Steve Wozniak has played a lot of roles over the last three decades – engineer, Apple co-founder, Segway polo champion, and university professor – but Steve is about to jump into an all new realm: Realty TV show host.

The Apple co-founder is reportedly tag-teaming with Mythbusters’ co-host Kari Byron for a new reality TV show about all-things tech called The Woz.

Americans are four days away showing how grateful they are for the biggest shopping day of the year, and to draw in more upgrades than ever, Apple is giving away $50 iTunes gift cards with the purchase of every iPhone and iPad.

Continuing its huge (RED) promotion announced yesterday, Apple will dole out (RED) iTunes gift cards in varying amounts to shoppers who pick something up on Black Friday. The deals aren’t much more impressive than last year’s meager offerings, but for the first time ever, Apple is including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the deal.

You can also get an iTunes gift card for buying a Mac, iPod, Apple TV, or Beats product. Here’s how much iTunes cash you’ll get for each:

NFC payments might be easy, but up until now it’s fairly safe to say that they’ve never been cool in the conventional sense. Hoping to change that perspective is a new TV spot by Chase bank, which shows Apple Pay being used by super-cool indie band Bleachers.

The ad shows the indie band travelling around Los Angeles, buying items with their iPhones. In a sense, it’s a bit similar to Eddy Cue’s recent Apple Pay demo, except instead of being a middle-aged man buying Frozen toys, it’s a rockin’ pop band buying custom guitars, cool haircuts and nachos.

Check out the ad after the jump.

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of my favorite dystopian sci-fi novels, and according to Hollywood magazine Deadline, it’s about to be brought to the screen courtesy of the Jason Bourne movies’ director Paul Greengrass.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, Nineteen Eighty-Four tells the story of a surveillance heavy future (well, technically the past at this point) in which an everyman named Winston Smith rebels against an all-knowing government in an age of omnipresent surveillance and perpetual war.

One of the first arguments that springs up in the many debates of Mac versus PC is cost. Traditionally, Apple computers come with premium price tags, which are almost always well-deserved. But there are a handful of Apple machines that were priced well above what you would normally expect to pay, even for Cupertino’s latest computer.

In today’s video, we take a look at the five most expensive Macs of all time — and tell you how much they would cost today with their price tags adjusted for inflation. You might think the new Retina 5K iMac is outrageously expensive, but compared to some of Apple’s older machines, it’s not that pricey.

Tim Cook recently gave a rare public interview at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJD Live global technology conference. Discussing everything from the iPhone’s status as Apple’s cash cow and the battle over Apple Pay, to the reason the iPod classic was discontinued, it was another winning performance from Apple’s CEO.

While Cult of Mac ran down the main takeaways from the conference at the time, the Wall Street Journal has now uploaded the video of Cook’s lengthy interview, so readers can see for themselves.

Check it out after the jump:

It’s been a great year for Apple in China, and to top it off the China Brand Research Center just released its China Brand Power Index for the year — placing Apple in the no 1 position over long-time rival Samsung.

While Samsung Electronics took home brand value prizes in both the TV and monitor categories, Apple roundly beat it in the all-important mobile category, which Samsung has occupied for the previous two years.

By now you’ve probably seen the HP Sprout computer, an oddly-named, yet undeniably original desktop computer/tablet/projector combination that allows users to scan physical items and then manipulate them on screen using their fingers.

One day after the $1,899 system got the tech world talking, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has published a continuation patent application from Apple — originally granted in 2011 — describing a very similar-sounding 3D imaging and display system.

Christian Bale might seem like the perfect actor to play Steve Jobs. Like the Apple founder, Bale is a perfectionist who cares so deeply about his craft that he can come across like a raging lunatic.

Bale, who will star in Danny Boyle’s upcoming biopic about Jobs, might be the best hope yet for a riveting onscreen representation of Apple’s late leader. But for many Apple fans, a 1999 TV movie remains the definitive depiction of Jobs.

That movie is Pirates of Silicon Valley, which tells the story of Apple versus Microsoft during a 20-year stretch starting in the late-1970s. With Pirates of Silicon Valley turning 15 this year, Cult of Mac spoke with its director, Martyn Burke, about Noah Wyle (who plays Jobs in the film), threatened lawsuits, and the miraculous way Jobs spun a potentially disastrous bit of PR into good press.

As was the case with “Scarfgate” following Apple’s September media event, the special guest appearances by developers can often often be the unintentionally comic highlights of Apple keynotes.

That’s exactly what happened at last Thursday’s otherwise fairly predictable iPad event, when two French developers accidentally titled their montage video app presentation “It’s road trip” instead of the intended “Utah road trip.”

Yes, it’s a minor glitch, that does at least show that all demos take place live, but it was amusing nonetheless — particularly the disgusted face exhibited by the typist, who appears to be inwardly kicking himself over screwing up the presentation.

Apple, however, seems to not have been quite so amused by the glitch, since someone at Cupertino has sprinkled some postproduction magic on the Replay demo, meaning that when you watch the keynote on Apple’s website or the Apple TV app, it now reads “Utah road trip” as was intended.