Amazon Instant Video — the official iOS app of the e-commerce giant’s Prime video streaming service — has just added a great new update.

The app will now attempt to lure you in by letting users stream the first episode of selected TV shows for free, with added ad breaks before and during playback.

In addition to this, the app features new video playback controls, including one-touch play/pause and 10-second skip forward/backward buttons, alongside a handy “Next Episode” button to make your binge watching sessions even easier and more tempting. It also promises faster playback start time after hitting play.

Got your own pick?

Agree or disagree with us on any of our picks? If there’s a concept, product, or feature you’d like to see Apple take another crack at, let us know in the comments below.

In famous ’70s sitcom Happy Days, Henry Winkler’s unflappably cool greaser, Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli, has a superpower, described on Wikipedia as “an almost magical ability to manipulate technology with just a nudge, bump or a snap of his fingers for things such as starting a car, turning on lights, coaxing free sodas from a vending machine, or changing the song selection on a jukebox.”

It turns out that if you’re having camera issues with your iPhone 5, fixing it might be as simple as channeling the Fonz: Just try thwacking it.

Graphic designer Susan Kare is iconic — literally. The mastermind behind the friendly 32 x 32 and 16 x 16 icons used in the original Mac operating system, Kare’s work has reached more people than almost any other graphic designer on Earth.

Yet the way she stumbled into designing the icons for the Mac operating system was pretty much a lark, and in a recent presentation at the EG conference in California, Kare spoke a little bit about how she stumbled into the job.

It’s a fascinating talk, not just for the details she shares about early Mac operating system development, but also because Kare finally reveals why Apple switched from the Apple symbol to the Command key.

I’m a sucker for old school platformers in the vein of Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, and upcoming iOS game Escape from the Pyramid certainly fulfills those criteria.

Set across 45 levels — representing three worlds in all — the game borrows from ancient Egyptian art to create something that definitely looks like it could stand out in a year already full of interesting-looking iOS titles.

Apple sure is looking friendlier these days.

This year’s Worldwide Developers Conference was geekier, more welcoming and less locked-down than any in recent history. Apple also bid farewell to Katie Cotton — the much-feared queen of PR, whose frosty relations with journalists made her only slightly less terrifying than an angry Steve Jobs — with a call for a “friendlier, more approachable” public relations face to warm up the company’s relationship with the press.

“For the past few years it’s felt like Apple’s only goal was to put us in our place,” Panic’s Cabel Sasser recently tweeted. “Now it feels like they might want to be friends.”

These recent moves represent a major change in the way Apple does business, even as the company sits atop a $150 billion war chest amassed thanks to innovative products, ruthless leadership and heavy-handed policies that fostered a culture of secrecy and utter domination. But in a world where it’s drummed into our heads that nice guys finish last, does Apple’s approach risk killing the company with kindness?

CEO Tim Cook certainly doesn’t seem to think so.

A new exhibit showcasing hundreds of original Apple patents has opened in Denver.

Entitled “Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology that Changed the World,” the display offers a rare opportunity to look over some of the most influential and important patents in recent tech history — ranging from the original Macintosh through the iPhone.

Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet says that the exhibit, “provides a unique glimpse into one of our country’s most iconic innovators, highlighting Jobs’ wide-ranging portfolio and lasting influence on modern technology.”

Foxconn and Pegatron — the two leading manufacturers set to produce the iPhone 6 — have been on a massive hiring spree as of late.

According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, Foxconn will recruit in excess of 100,000 new workers in mainland China to help assemble Apple’s much-anticipated next generation iPhone. It had previously been reported that the company was opening up new factory space to carry out the work.

Rival Taiwanese assembler Pegatron will also be upping the workforce in one of its factories by 30 percent in order to meet the demand the influx of new work will place on it.

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.