Square Enix announced Tuesday the release of the very first Tomb Raider, the initial game in a long-running franchise that has spawned sequels across console platforms, PC, the Mac, and even a couple of movies.

The release today to the iPhone and iPad is a direct port of the original game, complete with charming old school graphics and gameplay. And buttons. Lots of crappy virtual onscreen buttons.

Even though there are a ton of games out there that have refined this type of gameplay that you can get for a similar price, you’ll surely get to see where this popular genre got its start.

Czech Republic-based Madfinger Games just released a huge update for Dead Trigger 2 on the iTunes App Store and Google Play, just two months after its initial release.

The first person zombie shooter already has over 10 million downloads, and this massive Christmas update, with its new additions and added zombie-killing gadgets, will nearly double the game content for all.

In addition, the Madfinger team has updated the original Dead Trigger with support for new devices so even more folks can join in on the fun.

Amazon is gearing up to finally launch its first Kindle smartphone during the first half of 2014. That’s according to supply chain sources who claim the retail giant has recently struck a deal with Primax Electronics to secure its compact camera modules (CCMs) for the new device.

If you’ve been searching for a less expensive application that’s similar to Adobe Photoshop, then Cult of Mac Deals has found your match.

PhotoDirector 5 Ultra combines all the features you need for photography in a single workflow—efficient photo management, pro-quality adjustments and creative photo editing. With native 64-bit support, non-destructive tools, RAW support for popular DSLRs and Ultra 4K slideshow output, PhotoDirector is all you need to turn your photos into works of art. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 50% off: only $49.99.

If you’re fortunate enough to receive a new Mac this Holiday season, in addition to graciously thanking whoever gave it to you, you should make some time to take care of a few basic preliminary matters, which will end up saving you time and money in the long-run.

Unboxing. Unbox your Mac while being careful not to rip, tear, destroy, or discard any of the box or accompanying materials. There are a number of reasons why this is a good idea, but here are two of the biggest ones.

First, if something ends up being wrong with your Mac – whether it’s defective or an incorrect model – you’re going to need its original packaging (provided you’re still within Apple’s return policy period). Note here that although Apple’s return policy normally permits returns for up to fourteen days after purchase Apple has extended the deadline for returns on purchases made during the holiday season. This year, any purchases made between November 1, 2013 and December 25, 2013 can be returned through January 8, 2014.

Second, let’s think long-term here. Macs retain their value like no other consumer electronics products and, therefore, there’s a good chance that you may want to resell your Mac at some point in the future. Having your Mac’s original packaging materials always helps make the product look more attractive to potential buyers and will certainly help you sell it faster and for a better price.

Initial Inspection. Conduct a basic inspection of your new Mac. Have a good look at its exterior. Is there any damage? It doesn’t matter how slight because exterior damage may be evidence of a greater issue or defect. Make sure there aren’t any scratches on its body, chips or cracks in its screen, or any other evidence of damage or mishandling.

If your Mac is even slightly damaged you should take advantage of Apple’s extended holiday return policy and exchange it for a new one.

In my experience, Apple permits the return of damaged Macs provided the damage is reported very shortly after purchase. The longer you wait, however, the more likely an Apple representative will assume you caused the damage.

There are at least two reasons why you should do this: first, if your Mac turns out to be defective you’re going to have to take it to Apple for repair. If your Mac has undocumented damage an Apple Genius or repair technician may refuse to honor its One-Year limited Warranty or AppleCare (if you purchased AppleCare) because of the damage. It’s going to be their word against yours and – whether or not you eventually convince Apple honor the warranty or AppleCare – that’s not an argument you ever want to have to make. If Apple doesn’t honor your Mac’s warranty or AppleCare you’re stuck paying for the repair out of pocket.

Second, damage will always reduce the resale value of your Mac. If you ever do decide to resell your Mac you may have a more difficult time getting a good price, or even finding a buyer, if it’s damaged.

Check for Defects. Apple makes great products, but defects are a sad reality of any manufacturing process. You should put your Mac through at least an elementary vetting process where you inspect it for potential defects. Defects are different from physical damage. Unlike physical damage, which is not covered by Apple’s standard One-Year Limited Warranty or standard AppleCare (not to be confused with AppleCare+, which does provide limited coverage for accidental damage on iPhones) defects are fully covered and, therefore, there’s less of a sense of urgency here. That said, without going into all of the reasons, it’s always better to get defects handled sooner than later.

Chances are your Mac will not be defective, but do your due diligence just in case. When I’m checking my Macs for defects, I like to break it down by the various hardware components that make it up and I go through them one-by-one – asking myself whether each component behaves as advertised. For example, does the screen have an unacceptably high number of dead pixels; is my Mac able to connect to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices; does the battery hold a proper charge; etc.?

If something seems to be awry with any part of my Mac – something is visibly broken or a component is just not performing as I think it should – I research the specific symptoms online and make a decision about whether or not I should take it in for further inspection, repair, or replacement.

Save the Date. If, after carefully unpacking and inspecting your new Mac, you’re happy with its condition then it’s time to set a few extremely important reminders. Mark your calendar or, better yet, set an alarm on your Mac’s iCal to notify you of the key dates in your Mac’s life. Determine the relevant dates by going to Apple’s Warranty Status page. This page will tell you when your One-Year Limited Warranty and/or AppleCare (if you purchased AppleCare) are set to expire. Once you have determined these dates, you should proceed to set the appropriate alarms.

First, set one to go off on January 6, 2014. If your Mac was purchased during this holiday season then this is two days before you will have to decide whether or not to return your Mac to Apple. Second, set an alarm for two weeks before your Mac’s One-Year Limited Warranty expires. When it goes off, take some time to give your Mac a thorough inspection for any defects that may have manifested during the first year of its life. Third, if you purchased AppleCare or have any other operative dates (third-party insurance, credit card purchase protection, etc.) set an alarm to go off one to two weeks before those expire and conduct the same type of inspection when the time comes.

Stay Informed & Never Stop Learning. If you’ve followed the our advice, you’ve taken several of the most essential steps towards protecting yourself from the some of the most common issues owners of Apple products experience. Enjoy your new Mac, but also remember that it’s an expensive piece of equipment and worth owning responsibly. It’s up to you to stay informed about the particular model of Mac you now own as well as Apple products in general.

There’s always more to learn and circumstances do change – as time passes defects become more documented and articulated by online communities and Apple periodically implements special repair or replacement programs for its products. Reading sites like Cult of Mac or books like Buying and Owning a Mac: Secrets Apple Doesn’t Want You to Know will help you to become your own consumer advocate, which will help you to save you time and money during the life of your Mac.

With all the RAM we have these days, it’s easy to get some serious screen clutter going on when you have a ton of apps open.

You can hide the current app with Command-H, and you can hide all the other apps except the current app with Command-Option-H.

But did you know you could go to any app that’s currently running, while simultaneously hiding all the other running apps?

Twitter is said to be working on a new feature that will allow users to edit tweets after they are published, The Desk reports. As things stand, the only way to fix typos and other errors is to delete your tweet and publish another one, but sources close to Twitter’s new project say that’s set to change.

The flip-side to the fetishistic hankering over shiny new things is the staggering number of older gadgets that are thrown away each year.

According to new data released by the Solving the E-Waste Problem Initiative (Step), in 2012 this electronic waste added up to a staggering 48.9 million tons.

If someone came up to you on the street and told you that you could make ten dollars for nothing, as long as you gave him forty dollars to get started, you’d rightfully view him as a shifty grifter, yet when a retailer comes along, offering $50 iTunes cards for $10 off, we all shout ‘free money!’ and fork over our cash.

Society’s double standards are a strange thing, but regardless, discounts on iTunes Gift Cards are always a hot deal, and right now, there’s a particularly good deal on $50 gift cards going on at Office Max. For just $40, you can buy yourself credit for $50 worth of apps, movies, games, TV shows or music to purchase from iTunes, and that includes free shipping.

There’s a limit of three per customer, and these deals usually don’t last, so get in on the action now. It’s the perfect stocking stuffer.

Source: OfficeMax

On iOS as on the Mac, there’s only two browsers that most people take seriously: Safari and Chrome. But another browser you should consider is Coast, an iOS browser made by Opera that turns the worldwide web into a sea of apps.

It’s a great browser, one of the few that re-imagines surfing as if it were designed from the ground-up to happen on the iPad, with a primarily gesture driven interface and chrome that stays out of the way until you need it. And now, Coast is getting better, thanks to a beefy 2.0 update.

It might still be a tiny player in the smartphone market, but Microsoft is keen to build on recent successes by releasing a next-gen mobile OS, featuring a Siri-like voice assistant feature.

Windows Phone 8.1 will reportedly launch next April at the company’s Build conference — according to “sources familar with Microsoft’s plans”.

After Apple released the iPhone 5s with the A7, the world’s first 64-bit chip, ARM competitor Qualcomm made quite the fool of themselves about it. First, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called a 64-bit ARM chip a “gimmick.” Then they ate their words, soft fired Chandrasekher, and announced their own 64-bit chip to ship in 2014.

If that seems like a disorganized, chaotic response, you’re right. But there’s a reason for that. According to a new report, Apple’s unveiling of the 64-bit A7 chip took the entire semiconductor industry with their pants down… and everyone’s now scrambling to catch up.

Nineteen months after reaching its $500,000 target on Kickstarter, a new crowdfunded game developed by a former Metal Gear Solid and Halo developer is set for release on iOS this Thursday. 

When the iPhone 5c first came out, people were expecting Apple to finally release a mid-range iPhone. Instead, what they got was last year’s iPhone at a $100 discount in a colorful new plastic shell.

Perhaps because of these expectations, the iPhone 5c is seen as something of a middling success by Apple: a new ‘budget’ iPhone was supposed to open Apple’s handset up to more customers than ever, yet the iPhone 5s is still outselling the iPhone 5c two to one.

But the iPhone 5c is far from a failure. And if you don’t get the iPhone 5c’s appeal, you’re probably a dude.

Certain parties were practically salivating at the prospect of an iPad Pro the moment its seemingly-natural companion piece the iPad Air was announced earlier this year.

Well, according to rumors Apple may have a 4k “iPad Pro” for launch in October 2014 — joining reports of a next-gen iPad with a 2K display due earlier in the year.

Looking for a $330 camera bag that looks like and old thrift-store leather satchel? Then look no further: The Brooklyn ONA Camera Bag is just such an enigma, a beautiful bag that can carry your gear in a safely padded interior. Or you could opt for my excellent alternative…

There’s much to love about the CEO Folio and its accompanying web page. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a Filofax, and I guess even the “CEO” part of the name is a kind of upgrade to the mountain of “executive” faux-pleather crap that fills the pages of the Sky Mall catalog.

Anyhow, let’s ridicule it:

Okay, so December’s generally a fairly quiet news month, but that does mean that we get to look back and remember the year which preceded it.

Well, it seems Apple is getting similarly misty-eyed about the year that was 2013 (either that, or they want to gloat about the phenomenal success of the App Store this year) since the company has just released its annual “Best Of” list — revealing the top iPhone and iPad apps according to the numbers.

UPDATE: Facebook has now confirmed auto-playing ads will rollout this week. See the update at the bottom of this post.

Facebook’s auto-playing video ads, which first appeared on iOS last week, will be seen by all users on all platforms later this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. You’ll see them on your desktop as well as your mobile devices, and they will play automatically as you scroll through your timeline.

Why do you confuse us like this, Apple?

Renaming the 12 Days of Christmas app “12 Days of Gifts” one moment (just to underline that this is, after all, the holiday of shopping), and then producing what is genuinely one of this winter’s most heartfelt and touching Christmas ads the next — Apple has now further befuddled (and angered) a large group of people by banishing the giant Christmas tree in shopping area De Passage of Netherlands city The Hague.

We talk about people who take their jobs home with them, some folks take this way too seriously. Our own Killian Bell, for instance, gave his poor disappointed daughter a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad last Christmas.

This year, Santa tells me that she has begged him for a phone with Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich, and he’s going to give her this: an iPhone 5 with an ice-cream sandwich case. What a dad!

QuickerTech’s pitch for its 802.11AC USB Transceiver is a good one in this wasteful age of needless upgrades: instead of tossing out your perfectly good old Mac just to buy one that is only marginally better just because it has faster 802.11ac wireless, just add this little USB dongle instead. This is especially true for a desktop Mac, which has plenty of USB ports to house a the little widget.

When it comes to advertisements, doesn’t get much better than that.

Apple has restructured its growing iAd division to focus heavily on selling spots for iTunes Radio, according to a report from AdAge. To help sell individual ads to more potential buyers, the company is also reportedly building a real-time bidding exchange for in-app iAds.

At a recent staff meeting, Apple’s Eddy Cue reportedly communicated that iTunes Radio was the “top priority” for selling iAds. “The message that came across was basically if you’re not working on iTunes Radio, you’re irrelevant,” according to an AdAge source. Apple makes 90% of the revenue off its audio ads and only has to give 10% to advertisers. The company recently hired a top-level radio exec from Cumulus Media to help negotiate big deals.

Before iTunes Radio, iAds were only designed for developers to put in iOS apps, but they never really took off. Apple charged a steep premium and was highly selective in selecting ad partners initially, but this recent report suggests that the focus is being shifted to cheaper ads that can be bought individually. The real-time bidding system would work similarly to the stock exchange. In-app iAds could not only become more affordable, but more specifically targeted at users.

Source: AdAge

The Magazine is a Newsstand periodical that publishes five articles every other week. Created by Marco Arment, it is now owned and run by Glenn Fleishman, a veteran journalist who also writes for The Economist and elsewhere. As the first Newsstand-only publication of its kind, The Magazine is known for quality writing and illustrations on a range of topics.

Although articles are republished online through platforms like Medium, Fleishman wants there to be a physical version of The Magazine to celebrate its one-year anniversary. He has created a Kickstarter campaign for The Magazine: The Book, a hardcover collection of the best published articles from the past year.