If you’re looking for a way to get rich overnight, here’s an idea: somehow borrow $1 billion without anyone knowing what you’re doing, invest it all in Apple shares the night before an earnings call (when the stock price is all but guaranteed to rise), immediately sell the next morning, return the original capital, and then pocket the profit without anyone the wiser.

Sound too straightforward to be true? That’s because it is — although that didn’t stop 40 year old trader David Miller from trying the stunt back in 2012.

How would you react if you learned that Apple planned to force users to upgrade their iOS devices by making the old ones explode after a set period of time, like secret documents in a James Bond movie? (Well, this writer would push away his old model iPhone 5 for one thing!).

While this may not quite be the case (at all), an iPhone 3GS user in Beijing is alleging that his smartphone suddenly exploded on November 13 while lying on his bedside table. Fortunately no one was hurt.

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine 

Architecture hasn’t really ever been considered too important in the brick and mortar-averse tech industry. It wasn’t all that long ago that digital utopians proclaimed physical geography dead altogether, with a vocal minority apparently pleased to leave the actual world behind them and embrace the cyberspace of William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the technological breakthroughs of Silicon Valley have advanced almost inversely to the region’s architecture. In a brave new world of lush rolling hills and the always impressive San Francisco Bay, the most that the majority of companies have managed to come up with are drab industrial parks filled with two-story, cubicle-lined buildings.

Sarcasm doesn’t travel well over text message — and I can say that through bitter experience. I’ve probably come close to being slapped, dumped, kicked in the crotch, fired, and/or run over by a riding mower because of some sarcastic text I’ve sent that was misconstrued as mean when it was supposed to be hilarious.

Or so I’ve imagined; I have no real gauge, because in each instance I couldn’t actually see the reaction on the face of the recipient. At least one of the developers behind React Messenger must have faced the same problem, because they’ve come up with a solution that snaps and sends a quick, expressive selfie along with each text.

Apple’s new glass plant in Arizona has finally received the official seal of approval from the local government and some newly released documents reveal that in order to lure the tech behemoth to the Valley of the Sun, the Arizona Commerce Authority sweetened the pot by offering Apple a $10 million grant, plus some tax incentives.

The Gilbert Public School Board was the last of eight entities to approve the tax breaks for Apple, who plans to build a high-tech glass manufacturing plant in Mesa that will bring over 700 jobs to the area plus an additional 1,300 construction jobs while the plant is being built. According to one third-party economic study, Apple’s investment is estimated to generate more than $102 million in tax revenue over five years.

The Samsung Galaxy Gear, an Android-powered smartwatch that Samsung has been calling “the next big thing” in commercials, is officially a dud. Why? After BusinessKorea reported that Samsung has sold less than 50,000 units to date, Samsung quickly tried to spin the bad news by saying that it had in fact sold 800,000 units, making it the “most sold wearable watch available in the market place.”

Right. The only problem is that Samsung later confirmed that the 800,000 number was actually for units shipped, not sold, which is a big difference.

If you’re tired of having to watch movies on specific devices, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is going to set you free! With The MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack, you’ll be able to rip and convert movies, DVDs and other videos to a number of platforms. For only $19.99 – a savings of 81% – you can watch almost anything and everything on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple TV and Android devices.

Today Twitter announced a couple of new features that are coming to its official iOS and Google Play apps. The first is search filters for easily discovering different types of media, like photos or video. You can also toggle the results to only see related tweets from accounts you follow.

Apple and the city of Cupertino have reached an agreement that will see the tech giant paying more taxes to the city as part of the deal for its new Apple Campus 2 project.

The new deal is up to receive final approval Tuesday night. If approved, Apple’s tax increase will actually come from a reduction in the percentage of the tax rebate the city gives Apple each year, according to a report from the LA Times.

Under its current deal with the Apple, the city of Cupertino gives back about 50% of the sales taxes it receives from Apple-related purchases. From now on that number will only be about 35% of sales taxes.

Here’s what Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney had to say about the new tax agreement:

Siri continues to become more integrated into the operating system with iOS 7. We’ve already shown you how you can navigate to any of the specific settings screens on your iOS device using the clever digital assistant.

Let’s it one step further, though, and get Siri to actually DO some of the controlling of our oft-toggled settings, instead of just taking us to the specific page. Sure, you can also do this with the new iOS Control Center, but if you can’t touch your iPhone, Siri can cover it for you.

I turn down a lot of offers to review gadgets, either because I figure that you folks won’t care about whatever it is the PR folks are trying to hawk, or because it’s obvious that the product is too lame even to ridicule on these pages.

And sometimes it’s because I’m not equipped to review the item in question. I almost turned down the iOgrapher for this reason, as I have no LED lighting rigs; I recently gave away my tripod and I almost never shoot video. But I’m glad i didn’t, as the iOgrapher turns out to be a pretty excellent all-round iPhoneography case for the iPad mini.

One of the last Apple apps to be redesigned for iOS 7 is Find My Friends, the company’s network for sharing your location and viewing the location of friends on a map. Before today’s update, Find My Friends looked incredibly outdated with leather stitching and an old-style map design.

Now the app looks much more at home in iOS 7. No new features have been added, but the design includes a new icon, lightweight interface, and an orange color scheme (orange is apparently the new black, if Apple’s recent iOS 7 app updates are any indication).

Find My Friends was first introduced before the release of iOS 5 in 2011. Version 3.0 of the app is available in the App Store now.

Source: App Store

FiftyThree, the team of software developers behind the popular iPad drawing-app ‘Paper’ are moving beyond the digital wares with their first piece of hardware – a Bluetooth rechargeable stylus dubbed ‘Pencil,’ that’s customized to work in tandem with the Paper drawing app.

The new stylus comes in the form of a carpenter pencil with two different color options – walnut and graphite. One of the unique features of Pencil is the eraser end that artists can use to carve away errors without having to switch tools inside the app.  Pencil features a lithium-ion battery that can be charged via USB in 90 minutes and last a month and to pair the device to your iPad you simply press the tip to the screen and Bluetooth Smart wireless does the rest of the work.

Here’s a video of Pencil in action:

On Saturday Cult of Mac reported that a working Apple 1 failed to sell at auction in Germany, a notable result in the growing market for vintage Apple collectibles. It turns out that result was premature: the Apple 1 did sell for €246,000 ($330,000), after bidding on the item had closed.

The new Shared Links feature in OS X Mavericks is a great way to keep track of what your friends and connections on social networks are sharing. Unfortunately, if you want to refresh that list, you need to use a menu to do so (View > Update Shared Links). There is no easy keyboard shortcut built in to Safari to do this.

Luckily, Reuben Engel over at Tips and Tricks in Mavericks has come up with a pretty cool idea: make a custom keyboard shortcut for this process.

1 Minute Desk Workout — Health & Fitness — Free

You know how it goes: You’re sitting there at work, and you know you should take a break before your hands fall off, but you have all this stuff to do, and you’ll get to it after you do this one last thing, but then you don’t. And then you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Like, immediately.

OK, so you won’t, but 1-Minute Desk Workout will remind you to take hand and back breaks every hour, and it’ll walk you through 60 seconds of exercises while it’s at it. It’s kinda like your mom telling you to stop playing video games and go outside. But for your cubicle.

1 Minute Desk Workout

Bigger is always better, right? That’s been Samsung’s philosophy when it comes to smartphone screens, but the latest bits of gossip from the rumor mill suggest Apple might be looking to embrace that matra with its iPad displays.

A new report claims that Apple is preparing to build a 12.9-inch iPad for release in 2014, which may sound somewhat outlandish, except we’ve heard similar claims from the WSJ and other analysts.

According to Korea Times’ sources, Apple has already asked its top suppliers to start making the 12.9-inch touchscreens screens that will be included in its 2014 iPad lineup that is  expected to improve picture quality as consumers move away from PCs and towards tablets as their main computing device:

The best puzzle games either have a single rule (Tetris: “Make lines.”) or a few basic rules based on things we know innately or intuitively (Where’s My Water?: “Dig holes, water goes down, steam goes up, poison is bad.”).

Flux Free is a new iOS title which falls into the latter category. It’s a shape-matching game built on a few basic concepts like color theory that keep it from becoming obtuse even when all of its mechanics are in play.

That’s not to say that it’s incredibly easy, but you’ll never spend any time trying to remember how anything works. And it’s smart and fun, so that’s good, too.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer features an addition to your arsenal that MacGyver would be proud of.

The team at IN1 must’ve had these words in mind when designing this product, because prepared is what you’ll be with this veritable Swiss Army Knife of iPhone cases.
Combining sleek design with multi-tool functionality, The Multi-Tool iPhone 5/5S Case is a modern solution for life’s little emergencies. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $35.99 – a savings of 28%!

Apple has added another two new channels to the Apple TV today in the form of Yahoo Screen and PBS. The former provides access to the Yahoo video portal, which delivers popular clips from shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show; while the latter allows users to enjoy their favorite PBS shows like Frontline.

There’s no Downton Abbey, though, unfortunately.

Twitter has already removed the option that allowed users to receive direct messages from people they don’t follow, just over one month after the feature was introduced. This means that even if you opted in to accept DMs from anyone, you’ll have to go back to following people who you want to communicate privately with.

It was only six months ago that the White House officially went on record saying that they thought cell phone unlocking should be legalized. The statement was issued in response to a 114,000+ signature petition, which rightfully argued that if you have paid off a device on-contract, it should belong to you, full-stop.

The Obama Administration said flat-out they agreed… which is why it’s distressing to find out that they may have been misleading us. In fact, while telling the American public that it supported laws to make cell phone unlocking legal, it appears that the Obama Administration has secretly been working against it.

The fines just keep mounting for Google. In the wake of last year’s Safarigate, in which Google was revealed to be tracking millions of iOS & Mac Safari users against their knowledge, Google first agreed to pay a $22.5 million fine to the FTC, the largest such fine in history. But it’s not stopping there, with Google now agreeing to pay $17 million to settle the issue with 37 states.

Just looking at it, it’s clear that the iPad mini with Retina Display has improved upon its predecessor down to the pixel. But what about the pixels you can’t see? The ones inside the built-in iSight camera?

The bad news is the iSight Camera hasn’t changed from last year from a hardware perspective. It’s still a 5 megapixel, backside-illuminated, five-element, hybrid IR file red camera with a f/2.4 aperture. But the good news is it does a little better with low-light performance anyway.

If you’re a hardcore gamer who has never quite gotten over the fact that your iPhone doesn’t have a D-pad, Moga has just made available for purchase the first iOS 7 compatible game controller, the Ace Power. But you might want to hold onto your money for now.