When Apple first unveiled iOS 7, one of the features that made law-enforcement officials breathe a collective sigh of relief was Activation Lock, which allows users to locate, lock and wipe their iPhones remotely if they are stolen.

Activation Lock is a great system which prevents thieves from simply hard resetting an iPhone once they’ve stolen it, and considering what a big problem iPhone crime is, it’s a big step forward by Apple that helps make owning an iPhone safer all around. And it looks like it’s starting to make a difference, with a new report suggesting that almost 4 out of 5 iPhone users has it turned on.

Although reports have surfaced that Apple may be building a top secret $10 billion chip fab, right now, the vast majority of Apple’s A-series chips are made by Samsung. This is obviously not an ideal situation, as it gives Apple’s arch smartphone rival the advantage of knowing what the iPhone-maker is planning on doing next, at least from a silicon perspective.

It looks like Apple may soon be able to rely less on its nemesis when it comes to building chips, though. A new report says that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will largely take over for Samsung in making iPhone and iPad chips in the future. And they’ll be pretty crazy advanced chips, too, at least if the rumors can be believed.

Once the king of mobile gaming, over the past few years, Nintendo has found itself caught flatfooted by the rise of smartphones. Although the company’s 3DS portable game console can’t be said to be a total flop, it’s certainly not selling in gangbuster units compared to previous consoles, like the DS or Gameboy. The reason why is simple: most people have a perfectly good gaming device in their pockets all the time now in the form of their smartphone, and don’t want to have to carry around (let alone buy) an entirely separate device dedicated to gaming.

Many critics have suggested that it’s time for Nintendo to give up and just start releasing games based on its prize characters such as Mario or Link as iOS apps. Such advice is short-sighted, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t be better leveraging Apple’s iOS platform… which is exactly what the Big N seems to have in mind.

Earlier this year, Cult of Mac cited a study from Distimo stating that developers with a hope of cracking the Top 10 paid apps needed to be making in the region of $47,000 per day.

Well, after a strong year for mobile, that number has been revised slightly.

According to Distimo’s 2013 Year in Review report, global revenue for the 200 highest grossing apps in the App Store stand at more than $18 million — a figure which breaks down to around $90,000 average for the top apps.

Would Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs have created the Apple I as a Kickstarter project had they been born in, say, 1985 and 1990 rather than 1950 and 1955?

Certainly Apple co-founder Wozniak has clearly always seen a bit of himself in other would-be homebrew engineers — which is why he has supported the creators of kit computer Kano.

These PopSockets are pretty neat. They’re flat circular buttons that pop out, accordion-style, to make little rubbery cones on the back of your iPhone, iPad or other handheld device. They aid grip, work as basic kickstands and offer a place for fiddlers and fidgiters to work off their annoying energies.

It’s another day, another optimistic projection for Apple’s success over the Christmas season.

This time the report is from Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster, who analyzed 25,000 tweets featuring the hashtags @Santa and #wishlist — and found iPhone to be the “most mentioned item”.

Like the Lomo Konstuktor (which I have actually konstrukted and found to be pretty cool), the Last Camera comes as a kit so you can build your own camera.

Unlike the Lomo, though, the Last Camera comes with two interchangeable lenses, and you can buy extra kits to customize it in the future, and it even ships with a special “light leak” back that lets stray photons in through the back door.

As Crocodile Dundee would no doubt say, “That’s not a warranty, this is a warranty.”

Consumer rights watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), has accused Apple of misleading Australian consumers about their rights to refunds, replacements, and repairs.

It used to be OK to ask a stranger in a bar “do you have a Nokia charger?” and borrow said charger for a while to juice your phone. These days, though, you’ll mark yourself out as a Low-Charge Loser, the kind of person who goes to bed without plugging in his iPhone. Worse, you’re probably carrying more than just a phone. Are you really going to ask a stranger for adapters to charge your iPad and Kindle too?

You are not. What you need is a beefy backup battery. And at this time of year, it should be waterproof, too.

Imagine that one of your photos was printed onto a sheet of card, and that this piece of card was carefully sliced and cut to chop it into a series of concentric rings, or concentric squares, or just a geometric pattern of tiles.

The imagine moving these sections with your finger to make a fragmented version of your picture, only because you’re using the Fragment app instead of real scissors and paper, there are never any gaps between the pieces. Sound like fun right?

Apple has announced that developers must ensure that all app submissions are optimized for iOS 7 by February 1, 2014, according to a new posting on its developer portal.

This includes both new apps and updates to existing ones. In order to optimize apps for the new OS, they must be built with the latest version of Xcode 5 — which includes 64-bit support, and access to features such as backgrounding APIs.

Is nothing sacred in the Samsung vs. Apple clash, we ask you?

It might have recently been ordered to pay Apple $930 million in damages (with a possible side order of Apple legal fees), but Samsung still scored a personal victory this month by hiring away Apple’s senior store designer, Tim Grudgel.

Photos+ is a new iPhone app from Justin Williams aka Second Gear software aka the developer of iOS text editor Elements. Photos+ is in the “one thing well” school of apps: it lets you look at the photos you have on your iPhone, and it does a better job that the built in app. In most ways at least.

MIDI Guitar for GarageBand is a Mac app (remember those?) that turns your guitar into a MIDI controller for, well, for any instrument you like. Thus you can thrash away on your axe like the heavy metal rock god you are, and have the sound emerging from the speakers be a plinking, ringing triangle.

After 22 years at the Wall Street Journal reviewing technology, columnist Walt Mossberg is moving on. In his final column, Mossberg picks the 12 devices that had the most impact over the years.

“I chose these 12 because each changed the course of digital history by influencing the products and services that followed, or by changing the way people lived and worked,” Mossberg writes.

One company completely dominates the list. Guess which one it is (and what devices he chose)?

Beyoncé rocked the internet last weekend when she released her self-titled album in the iTunes Store as a total surprise. In exchange for launch exclusivity, Apple gave her the red carpet treatment in iTunes and iTunes Radio. The move was a smart one, as Beyoncé is the fastest selling album in iTunes history, moving an insane 828,773 units within the first three days of availability.

Target, another big music retailer that prides itself on exclusive deals with artists, isn’t too happy about Beyoncé’s decision to go the iTunes route.

Apple has added the ability to gift iBooks through its iTunes Store. Until now, the iBookstore was the only section of iTunes that did not support gifting. Here’s how it works.

The end of the year is fast approaching, and that means it’s time to start thinking about levelling up for the year ahead. Their are several apps available for the Mac that can help you do that, and Cult of Mac Deals has put together a bundle that takes some of these apps and packages them together at a very attractive price.

With The New Year’s Mac Bundle, you’ll get 9 helpful apps for one incredibly low price of $14.99. That’s 90% off – which works out to just over a dollar per app!

Yesterday the White House announced that President Obama would be meeting with a number of tech executives today about HealthCare.gov, the NSA, and how tech is converging the public and private sectors. Another topic of discussion ended up being Netflix’s popular House of Cards series, and apparently Obama is a fan.

While leaving the panel with the President and 14 other American executives, Tim Cook told a reporter that they had “a great meeting.”

Apple TV owners across the pond have received an early Christmas gift, a dedicated channel for Sky Sports through Now TV. Live sports can be viewed without an existing cable subscription, and Sky Sports is offering day passes that offer unlimited access to six sports channels. Pocket-lint explains:

Apple’s new tear-jerking Christmas commercial Misunderstood has quickly been lauded as one of the company’s best iPhone commercials in years. The syrupy-sweet ad pays homage to the holiday season with a medley of cliché family Christmas scenes while a sullen teenage boy sits in the background nose deep into his iPhone, only to find that the sad teen was really filming a beautiful family movie the entire time.

The ad is heartwarming, maybe even horrible, but also completely unrealistic as the teen shot vertical videos that magically switched to portrait orientation.

Business Insider and others have already pointed out the huge flaw in Apple’s commercial, but Youtuber Andy Nyugen has taken it a step further by making a parody of what Apple’s commercial would look like if it were real-life.

Take a look:

You might not know this, but when you’re on public Wi-Fi – at coffee shops, airports, hotels, or conferences – anybody can see what you’re doing online. If you visit sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon.com, and thousands of others, your privacy may be at risk.

How do you protect yourself? With Cloak. And right now Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $59 – that’s 38% off the regular retail price!

Today the Dropbox-owned Mailbox app was updated with support for iCloud and Yahoo mail accounts. The popular email client for the iPhone was previously only compabile with Gmail, and it stills lacks support for a number of other services, namely Exchange. Mailbox tells us that Exchange “is a huge priority” for the app’s development.

The update also includes background syncing in iOS 7, the options to disable the “help me get to zero” banner and swipe to open drawer gesture, and bug fixes.

Mailbox is a completely redesigned inbox that makes email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash. Scan an entire conversation at once with chat-like organization. Snooze emails until later with the tap of a button — they’ll return to your inbox automatically so you can focus on what’s important now.

You can download Mailbox in the App Store for free.

Source: App Store

The iPhone has already been named Yahoo’s top ranked search in tech for the year, and now Google has released its top 10 searches for 2013. It’s no surprise that the iPhone was part of the list, coming in at third under Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. The poor Samsung Galaxy S4 snagged the number 8 spot.

Here’s the full list of Google’s “global trending searches” for the year: