When our own Rob LeFevre reviewed the Earskins, he was surprised to find them to be an “essential accessory” for his EarPods. I decided to give them a go too. And guess what? They really are essential: I actually have a spare set, because now I can’t imagine using my EarPods without them.

I have a confession to make: I was probably the only human being on the planet not playing the original Angry Birds when it came out all the way back in 2009. As much as I love both birds and giant slingshots, I never really saw the appeal. I played for about five minutes, shot some birds into some things, and then shrugged and gave up.

Apparently, the game’s developer, Rovio Entertainment, saw this happen and did not approve, so it spent the next few years trying to come up with a way to get holdouts like me to buy in to its anti-pig propaganda machine. And so we received Angry Birds Star Wars, a dangerous cocktail of addictive, deceptively simple, physics-driven gameplay and just straight-up, unabashed nerditude. It was in many ways the perfect mobile game: accessible to everyone and irresistible to giant geeks like myself. But still, I resisted.

Now Angry Birds Star Wars II is out, however, I’m totally in.

You’ve got to admire a game that matches its own intent so perfectly that you suddenly can’t visualize how else the genre should be done. That’s certainly the case here with Zynga’s Solstice Arena. It’s currently my favorite MOBA game on any platform, which is great, since it plays well on both iOS and the Mac. I’m reviewing the Mac version here, but assume that–aside from touch controls–the game plays exactly the same on iOS. This is a good thing.

As a genre, the action real-time strategy (ARTS), or multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), has a history reaching back to modified RTS game maps for Starcraft and Warcraft. Recently, League of Legends from Riot Games has taken on the mantle as the most well-known game of its type, moving into the lucrative world of eSports, as well.

Zynga may be more known for Farmville and other Facebook games, but the San Francisco games publisher has delivered a much more midcore game than I expected. Developer A Bit Lucky has created a streamlined, compelling take on the ARTS genre, and while the game may not surpass more traditional entries in the field, Solstice Arena still engages players of all levels without sacrificing too much of the strategic depth of the game type.

Apple made the iPhone 5s available for in-store pickup on Monday, allowing customers to order their new device online, then collect it from their local Apple retail store later the same day. But just a day later, the option has already been pulled — probably due to the incredible demand Apple seen for the device since it launched last Friday.

With all the excitement over the recent release of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7, it’s easy to forget that the Cupertino-based company has another OS in the works, OS X Mavericks Beta. Currently at version 8 of the Developer Preview, or beta, OS X Mavericks continues to quietly update in the background, with more refinements over time.

One of these improvements is the ability to delete tags from the sidebar. As you may recall, we showed you how to add and modify tags to the list in the Finder sidebar, as well as how to drag and drop files to tag them.

It turns out, though, that now you can actually delete tags as well, completing the tag circle of life. Here’s how.

Apple has today announced a new iMac update which sees the latest fourth-generation Intel quad-core Haswell processors, new graphics, next-generation Wi-Fi, and faster PCIe flash storage options added to the popular all-in-one desktop.

As you guys probably know, I’m a sucker for wood on my iGadgets. My MacBook keyboard is covered in wood. My iPhone has wood paneling. Even my iPad is swatched from power button to Lightning port in a wooden smart cover and case.

Given the borderline hysteria I feel for love, it should come as no surprise that I want some wood in my iPhone dock… and Grove is about to make it happen for me.

If you were a MobileMe customer enticed to join the iCloud by Apple’s offer of 20GB of free storage, get ready to pony up for more: Apple is emailing people telling them to prepare to start paying for iCloud storage come September 20th.

Less than a week after Apple released iOS 7 to the world, the majority of iPhone and iPad owners around the world are using the operating system, and if the past is anything to go by, that adoption rate won’t slacken until only a tiny sub-fraction of users are left boasting out-of-date versions of Apple’s mobile operating system.

It’s ironic, then, that a week after iOS 7 was released, the iOS 6.1.4 jailbreak is almost done.

Apple’s iMessage service is pretty terrific, but it has one big limitation, and that is that it’s only available on Macs and iOS devices. At least officially. But there is an unofficial app that brings iMessage to your Android-powered smartphone. It works just as advertised, but we strongly advise you not to use it.

Oh, ignoble irony, how bitter your sting. A new bug in iOS 7 that is striking some iWork users is crashing their devices with the fabled Blue Screen of Death.

BBM’s cross-platform launch failed miserably this weekend. The app made its way to the iPhone in a small few countries, but the rollout was halted before it could reach the United States — or Google Play.

BlackBerry’s excuse for the catastrophic failure was that a leaked BBM APK for Android was causing some server troubles, and now the Canadian company has told fans that it will “take some time” to fix the problem, and that we should not expect to see the app this week.

There’s one feature in Adobe’s new Photoshop Elements 12 which demonstrates exactly the market that the app is aimed at: Pet Eye Correction. That’s right: if you’re the kind of person who takes flash photos of their pets with a shitty compact camera, and yet is willing to spend around $100 on an application which will help organize and edit your photos, then Elements 12 is for you.

Maybe I’m a big dummy, but I always thought that the whole point of “read later” apps was that you could shunt long-form articles off the desktop and onto a device that was better suited for reading for extended periods. After all, on the desktop a combination of bookmarks and Safari’s Reader view takes care of things.

But what do I know? Clearly there’s a place for reader apps on the Mac, and the $10 Words looks to be a very nice example.

EA Sports has brought the controversial free-to-play game model to the world’s biggest soccer franchise in FIFA 14 for iOS, which is now available to download from the App Store — three days before the big console release.

The title boasts a whole heap of improvements, including a new and intuitive control system, online multiplayer, a game of the week feature, and the hugely popular FIFA Ultimate Team mode.

The Plicopá is a cardboard iPad sleeve which unfolds and refolds into a sturdy tablet stand, ready to support your iPad for poking, or just to prop it up while you tap out words on an external keyboard. It looks to be pretty much ideal for travelers.

Marshall’s beautiful Stanmore brings some retro styling to the Bluetooth speaker game, looking a lot like one of the company’s classic combo amps or – if you want to really rock out – like the front of a speaker from a stack, with the head-unit controls concealed on the top.

Here at Cult of Mac, we love Mailbox, the third-party Gmail client for iOS. But since it was optimized for iOS 7, it has been plagued by a hugely frustrating bug that causes email accounts to be deleted at random. Fortunately, the app’s latest update — which is available from the App Store now — finally fixes the problem.

But at what cost?

If you were one of the many Apple TV users who didn’t have a pleasant experience updating to the big 6.0 update a few days ago, it’s safe to re-download and try again. After there were widespread reports of the software bricking devices, Apple pulled the update from its servers.

That happened earlier today, and now version 6.0 is available again with a new build number and hopefully some bug fixes. You can find it in software update. Once it’s installed, your Apple TV will be able to install updates on its own.

Apple TV 6.0 is one of the biggest updates to the set-top box ever. It adds iTunes Radio, Airplay from iCloud, shared Photo Streams, Podcast syncing, and more.

Breaking Bad fans have been upset with Apple because of a mixup regarding Season Passes in the iTunes Store. If you’re a fan of the show you know that the creators decided to slip the last season into two parts, effectively creating two separate seasons of 8 episodes each: “Season 5” and “The Final Season.”

Purchasers of the iTunes Season Pass for Season 5 expected to get all 16 episodes, not just the first half. A lawsuit was filed against Apple recently claiming that the company owed Breaking Bad subscribers a $22.99 Season Pass for the last 8 episodes instead of making them pay twice.

Today Apple started issuing Season Pass subscribers promo codes for “The Final Season” of Breaking Bad on the house to the tune of $22.99.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and while Apple has tested this assumption in court against Samsung and other mobile device manufacturers, Android users and developers might have a different opinion.

Because, as you can see from the screenshot above, a whole bunch of apps have appeared in the Google Play store with the express purpose of making your Android handset look just like…well, an iPhone running iOS 7.

Of course, the argument could be made that only Android is open enough to actually allow its users to change the look and feel of their devices to a competing system’s visual system, but the result is still clear: Android developers, at least, think that you should be able to have a mobile phone that looks like the latest iOS devices on the screen as well as in the design of the handset itself.

There are lock screen apps for Android that mimic the parallax of the new iOS 7, apps that call themselves iOS 7 wallpaper, when they really aren’t, and apps that are just plain honest, titled iOS 7 Fake iPhone.

Hit some of those links above to try these out on your own, because we all know it’d be cool to have an Android phone that looks like an iPhone running iOS 7.

Right?

Discuss.

Upset with how expensive Adobe Cretive Cloud is? Us too! That’s why we at Cult of Mac Deals brought you a solution. With Flux 4  you can easily build professional-looking website creation for only $49.99 (a savings of 64%). The interface is  more design-oriented than “code-oriented”, which allows for a much easier learning curve than other apps in this space.

With the release of Adobe Creative Cloud, having Dreamweaver for $50/month is just too expensive! Flux 4 is the perfect replacement for design focused web design – agile, simple, and powerful. Plus, no coding is required! This deal ends tonight at midnight, so grab it while you can!

Apple sold a lot of new iPhones over the weekend—9 million to be exact. While we don’t know the breakdown sales for the 5c and 5s, estimates suggest that the ratio of 5s sales to 5c sales was around 3 to 1.

Launch supply of the 5s was significantly constrained due to what was likely shortages of new parts. It’s nearly impossible to get a 5s in most stores around the country. Many carriers and third-party retailers only got a few units per location for launch weekend.

Apple’s online store also sold out of all initial 5s stock over the weekend, and shipping estimates for all configurations have been pushed back to an ambiguous October timeframe. To help cope with demand, Apple is now offering an in-store pickup option for helping you find a 5s at a local Apple Store.

The Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s has already been hacked—well, kind of. Over the weekend, a hacking team called the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) published a way to bypass Touch ID by replicating a lifted fingerprint.

Apple calls Touch ID “the most advanced hardware or software we’ve put in any device,” and the company believes the technology is the perfect replacement for a passcode. CCC disagrees.

Now that everyone has had a solid day or three to play with their shiny new iPhones, the Internet is ready with its customary wave of iPhone destruction videos.

We’ve already seen a number of durability tests, but RatedRR takes its testing to the extreme with its annual iPhone X vs .50 Cal Rifle test. The slo-mo shot of the bullet splitting the length of the gold iPhone 5s is pretty spectacular, if not the perfect celebration of American Consumerism, but why don’t they mix it up with like a bazooka, or ion cannon, or wheelchair-bomb once in a while?