The week is coming to a close, and now’s a chance for Cult of Mac Deals to highlight some of the best deals we’ve had on the go this week.

Scrivener 2 is a complete writing studio used by New York Times best-selling authors…and for good reason. It’s a word processor and project management tool that stays with you from your first, unformed idea all the way through to the final draft. You can outline your ideas, take notes, and view research, all while you’re writing – and all in one place. And Cult of Mac Deals has Scrivener 2 priced at 55% off – just $20 – but not for much longer!

Do you like to wander the streets, camera in hand, ready to catch an amazing shot? Have you ever missed that shot thanks to the time taken to fumble your iPhone from your pocket and fire up the camera? Even if the answer to these questions is “No,” you should probably take a look at Shoulderpod’s S1 anyway – it’s not only a great camera grip, but also the best value you’ll get spending $30 on an iPhone accessory.

Traditionally there are three choices when dealing with iPhone cases:

1. Bulky and effective
2. Razor thin and unreliable
3. Caseless (and vulnerable as a result)

This is where The Plasma Case Combo comes in.

Welcome to the final part of our series about note-taking for writers (or anyone else). Today we’re going to look at getting clippings and bookmarks into Evernote, to be stored and accessible alongside your scanned, paper-based notes (Part 1) and your text notes grabbed on your iPhone or Mac (Part 2).

We’ll use a few apps and services to get this done – EverClip, Mr Reader, IFTTT and Pinboard are the main ones.

As ever, you could just do much of this using Evernote and its web clipper, but this only works in Safari and Chrome on the desktop. In 2014! Clearly that’s no good. Let’s see how we can do it better.

With so many emails to send in a day, having an application that meets all your requirements is critical. Though Apple’s native email client might not always have been the fastest means of delivering messages, iOS 8 aims to fix that. In today’s hands-on video, we’ll give you a look at the new and improved Mail application, which comes equipped with quick tricks to speed up common activities.

For instance, you can swipe across emails in the enhanced Mail app to quickly access functions or go back and forth between your inbox and drafts. See how it all works in the video above.

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

We’ve heard plenty of reports about Apple’s 5.5-inch “phablet” iPhone 6, but most of the leaked pictures so far have claimed to depict its smaller sibling, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, instead.

That’s changed with some new model photos showing mockups of both sizes of the forthcoming iPhone 6, including both the back and front of the two next generation iPhone models, sitting side by side.

Back in 2008, basketball star LeBron James received a small stake in Beats Electronics in exchange for promoting the company’s headphones. Now that Apple has bought Beats, guess how much James is set to make? You really don’t want to know, but watch our news wrap anyway. The rest of it, including updates on split-screen iPad multitasking and the future of the iPhone 5c. will cheer you up.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest how-tos, tips and other videos.

Apple is definitely making a big screen iPhone that will launch this fall, the only question is how much extra is it going to cost you?

Fanboys are notoriously willing to pay an extra Apple Tax for Macs, but some analysts are worried a bigger iPhone with bigger price tag will chase some away. Those fears will probably prove to be unrealized though according to a survey by Raymond James that claims most of Apple’s potential iPhablet customers are totally cool shelling out $100 more.

Google Glass “explorers” have not integrated well into society.

There have been bar fights, street fights and subway nightmares thanks to the awkward face computers unleashed by Google, but Sarah Slocum and a group of Glassholes are convinced they’ve been unfairly targeted in hate crimes that had nothing to do with being a rude techies.

The Daily Show sent Jason Jones to investigate the group’s claims, who in turned tried to convert Jones with the joys of browsing the internet on your face. Jones of course had to try to the tech for himself, but at $1500 a pop, opted for a more homemade solution.

Watch the hilarious segment below:

Microsoft’s efforts to make Cortana as pervasive as possible could see the intelligent digital assistant brought to Android and iOS. A member of the software giant’s Windows Phone team has confirmed that Microsoft is “actively talking” about bringing Cortana to rival platforms.

Scoring a sweet deal on an iPhone directly from Apple is nearly impossible. Luck for us, a bunch of Cupertino’s retail partners aren’t afraid to cut some dinero off its price-tag to try to get you in the store. But which store is best for Apple deals?

To locate the top places to get deals on Apple products, DealNews tracked several years worth of deals for the iPhone, iPad, and 11-inch MacBook Air and discovered that certain retailers offer consistently better deals on one specific product. Many of the big name retailers are great for iPhones deals, but you might be the surprised where to look for the best iPad and MacBook Air bargains.

Here are the best places to score a deal for each Apple product:

Cult of Mac Deals has partnered with one of the world’s best WordPress theme developers to bring you the first-ever Name Your Own Price WordPress Theme Bundle!

You pay what you want for Bloggap, Legalized, and ThemeTick and if you pay more than the average price, you’ll receive all 15 themes in the bundle. That means you’ll get 15 WordPress themes valued at $825 at a price that you set with The Name your Own Price WordPress Theme Bundle!

Hotel booking giant Priceline.com will acquire OpenTable, the online reservation service for restaurants that provides Siri’s table-booking functionality.

Priceline is set to pay a massive $2.6 billion as part of the all-cash deal, which breaks down as $103 per share — or 46 percent above the publicly traded OpenTable’s closing price Thursday.

OMG y’all, it’s CultCast time. This week we bring to thee some more cool iOS 8 features you didn’t hear about at WWDC, plus we’ll tell you all about the new time-lapse video feature we’ve been playing with. Then, with rumors swirling that fall will bring us an iWatch, we have to wonder what features and price point would make us want one adorning our wrists. All that plus Apple’s marketing arm gets major renovations, and in honor of this week’s E3, we say why Nintendo absolutely needs to bring Mario to iOS to survive!

Cheerfully guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.

Our thanks to Slingbox for supporting this episode! Slingbox, the best way to watch your TV anywhere, and brings your cable set-top box, satellite receiver or DVR, right to your favorite mobile device, wherever you are in the world. With no monthly fees. Check it out at Slingbox.com/cult, and get $50 off plus free shipping on a new Slingbox.

You know those cheapo gadgets you pick up at the dime store or from the racks by supermarket checkouts? That’s the kind of throwaway gadget you think you’ve got when you pick up the Clamplight MINI from Blackfire. Which is a shame, because it’s actually pretty good.

What’s your take on iOS 8, Swift and OS X Yosemite?

Got your own favorite features in Apple’s latest releases? Let us know in the comments below.

Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

If you use Twitter a lot on your iPhone, you’ve probably heard of the Tweetbot app, a popular iOS Twitter client that was recently redesigned from the ground up for iOS 7.

Now in its third incarnation, Tweetbot 3 has just received a big update, adding a fistful of handy new features — including support for posting and viewing multiple images (although Tweetbot’s creators point out that these won’t show up on streaming timelines until Twitter adds support).

The app update also means that image detail views show the corresponding tweet when relevant, while Instagram videos are marked with a new “play” icon to make the user interface clearer.

Elizabeth O’Connell is waging war on Apple from an iPhone 5C with a cracked screen.

O’Connell, campaigns director for Green America, is part of an 80-strong group of environmental and human rights groups that recently fired off a 17-page letter to Apple’s vice president of environmental affairs Lisa Jackson. At the core of the question are known carcinogens, benzene and n-hexane, the chemicals that make your iPhone screen so shiny.

As former head of the Environmental Protection Agency Jackson, protest organizers say, should know better. The effort is part of Green America’s “Bad Apple” campaign, which features a mock app. At this writing, over 2,000 people have signed up for the “app,” which sends an email to Apple asking to cut the noxious chemicals. Organizers say another 20,000 people have signed a traditional online petition.

Apple has launched an exchange program in 36 countries for certain models of its 5W European USB power adapter, saying that there is a risk that they might overheat and pose a safety risk.

Identified as Model A1300, the affected adapters originally came packaged with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4s models which shipped between October 2009 and September 2012. Apple is letting owners of these chargers replace them with new adapters in participating Apple Authorized Service Providers. Replacements will be made so long as the corresponding iPhone serial number is verified.

Pikichat could be the next Snapchat. The idea behind the new photo app is ingeniously straightforward: Simply take a picture and then share it among a group of family members or friends. Like Snapchat, the picture will only stay up for a limited amount of time, but unlike Snapchat it will remain there until it is replaced by a new image.

Every time a person sends a new photo, it replaces the existing one. Group conversations take the form of the most recent photo added, with everyone possessing the ability to draw on the photo or add comments.

Apple may have bought Beats, but that’s apparently not enough to stop Beats cutting support for its Beats Music Android app, which just received a notable update.

The update adds a new landscape mode, as well as the ability to save offline downloads to an external SD card, and transfer offline downloads between an SD card and internal device storage.

You can now share your crazy World Cup goal celebrations with your friends via Facebook Messenger for iPhone. A new update rolling out today introduces the ability to record and send 15-second video clips without ever having to leave the app.

SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts made her first official public appearance as an Apple executive at the Friday opening of Apple’s tony new store in Tokyo, Japan.

Ahrendts posed for photos with fans who had turned up to see the opening of the upscale Omotesando Apple Store. Other Apple execs at the event included Retail Real Estate and Development Vice President Bob Bridger, Worldwide Apple Retail International sales VP Steve Cano and Online Stores VPs Jennifer Bailey and Bob Kupbens.