iOS 7.1 includes a host of obvious and subtle improvements, including a key addition that will make iBeacons smarter.

Apple has been trying to get the approval it needs to build its new flagship store in San Francisco for a long time. The company submitted its proposal to the city in March of last year, and today it has been given the final seal of approval.

The new store will be located on the corner of Stockton and Post in Union Square, San Francisco’s luxury shopping district.

The consensus within the rumor mill seems to be that Apple will release not one, but two larger iPhones later this year. According to a new report from Japanese site Macotakara, the new designs will borrow heavily from the existing iPhone 5c and iPod nano.

While there may be plenty of games in the app store with complicated stories and features, sometimes the simplest of games can be the best. The new app Red Bit Escape is an application that has made it to the top of the charts with its addictive yet simple gameplay. Last as long as you can to get a high score, that’s all. Do you think you can get a high score?

Take a look at Red Bit Escape and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application Red Bit Escape brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting your turn to play Hearthstone, the new free-to-play digital card game from World of Warcraft developer Blizzard, now’s your chance. The fast-paced strategy game plays like a simplified yet strategically challenging Magic: The Gathering, and it’s available for your Mac immediately.

The game is free to download from the Hearthstone website, and will install easily and quickly to your Mac.

Once downloaded, you’ll hop in-game for a quick couple of tutorials, and then you can either play AI opponents to hone your skills and learn the various hero classes, or you can jump right in to playing other human beings via Blizzard’s Battle.net game matching service, one of the most robust around.

The current Office for Mac hasn’t received a truly significant update since it came out in 2011. Now Microsoft is planning to finally release a new version of the software this year.

Ever wanted to hear Siri declaim “Luke, I am your father” in 32 different languages?

In a blog post by the developers behind the daily Spanish word app Vocab Ninja, you can click on all of Siri’s different voices — overwhelmingly female-gendered, interestingly enough — in both standard and enhanced audio resolutions.

The creator of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen, has practically gone off the grid since he suddenly pulled his viral hit from the App Store last month. The 28-year-old Vietnamese developer said his game had become “too addictive,” and Flappy Bird was no more.

At the height of Flappy Bird’s popularity, the game was making Nguyen $50,000 per day in ads. Now about a third of all games submitted to the App Store are Flappy Bird knockoffs.

In his first interview since pulling Flappy Bird, Nguyen told Rolling Stone that he is considering bringing it back. The interview also touches on why Nguyen made Flappy Bird to begin with, what it was like for him when the game got successful, and what his plans are for the future. It’s a great read.

Source: Rolling Stone

I’m a sucker for MMOs, and a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise. If you like both, you might want to know that a fantastic combination of these two great things is ready to play on your Macintosh.

Now you can get your Federation thrills on in Cryptic Studios’ Star Trek Online MMO. First launched for PC only in 2010, the game is now available as a free-to-play download on your Mac, letting the rest of us play this thrilling extension to the Roddenberry-created universe that first graced television sets back in the 1960s.

“Star Trek fans have been asking for Star Trek Online on Mac since we launched in 2010. Thanks to the tremendous success we’ve had with the game, we’re excited to be expanding the galaxy again.” said Cryptic Studios’ Stephen D’Angelo. “We know there’s a large gaming community that thrives on Mac and we’re thrilled to finally be able to let them experience Star Trek Online. It simply looks amazing on Mac widescreens.”

Ever wonder what’s going on in the skies above you at any given time? If you’re interested in airline flights in the air over your head, you can just ask Siri.

The personal digital assistant will check WolframAlpha for you and drop you a great little chart of the planes in the air overhead.

Wireless charging is a beautiful concept that fails to live up to its promise in reality. That’s not to say it’s unusable – far from it. I’d put wireless charging pads in the same place as Wi-Fi was some years back – useful when it works, but frustrating to get working properly.

The little iQi panel goes some way to fixing up the main problem of wireless charging on the iPhone. Because it’s not built in, you usually need a bulky case to pair with the charger itself. The iQi is so tiny it can be used with any case.

Day One has been one of the most popular journaling apps in the App Store for years, and it has always stuck to its guns: privately storing your thoughts and memories. But what about when you want to share something with your friends?

Today Day One is introducing Publish, a way to do exactly that.

Apple’s five day music festival is set to start today at SXSW in Austin Texas, but rather than making content available only on iTunes or Apple TV, the company has partnered with Vevo to help stream the event live.

Music fans can plug into the event live on Vevo’s website, but you’ll have to use a Safari browser. Shows will also be viewable on iTunes, Apple TV, and the iTunes Festival app for iOS.

The free concert series kicks off tonight with Coldplay, and features acts like Kendrick Lamar, Imagine Dragons, Schoolboy Q, Soundgarden, Pit Bull, Keith Urban, Willie Nelson and others throughout the week.

Up until now, iOS 7 on the iPhone 4 has been painful to use. The New York Times calls it “planned obsolescence,” but it’s really just old hardware having a difficult time powering new software.

The good news is that the newly released iOS 7.1 has noticeably sped up animations on the iPhone 4, reports Ars Technica. “iOS 7.1 solves the problem for people who don’t tweak their devices’ settings or for people who like the way the animations look but not how they feel,” according to Ars. “Animation durations have been shortened noticeably throughout iOS 7.1, and toggling “reduce motion” is now purely cosmetic.”

Apps open generally faster, and opening interfaces like Control Center feels smoother. Since iOS 7.1 will likely be the last major update that’s available on the iPhone 4, there is no reason to not download it.

Source: Ars Technica

Now that you know where to find all those DVDs, video games, and CDs with Shot and Find, you might want something to read. All Librarist needs is an ISBN, a keyword, or a quick scan of a barcode, and it’ll let you compare prices from stores all over the world.

The scanning works really well, and it includes an impressive selection of stores to choose from. Now if only it actually had some way to give me more time to read, it would pretty much be the perfect app.

Source:Librarist – Free | Droid Ltd

Grabbing an Apple exec for your board of directors has become somewhat of trend lately among prominent companies. Nike, Ferrari, Goldman Sachs, and even Vail Ski Resorts have done it, and now GoDaddy is the latest to join the ranks.

Wave Wave reminds me of the end of a story called “Blind Alleys” from an old Tales from the Crypt comic. It’s about the residents of a home for the blind seeking revenge on their unscrupulous caregiver by setting him loose in a maze lined with razor blades with a starving dog. He’s running from the beast, slashing himself to ribbons but still staying ahead, “And then some idiot turned out the lights.”

Why does this twitchy arcade game remind me of that sadistic story? Because it hates me in the same way, starting me out at a disadvantage and then continuing to throw in sudden changes until I lose.

It’s a random, cruel, mechanical bull of a game, and you should absolutely play it.

We all love our music and MixTape is all about that elusive perfect mix.

MixTape Pro will help you create, experiment, and publish the results onto the web or directly into iTunes. You can share your pro creations with friends or jam out by yourself. And right now you can save a bunch of money on MixTape Pro because Cult of Mac Deals has this simple and elegant app available for 50% off during this limited time offer. That’s right – you can get MixTape Pro for just $24.99!

iTunes Radio has barely been around for six months but after launching alongside iOS 7 in the U.S., Apple’s music streaming service has already knocked Spotify off the #3 spot among the most popular music streaming services in the country.

Apple wants Samsung to pay a $40 license fee for every smartphone and tablet it sells after the South Korean company infringed five patents with a number of Galaxy-branded devices.

That’s right… just five patents, $40 for every device. It’s a pretty surprising demand — especially after Apple recently stated that monetary damages were “not an adequate remedy” for Samsung’s patent infringing ways.

Apple might have added a bunch of new features for iOS 7.1, but not all of them are available in every single market.

Thanks to Apple’s “iOS 7 Feature Availability” webpage, however, it is possible for international users to easily check which features are supported in which countries. Apple’s CarPlay, for example, is currently available in just thirteen markets, while Siri’s more advanced features — included restaurant and movie reviews — to limited to even less than that.

Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often. The Operating System just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.

You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or SSD) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.

OK, so is there some sort of tune up or spring cleaning you can do that sorts it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.

Apple has made some changes to its Customer Loyalty Program, adding new items and increasing the discount offered on existing ones.

The discounts — which quietly went into effect last week — are on offer to people who spend upwards of $5,000 on Apple products in a 12-month period, making this a loyalty program targeted predominately at companies and education customers.

Companies like Apple using specially commissioned shuttle buses to ferry employees back and forth from San Francisco have caused their fair share of problems in the past.

Wanting to find out just how often the buses traveled past his house, Wired writer Kevin Poulsen recently decided to start monitoring the local Wi-Fi environment to see how often the Wi-Fi equipped buses registered.

In a world in which the iPhone camera is good enough to be most people’s primary camera, the days of low-grade cellphones pics are a thing of the past (for Apple users at least.)

But it’s not simply a matter of megapixels, but about the other “value added” touches that truly make the iPhone a camera worth hanging up your SLR for.

One of those touches is Apple’s neat “tap to focus” functionality, which arrived with the iPhone 3GS in June 2009.