Two guys named Mike met up on the TouchArcade forums a few years back and bonded over their love of retro platform games with a hook. A literal hook, to be specific.

Mike Meade and Mike Gaughen competed with each other to see who was the best Hook Champ player, moving on to challenge each other over Super QuickHook. When those speed runs came to an end, the two Mikes decided to make their own hooking endless runner, and Mikey Shorts, an App Store Best of 2012, was born.

On Thursday, August 8, the long-awaited sequel is set to release in the App Store. Mikey Hooks aims to be everything Mikey Shorts was and more, with a host of new ideas and features to keep us all jumping and hooking our way to joy.

Remember MobileMe? When Apple transitioned to iCloud, MobileMe users with paid plans were coaxed over with 20GB of complimentary storage. Apple had originally planned to take the free gigabytes away on September 30th, 2012, but the deadline got pushed back another year.

In an email to affected customers today, Apple reminds everyone that the free storage promotion comes to an actual end this year on September 30th.

“When it expires, your iCloud storage will be automatically adjusted to the free 5 GB plan,” explains Apple. “If you exceed your storage plan on September 30, 2013, iCloud Backup, Documents in the Cloud, and iCloud Mail will temporarily stop working.”

If you need more storage than 5GB, you can upgrade your iCloud plan now.

Source: Apple

Apple has been without a head of retail for nearly a year. Since John Browett was hired and quickly fired last year, Tim Cook has been in charge of the company’s retail operations. Apple has made it clear that it’s on the hunt for a new executive to fill the role, but there hasn’t been any candidates to fit the bill.

While Apple does occasionally make high-profile hires from other companies, promotions often happen from the inside. Tim Cook himself is an example. He was Chief Operations Officer before Steve Jobs died and made him CEO.

As Apple continues to seek a new retail leader, don’t expect the position to be filled by someone currently on Apple’s roster. But that doesn’t necessarily rule out former employees.

Released last month, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is the followup to the critically-acclaimed Kingdom Rush, one of my personal favorites in the Tower Defense genre, what with its cute little hand-drawn characters, wacky sense of humor, and some of the most finely-tuned tower defense levels I’ve ever played.

Kindgom Rush: Frontiers, then, just got a marine-flavored update today with six new nautical-themed creeps to defend against, two new heroes to deploy when things get rough, and some extra maps and achievements to keep you entertained far beyond the already stellar gameplay of the original release.

With compelling new features and a surprising array of customization options, the long-awaited Moto X is putting an interesting new face on Android. All the details on Motorola’s first flagship phone since the company was purchased by Google have finally been revealed.

The Moto X, which goes on sale later this month, runs Jelly Bean out of the box and features a 4.7-inch, hi-res display. The 16GB model will be priced at $199 with a two-year carrier contract, and the 32GB model will cost $299. We knew customization would be a big part of the phone before it was announced at today’s big launch event in New York City, but Motorola plans to offer a whopping 504 different color combinations.

One of my favorite new features of the Podcasts app in iOS, on iPhone or iPad, is the ability to stream episodes directly, rather than have to download them. It’s made me much more independent and willing to try out new podcasts; I simply don’t have to subscribe to ones that don’t catch my fancy, then delete and move all the downloaded files.

To the uninitiated, though, the difference between streaming and downloading is a tricky one. Here’s how it all works, and how to either download or stream podcast episodes as you decide which is best for you.

Video games are often praised right out of the gate due to their amazing graphical fidelity and smooth animation. A less visible but equally important feature of any game, especially in the realm of first-person shooters, is the control scheme.

DeNA / Mobage’s The Drowning, out today as a universal iOS app, has seemingly nailed both of these things in a game that’s taking the iOS gaming world by storm. And perhaps shotgun.

Apple has bought a company which specializes in low-energy chips that are ideally suited for devices like fitness trackers. The rumor mill is saying that Apple is working on an iWatch to release by the end of 2014, and this small acquisition is likely another way to bring in more expertise for the project.

Been waiting around for a killer deal before jumping all over a new MacBook Pro with Retina display purchase? For the next three days Best Buy is giving away a free Apple TV to customers who buy one of two 15-inch MacBook Pro models that are $200 below MSRP.

The developer behind incredibly successful free to play iOS game, Puzzles & Dragons, is back with a new free to play title called Freak Tower.

Launching the game for the first time allows prospective tower builders to walk through a tutorial that gives a decent overview of the game. The idea here is to build a tower, one floor up at a time, and fight off various monsters that climb said tower to steal the food that’s dubiously placed on the roof.

Since the dawn of time, Verizon has dominated customer satisfaction rankings thanks to its network reliability and customer service. Sadly, the king has been overthrown as AT&T topped J.D. Power’s latest rankings for wireless care satisfaction for the first time ever.

Id Software’s seminal first-person shooter franchise, Doom, came to the iOS platform back in 2009, with Doom Classic. It debuted as a $6.99 game, and we were all willing to pay for admission to a game that stole our hearts (and our free time) as young gamers.

About a year later, Doom II RPG showed up on the App Store at $3.99. It’s the sequel to 2005’s Doom RPG, a turn-based, more strategic take on the Doom universe.

Both titles are a part of gaming history, and they’re both available for $0.99 on the app store today. How long will they stay at this low price? Who knows? Not us.

Rovio’s point and click puzzler, Tiny Thief, has just dropped in price from $2.99 to $0.99. That’s not a bad discount, and it’s happening right now for we don’t know how long.

It just might be time to jump on this one, then, as Tiny Thief is a great game.

I’ve got plenty of headphones lying around the house — and I mean a lot.

I’ve got some in-ear style ones, earbud style ones (which generally came from a variety of iDevices), and a couple of pairs — “over ear” headphones — that cover my ears completely. The thing about headphones is that each type is suited for certain activities better than others, which means that having several pairs available isn’t a bad thing at all…especially if you’re into being productive like me and want to have as little friction as possible going from task to task (or, in this case, from audio-related task to audio-related task).

The in-ear and earbud style headphones are my “daily drivers”. They’re the ones I use for everyday activity, mainly because they take up very little space in any sort of carrying bag I’ve got and they just seem so…disposable. But I’ll use the earbuds more often for exercising (running, for example) than the in-ear ones because they are less likely to fall out while I’m being active. My earbuds and in-ear headphones can be found in various spots throughout the house, that way they can be grabbed quickly – no matter what I plan to use them for.

Netflix has begun to officially roll out user profiles today, meaning you can now share an account with your family and friends without all their horrible movie choices clogging your Instant Queue. 

It’s not uncommon that we see accessories for new Apple devices before they’ve even been announced — we covered the first cases for the iPhone 5C earlier this week. But they usually come from no-name manufacturers in China who are scrambling to get their products out there before anyone else, even if it means building them from rumored specifications.

It is uncommon that we see premature releases from big brands, however. But Spigen SGP has already made its first iPhone 5C cases and screen protectors available to order on Amazon.

The fifth-generation iPad is expected to adopt a whole new form factor, much like that of the iPad mini’s, only bigger. And proof of that comes with this leaked rear panel that has surfaced in China. Although the new model will have the same 9.7-inch Retina display as the existing iPad, this panel proves it will be significantly thinner, and narrower, with thinner bezels down the sides of its display.

Bad Piggies, the super popular puzzle game from Rovio, has gone free for the first time since it hit the App Store last September. It’s thought to be thanks to the App Store’s App of the Week promotion, so you have seven days to download the game before its price goes back up.

Reader Bruce C asks,

I just read your article Mastering Evernote on Your Mac. I began using Evernote about a month ago and am now using it exclusively for notes and writing (journal, poetry, etc.). I like the Notebook view but the program opens in the Notes view. Is there a way to set it so the program always opens in Notebook view?

Well, Bruce, there is sort of a way to make sure it opens in whatever view you like, though it’s not quite a set-it-and-forget-it kind of solution. Here’s what to do.

It’s happened to everyone. You’re typing on your Mac, and you suddenly get a phone call on your iPhone. But you only have two hands. On a deadline, you grab your iPhone, and try to talk to whomever is calling by clenching your phone against your shoulder with your chin, but it suddenly slips, and slides down your tucked shirt and into your underpants. And now, here you are, screaming at your crotch to call you back while shaking an iPhone down your pants leg. How embarrassing.

What, that hasn’t happened to you? How strange. Must just be me. Either way, though, wouldn’t it be cool if you could just route incoming iPhone calls to your Mac? Now you can, thanks to Dialogue.

UPDATE: There are some screenshots of BBM for Android at the bottom of this post.

By now you’re probably already aware that BlackBerry Messenger is coming to Android and iOS this summer, but BlackBerry has been pretty quiet about its release since it was announced. We don’t know exactly when the app will arrive — though we do know it’ll be by the end of September.

But the Canadian company has now begun making the BBM beta for other platforms available via the BlackBerry Beta Zone.

There was a time when everyone complained that Apple wasn’t putting USB 3 ports in Macs. Then Apple not only put USB 3.0 in all of their Macs, they introduced Thunderbolt — an incredible new hardware interface that can sustain lightning-fast speeds of up to 10 Gbit per second across four devices simultaneously.

Once Thunderbolt came out, a lot of us forgot about USB 3, and let the USB 3 ports we’d once clamored for get crusty. Thunderbolt was the new hotness. It looks like the group behind the USB 3.0 spec isn’t going to let that stand, though: They’re supercharging USB 3.0 by 400%.

Today’s how-to will show you how to install the command-line picture-manipulation tool ImageMagick, and how to build an Automator system service using shell scripting. The Service will take any number of pictures and make one long photo that contains them all. It’s as if you laid them out in a row on a table, only without a table, and with a computer.

Amazingly, it’s all pretty easy.

Readdle produces some of the best productivity apps money can buy for iOS devices, so it’s no surprise that it’s still going strong as it celebrates its sixth anniversary today. And in honor of this special occasion, the company has slashed up to 70% off all of its paid apps for a limited time.

It has also added a super cool timeline to its website that highlights some of the most important milestones and innovations from over the past six years.

Who better to star in the world’s most famous endless runner than the world’s fastest runner? That’s Imangi Studios’ latest stroke of genius: they’re now offering Olympic world record runner Usain Bolt, that stroke of greased lightning himself, as a playable character in Temple Run 2.