Oh, woe are we!

Telltale’s follow up to hit adventure game The Walking Dead has been delayed for Mac, due to “an unforeseen issue with the Mac version of Episode 1,” whatever that means. The Wolf Among Us is an episode-based adaptation of Vetigo’s Fable, a graphic novel set in the real world with mythical fairy tale creatures like Snow White, Jack Frost, Pinocchio, and–of course–the Big Bad Wolf.

The game publisher updated its original blog post announcement of the October 11 release to say that it “is working on an update right now and expect to have the Mac build live on Steam and the Telltale website within the next few days.”

Everybody is outraged — OUTRAGED! — that Google will soon start using their names and faces in advertising.

The pundits are screaming bloody murder over the move, suggesting that Google is now as bad as Facebook. The more constructive critics are scrambling to give instructions for opting out.

But all this gnashing of teeth and ripping of hair over Google’s new social ad policy is misguided, in my opinion. I’ll tell you why Google’s new “shared endorsements” is probably a good thing, but also how it could turn out to suck.

But first, let me tell you what this is really all about and why “shared endorsements” is probably a good thing.

For years, home automation has been the exclusive province of the very rich or extremely technical.

Companies you’ve probably never heard of, such as AMX, Control4, Crestron, Elan, HomeLogic, Colorado vNet, Vantage and Zenpanion have provided the platforms and many of the fundamental products, while integrators took care of the installation and service for many people.

Or, very dedicated and technical DIY enthusiasts have cobbled together their own ingenious solutions.

Recently, the major phone carriers have gotten into the act, and rumors suggest Google, Apple, Microsoft and other consumer electronics companies are working on home automation.

The reason everybody’s jumping is that home automation is in the process of making a transition from “hardly anybody” to “pretty much everybody.” So everybody wants a piece of what will definitely be a massive new industry.

In five years, the majority of homes in the United States are likely to have significant home automation happening in their homes — voice-controlled thermostats, Bluetooth-unlocking door locks, lights on self-learning timers, automated pet feeders, doorbells that ring your phone rather than a bell in the house and much more.

The reason? Kickstarter, mostly.

Who’s got a wad of 20s and a burning sensation in his pocket? This guy! But seriously friends… October 22nd, 2013. Go ahead and insert that date into your iOS 7s, because even though they haven’t confirmed it yet, that’s the day Apple will be unveiling two new iPads unto the world. But will we see new MacBooks, Mac Pros, and the other tasty tech we’ve been wishing for? Hit play on our newest CultCast, where we reveal our hopes, dreams, and expectations.

Whatcha waiting for? 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 and let baseline roll!

This week Cult of Mac Magazine  gets serious about games with an issue dedicated to one of our favorite pastimes.

We’ve never bought into the idea that video games turn your brain to mush (sorry mom!) and this issue explores the games that are doing good — the growing market for empathy games that strive to make us all better people. (The retro-tastic cover is the handiwork of Craig Grannell, the designing force behind the magazine.)

We also look at games that are engaging enough to convince the non-gamers you know to take up the controller, what to play when you’re sick of the blockbusters and our Games Editor Rob LeFebvre tells you how to get your game on our radar for a review.

The latest issue is available in the App Store. Let the games begin!

When role-playing game heroes die, I suspect Puzzle Dungeon is what their hell looks like. Plodding music, 60 progressively tricky puzzles, and a bare-bones presentation, Puzzle Dungeon gives you a glimpse at the unpleasant side of the 16-bit afterlife.

If you’re familiar with games like Chew Man Fu, The Adventures of Lolo, and all those generic block-pushing programs on old cell phones, you’ll immediately know how to play Puzzle Dungeon.

Instagram recently received a minor update with bug fixes, and you may not have noticed that a small setting is no longer present in the iPhone app. You used to be able to disable autoplay for videos, but now the only video options are for sound and preloading over Wi-Fi-only.

The change may not seem that significant at first, but when you consider that Instagram is about to introduce video ads, it makes more sense.

Instagram told Engadget that “it disabled the option due to “confusion” from users regarding what clips will play with sound,” but it just so happens that the decision is also a nice bonus for potential advertisers. Who wants to sell video ads to people when they could just disable them with a quick toggle?

Source: Engadget

Today AT&T announced that it will be completely doing away with traditional data plans for new customers on October 25th. The carrier has been transitioning to its pooled, “Mobile Share” plan options since it introduced them last summer.

New and existing customers have still been able to choose from a Mobile Share plan or a traditional data package, but that luxury will be gone for new customers in two weeks.

Apple’s new, multi-billion dollar campus has been in the works since Steve Jobs proposed the project to the city of Cupertino back in the summer of 2011. Construction on the 175-acre site, dubbed “Apple Campus 2.0,” is projected to begin by 2015-2016. The plan for the project will get the final vote of approval from the Cupertino City Council on October 15th.

We’ve seen mockups of what the UFO-like campus will look like already, but now Apple’s incredibly detailed model replica of the campus has been published online.

The adventure-game genre has two salient qualities: puzzles and story. I’ve played titles with great puzzles and crappy stories, and I’ve played ones with amazing stories and awful, boring puzzles. I’ve even played some in which both the puzzles and plots were great, and some where they were both bad. There may be some kind of permutation formula at work here, but that’s not important.

Brightstone Mysteries: Paranormal Hotel‘s story and puzzles are neither great nor terrible; it is completely average across the board. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing if you need an adventure fix, but it probably shouldn’t be your first choice especially since something like seven Monkey Island games are currently available in the App Store.

Regardless, Paranormal Hotel serves its purpose and does what it needs to.

We posted all about NASA engineer Mark Roper’s gruesome, iPhone-augmented Halloween shirts last year. Since then, Mark has quit his job at NASA to focus on Halloween. The result is more designs and, even better, both an improved t-shirt and a horribly gruesome effect worthy of being designed by someone who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover.

Robots are pretty cool, but have you ever wanted to create your own iPhone controlled cyborg? Backyard Brains is banking that a lot of kids are interested in cyborg technology and neuroscience (ethical dilemmas be damned), so after three years of R&D they’ve come up with the RoboRoach – a small electronic surgery kit that lets you turn a real-life cockroach, into an iPhone-controlled cyborg for a few minutes.

The kit comes with a backpack that contains a battery and receiver you superglue to the cockroach after sanding down a patch of shell.  You have to jab a groundwire into the cockroaches thorax, and then after that you carefully trim the antenna so you can stick some small electrodes onto both of them and receive signals from your iPhone. Don’t worry, the iPhone app and the cockroaches come free with the $99 kit, so you don’t have to go hunting for some behind your supermarket’s dumpster.

If you’re looking for an ultra-simple dock, or just for a way to stop your iPhone skittering across your desk every time you snap it’s cable, then you might like the Rolio from Blue Lounge. Not only is it one of the most versatile iPhone and iPad charging accessories around, it’s also one of the most affordable.

If there’s one group of people who could seriously do with less wires — or in this case, cables — it’s guitarists. Walking around with two grand worth of Fender in your hands, trying avoiding a snake-pit of cables and simultaneously tapping out Van Halen’s Eruption probably takes some concentration (I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been on stage with anything but an air guitar, which was completely wireless).

IK Multimedia’s new four-pedal iRig BlueBoard pedalboard de-clutters the floor a little, as it’s the first completely wireless pedalboard for iOS and Macs. The board connects to its companion app on an accompanying iDevice (or to a Mac) through a Bluetooth connection.

When you spend thousands of dollars on a new Mac, you don’t want to take it home and put it on anything — you want the desk beneath to look just as good. So, wouldn’t it be awesome if the Mac’s designer, Jony Ive, designed the perfect desk to accompany it.

Well, he has — but you won’t be able to purchase it. Like the special edition Ive-designed Project (RED) Leica unveiled earlier this week, the solid aluminum (RED) Desk is a one-off created by Ive and industrial designer Marc Newson for a charity auction. And it’s likely to fetch a fortune.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles almost all of Apple’s most popular devices, has admitted that it has forced student interns to work illegal shift patterns.

Thousands of students from the Xi’an Institute of Technology were made to work overtime and night shifts at the plant in violation of company policies. And if they refused to do so, they were in danger of losing their degree certificate.

Thanks to the iPhone, it seems there’s little hope left for BlackBerry these days. Apple has stolen most of its market share, and now it’s stealing its employees, too. The Cupertino company has reportedly been contacting BlackBerry staff via LinkedIn and inviting them to recruitment events in Cambridge, Ontario.

Your swanky new iPhone 5s may be significantly faster than its predecessors, but it’s twice as likely to crash when running third-party apps as the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5c. New research from Crittercism, a company that monitors mobile app performance, has found that apps crash around 2% on the iPhone 5s, but under 1% on its siblings.

The Google TV has pretty much been dead-on-arrival ever since it first launched in 2010. Google’s not about to abandon their TV ambitions, but they’re finally giving up on Google TV. Next up? Android TV.

Although Doctor Who is now a cherished cultural icon, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, many episodes of Doctor Who’s earliest adventures have been lost, thanks to the BBC’s tendency to simply record over the archival tapes. Occasionally, though, “lost” episodes are found, either because someone at home recorded the episodes by pointing a camera at their screens, or because the BBC shipped a copy of the tape to some international affiliate.

That’s how two lost stories from Doctor Who were just recovered. The BBC just discovered a small cache of Second Doctor episodes in Nigeria. And they’re now available on iTunes!

What exactly is the iWatch going to be? A tiny smartphone screen on your wrist that shows you notifications? The Pebble watch shows that such an approach can be popular, but it’s not going to set the world on fire the way we expect from Apple.

So what will it be? One analyst has an interesting theory: it’ll be a home automation gateway that controls all the smart objects in your house.

Way back in 2009, I reviewed the Lightscoop, a miraculous mirror which reflects your camera’s built-in flash up an off the ceiling, effectively turning the whole top surface of the room into one giant soft light source. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the fact that it was bulky and tricky to carry with you.

Now there are two new Lightscoops, both of which are a little more portable,

Given Samsung’s habit of shamelessly copying everything Apple does, I wasn’t at all surprised to see this morning’s report that the South Korean company had just spent $650 million on a fingerprint scanning firm called FingerPrint Cards. In fact, I simply rolled my eyes when I saw the news and thought, “there’s a surprise.”

But it appears that the whole thing was completely fabricated. The press release that went out announcing the move was false, and both Samsung and FingerPrint Cards have denied the acquisition.

Crypstagram is a neat service for encrypting messages inside your photos. And as an added bonus it also ruins those photos along the way by adding glitches to them. You probably won’t want to actually use it for good (or evil) though, as the images you use are posted right there on the site in a gorgeous glitchy gallery.

Tick is a brand-new ToDo app (yup, another one) that offers one big feature not found in the built-in Reminder app: Color. Actually, that;s not quite true; Tick offers bright, 1980s-style neon color, unlike the tastefully bright hues built into to iOS 7.