Yahoo! has released its list of top searches for 2013 and, when it comes to tech, Apple is once again leading the way.

The iPhone had the most searches (the second most searched subject overall), with the iPad making it to fourth place — ahead of PS4 and XBox One — and the iPod to eighth, above the Nokia Lumia and just below the Blackberry.

Practically everyone reading this will have heard the reports about the lengths Apple will go to in order to ensure that its products are on the cutting edge of industrial design.

Well, to those reports you can add the one which suggests that Apple recently paid a total of $578 million — more than half a billion dollars — to GT Advanced Technologies to speed up “the development of its next generation, large capacity ASF furnaces to deliver low cost, high volume manufacturing of sapphire material.”

This move is designed to help keep down the costs of the Sapphire Glass screen rumored to be featured as part of the iPhone 6 — along with a redesign and bigger display.

When you’re among the world’s most sued companies, we imagine that you get used to some pretty hefty legal fees from keeping lawyers on retainer.

Even Apple has kicked up a fuss, however, when its court-appointed “monitor” — given the job of ensuring Apple’s antitrust compliance concerning e-book price fixing — handed in what the company considered a fairly outrageous time sheet.

There are different ways to measure the success of a tech company — thing like how many lucrative patents it’s sitting on, how much money it’s giving back to shareholders, and what its overall market penetration is in whatever area it’s operating in.

Well, there’s another way also: how much do its product launches correlate with a spike rates. You can keep your reports about Apple’s recent financial quarters disappointing Wall Street analysts — as far as San Francisco’s criminal element is concerned, Apple is doing better than it has in years.

The ClipR is a little disk that turns any headphones into a set of Bluetooth headphones. Or, to be more accurate, it turns any 3.5mm jack cable into a Bluetooth-enabled jack cable.

And it has a clip, so you can tuck that cable neatly away.

It’s Black Friday everyone, and Cult of Mac is here to tell you that Apple has kicked off its sales across retail outlets in Europe (including the UK). We’re not just talking about gift cards being on offer, either — but real cash savings.

Here are the the most popular savings being given on Apple’s most popular products:

When I ordered a Retina iPad mini, I went for the cellular version – and not only because it means I can get online anywhere without draining my iPhone’s battery by tethering. I got it for the GPS, which is pretty fantastic to have when traveling, especially in the (big) pocket-sized mini.

But if you didn’t have the foresight to spend the extra $130 on a cellular, you can now spend that exact same $130 on a dongle that adds GPS through the Lightning port.

I love my Olloclip, but I wince every time I use it and see its anodized red body next to my white iPhone. Kidding. Who cares if it matches? After all, it’s what’s on the inside that counts and beauty is only skiZzzzzzz.

Kidding again. Somebody at Olloclip cares, which is why you can now snap up a limited edition gold or space gray Olloclip, along with a neat Cyber Monday cyber discount of 10%.

Native Union wasn’t kidding around when it chose the name “Gripster” – this thing can be gripped and grabbed any way you like. Hell, even a Dolphin could get a purchase on this thing with its slippery flippers. The case, now available for the iPad mini, had a swiveling hand loop, a kickstand/carrying handle and a Smart Cover that folds up to add yet another handle.

If the new iPad Air or Mini with Retina display is on your or a loved one’s list this holiday season – this bundle from the award-winning designers at Just Mobile is a deal that’s too good to pass up.

The Slide iPad stand and the AluPen stylus are winners of nearly a dozen prestigious awards, including Best of Show, Design, and other Category awards from the likes of MacWorld, iF International Forum, Reddot, iLounge, Computex, Spark, and others. And Cult of Mac Deals has them packaged together for just $59.99 for a limited time.

Hatch, the cute virtual pet for iPhone from the makers of Clear, has received its first update just one week after making its App Store debut. The release adds some beautiful wallpapers for your iPhone, introduces some new shop items, and makes a long list of fixes, tweaks, and improvements.

You’ve probably heard that the new iPad mini with Retina display has a significantly smaller color gamut that the larger iPad Air, but how does it compete against rival tablets like the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX?

According to the experts at DisplayMate, not very well. In fact, the new iPad mini came a “distant third” in their tablet display shootout, thanks to Apple’s “inexcusable” decision to use old technology.

“Apple was once the leader in mobile displays, unfortunately it has fallen way behind,” DisplayMate says.

Hoping to get a nice discount on your next Mac or iOS device this Black Friday? Then you’d better buy it from a third-party retailer. Apple has taken a new approach to its Black Friday deals this year and decided to give away gift cards rather than discount its goods.

An astonishing 76 percent of new smartphone sales in Japan for the month of October were either iPhone 5s or 5c handsets, according to recent data.

The report comes from a Kantar World Panel, and demonstrates just how far Apple’s share of the Japanese smartphone market has increased over the present quarter.

Just when you thought you had heard every wacky app concept going, here’s another you might not have considered: Facebook for dogs.

Okay, it’s not exactly Facebook, but the free Woof iOS app (from developer Woof Labs) is pretty much that — describing itself as “an ecosystem to bring dog lovers closer to their dogs and local dog communities.”

Imagine that your task list was made up of a bunch of little slips of paper that you can slide around in any order, only these slips can’t blow away. That’s the central metaphor for Gneo, a universal task manager app which starts out looking like the ultra-simple Clear app, but hides a lot of power under the hood.

“Great pen, lousy software” was the gist of our review for the Livescribe 3, a.k.a. “The World’s Smartest Pen” when we got the chance to use it recently.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Livescribe 3 is a so-called “smart pen” which takes handwritten notes and transfers them from paper to screen on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. (In other words, it’s something of a next-generation Newton stylus for those old enough to remember Apple’s long-abandoned line of PDAs.)

There are few tech terms more loaded than “user privacy” here in 2013.

Back in January Cult of Mac reported that Apple had lost its spot on a list of the 20 most trusted companies when it comes to user information. That was long before the revelations of Edward Snowden and PRISMgate (the subject of an entire recent issue of our Newsstand magazine), which made everyone super-jumpy about data collection and what it means for personal liberties.

Here’s a riddle to start Thanksgiving in style: what looks like an iPad mini, costs only $177, ships anywhere in the world, and runs… Android?

It’s none other than the Chuwi V88, and it’s a Chinese tablet designed to appeal to the would-be iPad owner on a budget — or at least a would-be Android owner, who wants people to think that they’re really an iPad owner.

Would you pay $100 for a cutting board with a few holes drilled in it? No? Are you sure? Because somebody certainly does. In fact, as of this writing, 349 people have ponied up between $68 and $98 to pre-order the Slate Mobile AirDesk on Kickstarter, a wooden laptop tray that lets you put your laptop on your lap. Like a sap.

TenOne Design’s new updated Pogo stylus is gonna be great for heavy stylus users, people who love magnets, and folks with shirt pockets. Why? Read on:

Ever wished that there was an app like Diptic, only it let you put videos together in a grid instead of just photos? No, me neither, but if we had, then we’d love Diptic video.

Apple is all about the dollars; something that usually pleases its shareholders no end.

However that same behavior may be exactly what has wound up getting the company on the wrong side of Brazil’s Consumer Protection Secretariat department.

Boxer, my current and all-time favorite iOS e-mail client, has now added Sanebox to its list of features. Sanebox, if you don’t know it, is a service that weeds out the crap from your e-mail inbox and presses it into a solid nugget that can be easily disposed of, after you’ve picked it over for anything good. And you can now try it out without signing up, right inside Boxer itself.

I bought the original version of Lomo’s make-it-yourself Konstruktor camera, made it, shot a roll of film, loved the results, and gave the thing to a thrift store.

Why? Because film is a pain. In fact, I probably should have bought this limited-edition see-through version instead, as it would at least had a life beyond one single 36-exposure roll of film.