Xiaomi just rode Apple’s coattails to the biggest startup valuation in world, but it appears the Chinese smartphone maker is ready to take its copying to new heights by getting into the laptop game with, you guessed it, a MacBook Air knockoff.

This year has been an amazing one at Cult of Mac Deals, where we have offered dozens of training opportunities that will make you a better developer.

Start 2015 off right by learning a new skill or upgrading the skills you already have. Grab one of these powerful eLearning programs now while you still can.

Most of my work day is spent at a 27-inch iMac, circa 2009. It’s admittedly getting a bit long in the tooth, but buffed up with as much RAM as it can take and a homemade Fusion Drive, it still gets the job done.

One complaint I have about the iMac, though, is that the screen is actually a little too low by default. Resting on my desk, the center of the iMac’s screen doesn’t exactly line up with my line of sight. Over an entire day, that can result in neck pain and bad posture.

And so, over the past few years, I’ve experimented with a lot of stands to lift the iMac up a couple inches to more naturally line up with my line-of-sight. Of all the ones I have ever tried, though, the Walnut Monitor Stand by Portland’s Grovemade is my favorite. After using it for the last few months, I can comfortably say it’s a perfect fusion of design and functionality.

Apple’s partnership with Disney goes back way further than the latter company’s recent decision to accept Apple Pay at Disney World. At the time of his death in 2011, Steve Jobs was the single biggest shareholder of Disney stock as a result of it acquiring his company, Pixar, in 2006.

Jobs got on particularly well with Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called Jobs in 2005 and asked if he could repair the damage that had been done to the Apple/Disney relationship under former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

That relationship is examined in a new Fortune profile of Iger, which describes his six-year friendship with Jobs as the “relationship that has most shaped his thinking.”

Europe’s largest collective of hackers, the Chaos Computer Club, claims to have come up with a way of reproducing fingerprints using only a handful of photos (no pun intended) showing your fingers.

Speaking at the 31st annual Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, hacker Jan Krissler, a.k.a. “Starbug,” said he had managed to copy the thumbprint of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

This was apparently done using the commercially available software VeriFinger, using a close-up picture of von der Leyen’s thumb, taken from a news conference in October, as well as some other photos showing different angles of the fingerprint.

Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle’s troubled Steve Jobs movie has had difficulty holding onto its cast members, but there’s a way you can help change that: by putting yourself forward for a role.

Beau Bonneau Casting is looking for San Francisco-based extras to appear in the movie when it starts shooting in late January 2015.

Here’s everything you’ll need to do to stand a chance at making the movie, just in case you ever wanted to be in the audience for one of Apple’s product launches (and, frankly, who wouldn’t?).

It was a great Christmas for iOS, according to new figures released by IBM, which monitored mobile traffic for online shopping over the holidays.

What it discovered was that a massive 57.1 percent of online shopping via a mobile device was carried out using an iPhone or iPad: up 8.3 percent compared to the previous year.

While no direct explanations were drawn, this has to be due to the enormous success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which some analysts have predicted was set to sell a massive 71.5 million units over the festive season.

After previously snubbing Sony’s offer to distrubute the film in the wake of the Sony hacks, Apple is now streaming The Interview on iTunes.

We all make compromises daily when it comes to online security. Everybody wants to be safe and secure when making purchases online, but practically none of us do everything necessary to keep our data secure.

“People, myself included, are basically lazy,” web developer Joe Tortuga told Cult of Mac, “and ease of use is inversely related to security. If it’s too difficult, then people just won’t do it.”

With all the recent hacks into private as well as corporate data — like the credit card grab from Home Depot and the hack into Sony’s files, there’s no better time to learn some of the things we all can do to protect ourselves. We spoke to some online security experts to get their advice.

Whether you head to a theater or stream it in the comfort of your home, you really ought to watch The Interview this weekend.

The action-comedy, about two journalists on a mission to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, has become the unlikely must-see movie of the Christmas break — and it’s your patriotic duty to see it, like it or not.