Every time I walk into a bookstore, I want to buy a book. Or three. Sadly, my budget doesn’t cover that all the time, because I go into bookstores quite a bit. To scratch that itch, I’ve turned to taking a photo of the book covers with my iPhone; that way, I get the satisfaction of doing something about my book lust without having to pull out the wallet each time.

Shoots & Leaves is a new iOS app that aims to solve the same problem, but for all those things you need to be reminded of, not just books you want to buy (though you can use it for that, too, I suppose).

While adding physical controls instantly improves almost any mobile game, no one wants to carry around a big, bulky control pad all day. But it’s unlikely you’ll have any complaints about taking the iMpulse with you everywhere you go, because it’s so small it fits on your keyring — and it’s compatible with both Android and iOS devices.

Referred to as “Swipey”, a new jailbreak tweak allows iOS 7 users to access six different apps via a left swipe from their iDevice lock screen — giving you all the features associated with a lock screen launcher, minus the clutter.

According to reports, Apple’s speculated-upon iPad Pro will come not only with a larger screen and greatly improved resolution, but also with eye-tracking technology.

With the iOS 7 jailbreak finally worth installing on newer iPhones and iPads, it seems the floodgates have finally been opened.

Virtual Home is one of the first Touch ID based jailbreak tweaks available for the iPhone 5s. Working with the Touch ID sensor, Virtual Home can help save wear and tear on the iPhone’s Home button by eliminating a large percentage of button presses. Instead users can replicate much of the functionality of the Home button simply by touching it.

Fact: I’m currently waiting for my lazy optician to supply my first pair of “old-man glasses” aka specs with progressive lenses. In young-folk terms that means I get glasses which let me read without holding the iPad at arms-length.

In the meantime, I have boosted the size of my iPad’s text, but on the Mac I might give Zoom It a spin. It’s a loupe app that magnifies whatever is under it’s little virtual glass eye, and it’s now compatible with Mavericks.

The sequel to 2009’s acclaimed Jet Car Stunts is now available in the App Store, and it looks pretty awesome.

I’m a sucker for great charger designs, and Ventev’s Utilitycharger 2100 is clearly a smart design. So clever is it that I’m even willing to overlook my hatred of cards for a few minutes as I write this post.

Which phone users are the smartest?

According to a peer-reviewed scientific study online intelligence test by renowned university British betting company Ladbrokes, the answer is iPhone owners.

If you’re looking to soften up your photo lighting (and let;’s be honest, who isn;t these days?) then you could do worse than the AirBox range of light modifiers. The AirBoxes are soft-boxes that you inflate. With Air. Hence the name AirBox.

My current desk cost me around €30 in the local flea market, comes from the GDR and is awesome. But it’s not a great desk for piling up with tech, thanks to a complete lack of charger cubbyholes and cable wranglers.

If you put my desk at one end of the tech-configurability spectrum, and a neat, modern desk on the middle, then the Bee9 Tablet Desk 2.0 would be way off at the other end of the scale.

Forget Black Friday or Cyber Monday, New Year in Japan is the time of choice for retailers and shoppers alike — since this means Fukubukuro.

Literally translating as “lucky bag”, fukubukuro gives stores a chance to make room for incoming stock and drum up some publicity by selling off inventory at a massively discounted rate. The catch? That customers hand over their money for a grab bag they have no idea of the contents of.

Write, the slick iPhone and iPad text-editing app, is now available in beta form on the Mac. It doesn’t yet have many of the fancy trimmings of its iOS siblings, but it is already a rather nice place to write your Markdown, rich text or plain text notes.

“Thunderbolt, ho!” That’s the cry of low-frame-rate animated big cats when they found out just how much the new Akitio Thunder Dock can do when hooked up to a Mac. And “Snarrrfff” is what their rat-like friend said when he saw the $269 price tag.

It’s been a while since we had a Call of Duty game for iOS. This latest incarnation — first released back in September — is set in the Black Ops II universe, and follows a Joint Special Operations Team in the year 2020, as they battle Cordis Die, a pseudo-terrorist organization with unfriendly intentions. (Don’t they all seem to have those?)

After the holiday season, there are usually a lot of new Mac owners. Many of those new Mac users aren’t familiar with the platform, having switched from a Windows machine. Instead of relying on more seasoned Mac owners, wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to point new users in the right direction? Thanks to Cult of Mac Deals and Mac Dojo, now there is.

The Mac Dojo Productivity Course couldn’t come at a better time in the twilight of the holiday season. There’s a lot of you with new Macs out there, and if you want to get the most out of it – this is the course for you. And you can get it for a limited time for only $25 – a savings of 74%!

It’s 2014…isn’t it time you had 4G internet access on the go?

With this Cult of Mac Deals offer you’ll get up to speed with the world’s smallest 4G mobile hotspot – The Freedom Spot Photon: Platinum Edition. For a limited time you can get it for $99 – a savings of 54%!

If you’ve looking for a great sounding deal during the holidays, then with no further. The Merry Mac Bundle: Beats + Media Edition features 8 killer apps that will make your Mac handle allsorts of media like a pro. And the best part? Cult of Mac Deals has it for 95% off the regular price – only $34.99 – during this very limited time offer.

If you own a laptop, it’s pretty easy to up and move to a more comfortable workplace when your joints start to stiffen. But if you have a giant 27-inch iMac or Cinema Display, you’re kinda stuck at your desk. You could opt for a standing desk, but what if you want to sit? Or you could go for one of those adjustable numbers, but what about the perfectly good desk you have already? That’s where the WorkFit-A comes in. It’s a big robot arm that lets you swing around even a 27-inch (2013 model) iMac as if it were an iPad. A really, really big iPad.

The iOS 7 jailbreak was released last Sunday, but it was a messy release that had a lot of bugs and compatibility issues. We warned everyone to wait at the time. Today the last major issue with the jailbreak was fixed for newer iOS devices with the A7 chip.

Jay ‘saurik’ Freeman, the creator of Cydia, has updated Mobile Substrate for iOS 7 and the new 64-bit architecture found in the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and second-gen iPad mini.

Hackers are always hustling to find the next big loophole in computer and internet security. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of this Cult of Mac Deals special offer so that you don’t get caught with your virtual pants down.

Bitdefender is premier anti-virus software that will secure your computer so vital information regarding your identity and finances remain tightly encrypted, and Cult of Mac Deals has one year of Bitdefender available for a very limited time for just $19.95 – a savings of 60%!

Apple denies working with the National Security Agency to create a backdoor into the iPhone and other products that would give the spy agency access to users’ data.

The denial is a response to leaked NSA documents published yesterday from 2008 that detail a backdoor into the iPhone called “DROPOUTJEEP.” The spyware is able to intercept data like the iPhone’s SMS messages, contacts, location, and more after being installed.

Ever wonder why that PDF with just text in it is somehow bloated to a massive file size? Why should something that would be under 500 kilobytes if it were a Text Edit file be two or three megabytes when put into PDF form?

Well, the answer can vary, but if you ever get a PDF from someone that’s too darn big, say, to send via email, then you can use Preview to shrink the file size down to, well, size.

Preview is the built-in file viewer for images and PDF documents, so it’s super easy to find and use.

2013 was an enormous year for Apple.  Yes, there were hyped keynotes galore, fabulous new products, record breaking sales, and much, much more. But 2013 was about more than just hardware for Apple Inc. During Tim Cook’s second full-year reigning over Apple we saw the CEO really settle into his role helming the largest tech company in the world while Jony Ive’s influence grew to greater heights than in the Jobs-era as he spread his design tentacles from hardware to software.

Jony and Tim weren’t the only stars of 2013 though. There was the up-and-coming VP of software engineering Craig Federighi and Craig Federighi’s Hair, while Apple’s hiring of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts received heaps of praise from both the financial, tech, and fashion markets. Oh and don’t forget about goons like David Einhorn, Carl Icahn and even cranky old John McCain getting their jabs in at Apple throughout the year.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s look back on Apple in the year 2013:

As we approach the end of 2013, it’s time to take a look back and pay some recognition to some of the finest apps that have hit the App Store over the past 12 months.

It’s not easy to build a successful iOS app anymore — with over 1 million of them in the App Store, competition has never been tougher — but some developers have proven it’s still possible to stand out among the crowd with titles that are either completely unique, or just far greater than their rivals.

We’ve picked 15 that you really shouldn’t miss.