I don’t need to tell the readers of a blog called Cult of Mac that Steve Jobs could be brilliant. Nor, if you’ve read much about Jobs’ life, do you likely need to be informed that he could sometimes be a little unhinged — whether that meant berating co-workers, or bursting into tears because the design for a forthcoming product didn’t totally live up to his expectations.

A good case can, in fact, be made for the fact that these two qualities went hand-in-hand: that treating the creation of a personal computer or a smartphone as if life depended on it was what made, and still makes, Apple products great.

Taking this idea into consideration, a new plan by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications seeks to find the country’s next great technology mogul who is just a bit “hen” — the Japanese word for odd, weird, or crazy.

If you’ve previously felt left out by the lack of Touch ID on non-iPhone 5s devices, have no fear: according to well-resepected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo the fingerprint sensor will be featured as a standard in all new Apple devices– including the iPhone 6, iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3.

A number of Mac and iOS users from across Australia have had their Macs, iPhones and iPads remotely locked by hackers — and money demanded if they want to be able to continue using the devices.

Affected users have taken to Apple’s support forum, along with social media, to discuss the issue.

In this digital age, the days of physical media are coming to an end.

With The MacX DVD Video Converter Pro Pack, you can rip and convert movies easily. Now you can enjoy those films anywhere and everywhere — and for only $19.99 courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

For many of us, our iPhones are already the most-used remote controls in our entire house. But come June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple’s ready to make that official. A new report says the company is planning a platform that would turn its iOS devices, including the iPhone, into universal remotes for the internet of things inside your house. Think of it as Made for iHome.

Scientific calculator app Archimedes has received its first significant update in quite a while.

Adding the expected iOS 7-compatible design tweaks, the app also adds a number of useful improvements. The first of these relates to Archimedes’ plotting function. Curves now feature fluid navigation and crisp rendering, and are adjusted in real-time as their associated formulas are edited.

Ever since Apple first unveiled the iPad, we’ve been hearing rumors about Apple switching to ARM-based Macs. Now, the rumor is back again, with a French website claiming that Apple is actively developing 64-bit, quad-core Mac variants with ARM-based chips. But we’re just as skeptical as we’ve ever been.

This week: two awesome Apple artifacts hit the auction block; Oompa-loompas leak pics of a super-sized iPad; forget headphones, the Beats acquisition could be all about video; Woz sets the FCC straight on net neutrality; iPad is where the Gov-er-na-tuh stores his shirtless selfies; a popular travel app you should definitely download, like, right now; and, is Apple building out their own content delivery network?

Heartily guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!

Our thanks to Smile Software for supporting this episode! If you haven’t tried TextExpander from Smile software, you’re missing out on one of the most useful apps available for the Mac. TextExpander saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text and pictures, and it’s an application Erfon uses every single day. Try it out yourself for free at smilesoftware.com/cultcast.

Click on for the show notes.

I started writing stories this year – short fiction and a couple of novellas so far – and I’ve found I need to make a lot of notes. The iPhone is pretty great for this, as you’d expect, but not always: Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to tap away on a cellphone, and sometimes you might want to make little drawings, or maybe you just find it easier and faster to pull out a paper notebook or index card.

The biggest advantage of iPhone notes is that they are sync-able and searchable. Paper is neither. But using a combo of apps, old-school paper hacks and an easy-to-maintain “workflow”, I came up with a simple note-taking system that keeps paper and pixels together, both equally searchable, sync-able and usable.

Apple’s video chat feature FaceTime has bridged the miles for families, sparked a ton of romances and probably shattered a few marriages.

This may be the first time it’s ever shipwrecked someone, though.

John Berg was sailing off the coast of Kona, Hawaii when a FaceTime login request started messing with the navigation app on his iPad. Although sailing apps on smartphones and tablets so popular they’re credited with having sunk the market for Garmin products,  imprecise navigation has been a concern.