Following up on the successful release of Final Fantasy IV on iOS back in 2012, publisher Square-Enix is following it up with a sequel, which follows up on the characters and events of that game twenty years later. It’s called Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and it’s available now on the App Store.

Instagram does photos on mobile better than anyone else. They also recently added video to that mix, but it doesn’t look like Instagram is going to stop there: rumor has it they are getting into messaging next as well.

When you look at iOS, you’re looking at a user interface more than an operating system. Beneath the animations, transparencies and rounded-corner icons is the core of the operating system… basically, a bunch of ASCII text, similar to a Terminal window, that is what iOS looks like before it puts its face on.

In a rather interesting twitch, Winocm — one of the hackers behind the iH8Snow iOS 6.1.3/6.1.4 jailbreak — has managed to get iOS’s core running on a Nokia n900 smartphone.

VSCO, the iPhoneography app which retro-fies your pictures and turns all blacks into shades of dark gray, has taken what looks like the final step to become a social network: The VSCO Grid, a place for you to group and display your best work in – yes – a grid, is now followable. As in Twitter or Instagram-like followable.

Remember Mac font managing apps? I do: I hated them. Extensis Suitcase caused more problems with my old G5 PowerMac than anything else, ever, and I was fairly conservative in my font use back when I worked as a designer.

Thankfully, Macs these days don’t need the user to manually switch fonts on and off: our computers are powerful enough to handle it. Which is why Bohemian Coding ditched its old Fontcase app and replaced it with the shiny new Fonts, an app that is dedicated to just organizing and looking at your fonts.

When the topic of Apple expanding into wearable computing comes up, few people are likely thinking that a logical starting point is a new hearing aid.

But according to numerous reports, that is exactly the direction Apple is heading in. The Danish-based, fourth-largest hearing aid manufacturer in the world has been collaborating with Apple to develop a device, called the LiNX, that will allow users to stream voice and music from their iOS devices without the need for an intermediary device.

Marvin is an ebook reading app for the iPad that gathers together all your EPUB ebooks in one place. The idea is that you can keep your book files in your Dropbox and access them from anywhere.

It’s EPUB-only, which means it won’t work with your Kindle titles, but that’s no problem, because Marvin also has tight integration with the Calibre e-book app for desktop computers, and as all avid Cult of Mac readers know, it’s pretty easy to use Calibre to rip the DRM from your Kindle books and save them to your Dropbox as EPUBs.

HTC has today announced a new HTC One variant that gives Android fans with a penchant for gold a nice alternative to the iPhone 5s. The new device is identical to the original on the inside, but its aluminum panels have had a new lick of champaign-colored paint.

Rickshaw Bags, the finest bag-maker in San Francisco, will now sell you a plush-lined sleeve for your iPad Air. I have tested the mini version and I loved it, although I’d say it’s actually better suited to the bigger iPad thanks to the fact that the mini looks after itself so well, even when left naked and cold in the basement of a dark messenger bag.

It would be next to impossible to ever label an iPhone thief “thoughtful” — but a recent story coming out of China took a turn for the strange when the thief in question painstakingly wrote out eleven pages of contact details and sent them to the owner of the iPhone he had pickpocketed.

There are two things that I love about this iPhone abacus case. One is that it’s an actual working abacus. The second is that I learned that you can stain and dye 3-D-printed plastic as if it were wood or leather.

Thinking of making the jump between platforms?

Well, Google chairman Eric Schmidt is happy to ease the transition — publishing a 900-word guide on “Converting to Android from iPhone”.

Remember the rumblings about Apple acquiring PrimeSense, the Israel-based company behind the 3D motion tracking in the original Xbox Kinect? It turns out that the rumor is true, as Apple has officially confirmed the buyout.

Reports dating back to this summer have said Apple and PrimeSense were in talks, and just last week it was being reported that the deal was close to completion. Israeli business site Globes said the deal is valued at $300-$350 million earlier today, and AllThingsD later said the asking price is “around $360 million.”

PrimeSense certainly has expertise in full-body motion tracking, as evidenced by the Kinect, but lately the company has been focusing more on mobile. Its Capri 3D sensor is the smallest in the world and is designed for implementing natural gestures for smartphones and tablets.

Source: AllThingsD

Google announced this week Google Play Newsstand, an app for reading non-book content (magazines, newspapers, blogs and more) on an Android phone or tablet.

Google Play Newsstand is an alternative to Flipboard. But Google gives us no strong reason to choose that alternative.

Here are the three things Google needs to change in order to turn Google Play Newsstand from also-ran to awesome sauce.

Now here’s one for the record books – a special one-of-a-kind Product (RED) Mac Pro, created jointly by Jony Ive and Marc Newson, sold at Sotheby’s on Saturday for $977,000! The upper six figure bid makes the (RED) Mac Pro the most expensive desktop computer ever built or sold.

While there are plenty of revelations about how Jony Ive’s aesthetic developed in Leander Kahney’s NYT bestselling biography, Apple fans got a unique glimpse into an informative childhood inspiration for Ive this past week thanks to a television appearance on the Charlie Rose show.

Ive and industrial design pal Marc Newson have been making the media rounds recently to promote a charity auction featuring special items customized by the pair.

However, one item in the auction was neither designed nor modified by the pair: a Star Wars Stormtrooper helmet signed by none other than George Lucas.

With this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you can turn your living room into a war-zone with this iPhone-controlled, missile-firing helicopter.

Forget toy remotes – you control this hovering hellion with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or
iPad! Just download the free app, plug the transmitter into your headphone jack, and take flight. Grab one of these for just $49.95 – a savings of 28% – and make it a holiday the tech-lover in your life will never forget.

Yes, Apple maintains a press “blacklist,” a list of people in the media who are shunned and ignored — “punished,” as it were, for “disloyalty.”

“Blacklisted” reporters, editorialists and media personalities are denied access to information, products and events.

Once you’re on the list, it’s almost impossible to get off. (I’ve been on it for more than a decade.)

Here’s what everyone needs to know about Apple’s press “blacklist.”

Apple and a 12.9-inch iPad; the first iOS 7 game controller is long overdue; Retina iPad Minis are almost perfect; strategies to backup all those iPhone photos you take; and Adam Christianson from the Maccast podcast joins us on this time on The CultCast!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on each week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below adventure begin.

This week in Cult of Mac Magazine: how some collectors are making serious money with old Macs.

Well, that and how some are discovering that it may be sentimental value that keeps the old machines humming – as it turns out for our publisher, Leander Kahney, who reminisces on the antiquated machines in his life.

And if you dream of finding an Apple 1 or coming across a Twiggy Mac and making a pretty penny, we’ll tell you what happens when those machines roar back to life and come up at auctions.

We’ll also help you figure out what to keep – and toss! – in your collection and showcase some of the coolest ways Apple lovers have repurposed those aging computer carcasses to give them new life.

Our Apple Genius dishes on how to keep your privates protected when you bring your machine in (it’s not as hard as you think) and the best way to let your technician know you’re not a total moron – so you can get your device fixed and get out as soon as possible.

Cult of Mac Magazine

Never suffer from a system crash, failed hard drive, or dip in system performance again.
The Stellar Drive ToolBox for Mac is a comprehensive bundle of utilities to keep your system healthy and optimized.

All 14 utilities help optimize hard drive performance, protect your data and provide an easy way to repair your hard drive’s volumes – it’s all you need to optimize, repair, and maintain your Mac. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $49.99 – 49% off the regular price of $99!

Sure, those old computational machines are making some collectors serious new money. But love of Apple doesn’t always translate into hard cash. Over the years, we’ve covered a lot of cool things you can do with your obsolete — but still near and dear! — Apple gear.

Here are some of our favorites.

There aren’t many in-ear monitors made of steel. Aluminum? Yes. Plastic? Wads. But steel-bodied IEMs — now that’s a rare find. There’s good reason for this: Though the material is solid, hard-wearing and, according to some, produces a cleaner sound, it’s heavy — which can make steel-housed IEMs often uncomfortable and annoyingly ill-fitting.

But forget all that. Scottish-based RHA have managed to make the stainless steel-bodied MA750i supremely comfortable and well-fitted, even under heavy action. In fact, RHA absolutely nailed it perfectly with these ‘phones in every single category that matters, with only two or three minor trade-offs.

Springpad launched on the heels of Evernote in 2008. Though the two are superficially alike — they’re both cloud-based note-taking services often accessed though their respective iOS and Android apps — Springpad was always a little more geared toward collecting and organizing groups of things, like products or recipes.

Springpad’s latest update further underscores this difference; it now has a set of templates that can be used for organizing different categories of saved items, as opposed to the more open format of Evernote.

One of the newer features of iOS 7 is in the App Store. No, I’m not talking about the Wish List feature, which is pretty slick, but the “near me” function of the App Store. It’s a pretty cool thing to play with when you’re traveling, if nothing else.

You can get a neat little list of the hot apps of other people in your general area with this cool little feature, and I did so on my current trip to Hawaii, just to see what people were downloading here in the beautiful city of Honolulu.

You can see my results above, and then try it on your own.