Let’s be clear: I love tower defense games. I’ve been a fan since the first time I played Desktop Tower Defense on Kongregate, I fell hard for Gem Keeper and Fieldrunners, and I carry a torch for Kingdom Rush.

These are tough waters to compete in, especially with a free-to-play business model that needs to encourage players to spend real money to help fund the game itself. There’s a delicate balance in tower defense games, between too easy and too difficult.

Does Super Hippo Studios Limited’s Pirate Legends TD bring enough to the table, then, to stand next to these others?

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

There are numerous productivity apps out there – no matter what platform you’re using (except perhaps Windows, but that’s another story). Many of them are simple to do list applications. These apps don’t dive in too deep into what David Allen calls the “Horizons of Focus” but tend to focus on the immediate future. That’s all well and good for the things you need (or want) to do now, but it’s not so good for those things down the line that you need (or, again, want) to accomplish. And when you’re a student going back to school you need to be able to look right in front of you and further down the road – and do so in an efficient and effective manner.

That’s where an app like Todoist shines. And right now as part of Cult of Mac Deals’ Back To School Week, you can get 1 year of Todoist Premium for only $13.99.

Apple is reportedly looking to skirt the cable companies and strike up deals with HBO, ESPN, Disney, and Viacom to offer their content on a new pay TV service. Rather than distributing content in channels, Apple’s strategy would emphasize apps over cable TV according to a report from QZ.

Sony, Google, and Intel are also trying to score similar deals and might even get their pay TV services up before Apple. However, Apple is also looking to release a TV set as well, in order to control the entire TV-watching experience.

Documents by Readdle — the free iOS app that replaces a dedicated document viewer, PDF reader, download manager, music player, and more — has today received another new update that adds even more nifty features.

In addition to photo library integration, you’ll also find drag and drop file organization, and the ability to “star” your most important or most frequently used files.

I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded an app that comes with an instruction manual, but it seems BlackBerry felt the need to create one for its upcoming BBM releases for Android and iOS. We’re expecting the apps themselves to arrive any day now, but the user guides have been leaked and they are already available for reading online.

Ever end up with a lot of Finder windows floating around your Mac screen? In previous versions of Mac OS X, the choice was to close them all with a keyboard shortcut, Option-Command-W, which will end all your Finder suffering in one short tap.

In Mavericks beta, that still works. Yet Apple has also added another way to deal with multiple Finder windows: merging them. Here’s how.

Three years ago, Tim Cook very memorably said that although Apple was selling $40 billion worth of products every year (that number has since more than quadrupled), all of Apple’s products could fit on a dining room table. That amazing quote was slightly disingenuous — many of Apple’s products are virtual, and take up no physical space at all — but it still made a point: Apple chooses what it does so carefully that everything has its place. What Cupertino doesn’t do is just as important as what it does.

It’s all interesting food for thought, to be sure, but what if we took Tim Cook’s table metaphor and broke it down? For every foot of table, how much money does Apple make on each product?

MyFlavors for the iPad is a clever recipe app which auto-rips recipes from the web and separates out the various components, tidily parsing out and filing directions, ingredients, photos, the description and the cook time. The app is free, but requires a $5 in-app purchase to actually do more than try it out.

Doctors in Germany have just used an iPad to operate on some guy’s liver, not by smashing the screen and using the jagged shards as a scalpel, but by using Apple’s tablet as a second-screen for an augmented reality app. Will wonders never cease? Is there anything the iPad can’t do?

Google clearly has high hopes for Google Glass, and it’s confident that in the future, we’ll all be wearing one. In fact, you may be able to pick one up in your local Best Buy when you pop in for that new Justin Bieber CD. Rumor has it Google is renting 6,000 square feet of floor space inside every Best Buy store next year just to sell its new wearable tech.

It’s almost instinctive these days for me to place my iPhone or iPad facing in in whatever bag or pocket I use, to protect its screen from bumps. But the new Portal series of bags from Osprey might just make it worth breaking the habit: The bags have a pocket at the front with a flap that opens to let you use your iPad without removing it from the bag.

If you’re having problems accessing the iCloud this morning, it’s not just you: Apple’s official Systems Status page indicates that multiple iCloud users are having problems accessing Apple’s services.

If you’re anything like me, no matter how much evidence has mounted that Apple is indeed planning a gold iPhone 5S, you’ve had a hard time believing it. Gold in a gadget usually turns it into gaudy, undignified bling, more appropriate for a Saudi oil baron or diamond-toothed rapper than, say, the pocket of Jony Ive.

It looks like I needn’t have worried. Apple may be planning on making a gold iPhone 5S, but as you can see from the image above (you can see it in the middle), it’s a very tasteful affair… more champagne, or even platinum, than anything else. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if I were going to buy a new iPhone 5S, I might even opt for that color.

There are more images below the fold. What do you think?

Ever tried to snap a self portrait with your iPhone? And I mean a proper self-timer self portrait, not an arm-out-the-side-of-the-frame selfie. It’s almost impossible. First, you have to deal with the lack of a self timer on the iPhone. And second, you have to find somewhere to balance it.

What you need is Joby’s new MPod mini.

Every time I use my iPhone 5, I’m less and less convinced that it even needs a dock. It’s far easier to use the phone when it’s laying flat on my desk than when it’s propped up at a steep angle. The only place I’d like one is on my nightstand, and as I don’t have a nightstand that option is out. However, many people want docks, and of these many of them keep their iPhones in fat, ugly protective cases. The Sarvi Dock is for them.

In camera years[1], Canon’s G-Series is now drawing a pension and should really be scratching out a will. And when a product line is so successful and so mature, it gets hard to improve on it. The G15 had a big sensor, a fast ƒ1.8 lens and a handy front control dial, as well as all the rugged capability that made the G-Series last this long.

The new G16 adds very little, but it get one hugely handy update: Wi-Fi.

Great news for automatic fanatics: Twitter is back on If This Then That (IFTTT). The Twitter channel was pulled from the service some months back thanks to authorization issues, but now it’s back, and ready to trigger and be triggered.

One of the more intriguing digital media platforms is Narr8, a Moscow-based startup that offers a platform with which to publish or enjoy multimedia creations crafted with a hodgepodge of animation, text, images and sound; think motion comics with added audio punch.

The app has been available for a while on the iPad, but has just now been given Universal App treatment, making it available on the iPhone too — though how the app’s experience translates onto the iPhone’s smaller screen is an interesting question.

Apple has released the sixth beta build of OS X Mavericks to developers this afternoon. The update comes a full two weeks after the release of the fifth beta, which brought iBooks to the Mac along with a new version of iPhoto.

Developers can download the new beta build by checking for software updates in the Mac App Store, or directly from the Mac Dev Center. OS X Mavericks is scheduled to release later this fall.

This is #BackToSchool week at Cult of Mac Deals. There will be several new deals launching each day. Check in here each day for new deals for #BackToSchool. There will be a ton of apps, gear, gadgets, games, and more to buy just in time for the start of school, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for deals that have school — and savings — in mind.

One of the things I do when I’m writing is play music in hte background. I just can’t work in silence.

Lately I’ve been using a cool online service called focus@will that plays a variety of types of music that can serve to enhance productivity and focus. But I don’t use my Mac’s internal speakers when I use the service. Instead, I use external speakers. That way I can get much better sound out of the experience — and Cult of Mac Deals has a deal on the Soundfreaq Sound Step Recharge that will help you have a great-sounding experience during work and play.

Twelve South, maker of several fine iOS device and Mac accessories, has released an updated version of the SurfacePad for the modern MacBook. The SurfacePad is one of Twelve South’s earliest products, and it has now been optimized for Apple’s 2013 laptops.

Google’s Chrome for iOS is a heck of a browser on iOS, and a great alternative to using Safari, except for the fact that it’s not quite as integrated into the experience as Safari is.

Because of that, if you use Chrome and want to clear out your browser data to keep others from checking out what you’ve been doing on the web, you won’t be able to do so in the official Settings app like you can with Safari data.

Here’s how to clear your cache files, browsing history, and any cookies from Chrome in iOS.

Yahoo released an update today for its recently redesigned Yahoo Sports app for iOS that includes the addition of MMA coverage along with improving some of the UI and bugs.

The app also comes with improved scoring summaries and an expanded view for football games, as well as WNBA info and improved external article rendering. The update is available now in the App Store for free.

Here are the release notes:

Originally released in 1997 by Electronic Arts (EA), Dungeon Keeper was a PC strategy game made by Bullfrog Productions under Peter Molyneux (Fable, Curiosity, Godus).

Dungeon Keeper tasks players with building and defending their own evil lair while protecting it from “heroes” who seem bent on stealing treasure and killing all the nice monsters. It’s a nice flip to the traditional theme of defending against monsters, and it has a huge following.

Kotaku today reports that the game is returning, but not to the PC. Instead, Dungeon Keeper is headed back tot he digital realm on mobile devices, on iOS and Android.

The problem with many armbands that I’ve used over the years is twofold. One, if the armband is too small, it only holds an iPhone without a case and nothing else. Too big and it’s unwieldy to use. Two, unless it’s cinched incredibly tight on a bicep, the weight of the phone tends to bounce while running, making the whole concept less than useful.

The Armpocket i30 armband is a fantastic little iPhone 5 holder that solves both of these problems, with a large enough pocket to hold an iPhone 5 and its case, as well as some extra items like a small amount of cash, a couple of keys, and an ID or credit card. The i30 is perfect for walking, running, hiking, and pretty much any physical activity that requires easy storage of and access to an iPhone 5, when pockets aren’t an option.