While accusations about NSA backdoors to Apple devices have been doing the rounds for a while now, yesterday’s revelations about spying agencies using so-called “leaky apps” to capture user data has reignited the debate. Below is a Q&A covering everything we’ve learned so far:

Q) What is a leaky app?

A) An app that transmits private user information across the Internet. While apps have come under fire for collecting private user information before, the current outcry follows revelations leaked by Edward Snowden, suggesting that leaky apps have been the focus of spying organizations such as the NSA and its UK counterpart, GCHQ (Government Communications HQ). The NSA has cumulatively spent more than $1 billion in its phone targeting efforts. A 2010 NSA presentation cites poor secured apps as a “golden nugget” for gathering user information — including, but not limited to, address books and friend lists.

Today Moshi announced the SenseCover, one of the most unique iPhone cases I’ve come across in a long time. By using touch-sensitive plates on the front of the case, the SenseCover allows you to answer incoming calls and turn off alarms without opening the front flap.

Apple TV got an extra shot of adrenaline this morning with the addition of Red Bull TV to the device’s channel listings.

As the first branded-content channel to be added to Apple TV, the channel  offers viewers action-sports videos produced by energy-drink maker, along with live programming, films, shows and other clips that are available on the Red Bull TV website and iPhone app.

A reader sent this in. Pretty much sums up the two main spins on Apple you see in the media.

Thanks: Chris

Cult of Mac has long had a thing for standup desks – for years, publisher Leander Kahney has written posts great and small at an Ikea kitchen table propped up on canisters. His DIY version outlines the basic problem: a desk where you can stand up is useful, but they tend to be pricey.

We’ve reviewed NewHeights, for example, which will set you back over $1,300, so we were eager to try an option with variable height that didn’t break the bank.

Enter the Varidesk.

For the last few weeks, I have had a little pebble-shaped gadget sat out on the wall of my balcony. It’s the Tempo, a Bluetooth thermometer which keeps the last 24 hour’s temperatures in memory, and passes them to your iDevice on demand. It’s also pretty tough, as we’ll see…

Having just crawled out of its smackdown from Google, Rap Genius is back with a new app for iOS that gives you access the site’s breakdowns and explanations on all those pop songs you just don’t understand.

The Genius app lets you swim in the all the annotations for song lyrics, poems, and news articles provided by the Rap Genius community. Once you install the app it scans your iTunes Library to prep all your song lyrics. There’s also a Shazam like function that can find lyrics for any song that’s playing around you.

The app is only available on iPhone with no word on an iPad version or upcoming support for Android, but you can grab it for free on iTunes starting today.

Here are the full release notes:

Last week Steven Troughton-Smith treated us to the first screenshots of iOS in the Car, an upcoming feature that integrates your iPhone with a vehicle’s in-dash system. Now the developer’s digging though iOS 7.0.3 has  resulted in a video of iOS in the Car in use on an iOS Simulator.

According to Steve’s findings, iOS in the Car supports multiple resolutions and touchscreens to allow for different hardware buttons, wheels and touchpad. Right now it only works with certain whitelisted Apple apps as there’s no public API for developers yet, and rather than including an onscreen keyboard the UI only accepts voice recognition input. 

Check out the video below:

One cool thing you can do in the Finder is set any window to view as large, 512X512 icons. You can do this by clicking on the icon button in the top left of any Finder window, then dragging the resizing slider in the lower right corner.

It’s fairly easy, but not super precise, and if you often use the Finder to quickly scroll through large photo icons to preview images you’ve taken or downloaded, it can be somewhat of a tedious chore.

Creating an AppleScript to do it for you is easy, and it will save you some serious time.

Well, that little dream didn’t last long.

Nintendo has denied plans to bring mini games to smartphones and tablets in an effort to promote its latest console titles. Sources had claimed that the Japanese company was set to announce new mobile offerings later this week, but as many will have suspected, that’s not going to happen.

Best Sleep Hygiene — Health & Fitness — Free

Alright, so “sleep hygiene” is kind of a weird way of describing one’s sleeping habits, but this is a pretty useful app, regardless.

It starts out with a questionnaire that asks about your pre-bed routine, including how much TV you watch, alcohol consumption, and when you ate your last full meal, and then it ranks your results and offers suggestions for how you might make your sleepytime more effective.

My results put me in the bottom 25 percent of respondents, which is probably why I spend all day lapsing in and out of consciousnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn–huh? I’m up. What are we doing?

Best Sleep Hygiene

Obsorb is hard.

It’s not that it’s complicated or the enemies move too quickly or even that its controls are tricky. But it’s one of those games where you’ve lost as soon as it starts, and all you can do is delay the inevitable.

In theory, if you were good enough at it, you could play it indefinitely. But that’s not going to happen because it’s impossible.

If you’ve been looking to add a ton of tools to your designer toolbox to start off the year, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is going ot be right up your alley.

The Dynamic Designer Bundle features thousands of design assets and 10 premium website packages, providing you with a nearly endless supply of design elements that you can use for your personal or professional projects. The total value of this package is $1340 but for a limited time you can get it for just $29 from Cult of Mac Deals!

A new Apple patent awarded this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office suggests future MacBooks could be powered by the sun. In its filing for an “Electronic device display module,” which was first submitted back in 2010, Apple describes a notebook with a double-sided display that has photovoltaic cells on its back for solar charging. 

Nintendo is finally ready to swallow its pride and begin developing games and other content for mobile devices, according to a new report from Japan. It’s still unlikely we’ll ever see full Super Mario or Zelda titles, but sources say will will get free mini-games, trailers, and more to promote new Nintendo releases on its own consoles.

I always know when it’s going to rain. It’s not because I’m psychic, but because of Dark Sky, which I can confidently call one of—of not the—best weather apps in the App Store. Originally funded through a Kickstarter campaign, the success of Dark Sky has brought about Forecast.io and a robust weather platform for other great apps.

What does two years of development and going back to the drawing board get you? A complete redesign of Dark Sky for iOS. I’ve been using it for months, and it’s finally available in the App Store as a free update.

Yahoo is reportedly in talks to acquire business app developer Tomfoolery for around $16 million.

Tomfoolery is most notably the developer behind Anchor, a social network for coworkers, which we have previously written about at Cult of Mac.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has begun a pilot program in two of its major hotel locations in Manhattan and Silicon Valley, which does away with keycards altogether by allowing guests to enter their rooms using just their smartphones.

With Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year all now firmly in our rear-view mirrors, Apple is focusing on the next big sales holiday of the year: Valentine’s Day.

Describing the iPad Air and iPad mini as “two ways to your valentine’s heart”, Apple has posted a new ad campaign on the main page of its online store — advising that users take advantage of Apple’s free custom engraving to “include a few love letters on any iPad”.

Steve Wozniak has been announced as the headline speaker for next week’s Apps World North America event in San Francisco.

Running February 5-6, Apps World is an event presenting the latest insight into the multi-platform app ecosystem, expected to attract more than 8,000 attendees.

If you’re a movie nerd, then you’re going to freak out about Yeah! Movies. It’s an iPad app which lets you stream many great films (Kill Bill, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Mad Max, Blade Runner, Caddyshack and so on, but it doesn’t stop there. You also get around 500 “curated extras” with every movie purchase.

Top-grossing iOS developer ComiXology has just updated its popular Comics app with several improvements — including the addition of a highly-requested “Wish List” feature.

The feature lets users build their own list of ComiXology wants by tapping a Wish List button, which saves the book for later. Wish Lists can be accessed in the app’s Purchases section.

Do you hear that tinkling, rattling sound? That’s the sound of a million teeth skittering across the floor tiles as their previous owners relax their legs after smashing the teeth out of their own skulls with their own knees.

What the hell am I talking about? The absurd, almost violent knee-jerk reactions to Apple app updates that pare back functions in order to provide a clearer path for future updates. It’s like these folks never heard of pruning a rosebush to promote better growth.

And the news: Applescript is back in Numbers.

The much-leaked Fujifilm X-T1 is now officially official, and will surely be a sell-out success when it goes on sale next month for $1,300 (body only). It’s an SLR-style camera with an electronic viewfinder, Fujifilm’s trademark (16.3MP) X-Trans sensor, a metal body and a whole mess of mechanical knobs and dials.

Dark Sky, the Instapaper of weather apps, just hit v4.0. It’s still only available in the U.S and the UK, and it still gives you accurate, hyper-local predictions for rain, but just about everything else has changed. For the better, I might add.