As per Japanese tradition, Apple has started handing out its Fukubukuro (a.k.a. “Lucky Bags”) to customers at its brick-and-mortar retail stores in Japan — giving some fortunate buyers massive discounts on the latest Apple products and accessories.

The bags are part of a special New Year offer, and are available in only limited quantities, with customers not knowing which they’re going to get until they’ve stumped up their ¥36,000 (around $300).

Check out the bag’s contents (as well as how you can get your hands on one, even if you don’t live in Japan!) after the jump:

Apple won’t be at the mammoth International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, but once again, it’s setting the agenda from afar.

While Korean electronics giants like Samsung will dominate the show floor, Apple is laying the future path for the entire tech industry.

In the coming year, the tech industry’s big battlegrounds will be your body, your home and your car. At CES, thousands of companies will showing off new and prototype products to do battle in these arenas. But Apple is the company to beat. With the upcoming Apple Watch, in addition to HealthKit, HomeKit and CarPlay, Apple is setting the agenda for the entire tech industry, and it’s not even there.

We love GIFs here at Cult of Mac and 2014 did not disappoint in providing us with twelve months worth of hypnotic images that deserve to be watched, over and over and over.

We already highlighted the most GIF-able moments of 2014, but in our final GIF roundup of the year we’re busting out the best images of the year that came out of Cult of Mac’s GIF making factory (also known as Buster’s underpowered MacBook Air). We GIF’d everything from Tim Cook’s ice bucket challenge, to the hilarious Bendgate controversy that was the Internet’s joke du jour for weeks.

Here are the best Cult of Mac GIFs of 2014:

Christmas may be over here in the United States, but the season’s just starting in Japan. Apple has just announced that it will kick off its annual “Lucky Bag” celebration in its Japanese retail stores starting January 2.

A couple months ago, we wrote about the Continuity Activation Tool, an app that hacks Continuity into older Macs that can’t support Handoff, Instant Hotspot, and AirDrop by default.

The only problem? It was rough: you needed to physically break open your Mac and replace it’s wireless and Bluetooth card. Dongles just wouldn’t work. But guess what? Two months later, and things are very, very different.

For as long as there have been home computers, users have been looking for ways to increase their storage capacity. The first harddrives that entered the market in the 1980’s were difficult to install, had small capacity limits, and were remarkably expensive, even by today’s standards.

By contrast, today you can easily increase the capacity of your MacBook Air 13” or MacBook Pro Retina 15” by up to a huge 128GB for a paltry $30 with the HyperDrive MacBook Storage Expander, 25% off at Cult of Mac Deals for a limited time.

Great design doesn’t finish when you go home if you’re a member of Apple’s Industrial Design team.

San Francisco’s SFGate has published new pictures showing the home of long-time Apple industrial designer Peter Russell-Clarke, one of the inner sanctum of designers who work with Jony Ive.

Russell-Clarke is named on multiple Apple design patents — including ones for the iMac, iPod nano, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. With that kind of résumé, a house that is anything less than a stunner would be a missed opportunity.

Fortunately, Peter Russell-Clarke doesn’t disappoint.

With Black Friday just a few days away, Apple has just debuted two new television ads for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: one focused on how great the iPhone is at gaming, and the other showing off iOS 8’s impressive new Continuity features.

You might think college students are tricky to shop for, but in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. Since they’re constantly swamped with homework and simultaneously managing a busy social life, all they want is stuff that makes their lives easier and more fun.

If you’re stressing about what to get the student in your life this holiday season, never fear. We’ve collected some great gift ideas, handpicked by college students for college students:

Apple may build smoke detectors into future Macs and iOS devices, according to a patent application published Thursday.

As users move toward the smart home, courtesy of services like Apple’s HomeKit, the idea is that Macs, iPhones and iPads could intelligently monitor for signs of a fire and trigger various mechanisms accordingly.

This could mean sending users a text or email alerting them of the danger, calling 911 for emergency assistance, or even activating fire suppression equipment.