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SALT LAKE CITY — Mother Nature’s got a million ways to make your life miserable. Luckily, the outdoor industry is filled with innovators, entrepreneurs and inspired inventors working incessantly to make your adventures more epic and less stressful.

The sheer number of companies hawking advanced snowshoes, crampons and things made of Merino wool proved a little mind-numbing last week at Outdoor Retailer 2015, the industry’s largest convention.

Everything from stitch-free puffy jackets to shoes made with Michelin tire technology were on display in the giant convention center, but we waded past the immense numbers of mannequins and bowls filled with enticing fresh fruit (rather than convention-standard Red Vines) to bring you a few of the more interesting gadgets, clothing items and even a new camera strap for your micro 4:3 camera.

Given that Tim Cook thinks China will soon overtake the U.S. as Apple’s biggest market, it’s no surprise that Apple is taking its expansion into China seriously.

Amidst plans to open 25 new retail stores in the country by 2016, Apple has just released a new video showing a new mural outside its upcoming second Apple store in Chongqing, set to open at 10am local time on January 31.

The mural was created as a collaboration between international photographer and former engineer Navid Baraty (best known for these spectacular vertigo-inducing cityscapes) and artist Yangyang Pan.

A weird bug in iOS 8’s Calendar app has been making people pull their hair out for months. When adding events using either a Google or Microsoft Exchange server, the time zone is randomly synced to Greenwich Mean Time.

Complaints started surfacing around iOS 8’s release last September, and the issue still persists.

iPhoto is a free download for everyone these days, making it a basic bit of kit for anyone dealing with the deluge of photographic data we seem to collect. Still, it’s often overlooked by the best of us because of its limitations.

That’s unfortunate, because the simple program offers some pretty useful features that can quickly let you get on with enjoying your photos rather than tweaking them.

Here are five simple tips for using Apple’s built-in photo “shoebox,” letting you make your photos better and more organized even more quickly.

Artists don’t always explain themselves well.

Even acclaimed illustrator Christoph Niemann, who can articulate the mysteries of creativity better than many, doesn’t always understand the moment when the head, heart and eyes merge with skills and gifts to produce a brilliant piece. It’s like trying to put into words the act of breathing.

But every Sunday, we can behold the headwaters of his creative flow.

New photos leaked online apparently show the display portion of the forthcoming, eagerly-anticipated 12-inch MacBook Air: a device rumored to be Apple’s first Retina MacBook Air model.

In the photos, the display is compared in size to various current Apple devices, including existing MacBook models and the iPad Air 2.

Personally, I can’t wait for it! Feast your eyes on some of the other photos after the jump:

Angela Ahrendts was arguably Apple’s biggest hire of 2014, and according to the company’s latest SEC filing, luring the Burberry CEO over to Apple wasn’t cheap.

In 2014, Apple’s new SVP of retail and online stores was the highest paid executive at Apple. It’s the first time in Apple history that the highest paid person at the company is a woman, and Apple gave her a transition package that made even Tim Cook’s salary look like pittance pay.

Ahrendts made her move from Burberry to Apple in May of 2014. By the end of the year Apple paid her over $64 million more than CEO Tim Cook. In fact, Cook wasn’t even in the top 4 highest paid employees at Apple last year. Eddie Cue took home the second biggest salary with $24,445,739, while Jeff Williams (aka Tim Cook’s Tim Cook) took home $24,403,235.

Check out the full breakdown of executive compensation below:

As we use our iOS devices for more and more tasks in daily life, a big question facing Apple is exactly how to squeeze more functionality out of limited screen real estate. The iPhone 6 Plus and the rumored 12-inch iPad Pro offer the simplest answer to this conundrum: make the devices bigger.

But a new patent application published today offers another potential way around the problem, without compromising the gorgeous one-button simplicity of Apple’s mobile devices.

Filed in August 2014, the “Configurable Input Device” patent application describes how Apple may consider incorporating sensor regions for user input on the back of iPads, thereby opening up a whole new way of using your favorite apps.

Okay, so we live in something of a great time for epic movie storytelling — where a combination of the home video market, multiplex theaters, and multi-part franchises mean that filmmakers are no longer pressured to squeeze giant stories into single 90-minute movies.

But while that’s all well and great in some ways, there are definitely occasions upon which we wish movies were a bit more manageable in length: the kind of thing you can comfortably watch over, say, a lunch break.

With that in mind, here are five superb short films you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t watch. They may be short on running-time, but you’ll be surprised at just how many insane stunts, great plot setups and, err, creepy Russian robots they can manage to whip out during 5 or 10 minutes.

Realmac Software has been schooling developers on how to make great apps since 2002. So when they brought Typed to OS X back in December, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Two months on, I’m convinced it’s the best Markdown editor you can get on the Mac, so I spoke with Realmac founder Dan Counsell to find out how he and his team built it.

Microsoft showed off a few neat concepts at yesterday’s Windows 10 conference. But while looking at the stage showed a company secure about its place in the tech world, turning around and facing the audience revealed a very different picture: a room full to bursting with MacBook-wielding journos.

Grasswire co-founder Austen Allred tweeted the above image taken at the event, adding the pithy understatement “A couple MacBooks at the Windows 10 Unveiling…”

If one were needed, it’s yet another reminder for longtime tech followers about just who won the PC war in the long run, despite Microsoft’s dominance during the 1990s. We can’t say we’re brokenhearted about it, either.

Microsoft just unveiled the future of Windows 10 today in Redmond. Along with some crazy holographic goggles that take on Google Glass and Oculus, company executives revealed the ambitious plan to make the next generation of Windows the first truly universal platform for desktop PCs, laptops, smartphones and more.

The 2.5 hour keynote was packed with new features coming to Windows 10 devices and the Xbox, but eagle-eyed Apple fanboys have already noticed a few ways Microsoft was influenced by some of Apple’s best features.

Here are 5 plays Microsoft stole from Apple’s playbook:

Forget about spreadsheets and Word docs — Microsoft thinks the world is ready for holograms.

“We’re dreaming about holograms,” said Microsoft’s Alex Kipman as he introduced Windows Holographic and HoloLens, the company’s new wearable holographic computer. He showed off the device, which is strapped to the head and includes see-through lenses and an array of built-in sensors designed to bring high-def holograms into the real world.

It looks like much more than a dream.

Thanks to Apple’s continued success in Japan, and Tim Cook’s big push to expand into China, everyone forgets about one of the most revealing markets the iPhone 6 has scored big in: South Korea. Why is South Korea so revealing? Because it’s none other than the stomping ground of longtime Apple rival, Samsung.

According to a report published Wednesday by Counterpoint Research, Apple is now firmly challenging Samsung in its home ground — with market share in the country rising to 33 percent, from less than 15 percent, based on the success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Samsung’s market share meanwhile plummeted from 60 percent to 46 percent.

Although we’ve heard vague reports about it, all’s been quiet on the Cupertino front about Apple’s plans to relaunch its Beats Music streaming service later this year — possibly as early as February.

Today another piece of the puzzle may have fallen into place, however, with the news that Apple has acquired U.K. startup Semetric, which runs the Musicmetric analytics tool, designed to allow music labels to track sales, BitTorrent, YouTube, Spotify and social-networking data for their artists.

Now that Google has pulled Glass off the market, for the time being at least, we’re left with a handful of questions that can’t be easily answered — even by a face-mounted computer.

Questions like, “What went wrong?” And, “What didn’t go wrong?” And, perhaps most enlightening of all, “How would Apple have gotten Glass right?”

While Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide marketing, was not a fan of Glass, we’re certain Cupertino could have found success with a head-mounted wearable. Here’s how.

Steve Jobs famously didn’t let his kids use an iPad, because he wanted them to avoid getting sucked into a netherworld of endless screens, without real-world engagement. It’s a feeling even the most tech-loving of parents likely knows — and it’s the inspiration behind a new project from MIT graduate Adam Kumpf.

I wrote about Kumpf’s clothespin iPad piano a few months back, and I’m fascinated by his concept for what he calls an iPad inventor’s kit. Essentially it’s a shoebox of easy-to-find household objects that, when paired with the right app, can help kids invent futuristic iPad gadgets — while also teaching them about the fundamental concepts of mechanical systems, physics, basic electronics, interface design and engineering.

Best of all, you can put it together yourself free of charge, thanks to Instructables.

Apple is already testing iOS 9, but in the meantime iOS 8 adoption continues to grow — although it’s starting to slow down.

According to Apple’s latest stats, 69 percent of active iOS devices are now using the latest version of the company’s mobile OS; up just 1 percent from January 5, when Apple last shared iOS 8 adoption stats. By comparison, 28 percent of users are still working on iOS 7, with a minuscule 3 percent using assorted earlier iterations.

The iPhone recently celebrated its eighth birthday, and what better way to mark the occasion than with a mesmerizing animated GIF — showing the evolution of Apple’s mobile handset from the revolutionary but (now) small and slightly bulky device Steve Jobs unveiled in 2007, to the landmark iPhone 6 which racked up more than 10 million sales in its first weekend alone?

If you’re a long-time iPhone fan, or a relatively new user, it’s an astounding glimpse at just how far we’ve come in just a handful of iPhone iterations. To paraphrase The Simpsons, it’s hypnotic… almost like watching a lava lamp.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and to mark the occasion Apple has changed the image on its homepage to one commemorating the beloved civil rights activist and pastor.

The black-and-white image is accompanied by a line reading, “Today we reflect on the life and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the work that continues in service of the broader concerns of humanity.”

Ever since Tim Cook unveiled the Apple Watch last September, it’s been one disappointment after another as far as I’m concerned. Apple’s first wearable won’t come in the minimalist form factor of the fitness bracelets I love. Worse yet, the launch version of the fashion-forward device will lack GPS, suffer from underwhelming battery life and fail to offer truly native third-party apps.

For the first time, I realized I would not be buying an Apple product when it first hit the market. “It’s not worth lining up for,” I told my dad when he asked what I thought after the Apple Watch’s big reveal.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Apple Watch’s launch day, which is coming sometime this spring. And I’m not talking about the previously unthinkable — an Apple fan calling the Microsoft Band the best smartwatch on the planet. No, I’m talking about wading through an ungodly sea of really bad smartwatches at International CES earlier this month and seeing indisputable proof of just how innovative and disruptive Apple Watch actually will be.

Apple has long been outspoken about the measures it goes to to keep your iPhone secure, but new documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden demonstrate how the British spy agency GCHQ was able to carry out “realtime tracking of target iPhones” — by compromising users’ computers.

Rather than directly targeting the iPhones, GCHQ agents focused their attack on the computers with which the iPhones were synchronised, enabling them to access much of the data stored on the handset. The method took advantage of flaws in Apple’s UDID (unique device identifier) system, which issued a unique code for every iPhone, linking it with its owner.

The iPhone tracking report was handed over by Snowden to a group of nine journalists — including Laura Poitras, the filmmaker behind the acclaimed documentary Citizenfour.