An anonymous hacker who has exploited an iCloud security flaw that lets anyone unlock a lost or stolen iPhone says Apple contacted him about the matter today, but he deleted the email.

“They have asked me to contact [them] as quickly as possible, but why now?” the hacker, who goes by AquaXetine, said in an email to Cult of Mac. “I’ve already warned Apple couple months ago.” Cult of Mac confirmed that the email did in fact come from Apple.

The hack, which is the first of its kind, bypasses the iCloud security system for locked iOS devices called Activation Lock. By using the free DoulCi site, which appeared to be offline most of the day but is now back up, a locked iOS device can be tricked into thinking it’s talking to Apple’s iCloud servers when connected to a computer.

Last month, sales of the Nest Protect smoke alarm were suddenly halted after the Google-owned company discovered a malfunction with one of the product’s key features. By design, a simple wave of the hand under the device was able to manually turn off an accidental alarm.

Nest discovered that the feature could be triggered by accident, which could result in some seriously dangerous scenarios. Now Nest is recalling all 444,000 of its smart smoke alarms with plans to have the device back on the market in a few weeks.

Your Facebook app is about get a lot smarter at knowing what you’re listening to and watching on TV.

In an upcoming update in the App Store, Facebook will add the ability to automatically tag music and TV shows within a status update. The Shazam-like feature will have to be manually enabled by the user, and links to songs and shows will be attached to statuses in the News Feed. Facebook hopes the feature encourages people to share more, while it’s sure to cause some users to worry about sharing too much.

It’s time to cancel your cable subscription. The best TV shows, movies, and documentaries have landed on Amazon Prime thanks to a deal with HBO that unleashes the networks’ exceptional collection of content to the Internet for the first time ever.

Starting today Amazon Prime users can catch up on entire seasons of HBO’s top shows by streaming them to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad at absolutely no extra cost. It’s an unprecedented treasure trove of greatness that required an HBO GO subscription to access until today when it was finally set free for the first time ever.

HBO has been reluctant to embrace a paid-streaming model that would cut its ties to lucrative cable subscriptions, but the move is a sign that a top-down approach could be on the way as HBO adds its GO app to Amazon Fire TV and other services.

The entire HBO lineup isn’t available quite yet, but the company says shows like Veep and The Newsroom will be added once they pass their third seasons, making them available for the low-cost of a $79 annual Amazon Prime subscription.

Here are five shows you should start binging on today.

The more I use my MacBook Pro for work and play, the more I need to plug stuff into it. It’s got only two USB 3 ports along with its two Thunderbolt ports and HDMI out. Other docks, like the Kanex dock we reviewed a while back, use up one of the two USB ports, and they don’t provide video out capabilities.

With Apple’s Thunderbolt protocol, though, you can get stuff like video and audio out that requires a lot of bandwidth. The Elgato Thunderbolt Dock is just what you need if you aren’t using either of your MacBook Pro’s Thunderbolt ports, as it gives you three more USB 3 ports, an HDMI out to connect your favorite high-def monitor, a microphone and headphone port, and a gigabit Ethernet port as well.

It’s kind of everything you need in one sleek package.

In this quick video (below) announcing the new Star Wars: Force for Change program, JJ Abrams provides the first look at a Star Wars alien who walks from behind left and off stage right while the famous director talks about the initiative.

Abrams should need no introduction here, but in case you missed it: he’s directing the next Star Wars Movie. As a huge Star Wars fan himself, he’s honored to be a part of the new set of films, saying it feels a bit surreal to be there on the set in Abu Dabi.

You can enter to win a trip for two to London to actually be in the new movie, airfare and hotel included, with a donation to the program, which benefits UNICEF, one of the world’s most visible charities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs to hire more hackers — and that means changing the rules about how much pot you can smoke on the job.

“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cybercriminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” FBI Director James B. Comey told the Wall Street Journal.

Cult of Mac Deals has arranged another “name your own price” bundle, and this one’s another winner for both budding professional designers.

We’ve partnered with 6 of the world’s finest designers to bring you The Name Your Own Price Designer Bundle 3.0. With this bundle, you pay what you want for the R-Graphics and Victoricon Assets and if you pay more than the average price, you’ll receive all 6!

Apple is having some fun with the mystery surrounding its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, updating the WWDC app to include whimsical session titles designed to give devs a chuckle even as they’re guessing what’s next.

Just about the only solid piece of information from the app update is that Tim Cook and company will kick off the annual event with a special keynote June 2 at 10 a.m. Pacific in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Apple is expected to reveal details of iOS 8 and the next version of OS X during the address.

You need to change your eBay password. Now.

Later today the online auction giant will be emailing all customers to inform them that it has discovered a major security breach that took place several weeks ago. A database that included unencrypted passwords and personal information was compromised, but eBay promises your financial data is safe.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Brendan Nee is a walking contradiction. He’s car guru who doesn’t own one, a 21st-century geek with an 18th-century mustache who has come up with a novel bit of nagware that could help Americans get off their spreading behinds.

An engineer working on “smart car assistant” Automatic, he spends many of his weekends at hackathons and has a coder’s physique to show for it. In January, he won the Clinton Foundation Code4Health Codeathon by developing a working prototype of an app called Walkoff in just a weekend. A few months later, Nee and team rolled out a more polished version that mashes up the data Automatic pulls from cars with info gathered by a Jawbone Up fitness tracker, showing a user how much time they’re spending behind the wheel versus walking.

“Clearly, without an actual car, I’m not the ideal tester,” admits Nee. The closest he comes to owning a set of wheels is a retired public bus dubbed the PlayaPillar that he only rolls out for Burning Man.

It’s a slippery slope when it comes to fan trailers (seriously, type the word “trailer” next to any possible future sequel on YouTube and see how many hits come up!) but this is pretty awesome.

If you were a fan of the recent Godzilla reboot, along with last summer’s superb Pacific Rim — which featured giant mechs battling monsters from below — then you’ll likely love Paczilla: a fun mash-up by YouTube user MOVIECLIPS Trailers. The well-edited trailer gives an idea of what it would look like if Gipsy Danger and the other Jaegers came to the rescue when the monsters of the Godzilla universe began stomping on cities.

Mac sales have been growing impressively for the past few years, but according to a new press release they’ve run into a Lenovo-shaped obstacle in their climb.

That’s according to new figures released by (surprise, surprise) Lenovo, which claims that it has overtaken Apple in personal computer sales in the U.S. market for the first time ever. If these figures are accurate, it means that Lenovo has kicked Apple aside to take third place in the U.S., taking its position behind PC giants Dell and HP.

Everybody packs differently for the apocalypse.

Photographer Allison Stewart reveals the fears and foresight of survivalists in her photographs of bug-out bags, the emergency preparedness kits put together by individuals ready to flee an impending disaster. In her photo series Bug Out Bags, the contents of the grab-and-go bags get splayed out against a stark white background, showing the wide variety of items deemed necessary by the preppers.

Stewart, raised on the Gulf Coast under the annual threat of hurricanes, comes by her fascination with the subject naturally.

“When I lived in New Orleans, I was stuck in my house for four days without electricity or fresh water,” Stewart told Cult of Mac in an e-mail. “The water in my street was waist-deep and lapping at my front door. I was very thankful for my water supply, my transistor radio, and of course the wine supply.”

No two packs in her Bug Out Bags photo series are alike, a fact Stewart attributes to the individual nature of fear. One is loaded with forestry tools; another includes a gas mask; a third is stocked with canned food. While basements from Tornado Alley to the Ring of Fire hold stockpiles of emergency supplies, she found bug-out bags truly explore the unique psyches of their owners.

Notifyr is a great new iPhone app which lets you route iOS notifications over to your Mac.

Optimized for Bluetooth low energy (LE)-compatible iPhones and Macs, it allows you to receive notifications regarding phone calls, text messages, and iOS apps (such as WhatsApp messages, or Instagram follows) in the right-hand corner of your Mac’s display.

Given the extra security you find at airports these days, we’re grateful for anything that makes the experience of checking in and boarding your flight that bit quicker and easier.

With that in mind, Southwest Airlines has just posted an update for its official iOS app, adding several notable improvements, including faster access to tools like the Checkin and Mobile Boarding Pass options, right from your home screen. There’s also info about your upcoming trip card on your homepage, which means that you can view information related to Flight Status, Boarding Position, and Gate Information more easily than ever.

Better yet, the app update coincides with support for mobile boarding passes being added at 28 airports around the United States — rather than just Austin, where the technology was previously trialed.

Controversial cannabis-growing game Weed Firm has been booted out of the App Store.

Essentially Farmville for stoners, the app put you in the role of a marijuana dealer, as you try to grow your business (literally)  and stay one step ahead of “thugs and cops.” Somehow making it past Apple’s usually stringent guidelines for adult content, the app had made it to the top of the App Store’s Top Free iPhone games prior to its expulsion.

Google has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable brand, according to a new survey.

As per Millward Brown’s BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, Apple’s brand value fell by 20% in the past year to just under $148 billion, while Google’s value increased by 40% to $159 billion.

“Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,” says Benoit Tranzer, regional managing director of Millward Brown Europe. “All these activities send a very strong signal to consumers about the essence of Google.”

Dan Lyons lambasted Steve Jobs and his fellow Silicon Valley cronies for years under the Fake Steve Jobs blog, but now after stints at Fortune, Newsweek and Hubspot, the tech writer will mock a new generation of startup wannabes and tech wackos as a writer for HBO’s hit comedy Silicon Valley.

Itching to take on the future techno-war depicted in the hyper-realistic Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise? Well, if you’ve finished off the original Modern Warfare game on your Mac, ported in 2011 by Aspyr, it’s time to lock and load your weapon of choice for the next two installments in the series, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3.

These huge sequels are available now for the Mac platform, on Steam or porting publisher Aspyr’s own GameAgent distribution service. The new Mac versions of the game have all the downloadable content (DLC) packs from each game ready for your first-person shooter marathon.

There have been a lot of remixes of the iconic iPhone ringtone over the years, and this one may be the best. The guitar solo at the end is an unexpected twist.

The remixer goes by the name MetroGnome, and his YouTube account features countless remixes of popular songs. He’s got some original stuff on iTunes, and it’s pretty standard electronic music.

You can download the above track yourself and turn it your own ringtone if you want to be that kinda guy at the party. It’s not free, but I recommend Ringer in the Mac App Store.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love affair with his iPad hasn’t been as well documented as some of his other lusts but Conan the Governor loves his Apple tablet so damn much he takes it everywhere, which makes it the perfect tool for capturing the Austrian Oak’s greatest love – his deteriorating guns.

Here’s Arnold’s iPad selfie from another angle:

There’s a scene in recent movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier in which Steve Rogers checks a list of things he’s missed since he took the cold plunge into the ice after his exploits in World War II.

In the U.S. version of the movie, the list looks like this:

Verizon’s upcoming Voice over LTE standard, or VoLTE (terrible acronym), will finally fix the biggest problem so many people have had with Verizon for years.

VoLTE will bring enhanced call audio calling over LTE, which also means that you’ll finally be able to talk and surf the web simultaneously.

Today Apple made some upgrades to its web-based version of the iWork suite that are more suited for those working in large teams. The number of people that can collaborate on a single document has been doubled to 100, and the maximum storage size for files and docs has also been increased.