SAN FRANCISCO — It’s that time of year when the biggest Apple fans in the world congregate on Moscone North for a three day celebration of all things Apple. This year’s Macworld/iWorld show offers a little something for everyone from hands-on tutorials for taking better iPhone photos or live-recording with an iPad, to parties, tons of exhibitors, games, and more.

Cult of Mac will be covering all the Macworld festivities starting today on our live-blog, but if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about for Macworld, an event that even Apple doesn’t attend anymore, here six things that you won’t want to miss this year:

HTC finally made its much-anticipated HTC One M8 official today. In addition to a gorgeous aluminum unibody design, it boasts all-new internals, a larger display, improved BoomSound speakers, and HTC’s latest Sense 6 user interface.

But how does it stack up against competitors like the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Sony Xperia Z2, and even the Apple iPhone 5s? Our in-depth comparison chart makes it all clear — and helps you decide which of today’s flagships is worth your hard-earned cash.

Guitar Hero will vanish from the App Store at the end of this month.

Not the best rhythm game available, but still a lot of fun, we praised Guitar Hero back when it first arrived on iOS in 2010. With its price now reduced to 99¢ as a parting gift, it’s absolutely worth picking up if you’re interested in the genre.

It’s been almost two years since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s still the only Mac with a Retina display. But according to sources in Apple’s supply chain, that’ll change this summer when the Cupertino company finally unveils the Retina MacBook Air.

Ultra-addictive iOS game Dots has just received a major update, adding a significant new feature.

Called “Challenge Mode,” the addition circumvents the hassle of taking screenshots of individual dots counts — or else comparing scores via social media — by letting players face off in real-time, head-to-head competition.

Following news of Facebook’s surprise acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg shared some impressive numbers regarding the social network’s sustained mobile growth. Facebook has an “active” mobile user base of 1 billion, Zuckerberg announced, while the Facebook-owned Instagram has 200 million active users of its own.

This means that Instagram has added 100 million users since Facebook acquired it back in April 2012. Under Facebook’s control the Instagram iOS app has been regularly updated, much like Facebook’s own iOS app.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, Facebook had 945 million active mobile users, out of a total of 1.23 billion users.

iPods are being used in a nursing home pilot program designed to help rekindle the memories of residents with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The program uses iPods, equipped with personalized playlists, to help improve the mood and interactions of residents. It is also replacing the need for medication in some cases.

Paper? In the age of the iPad? Unthinkable! Ink from a pen? Inconceivable! And yet that’s what the new Booqpad for iPad Air promises us, a case that both protects the iPad and gives you a pad and paper to write on. Not only that, but it does it all with magnets.

Ahead of the next round of the Apple vs. Samsung legal battle, one of the original iPhone engineers, Greg Christie, spoke to the WSJ about the development of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Much of what he discusses in the Apple-approved interview is already well known, but a few neat details emerge.

At one point, Christie says that Jobs gave the team a two week ultimatum, after which he would move the project to another team if they were unable to create what he was after.

“Steve had pretty much had it,” said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple’s user-interface team. “He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts.”

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I use flash thumb drives for precisely one purpose these days – taking a PDF boarding pass to the local print shop. That doesn’t stop me being impressed with Edge’s new DiskGo Sonic USB 3.0 Flash Drive, though, which is a super-fast SSD drive in the form of a USB stick.

Back when I wrote at Wired, I called Waterfield’s keyboard case a “signal of the end of civilization.” Who needs a coddling cover for a keyboard that is so tough it can keep working even after you have a tantrum and smash it on a marble topped table? Repeatedly? (Like a friend of mine did one time).

Now I actually use that same cover whenever I travel, so I’m a little more accepting of the new “CitySlicker for the Jawbone Mini Jambox,” a case for the toughest little speaker on the market.

Uber, the app-based alternative to traditional taxi services, is reportedly considering switching its drivers from iPhones to Samsung-manufactured Android handsets.

Uber has previously purchased tens of thousands of iPhones, which are used for receiving and tracking rides. Although customers can use Uber on either an iOS or Android handset, the drivers’ systems runs only on iOS.

BlinkMail is a great new OS X mail app that lets you speed through your inbox using just the arrow keys. It also integrates with other services like Evernote, and Dropbox, Things and Omnifocus support is on the way.

Oh man. If you make a product. Then somebody, somewhere, will make a case of a stand for it. This is a rule as fast as death, taxes and death taxes. So, if you were thinking that your AirPort Extreme was doing a pretty crappy job of sitting on your desk, and of not falling over, then the Air Mount is for you.

When your camera is a computer instead of a dumb lens and light sensor, you can do all sorts of tricks. That’s the idea behind HTC’s new One M8, a camera which matches its two names with two lenses.

Every once in a while a software bundle comes along that is almost impossible to pass up. This would be one of those times.

Cult of Mac Deals has assembled 7 top Mac apps in The Mac Freebie Bundle. Valued at $119, this nundle has a little bit of everything – and best of all its price is tough to beat.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re a big fan of Noodlecake Games’ Super Stickman Golf series. Also? We love Flappy Bird (and it’s better clones).

For us, then, Noodlecake’s new game, Flappy Golf, is just chocolate melting over delicious peanut butter. It’s like Super Stickman Golf except with a flappy golf ball, which you need to get in the hole with as few flaps as possible. Even better? All thirty levels of the game are completely free. Oh, Noodlecake, we love you so.

Flappy Golf
Via: Touch Arcade

BlackBerry — the beleaguered Canadian smartphone maker that controls literally 0 percent U.S. market share — is now suing its own executives to prevent them from quitting their jobs and flocking to Apple. Really!

In early 2012, Apple acquired Chomp, largely to fix the broken search, recommendation and discovery features of the iOS App Store.

Two years later, app discovery on the iOS App Store remains pretty much as broken as ever. Maybe that’s why Cathy Edwards, Chomp’s co-founder who went on, post-acquisition, to become Director of Evaluation and Quality on Apple Maps, is leaving Apple come April 11.

When it comes to emoji, Apple supports everything from a smiling pile of feces to intricately detailed sunset landscapes. But if you’re looking for racial diversity there’s not a black person to be found and we’re not sure if the dude with the thick mustache is supposed to be latino, but if you scroll through the collection you’ll get the point.

The lack of racial diversity in emojis was not lost on MTV Act’s Joey Parker who decided to email Tim Cook about the controversy and was surprised to get a response the next day about Apple’s efforts to make emoji more diverse.

Here’s what Apple PR Queen Katie Cotton had to say about the emoji controversy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yW4n17lhc

Hate iOS 7’s visual aesthetic, but have apps that require iOS 7 to function? You should do what famed jailbreaker winocm did — hack his iPad 2 so it triple boots between iOS 5.1, iOS 6.1.3 and iOS 7.0.6!

Well, okay. You got us. The elite skills necessary to hack your iPad to dual boot operating systems is beyond the ability of most of us mortals, and it’s unlikely winocm will ever make this process friendly for the everyman. Still, wouldn’t you love if your iPad could do this?

Source: YouTube

We’re still months away from the big reveal of the iPhone 6, which means concept designers still have plenty of time to toss around fanciful dreams of what Apple might do for the redesign of the iPhone.

Teaming up with Martin Hajeck, iCulture created the following concept mockups that would see the iPhone taking some design cues from the iPod Nano, with curved edges, a narrower bezel, and larger screen to boot.

Take a look:

Today Apple updated its iTunes Movie Trailers app with a couple of cool features, including the ability to receive push notifications when movies marked as favorites arrive in theaters or on the iTunes Store. While you could previously only see overall Rotten Tomatoes ratings for movies, the app now lets you read individual reviews from critics.

Here’s the full list of changes:

Apple has bolstered its online retail ranks by hiring former Delta vice president Bob Kupbens. Kupbens joins Apple as its new Vice President of Apple Online Retail.

At Delta, Kupbens was involved with the company’s marketing and digital commerce strategies. Prior to that he pioneered the e-commerce operations at Target.

Twitterrific, the oldest Twitter client in existence, changed its business model today in the App Store. Instead of charging $3 to download, Twitterrific 5 is now free and ad supported.