Product managers at Nikon and Canon must be getting pretty worried about their bonuses right now – First of all they’re still being squeezed by cellphone cameras at the low end, and now even their high-end compacts look absurd in the face of Fujifilm’s latest offering, the X-A1. It’s a camera which costs around the same as Nikon’s P and Canon’s G cameras ($600), only it comes with an APS-C sensor and an interchangeable lens.

Apple has started airing its first TV ads for the iPhone 5c following the availability of pre-orders over the weekend. This particular ad, “For the colorful,” features the 5c forming in different colors out of liquid. It could easily be confused with a candy commercial at first, but it turns into a classic Apple ad about halfway through.

The 5c hits shelves this Friday alongside the 5s.

Thanks: Sean

Apple has seeded the OS X v10.9 Developer Preview 8  to developers this afternoon. The 8th Mavericks beta is coming to developers nearly two weeks after the 7th preview was released that came with new wallpapers. Developers can download the new beta build via the Software Update tool in the Mac App Store or directly from the Mac Dev Center.

Now that the pre-order season is done, and purchase time is just around the corner on September 20, Sprint is one of the first carriers out of the gate with a new enticement for potential new customers.

Staring the same day the iPhone 5c will be available, Sprint will give you $100 off any new phone when you switch your current cell phone number over to Sprint. That includes the iPhone 5c and–when available–the iPhone 5s.

Considering that the basic 16 Gb iPhone 5c is set to retail for $99 with a qualifying two-year carrier plan, it looks like you’re going to be able to get one for what amounts to free, if you switch over to Sprint.

Apple’s new 64-bit A7 processor promises to make the iPhone 5s one of the fastest smartphones the world has ever seen, and with its launch day looming a mere four days away, Apple is making sure developers get their 64-bit apps submitted in time for launch.

A new note was posted in the Apple Developer Center this afternoon alerting developers that they can submit 64-bit apps for iOS 7 starting today: 

Mobile start-up Bump just announced that it has been acquired by Google in a blog post on Monday.

The company was founded in 2008, making a name for itself on the hot technology of bumping phones together to share contact data. The app has been downloaded over 100 million times, and continues to get updates. The same team released a fairly popular photo-sharing app called Flock last year, as well.

The acquisition was reported on AllThingsD as netting the company somewhere between $30 and $60 million.

As one of the year’s most anticipated games, Grand Theft Auto V is sure to be one of the biggest time sucks you’ve ever experienced. To keep you plugged into its action adventure open-world game more than ever before, Rockstar has launched a companion iOS app for the console game called “iFruit.”

The companion app allows GTA V players to to create their ultimate vehicle from the Los Santos Customs shop. Players can customize everything from the paint job down to the body armor, place an order, and then find the vehicle waiting in the shop when you boot up your console. You can also use the app to train and play with your canine sidekick Chop. The more you play, pet and feed your virtual Rottweiler, the more useful he becomes playing alongside Franklin once GTA V launches on consoles September 17th.

Here are the full release notes:

Robot Loves Kitty is the husband and wife team that lived in a treehouse to save money while they ran a Kickstarter project for the game that became Legend of Dungeon.

It’s out now on Mac, PC, and Linux, and it’s a brilliant combination of high tech, retro-graphics, and a strong sense of irony, not to mention whimsy. When I chatted with Alix Stolzer (Kitty) at PAX this year, she mentioned that she and Caleb Goble (Robot) liked vastly different types of games, so they decided to make one they could play together.

From those humble beginnings, they’ve succeeded, at least, in making a game that allows up to four players to explore procedurally generated dungeons together, to fight various monsters, explore environments, and try to stay alive. The game works with keyboard and mouse or console-style controllers, with a real-time battle system. Also, there are funny hats! If you take some time to give this one a play; you won’t be disappointed.

We haven’t seen any gold iPad mini 2 cases leak yet, but now that Apple’s announced the gold iPhone 5s, could a golden iPad mini with Retina display and Touch ID be on the way?

Our favorite Apple concept artist, Martin Hajek, has created a new gallery of mockups that showcase a gold iPad mini next to a space gray iPad 5, both of which are also rocking Apple’s fancy new Touch ID sensor. While we doubt Apple will release a gold iPad mini, a gold iPhone sounded crazy just two months ago, so maybe Apple will surprise us again.

Would you be interested in a gold iPad? Take a look at the pics below and tell us your thoughts in the comments:

iOS 7 is coming this Wednesday, September 18, and it’s going to be a fairly simple upgrade. You’ll be able to just update your iOS device without any trouble, most likely over the air or by connecting to iTunes. No fuss, no muss.

However, you do most likely want to make a backup in case things go awry during the update process. Chances are you already have a backup if you use iCloud or iTunes, but here’s how to make a manual backup, just in case.

Thanks to all of Jony’s changes with iOS 7, every app developer in the world is hurrying to finish their iOS 7 overhaul. Twitter is busy at work on their update too, except rather than just making everything flatter with shimmering gradients, Twitter plans to introduced a new feed dedicated to everything about TV, according to AllThingsD.

Twitter’s not just focusing on aesthetics for the iOS 7 redesign, as the company wants to make its mobile apps more appealing for casual users. According to AllThingsD, the new TV feed will become a big part of Twitter’s pitch to connect to new users:

Before Apple is able to officially unveil its free new iTunes Radio feature, popular music-streaming service Rdio has revealed that it has struck a deal with Cumulus Media and plans to bring a free version of its service to the market.

The new deal will give Rdio users access to Cumulus’ 525 radio stations which will strip out localized traffic and weather details as well as be used to create playlists and other programs based on the stations and their syndicated shows, explains the New York Times:

Alright, stop me if you’ve heard this one:

An unseen protagonist, armed only with a flashlight, sets off on an investigation into some spooky woods. With no map, our hero wanders through the forest gathering a bunch of pages for unknown reasons with a shadowy, black-clad figure in pursuit. The tormentor can appear anywhere at will, and if you look at it too long, the game will end, and you will have to start over from the beginning.

If you think that sounds an awful lot like developer Parsec Productions’ instant classic Slender: The Eight Pages, you would be correct. But that’s also the premise of 3 Cubes Research Limited’s less ominously named The Woods, which is available now for iPhone and iPad.

I’m not really sure what else to say; The Woods is Slender with more pages, a less scary antagonist, and worse controls.

Some Apple fans were holding on to hope that Cupertino would unleash new iPads on the world at last week’s keynote, but even though the keynote came and went without so much as a glimpse of a new iPad, we might only have to wait a month until the next Apple event.

According to the French Apple-blog MacGeneration, Apple will host an event on October 15th to present the new iPad. While the site has got some rumors right, it’s also missed the mark on quite a few – including when they claimed new Mac Pros would be launch in Spring 2013 – so don’t put too much hope in this rumor just yet.

The Swiss Army knife is one of the best creations ever. You have so many tools at your disposal with it that it makes a lot of sense to have one handy. Now Cult of Mac Deals is offering you what could be considered a digital Swiss Army knife of sorts in the Sensordrone.

Sporting 11 sensors for your smartphone, the Sensordrone fits right on your key chain and has tons of applications that can be used anytime and anywhere. Whether you want to administer your own breathalyzer, check for gas leaks, or get incredibly local weather information, the Sensordrone has you covered. And you can get the Sensordrone for just $149 during this limited time offer.

I wasn’t sure if this would be a good iOS Tip or OS X Tip, but I figure that since most of the heavy lifting occurs on your Mac, we’d post this as an OS X Tip.

Ever want to record your iPhone screen? Maybe take a video of something you’re doing on your iPad? Well, you can record any portion of your screen with Quicktime Player, which we’ll cover later this week, but the easy way to get a video of what’s going on on your iPad or iPhone is to use an OS X App: Reflector.

What the app does is trick your iOS device into thinking that your Mac is an AirPlay device, like an Apple TV. Once your iPhone or iPad is sending it’s video display to your Mac, Reflector has a built-in recording option.

Here’s how to make it all happen.

Taking their sweet time about it, Sprint will be following the likes of Verizon Edge, AT&T Next and T-Mobile Jump with an annual update plan all of their own. The plan is called One Up, and it will be available on Sprint the same day the iPhone 5S/5C go on sale: September 20th.

Apple fans are dedicated. Every single year, they brave the elements for sometimes weeks at a time, camping out in front of Apple Stores so that they can be first getting their hands on Cupertino’s latest iDevice.

Even by the standards of most Apple launches, though, the guys hanging out in front of Tokyo’s Ginza Apple Store are dedicated. They are braving a frickin’ typhoon to be first in line for the iPhone 5s.

Attention, all potential iPhone modders, casemakers, obsessives and tinkerers. Apple has just posted detailed schematics of its new iPhone 5s and 5c handsets to the Apple Developer Portal.

It’s hard to argue with the awesomeness of Grove’s Wood Print case, a maple shell for your iPhone 5 with one of your own Instagrams printed on the back. Who wouldn’t want that?

iOS 7 is launching on Wednesday September 18th, and with it will come a whole slew of neat (and sometimes eye-searing) features. But what will there be for us poor bloggers and developers who have (maybe) been running the beta for so long now it doesn’t even seem new anymore? The answer is app updates. Lovely updates to some of our favorite apps to make them play nice with the new, clean OS. And the one of these will be Instapaper.

The M7 Motion Coprocessor (MoCoPro?) in the iPhone 5s is something of a mystery beast. It’s function is clear – it is an always-on low-power chip that processes data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass in your iPhone – but its eventual purpose is still a little unclear. So why don’t we do some speculation?

Photogene has long been one of the top photo-editing apps on iOS, beating out Photoshop Touch in so many ways it’s not funny (not funny for Adobe anyway – it’s still pretty funny for me, and I laugh about it every time I use something by Adobe and am forced to wonder if they hired chimps to write their installers).

Anyhow, now Photogene 4 is out, and it’s a big update. To begin with, it’s now universal (previously there were separate apps for iPhone and iPad), and it works with full-res RAW images.

I absolutely love my Magic Trackpad. It gives me all the functionality of my MacBook’s trackpad, only on a huge panel which can be placed to the left or the right of my keyboard. For a while I was even using two of them, but that deviation is now over (side note: if you want a Trackpad and live near Barcelona then hit me up on Twitter or e-mail). But my happiness with Apple’s glass-n-aluminum slab doesn’t stop me coveting the Touch Slab from Orée, possibly the best-named Mac peripheral ever.

What is it? The Touch Slab is a trackpad carved from solid wood.

Is there any end to the awesomeness of Drafts? The write-once-send-anywhere app for iOS has added a great new sharing feature for those using iOS 7, without developer Greg Pierce having to do anything. If you use AirDrop, you can send a chunk of text to anyone else with an AirDrop-capable device, even if they don’t have Drafts.