XCOM: Enemy Unknown, inarguably the best turn-based, squad-level strategy game on the Mac, is now available from the Steam store — with some big differences from its Mac Store sibling.

iOS 6 gave us the Compass, which, honestly, I’ve never really used that much.

The new iOS 7 beta, however, has given me some functionality I’m much more likely to need and use. Heck, I even have a third-party app to make sure my handyman projects around the house aren’t crooked.

I’m talking about a level, and there’s a new one built right into iOS 7 beta, within the Compass app on the iPhone. I haven’t found a comparable app on my iPad running iOS 7 beta, but maybe in the future?

Either way, here’s how to find and use the compass and level app.

The Speck HandyShell for iPad and iPad mini is a protective case with an integrated multi-function utility handle that lets you hold it, mount it, stand it, and hang it. It allows you to use your device in new ways in all kinds of situations.

It has a hard plastic back with impact-resistant, “bump-proof” rubber sides that protect the edges of your iPad from dings and drops, and extend around to the front to protect its display. So if your iPad falls flat on its face, the HandyShell will take the brunt of the impact — not your screen.

As you would expect, the HandyShell makes all of your ports, buttons, and cameras easily accessible, and it’s available in a number of colors. But at just under $55, is it a little too expensive?

Have you been looking for unbridled file transfer between any computer and your iOS devices, without the authorization limits imposed by iTunes? Want to be able to do it anywhere and anytime? Now you can…with DiskAid.

DiskAid is iPhone file transfer software for PC and Mac, giving you access to the iOS file system via USB connection or wi-fi. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $10 – a savings of 66% – but only for a limited time.

In the ongoing smartphone culture wars, Samsung spent a reported $5 million engaging the latest song stylings of Jay-Z as an exclusive for Galaxy owners.

Owners of that phone contended for a million copies of the impressively-titled album “Magna Carta Holy Grail”  launched July 4 in a special app, three days before the rest of us can get it in iTunes. Media saw the promotion as a tactical move by Samsung to gain position on the music front over Apple.

The cachet lasted about as long as a cheap sparkler: there are thousands of torrents of the album available.

As one of the guys who decided to spread the work of Beyoncé’s husband up for everyone put it: “I should clarify it was available to the first million (I think…) Samsung Galaxy owners to chime in with an app for the album. My wife got it but I’m not rocking a Samsung :/”

When you’re galavanting about with your MacBook Air or Pro, it’s important to manage you battery power. It just wouldn’t do to show up for an important meeting or interview with a dead battery, let alone not being able to watch a movie on the airplane, now would it?

Knowing which apps are sucking up the most juice is key to this effort, of course, and OS Mavericks beta makes it severely easy to know which ones are the most power-hungry. That way, you can quit the apps that are using up too much battery in order to leave enough power for the important stuff.

Here’s how it works.

JoliDrive is JoliCloud’s new iOS app and it’s pretty good, if a little basic. The general idea is that you use the app to log in to your various web servixes and then use a single app – JoliDrive – to access them.

Apple is expected to launch a new smartwatch called the “iWatch” as early as this fall, and we already know that it could face competition from Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and LG. But there’s another competitor that may want a piece of the pie: Dell.

Apple’s iPhone 5 is “the most hated handset” currently available, receiving the most criticism on social networks, reports British tabloid The Daily Mail. Its biggest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S4, is the most loved — receiving just 11% of the complaints.

Here’s a great idea: It’s the Satechi Bluetooth Wireless Smart Keypad and it combines a number pad for your Mac with an actual old-school calculator. It even matches your Apple Wireless Keyboard.

An Irish parliamentary committee has dismissed the opportunity to grill Apple and Google over their tax affairs in Ireland, despite requests for a change to the way in which it taxes large multinationals that do business in its country.

The move comes weeks after Apple and Google came under scrutiny for the way in which they use tax “loopholes” or “gimmicks” to avoid paying excessive taxes on international sales. It was revealed that Apple used an Irish subsidiary with zero employees to pay less than 0.05% tax on $78 billion over four years.

On-camera flash is usually a terrible idea (with just two – maybe three – exceptions I can think of). It lights up your subject, sure, but it totally kills the mood that made you want to take a photo in the dark in the first place.

But if you’re a fan of shiny, overexposed faces, red eyes and disappearing backgrounds then why not grab an iblazr, the world’s first all-lower-case iPhone flash. Kidding. It is all lower cae, but that’s not really its tagline. It’s real tagline is “is the first universal LED flash for smartphones and tablets.”

Lame.

Another supposed holiday; another super-useful tool from Brett “I just built this” Terpstra. This one is called GrabLinks, and it does just that: Fire the bookmarklet off inside your browser and you can quickly grab a bunch of links and save them out in Markdown. Nerdy? Sure. Useful? Hell yes.

Samsung has produced a new Galaxy S4 commercial for Iceland, and it’s possibly one of its weirdest smartphone adverts yet. It features some really strange dancing from a bunch of unconvincing ninjas, and a less than subtle dig at Apple using real apples.

Recently on Twitter, our deputy editor John “pipe and slippers” Brownlee posted a picture of his Mac keyboard, with wooden tiles stuck to the keycaps. It was utterly hideous, and yet completely in keeping with John’s fetish for anything made of wood. It was the real-world equivalent green felt or rich Corinthian leather.

This all-wood keyboard, on the other hand, is pretty gorgeous. It comes from French company Orée, it’s called the Orée Board and it costs a steep-ish €150 ($193).

See if you can guess what the app External Flash does. Hopefully you guessed “It’s an app that lets you control the LED lamps from up to 16 other iPhones and fire them in sync with your own iPhone’s camera," because then you’d be correct. If you guessed anything else, then you’re totally wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

There’s nothing worse than having a cable that is too short to be very useful. The 3 foot stock iPhone 5 would be a classic example of such a a cable. This Cult of Mac Deals offer gives you the chance to get a cable that will go a long way to solving that problem.

This lightning fast 10 foot USB 2.0 cable will keep your iDevice charged, updated, and ready for use – and without you having to worry about whether it will reach where you’re at. For a limited time, Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $13.99 – plus free global shipping!

If you have dozens of old magazines lying around your house then that might be a sign that you need to go digital. Now you can stop having to store and throw away old subscriptions because now you can have your ultimate newsstand right at your fingertips, whenever you want it – with Next Issue.

Next Issue offers all-you-can-read access to over 90 of today’s most popular magazines on your tablet and now you can test it out with 2 free unlimited months of use – a $30 value – courtesy of this Cult of Mac Deals offer!

Duolingo is the developer behind a smartphone app for Android and iOS that helps users learn new languages for free. It has a great deal of appreciation for its users, so much so that it went out of its way to help one of them create a unique wedding proposal that they’ll never forget.

Apple is on a quest to register the “iWatch” trademark worldwide ahead of its rumored smartwatch launch later this year, with filings already made in Japan, Taiwan, and Mexico. But the Cupertino company will hit a snag in the United States and the United Kingdom, where the iWatch name is already spoken for.

Battery life on the iPhone 5 is pretty good when you compare it to other high-end devices with LTE connectivity, so if you’re having to charge yours more than normal, then you may need a new battery. But don’t worry — battery replacements are relatively cheap, and they’re so easy, you can probably do them yourself.

Teardown specialists iFixit show you how in a new five-minute walkthrough video.

Do you ever stop to think about how many albums your iPhone will hold? Probably not, as you most likely filled your iPhone or iPod up with music from the iTunes Store, or you stream from Spotify or Rdio. And even if you filled up your iTunes with music by ripping actual physical disks, you almost certainly didn’t do it from vinyl records.

I did fill my first 15GB iPod with music from ripped CDs, so I know just how big the stack was that I had to work thorough. But if you head over to ConcertHotels.com and click the little arrow, you’ll be treated to a stack of vinyl big enough to fill a 160GB iPod. That’s 40,000 songs in total.

According to the denizens of the Internet, the Airport Extreme you have sitting in your hallway or – nerd! – in your bedroom might be experiencing dropout. According to Marco “I just sold [x]” Arment of Instapaper fame, this problem might have something to do with the latest 7.6.3 firmware. The good news? Downgrading is stupidly easy.

I wouldn’t tell anyone else this, but I’m going to admit it to you: I spend far too many brain cycles pondering better ways to carry my camera and other essentials. Worse, I have a box full of bags and straps leftover from my efforts. So i’m not sure whether this tutorial for making a DIY harness is a great idea of the beginning of another foolhardy adventure. I suspect it might be both.

Glui is an antidote for those who think that Evernote’s Skitch has gotten a little too fancy. It’s a Mac app that sits in the Menubar and captures screen shots. It then lets you quickly annotate them and upload them to Dropbox, copying the URL to your clipboard along the way.

And that’s about it.