First-person shooters are tough to pull off in mobile. You have to manage two virtual joysticks if you want the flexibility of their console and PC cousins, and you also have to figure out how to make shooting work on a platform with no buttons. And thirdly, you have to compensate for the fact that the player’s thumbs must, by necessity, cover up part of the screen.

Neon Shadow is a new first-person shooter for iOS devices from developer Tasty Poison Games that aims to capture the bare-bones, “You are trapped in a cramped space with things that will kill you unless you kill them first” experience of classic FPSes, and it succeeds. It even does a callback to the original Doom games by having a picture of your character’s face that gets more bloodied and beat-up as you take damage.

Plus, you start with the shotgun, and the game gets an extra star just for that.

If you’re looking to gain an insightful perspective as to how Apple has become the most valuable brand in the world you’ll get that and so much more with these two genius titles written by Leander Khaney.

Leander has been a technology writer and author for decades and has been following Apple since before Steve Jobs’ return. He was a former managing editor at Wired News and now’s he’s moved onto running his own successful Apple-centric blog – the very one you’re reading right now – Cult of Mac. He’s written these two books to help us all gain a better understanding of how Apple’s dynasty has been created and he does an excellent job at doing so. And now you can get both of them for just $19.57 during this limited time offer from Cult of Mac Deals.

The official Google Music app for iOS, which will allow Google Play Music All Access subscribers to enjoy the music streaming service on iPhone and iPad, is now “imminent,” a reliable source reports.

Once I started iSpying in the crowded, bustling streets of Hong Kong, it was hard to stop. (Also, the IP lawyers must be seriously busy in these parts.)

These are some of my favorite finds of Apple-esque products and signs — minus the pics that didn’t turn out because my travel companions were trying to stop me from lagging behind or getting run over.

We’ll have more reporting from Hong Kong soon; a special thanks goes out to Truman Au for showing me around.

It’s great to be able to keep track of addresses for friends and places around town in your Contacts app. Having all the address info in a ready Contact makes it super simple to launch Maps in Mavericks from the Contacts app when you want directions to a party in town somewhere.

And, while you can easily send directions from Maps app to your iPhone, it’s also helpful to just say to Siri, “Directions to Jill’s house,” or “Get me to the movie theater,” and have your iPhone just pull up maps based on that name in the Contacts app.

Mavericks makes it incredibly simple to put addresses for all the places you might want to go right into your Contacts app so you can do just that.

The holiday shopping season will be starting a little earlier this year for Apple, as sources are now claiming that Apple will keep several of its U.S. Apple Stores open on Thanksgiving Day.

What store sells the most iPhones every year? If you named, oh, the 5th Avenue Cube, or the Grand Central location, you’d be wrong, asserts ABC News. Instead, they identify an obscure Apple Store in a shopping mall in Delaware as being the likely contender for selling the most iPhones every year. What wizardry is this?

Those frustrated that Nintendo still stubbornly refuses to release an official Legend of Zelda game for iOS should pluck-up, because the next best thing is here. Heavily inspired by one of the best Zelda games, The Wind Waker, a console-quality Zelda like has just hit the Apple Store called Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas. And this is a game you want to get.

If you want an iPad mini with Retina Display today, there’s only one way to get one: reserve it for in-store pick-up. That’s how I got my 128GB iPad mini with Retina Display on day one of availability while my colleagues Charlie Sorrel and Killian Bell were sitting at home, waiting five to ten days for delivery like a couple of suckers.

If you’d like to make the hunt for an iPad mini in your area easier, a new web-based tracking tool has been released that makes the process less tedious. But act now, because Apple has shown itself to be willing to kill these trackers before, although it’s possible this one will escape unscathed.

I ordered a Retina iPad mini (128GB, LTE, silver if you’re asking) barely 30 minutes after I noticed Killian had posted about it. And yes, I have to wait 5–10 days, but so does everyone else. Even those hippies on the West Coast who sleep in ’til noon every day before making their mango smoothies.

Which is to say that I agree with Ed Dale’s smart take on Apple’s weirdly quiet launch of the Retina mini: that it was designed to keep folks happy.

Jawbone has announced the UP24, a tweaked version of its troubled UP activity-tracking wristband. It’s mostly the same, with a cool futuristic look and $150 price tag. The difference is that it now uses “Bluetooth Smart,” which lets it communicate with your iPhone in real time to send alerts and notifications.

But what’s really interesting is that it now has a rather useful IFTTT channel.

Coffitivity is an app that turns your too-quiet (and frankly pretty creepy) home office into a buzzing coffee shop, only without the jerk who’s hogging the single power outlet all frikkin’ morning after buying one measly coffee. And not even a real coffee. It’s one of those lame-o frappa-latte-chinos or something.

Anyhow, Coffitivity adds a backing track to your office, via a Mac or iOS app.

Everpix’s servers are probably going to hate this, but users will love it. Picturelife (my favorite of the Everpix alternatives I tested, has made an Everpix-to-Picturelife importer. If you received a link to your Everpix archive, you can just plug it in to the importer and walk away.

Best of all, the entire archive won’t count towards your storage quota. And the Picturelife team managed to put this all together in less than 24 hours.

Day One, the beautiful journaling app for Mac and iOS, has just gotten even more beautiful on iOS 7, and added features to boot. I roll my own nerd journal, but if I used a journaling app it’d be Day One. Especially now it has M7 support.

Richard Haberkern’s new GPS Cookie looks like a great little data logger for photographers, and a nice tracker for bikers, hikers and vacationers. It’s a tiny little puck which does nothing but detect GPS satellites and record it’s location periodically, so you can just switch it on an forget it.

Facebook has released a major redesign of its Messenger iPhone app in the App Store. The update is a significant departure from the previous version, and Facebook has designed it with iOS 7 in mind. Profile pictures are circular like they are for contacts in iOS 7, and Facebook is using a brighter color scheme that comes close to mimicking the look of Apple’s Messages app.

Badges now appear over friends’ pictures when they are on Messenger. Facebook has done a good job of stripping pretty much all of its normal branding out of the redesign, so Messenger looks like a typical chat app now.

A key addition is Messenger’s new integration with phone numbers. If someone has their phone number listed on Facebook or in your iPhone’s contacts, you can enter their number in the app to find them on Messenger. You can also message people through the app by using phone numbers in your contacts list.

Source: App Store

There are tons of wireless keyboards on the market these days for all sorts of prices. Those for portable devcies like the iPad are even more numerous, and of wildly divergent quality. I’ve long been a fan of the Logitech series of bluetooth keyboards, as it lights up and can connect to any device, Mac or otherwise, with a quick tap.

The MiniSuit BlueBoard is a nicely designed keyboard that connects via Bluetooth to any computing device, but it is primarily designed as an iPad (or other tablet) stand. It’s solidly constructed from aluminum and the keys are responsive and accurate. The price to be paid, here, though, for a full-sized keyboard, is one of size and bulkiness: I wouldn’t want to have to carry this around as a permanent bit of kit.

Ever wondered what your house would look like if you added an extra room? What about a new set of furniture? Stop wondering and start building the home of your dreams right on your Mac.

Whether you’re a casual user looking to redesign your home or a professional designer preparing a mockup for clients, Live Interior 3D is a powerful and intuitive home and interior design application that will help you get the job done no matter your skill level. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $19.99 – a savings of 50%!

Pocket, the service formerly known as Read It Later, announced a new version of its mobile and desktop apps today. Version 5.0 introduces what Pocket is calling “Highlights,” a new method for discovering articles inside the app.

The user interface has also been simplified to make the experience of using the app smoother, and Pocket has added a new side navigation bar and the ability to bulk edit lists of items.

While everyone seems certain that Apple is working on some sort of wearable, exact details on the mysterious ‘iWatch’ remain allusive. Publications like The New York Times have said Apple is working on a watch with a curved glass display, and Tim Cook has hinted that the wrist is “profoundly interesting” for wearables.

The latest rumor on the iWatch is that Apple is developing two sizes: a larger display to market towards men, and a slightly smaller display for women.

By now you should know that it takes an incredibly complex, efficient system to build Apple products overseas, assemble them, and ship them thousands of miles to then show up at your doorstep in the arms of a friendly mailman. Apple’s attention to detail extends outside of its Cupertino HQ to every area its business touches, including the machinery that makes the products overseas.

For 2014, Apple has committed to spending a record $10.5 billion on new manufacturing technology, according to a new report. Apple outspends all of its competitors to get exclusive deals on unique machinery that is needed for its product designs. 

Hartmut Esslinger, Apple’s first celebrity designer, is coming to the Jony Ive book launch party on Thursday!

This is super exciting. Esslinger is giant of the design industry. He was hired by Steve Jobs in the mid-1980s to bring world-class design to Apple. Jobs wanted to make Apple “the Olivetti of Silicon Valley,” a world leader in design. He succeeded amazingly well. Esslinger was responsible for Snow White, a distinctive design language that dominated the entire computer industry for more than a decade, and other industries too.

The crazy folks over at iFixit are at it again with a complete rip apart of Apple’s latest amazing machine, the iPad mini with Retinal Display.

What they found is that the iPad mini with Retina Display is just as amazing, just as powerful, as the other two flagship iOS products, the iPad Air and the iPhone 5s. The mini, as advertised, has the uber-powerful mobile A7 chip as well as the M7 motion coprocessor. It also has a stunningly sharp 2048 X 1536 pixel display that fairly shines with a fairly dense 326 pixels per inch (the iPad Air “only” has 264 pixels per inch).

That’s a lot of pixels–and power–in a small space.

Artpop — Music — Free

Are you a creative, psychic Lady Gaga fan with an interest in intergalactic travel? If not, does any of that at least sound like something you’d like to see? Hey, Artpop.

It’s a slick, shiny app that ties in with Gaga’s latest album, which is also called Artpop. It’s also a social-media platform, a music player, an art creation and sharing app, and a chatroom. You create your “Aura” (read: avatar), and then you can make projects using a combination of preloaded shapes and patterns and your own pictures and share them with all the other little monsters on the app.

Plus, it’ll tell you if Lady Gaga actually looks at your creation, so it’s kind of the ultimate super-fan experience.

Artpop

I’ve always loved the Lego suite of licensed games more than most people do. They’ve always been the perfect storm for me: a unique combination of geekiness, humor, and obsessive collection and completion. Every time I pick one up, I don’t stop playing it until I’ve unlocked every character, found every collectible, and beat every secret level.

Needless to say, I am a fan.

The iOS version of developer Traveler’s Tales sweded version of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy is out now; the epic 1.3-gig game contains Lego recaps of all three Lord of the Rings films, over 90 characters, and all the soon-to-be-dead orcs, goblins, and Uruk-Hai you can tap. And while the game is every bit as cute and collectastic as the other ones I’ve played, its easily confused controls bog it down a little.

That’s not to say that it’s unplayable, but you’ll have to muster all of your fandom and patience to really enjoy it.