Apple’s acquisition of Beats is official, and it’s clear that the move is more about the talent Apple is getting than anything else.

After the buyout was announced this afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained the reasoning behind the company’s decision. “What Beats brings to Apple are guys with very rare skills,” he said in an interview with Re/code. “People like this aren’t born every day. They’re very rare. They really get music deeply. So we get infusion in Apple of some great talent.”

So it’s obvious that Apple thinks very highly of the people at Beats. But who exactly are they getting as part of the deal?

Two weeks after the news of the deal was first reported, Apple has officially announced its buyout of Beats Electronics for $3 billion.

Apple will keep the Beats headphone and Beats Music brands separate as part of the deal. As previously reported, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will join Apple full time.

“Music is such an important part of all of our lives and holds a special place within our hearts at Apple,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “That’s why we have kept investing in music and are bringing together these extraordinary teams so we can continue to create the most innovative music products and services in the world.”

An analyst has traveled to Apple’s supply chain in Taiwan, and he claims to have learned about the rumored iWatch.

While the design of Apple’s upcoming wearable has been a point of contention so far, Brian Blair of Rosenblatt Securities claims that it will feature a round face. He also backs up previous reports that the device will go into production this summer. Based on the increasing frequency of such claims, we may see an actual iWatch materialize by the end of this year.

And that’s not all Blair has learned from supply chain sources.

There is a ton of competition in the external battery pack space. You can get a ruggedized brick for your Xtreme adventures, a cute little pocket-sized charger for a quick hit of juice in the car or on the go, and even an iPhone-wrapping battery pack that gives you even more storage space than you might need.

I live a portable, electronic-powered life, carrying iPhones, iPads, e-Readers, and portable gaming devices with me at all times. Most of these things are power-hungry, forcing me to keep my eye open for wall plugs, or to carry external power packs that can handle the energy load.

So what does a battery pack need to do to set itself apart from the crowd, claiming the scarce space in my backpack or messenger bag? It has to be quick to charge, easy to use, small, light and pretty to look at, for starters. And it really should have a lot of spare power to keep all my devices rolling.

Your Ouya just got a little creepier thanks to the developer of creepy platforming game, Whispering Willows. The trailer (below) shows protagonist Elena as she searches for her missing father through innovative environmental puzzles and supernatural obstacles.

“[Elena] must harness the powers of her heritage,” writes developer David Logan on the Kickstarter page, “utilizing astral projection and other ethereal abilities to find her father before he, too becomes lost to the hopeless morass of the Willows estate.”

If that (and the trailer below) doesn’t have you dusting off your tiny Android-powered gaming cube, we don’t know what will.

One of the best perks about having an iPhone is that it naturally does a pretty good job at running well. Although, after time many users have found that their iPhone runs slower and doesn’t perform as well as it used to. In today’s how-to find out how to help your iPhone run smoother in just five quick tips.

Take a look at the video to see what to do.

FaceFilter3 Pro is a versatile photo retouching and beautifying toolkit makes it easy to apply natural skin smoothing and blemish removal tools, or—if you’re feeling creative—go all out with the comprehensive multi-layer makeup system to really make your features pop.

As photo-editing software goes, the editing environment is very easy to use – and along with the included makeup templates – makes applying effects as easy as clicking a button. And Cult of Mac Deals has FaceFilter3 Pro available for only $49 during this limited time offer.

The Opinel No8 is hardly a new gadget, but when something is this good, why change it? I’ve been using the wood-handled French pocket knives for around 12 years since I was given a carbon steel No8 as a gift. That knife is still in daily use, and has since been joined by several others, including one made for children (more on that in a bit). I even have a tiny No3 that I use for sharpening pencils.

Why am I writing about a 120-year-old knife on the Cult of Mac? Because age doesn’t matter when something is this well-designed. Also, I figure if you’re a fan of Apple gear you will appreciate good design wherever you find it.

Coming up with a slogan can be tricky business. Although Apple has a history of thinking different about its catchphrases, when the Cupertino company unfurled the banners for WWDC 2014 this week, we were unimpressed.

This year’s slogan — “Write the Code. Change the world.” — sounds like it came straight from Mike Judge’s hit comedy show Silicon Valley. In the HBO series, every half-baked startup either wants to “revolutionize” or “make the world a better place” through things like “software-defined data centers” or “scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed data bases with ACID transactions.”  Code Flappy Bird, save the world!

Here are some of Apple’s WWDC hits and misses from over the years.

Think we’re off the mark? Let us know in the comments!

Coding marathons, packed parties and more fanboys than should be legally permissible in one building await developers when Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off in San Francisco next week, and while the conference is serious business for most devs, who says you can’t have a little bit of fun too?

WWDC rips into high gear with a keynote on June 2nd followed by days of coding sessions, high-profile speakers, hands-on labs and tons of get togethers for developers of all sizes and backgrounds.

Sneaking in time to tour San Francisco is nearly impossible thanks to the stuffed scheduled at WWDC and nearby AltConf, but whether you’re coming to WWDC as a first timer or a seasoned vet, here are nine things every Apple fan must do at least once while visiting the Bay Area.

We showed you ours. Now it’s your turn. Here are the items big and small that Cult of Mac readers most want to see designed and produced by the mothership. We’ve got Apple solar pens, food packaging and yes, puppies — because even pets could use the Sir Jony treatment.

Good news if you’re a student! Apple has introduced reduced education pricing for both the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini — with prices for the two tablets starting from $469 and $379.

This represents a $30 discount for the iPad Air and a $20 for the iPad mini, and also marks the first time that Apple has included the iPad in its special discount program. Last year the company cut the educational price of the non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro to $999, while Apple additionally offers discounts on its entire Mac line in its education store.

Mobile developer Vivid Games has dropped a new trailer for its forthcoming open world actioner Godfire: Rise of Prometheus and — wow!

If I wasn’t excited about getting my Greek mythological badass on prior to watching these tantalizing glimpses of what’s to come, then I certainly am now. In short: the game looks incredible, with epic boss battles, gorgeous graphics, and all the blood and guts you could hope for.

With the success of apps like comiXology showing just how much mileage there is in digital comics, it’s no wonder creators are keen to get on board!

Today comic book legend Alan Moore (the eccentric brains behind Watchmen, V For Vendetta and other classics) has announced that he is partnering with a team of creators and funding bodies to produce a digital comics app called Electricomics — which will launch with four original comic titles and, somewhat surprisingly, an open-access platform for comics creators to develop digital comics of their own.

Google has taken its self-driving car concept a step further by integrating the technology onto its own prototype vehicle powered by electricity. The tiny two-seater is made using off-the-shelf car parts, and it does not require a steering wheel or pedals.

Apple devices are already wiping the floor with the competition in Japan — but things look to be getting even better on the iOS front, thanks to news that the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display are set to launch on the DoCoMo network in two week’s time.

With more than 63 million mobile subscribers, NTT DoCoMo is the largest mobile service provider in Japan.

“With the addition of iPad alongside iPhone, we now offer the complete lineup of Japan’s most popular mobile devices on the nation’s most reliable LTE network,” says NTT DoCoMo CEO Kaoru Kato.

Apple says that iCloud was not hacked, following on from the news that a number of iOS and Mac users in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. report have had their devices remotely locked in exchange for ransom.

It’s been speculated that the hacking in question was done using login credentials gained from users as a result of recent data breaches and then used as Apple ID logins to lock users out via iCloud. While this may be the case, Apple says that it is not the result of the iCloud being compromised in any way.

So far, we at Cult of Mac have not been big fans of Amazon’s acquisition of ComiXology. Although we’ve previously praised them as the iTunes of comic books, the first thing the e-shopping giant did upon purchasing Comixology was stop allowing you to purchase comics directly within the app on iOS, presumably to get around paying Apple its 30% cut.

It was an anti-consumer move that made the app infinitely less appealing for digital comic readers, but Amazon has now announced something that might take some of the sting out: they’re releasing a free comic a day for the next three weeks. That means 19 free comics, which should be enough to tempt anyone who lovers comics to at least download the app.

Ever since the iPhone 4s was released, it hasn’t been hard to predict when Apple will release the next iPhone. In the second week of September on a Tuesday, Apple holds its annual iPhone event; ten days later, the newest iPhone is released in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and a handful of other countries.

Following this logic, it’s pretty easy to guess that the iPhone 6 will be released on September 19th this year, after being announced on September 9th. And, in fact, that’s just what a German telecom is now predicting.

Universal translators are a common trope in science fiction. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, they come in the form of the babelfish, a tiny crustacean you jam in your ear. In Farscape, they are bacteria injected into your body. In Star Trek, they take a less squishy form as a wand or tiny computer pinned to your lapel.

In all incarnations, though, a universal communicator is seen as alien and futuristic. But Microsoft wants to change all that. The Washington-based company has just revealed a new real-time speech translation tool that is set to be built right into Skype, and which can translate any foreign language into English in the blink of an eye.

After Beats co-founder Dr. Dre made an exuberant video post on Vine boasting about becoming the first rap billionaire, many worried that Apple’s deal with the audio and streaming music service — once rumored to be worth as much as $3.2 billion — was scuttled. But a new report suggests it’s still on track for being announced this week, although Dre’s boastfulness may have cost him two hundred million dollars.

Ubisoft’s highly-anticipated console and PC game, Watch Dogs, came out today. One of the cooler features of the release, though, at least from a mobile gaming standpoint, is an app for both iOS and Android that purports to be more than just a tie-in game, letting mobile players “hack into” the console version of the game to play a bit of cat-and-mouse via the mobile app.

As I grabbed the free Watch_Dogs Companion: ctOS Mobile app for my iPhone today (it’s also on the Google Play store), I was excited to drop into the futuristic setting and actually impact someone’s game.

Unfortunately, the excitement didn’t last long. When I tried to connect via the game’s Quick Match option, which connects mobile players to random console players for some head-to-head action, the app hung on the connection screen.

For those with access to its mobile app, Uber is quickly becoming the preferred method of transportation over traditional taxis.

It’s a lot easier to summon a ride with a tap on your iPhone screen than hailing down a cab on the side of the street. For drivers, Uber is proving to be not only easier, but incredibly lucrative.

Our iPhone’s have the ability to do so many things but the core of its purpose is to help us communicate through talk and even text. While it can be easy to simply type a message and send it off, the messaging app in iOS 7 is capable of doing so much more. In today’s how-to find out how you can take full control of the iOS messaging app and take your messaging to the next level.

Take a look at the video to see what to do.

Apple wants to keep a tight grip on its supply chain, but it’s caught in a bidding war over a key component supplier for the iPhone.

Renesas Electronics has been in talks with Apple about Cupertino taking over a unit of the Japanese company that makes all the iPhone’s display chips. Apple has been interested in the purchase, but it’s now set to lose to a higher bid from Synaptics, a screenmaker that already works with Apple and its competitors.