo has hacked by a Georgia Tech student, together with two of his room mates. The hack allows for them to access any Yo user’s phone number, spoof Yo messages from any user, spam users with multiple messages, and even send push notifications featuring any text they want. Another hack appears to let hackers Rickroll users with the infamous Rick Astley song.

While some reports are claiming that Apple is still finalizing the specifications for its first generation iWatch ahead of the supposed October launch, another set of reports — supposedly backed up by insider sources — put forward another theory.

And it makes a lot of sense.

I’m a massive fan of SNK’s King of Fighters franchise, to the point that I own a 4 CD compilation of the series’ soundtracks over the course of its lifetime. Which is why I’m incredibly happy to hear that SNK Playmore is working on a rhythm game based on the King of Fighters fighting game franchise “packed with legendary SNK tracks!”

We’ve written a lot about how there’s no shortage of great games in the App Store, and just to gobble up even more of your time this summer, Electronic Arts has just staged a massive sale on some of its most popular titles — discounting them by as much as 90 percent in some cases.

Some of the company’s hottest games are included, so this is a great opportunity if you’re looking to pick up some worthwhile bargains.

Here’s the complete list of titles on sale for just $0.99!

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: