Although his products now touch every aspect of our modern lives, we all tend to be agnostics when it comes to Jony Ive. Even as he appears on video during Apple’s developers’ conference to speak with soft-spoken intensity about the design of the latest iPhone or iPad, his personality seems inherently unknowable. Yet it is possible to know Jony Ive. He’s at least one person’s friend.

Granted, that friend, Marc Newson, is a design legend in his own right. For over 15 years, he and Ive have laughed together, talked about cars together (a mutual love), and vacationed together. During that time, they have shared countless conversations about the purity of form, material, and process that drives them both. About designs they like, and designs they don’t like.

So when you look at the (RED) Desk, which will be auctioned off on November 2nd by Sotheby’s to raise money for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, it’s important to see something more than just a collaboration between two of the most influential designers on Earth. It is also the physical embodiment of a friendship.

Check out the full story below.

Source: Co.Design

The now 14-year-old app developer we introduced to you last year, Nicholas G, has just released a second app, putting all of us adults to shame yet again.

This year, Nicholas has put together a rather impressive looking tip calculator that makes it super easy to figure out an accurate tip without all that pesky math.

Called Quick Tips!! (yes, the exclamation marks are part of the charm), Nicholas’ latest app uses all the visual style of iOS 7 and it looks to be pretty as well as functional.

Tim Cook and the gang are set to take the stage in eight days to announce the newest lineup of iPads, but if a new set of leaked iPad shells are the real deal, we’ll have already seen all the new iPad colors before Schiller and Jony can wax poetic about how the iPad is unapologetically gold.

A new set of images allegedly showing both a gold iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 rear shell have been leaked by the Chinese site CTech, however it’s questionable whether they’re real, so have your salt shaker ready. If the images are accurate, the iPad will follow the same course as the iPhone 5s with Apple offering both models in silver, space gray, and gold.

Here’s another pic of the puportedly gold iPad shell:

Who’s got a wad of 20s and a burning sensation in his pocket? This guy! But seriously friends… October 22nd, 2013. Go ahead and insert that date into your iOS 7s, because even though they haven’t confirmed it yet, that’s the day Apple will be unveiling two new iPads unto the world. But will we see new MacBooks, Mac Pros, and the other tasty tech we’ve been wishing for? Hit play on our newest CultCast, where we reveal our hopes, dreams, and expectations.

Whatcha waiting for? Have a few laughs and get caught up on 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 baseline roll!

This week Cult of Mac Magazine  gets serious about games with an issue dedicated to one of our favorite pastimes.

We’ve never bought into the idea that video games turn your brain to mush (sorry mom!) and this issue explores the games that are doing good — the growing market for empathy games that strive to make us all better people. (The retro-tastic cover is the handiwork of Craig Grannell, the designing force behind the magazine.)

We also look at games that are engaging enough to convince the non-gamers you know to take up the controller, what to play when you’re sick of the blockbusters and our Games Editor Rob LeFebvre tells you how to get your game on our radar for a review.

The latest issue is available in the App Store. Let the games begin!

When role-playing game heroes die, I suspect Puzzle Dungeon is what their hell looks like. Plodding music, 60 progressively tricky puzzles, and a bare-bones presentation, Puzzle Dungeon gives you a glimpse at the unpleasant side of the 16-bit afterlife.

If you’re familiar with games like Chew Man Fu, The Adventures of Lolo, and all those generic block-pushing programs on old cell phones, you’ll immediately know how to play Puzzle Dungeon.

If there’s one group of people who could seriously do with less wires — or in this case, cables — it’s guitarists. Walking around with two grand worth of Fender in your hands, trying avoiding a snake-pit of cables and simultaneously tapping out Van Halen’s Eruption probably takes some concentration (I wouldn’t know; I’ve never been on stage with anything but an air guitar, which was completely wireless).

IK Multimedia’s new four-pedal iRig BlueBoard pedalboard de-clutters the floor a little, as it’s the first completely wireless pedalboard for iOS and Macs. The board connects to its companion app on an accompanying iDevice (or to a Mac) through a Bluetooth connection.

When you spend thousands of dollars on a new Mac, you don’t want to take it home and put it on anything — you want the desk beneath to look just as good. So, wouldn’t it be awesome if the Mac’s designer, Jony Ive, designed the perfect desk to accompany it.

Well, he has — but you won’t be able to purchase it. Like the special edition Ive-designed Project (RED) Leica unveiled earlier this week, the solid aluminum (RED) Desk is a one-off created by Ive and industrial designer Marc Newson for a charity auction. And it’s likely to fetch a fortune.

The Google TV has pretty much been dead-on-arrival ever since it first launched in 2010. Google’s not about to abandon their TV ambitions, but they’re finally giving up on Google TV. Next up? Android TV.

Although Doctor Who is now a cherished cultural icon, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, many episodes of Doctor Who’s earliest adventures have been lost, thanks to the BBC’s tendency to simply record over the archival tapes. Occasionally, though, “lost” episodes are found, either because someone at home recorded the episodes by pointing a camera at their screens, or because the BBC shipped a copy of the tape to some international affiliate.

That’s how two lost stories from Doctor Who were just recovered. The BBC just discovered a small cache of Second Doctor episodes in Nigeria. And they’re now available on iTunes!