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PORTLAND, Oregon — The glowing light from the beer signs in the window reflects off Bear’s face. He is standing guard tonight at one of Portland’s favorite hot spots, and the line stretches down the street.

A motley-looking cast of characters wait patiently for their chance to get past security. But they are not here to see a punk or metal show, or even for a hot DJ. They are in line to rid their pockets of quarters playing Ms. Pac-Man and other vintage video games at Portland’s Ground Kontrol.

With 60-plus video games and almost 30 pinball machines in operation — all at the price they were circa 1985 — it’s no wonder the arcade is packed with gaming nerds.

Mike Choi, a talented, experienced comic book artist, was drooling.

We were talking on the phone about Midnight Rises, a new digital comic app that explains the rich sci-fi backdrop of Midnight Star, an upcoming first-person shooter for mobile devices from Industrial Toys.

Choi had just had some teeth pulled, and was still kind of loopy when we got to chat with him and two other Industrial Toys execs, President Tim Harris and CEO Alex Seropian (you may know him as one of the co-founders of Bungie Software) about their first iOS app, a re-visioning of what visual storytelling can do.

Most digital comics are just a reformatting of traditional print comics to fit on a touchscreen. Midnight Rises goes further, using the tricks of video games to tell a comic-book style story.

“We hate motion comics,” said Choi. “This was way more work than just turning the canvas on its side.”

Coming off a record-breaking financial quarter — largely thanks to the astonishing success of the iPhone 6 — it’s worth asking who Apple owes its present success to.

While everyone is quick to mention the usual suspects (Tim Cook and Jony Ive being two of the most prominent), a name you don’t hear bandied about so much is Jeff Williams. He’s Apple’s operations whiz, the VP whose job it is to make sure products get manufactured, shipped and delivered on time, and with the highest possible standards.

Ever wonder how Apple was able to go from shipping 10 million iPhones in the whole of 2008 to 74 million in the past quarter alone, without missing a beat? That would be Jeff Williams, the guy Fortune once called “Tim Cook’s Tim Cook.”

Here’s why he deserves your respect — and the $24.5 million he took home last year.

Although the iMac generated a whole lot of buzz for Apple upon Steve Jobs’ return in the late 1990s, it was the debut of the iPod in October 2001 that truly dispatched Apple on its path to astronomical levels of success: a path it hasn’t strayed from in the near decade-and-a-half since then.

Which is why it’s kind of sad to realize that on Apple’s most recent quarterly filing, the “little MP3 player that could” has been unceremoniously shuffled (get it?) into the “Other Products” category, along with such “hobby” project as Apple TV.

To be fair, Apple had warned everyone this would happen back in October 2014, but seeing the iPod no longer mentioned with Apple’s flagship products is a reminder of how the once mighty have fallen — and how much Apple’s core business has changed since the millennium.

Alas, poor iPod! We knew you well!

This week, Luke details all the ways those original iPad haters were utterly wrong on the fifth anniversary of Apple’s category-busting tablet, Luke has a sneak peek at the stunning mural for a new Apple retail store in Chongqing, China, Evan takes us into the bizarre world of the latest Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell game, Buster slams through the seven biggest reveals in Apple’s record-smashing quarterly earning’s call, and Rob writes up five super easy tips to master iPhone, with a huge assist from video auteur, Stephen Smith.

Be sure to catch all of these stories and many more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, available for free right now.

As China continues its march to become one of Apple’s most important markets, the country’s press have been given a special advance preview of the company’s forthcoming second Chongqing Apple Store, set to open at 10am local time this Saturday, January 31.

Not dissimilar to the concept behind Apple’s Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York, the new Chongqing Apple Store features a stunning glass structure emblazoned with the Apple logo, leading to an underground shopping area. In doing so, the store recycles the design Apple first created for its Pudong retail store in Shanghai.

Check out some some other beautiful inside images after the jump.

It’s been six months since Apple unveiled iTunes 12, the latest version of its multimedia mega-app. Updates since then have been few and far between, but today Apple released the first big one: iTunes 12.1, which introduced a swank new media control widget for Notification Center.

One of the first projects Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer oversaw as CEO was the Yahoo Weather app. The app was so well received that it even ended up receiving a coveted Apple Design Award in 2013.

Apple also redesigned its stock Weather app to look just like it in iOS 7.

It turns out that it wasn’t a coincidence the two apps looked so similar. Jony Ive was “tormented” with jealously of Yahoo Weather’s design.

Tourists are invading Phoenix like locusts this weekend thanks to the Waste Management Open and a little football game called the Super Bowl. And while all the snowbirds are running around the valley watching golfers, snapping pics of gridiron superstars and taking in the unbelievable Arizona weather, Uber has a secret plan to lure fans into its black sedans.

Starting today, Uber is partnering with Mophie to deliver free JuicePacks to riders across the Phoenix valley, and they might just throw in an NFL superstar to go with it.

This afternoon I tested out the Mophie giveaway and wasn’t surprised how quickly an Uber SUV pulled up to my apartment. But when my driver opened up the passenger door to reveal Arizona Cardinals’ running back Andre Ellington, chilling like this is just what he does in the off season, I nearly lost my cool.

Everyone at Apple should be patting themselves on the back after a record-shattering Q1 2015 financial quarter, in which the company raked in $74.6 billion in revenue and an impressive $18 billion in net profits.

But business unit was conspicuous in its absence from Apple’s celebratory earnings call and press release: iTunes.

Now that Apple has filed its 10-Q quarterly report with securities regulators, we now know why: Outside of the App Store’s continued success, iTunes was one of the few areas of Apple business that declined over the last three months. How badly? Read on to find out.

Every gamer over a certain age has a fondness for the 8- and 16-bit titles they grew up with, so it’s no surprise developers born in the 1980s are now creating nostalgia-infused iOS games harking back to the glory days of the Genesis and S.N.E.S. But which of these should you be playing? Fortunately, Cult of Mac can be your guide.

Pop in another quarter, click the button below, and find out what you need to download to truly be down with the kids thirty-somethings.

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a weird game. And I’m not just saying that because it’s about two members of a street gang going to hell to rescue their boss before he or she is forced to marry Satan’s daughter. Because that’s super-weird, don’t get me wrong.

Other than that, Gat is an expansion to 2013’s Saints Row IV that doesn’t require you to own the main game but doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t played it. It has a six- to eight-hour story with an additional dozen or so hours of open-world gameplay. Whether you’re new to the series or not, you’re in for its special brand of relentless fun.

The iPhone has gotten considerably better over the years, but which iPhone is the loudest?

iClarified ran the numbers in a recent video, in which a decibel meter was placed beneath the speaker of every Apple handset so far while they played sound at maximum volume.

Recently I wondered here on Cult of Mac how much of the forthcoming Steve Jobs biopic, penned by The Social Network‘s Aaron Sorkin, was going to take place in flashback.

For those who haven’t been keeping track, until now everything we’d heard suggested that the movie would be divided into three acts, with each one taking place backstage at a major Jobs product unveiling. The first part will take place before the original Macintosh launch, the second will deal with NeXT Computer, and the third will be Jobs’ introduction of the iMac (not the iPod, as previously suggested) upon Jobs’ return to Apple.

While that all sounds well and good, recently we’ve heard about scenes for the movie taking place at Jobs’ childhood home (modified to look as it would have in 1976) and a cafeteria at U.C. Berkeley, circa 1983 — neither one fitting with the entirely backstage narrative we’d been sold on.

Apparently these suspicions were correct, as a new report suggests that the movie will also contain flashbacks to several other points in Jobs’ life. Find out what they are after the jump:

Apple closed its earnings call this afternoon after announcing an unprecedented 74.5 million iPhone sales to go along with $74.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in profits. It broke the record for the most money made by a corporation in history.

While breaking down the Q1 2015 numbers, Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri also gave us some juicy details about what’s in store for 2015 by hinting at new products in the pipeline, as well as subtly dropping the Apple Watch’s release date.

We’ve combed through the numbers and the conference call and found seven huge new revelations every Apple fan needs to know:

During today’s historic Apple earnings call, Tim Cook dropped a subtle bomb on Apple fans by revealing that the Apple Watch is slated to launch in April.

“I’m using it every day and I love it and I can’t live without it,” Cook said.

While he didn’t give a specific release date for the wearable, it’s the first time Apple’s narrowed down the launch beyond “early 2015.” Cook said Apple considers “early” to be sometime within the first four months of the year, so the Apple Watch is right on target.

The numbers are finally in for Apple’s Q1 2015 financial quarter, and just as predicted, Apple blew away its own projections with a record-breaking $74.6 billion in revenue, leading to $18 billion in net profits. Both profit and revenue topped Apple’s previous records set in Q1 2014.

Apple’s record-breaking quarter was aided in large part by unprecedented demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Total iPhone sales hit an astounding 74.5 million, while only 65 million was expected. The iPad experienced decent holiday sales, with 21.4 million sold, and Mac sales didn’t disappoint either. With 5.5 million sold, it’s no wonder Tim Cook called the quarter “simply phenomenal.”

Despite the better-than-expected performance, AAPL shares were down 3.51 percent to $109.53 per share by close of market today. Take a look at the impressive numbers in Apple’s announcement below:

Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri are getting ready to announce Apple’s biggest earnings ever to investors this afternoon, and we’ll be on hand to liveblog all the action.

The results are expected to be historic, thanks to unprecedented demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in not only the US, but also China. Wall Street expects Apple to blow past its projected revenue of $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion and hit somewhere closer to an all-time high of $68 billion.

Analysts expect iPhone 6 sales to have topped more than 66 million, but Apple expert Ben Bajarin is predicting any number lower than 70 million would be a result of supply chain limitations, not demand. Mac sales are also expected to be strong, while the iPad remains the only wild card.

The call begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, but the liveblog action starts now. Keep this tab open and come back throughout the day for coverage of Apple’s biggest quarter ever.

Well, there goes Alfred.

That’s the first thought I had when I saw the new Spotlight in OS X Yosemite. I feared Apple had basically made my favorite little app launcher obsolete (we nerds call it “sherlocked”).

I was wrong.

It’s six months later, and Alfred is doing just fine, thanks largely to a vibrant community built around its power features, or workflows. Spotlight may be able to quickly launch an app from anywhere, but Alfred can tell the weather, eject attached hard drives, and control your Nest thermostat.

And now, after five years on the Mac, Alfred is making the leap to iOS with a new companion app called Alfred Remote. Released today, it’s not going to be useful for most people, but serious Alfred users will love it. If anything, it’s evidence that you can still build a great app and community around core features offered by Apple.

Five years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. A giant screen with one button, the iPad represented possibly the purest distillation of Jobs’ tech dreams. Yet at the time it was met with derision. “I got about 800 messages in the last 24 hours,” Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “Most of them are complaining…. It knocks you back a bit.”

Half a decade and multiple iterations on, the iPad is an established part of Apple’s ecosystem. While it’s had its ups and downs, nobody’s flooding Apple’s inbox with iPad-related hate mail anymore.

So what were people complaining about? We hopped in our time machine to take a look at the original criticisms — and what, if anything, Apple’s done about them in the years since.

What is it with Apple and the gaming-related patents as of late?

Just weeks after the publishing of an Apple patent showing a concealed gaming joystick capable of being hidden in future iPhones, today the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office has revealed another Apple invention related to a snap-on gaming controller for iOS devices.

As with the joystick patent, the idea here is to allow gamers to fully capitalize on the present golden age of iOS gaming, without having to block parts of the screen using their fingers for multitouch controls.

Five years ago today, on January 27 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco — giving the world its first glimpse of the so-called “Jesus tablet.”

Although not Apple’s first venture into the tablet market (that would be 1993’s Newton MessagePad 100), the iPad was the first tablet Apple had released while Jobs was running the show. And, boy, was it great!

When looking at the iPad, at first the temptation was to think of it as a giant iPhone. That’s not the case, however. In reality, Apple began work on its tablet before its now-iconic smartphone. For Jobs, the idea went back to 2002 and a conversation he had with a boastful Microsoft engineer, who bragged about a stylus-based tablet computer. A patent application from Apple followed in March 2004, with Jobs and Jony Ive as two of the inventors named.

Things have come a long way since then, but it’s worth re-watching Jobs’ original iPad introduction — just for a reminder of how much Apple’s revolutionary device has meant in the half-decade since.

Check out the video after the jump:

There’s nothing more frustrating than a beautiful iPhone that has zero GB of storage left. Especially when you see that a lot of room is actually taken up by a mysterious “other” section that just seems to grow bigger over time.

In today’s handy video, I’m going to show you a few quick methods to clear your phone of unnecessary files, giving you more room for favorite albums, pictures and apps.

Apple is set to announce record-breaking earnings tomorrow for its 2014 holiday quarter. Apple projected making $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion in revenue, but Wall Street’s consensus is that the company will blow past its own guidance and report revenue closer to $68 billion.

That’s about $20 billion more than Google’s last three quarters of revenue combined.

Growth will likely be fueled by strong iPhone sales, although the Mac is also projected to reach record sales.