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It was only a matter of time before Apple spoke out more publicly about the controversy surrounding the compromised iCloud accounts of numerous celebrities.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook revealed that Apple is adding new security measures to iCloud in the coming weeks. Users will be notified by email and a push notification for account activity, including whenever an iCloud backup is accessed. Two-step verification will also be strengthened to cover more aspects of iCloud.

Cook also said that Apple plans to raise more “awareness” about internet security.

Apple’s September 9th event is nearly here, and you know what that means: last-minute rumors galore.

The New York Times weighs in today with several new tidbits, including details about the iWatch. Not only will Apple’s wearable sport a curved sapphire glass display, but it will reportedly power up via wireless charging.

Next week’s Apple event at the Flint Center promises to be one of the biggest tech announcements of the year with both the iPhone 6 and iWatch expected to make appearances, and to make it even more exciting for fans, Apple just announced it will stream the entire keynote live.

Apple’s event will kick off on September 9th at 10 a.m. Pacific at the Flint Center in Cupertino. Fans will be able to view a live-stream of the event on Apple’s website.

To view the Apple livestream user will need to use Safari 5.1.10 or later on OS X 16.6.8 or later. The stream will also be available on Apple TV via a dedicated channel. Cult of Mac will be covering the event live from the Flint Center so make sure to stay tuned for an onslaught of hands-on goodness and coverage when the event kicks off next Tuesday.

Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has a big research report out today with his late-minute predictions for Apple’s September 9th media event.

It’s a doozy of a note, mainly because it lays out not only juicy iPhone 6 and iWatch details, but the revelation that Apple is expected to introduce the second-gen iPad Air at the event as well.

Kuo, who nailed most of the details surrounding the iPhone 5s/5c launch last year, is saying that both 4.7 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 models will be announced. On top of that, both will have a 128GB storage option. He also makes some interesting predictions regarding Apple’s sapphire plans and iWatch specs.

I like the Lensbaby that I have for my regular camera, but I frikkin’ love the Lensbaby LM–10 for the iPhone. Like most things that make the trip from elsewhere to iOS, the little Lensbaby offers a subset of the original’s features, but they are – dare I say – a more focused set of features.

Let’s just say the iPhone Lensbaby is about the funnest iPhoneography accessory around.

Photos: Kahney family archives and Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

In his latest column for The New York Times, Nick Bilton drops an interesting tidbit about Jony Ive and the iWatch.

The mythical wearable, which is expected to finally see the light of day at next week’s Apple event, is something Ive has been bragging about around Apple HQ. He thinks it will be so good that even Swiss watchmakers won’t know what hit them.

Apple’s event on September 9th is going to be huge. Sure, iPhone announcements come around every 12 months, but this year Apple’s going bigger than ever with two product launches, a gigantic venue, and a mysterious white cube.

We investigated Apple’s mystery box ourselves last week and still couldn’t piece together what it’s for, but according to rumblings on the Internet, U2 will be the headlining act during next week’s event, and will launch their next album by pre-loading it on every new iPhone 6.

It may sound too crazy to be true, but U2 fans are already convinced Bono and The Edge will tear up the stage at the Flint Center, and there’s come compelling proof.

Here’s the evidence:

We’re still six days away from the official unveiling of the iPhone 6, but a set of professional line-sitters in NYC are already setting up camp in front of the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store.

Dan Benton spotted the iPhone 6 line this morning, and while the previous record for waiting camping out for the iPhone was 18 days, this group started 19 days before the iPhone 6 is expected to hit shelves.

Most of the campers are professional line sitters and are just using it to get some free press for new apps and other services, but the true fanboys will probably start filing in any day now. The iPhone 6 is expected to be revealed at an event on September 9th followed by a public release about two weeks after.

By now you’ve probably heard about the avalanche of celebrity nude photos that slammed the Web on Labor Day. But amid the chaos of FBI investigations, celeb denials and Apple PR releases that say basically nothing, understanding how the attackers executed the hack — and how to prevent it from happening to you — hasn’t been so clear.

Apple recommended that all users enable two-step verification “to protect against this type of attack,” but the truth about iCloud’s two-step security is a little more complicated than Apple’s letting on, and turning it on probably wouldn’t have prevented the celebrities’ pics from getting hacked in the first place.

To help sort through the confusing mess, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about iCloud’s security and how you can use two-factor authentication and other security steps to keep some perv named 4chan from blasting your nips all over the Internet.

OS X will get a new Photos app next year that will keep all your pictures in sync across all your devices. It will work with the iOS 8 Photos apps on iPhone and iPad to match up your full-res photographs, your albums and even the edits you make to your pictures.

The changes are a ways off, but fret not -– if you use Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile, you can enjoy this fabulous cross-platform photo synchronization right now.

Martin Hajek’s incredible renders come in two equally impressive categories. The first are the realistic recreations of upcoming devices that that the artist put togethers based on leaked parts and schematics: for example, his incredible iPhone 6 render.

But Martin Hajek does another kind of concept as well: his purely conceptual imaginings of what still unrevealed Apple gadgets like the iWatch or the Apple HDTV.

This might be a first though. In his latest series of rendering, Hajek has paired both kinds of renders together: the iPhone 6, a design we know, with the iWatch, a design that is, to all of us, still a mystery. And if the real iWatch + iPhone 6 combo looks half as good in real life as Hajek’s, we’re in for an exciting year. More images after the jump.

SEATTLE — Tanya Short, fresh off the successful release of sci-fi-themed indie game Shattered Planet, thinks her new game has widespread appeal. For a game set in ancient Mesopotamia, that’s saying a lot.

KitFox Games’ Moon Hunters, due out next summer for Mac, PC, and PlayStation, is a one to four player action role playing game that lets you create the kind of hero you want to be remembered as. The moon isn’t rising, and you and your group of friends set out to find out why.

“Essentially,” she told us at the Penny Arcade Expo this past weekend, “you’re in mythical ancient Mesopotamia in the Bronze Age. In pantheon of the gods, the central figure is the Moon. The moon not rising is a big deal.”

Blame for the flood of celebrity nude photos that hit the Internet has been rotating from the pervy hackers that ripped the pics, to Apple, to the creator of iBrute, but while the FBI and Apple continue to investigate the source of the leak, there’s one tool that has gone unmentioned: the police forensic tool that made it all possible.

One of the key elements behind the iCloud nudes leak is a piece of software created by Elcomsoft that allows attackers to impersonate a target’s iPhone and download its entire iCloud backup, and you don’t even have to be a cop to get it.

Today Apple released the seventh update to its developer build of OS X Yosemite. With the public release of Yosemite expected to arrive around October, Apple is polishing some of the finer details to get the OS ready for prime time.

Like always, we’ve collected today’s changes in Yosemite.

Apple flat-out denies that an iCloud security breach led to the trove of celebrity nudes that leaked over Labor Day weekend. “None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone,” said the company in a statement.

Private photos of stars like Jennifer Lawrence were posted on the internet over the weekend, and initial reports pinned the hack on a flaw in iCloud’s login security.

With all the excited chatter about the iPhone 6 and the iWatch, the iPad is starting to look like a relic from the past — and the sales back this up.

Across the board, tablet sales have flatlined. On the back of another lower-than-expected tablet quarter, research firm IDC recently slashed its 2014 forecast for worldwide tablet shipments from 260.9 million units all the way back to 233.1 million. With Apple’s leading position in the market, even Tim Cook has had to admit that this has represents a bit of what he calls a “speed bump”.

The iPad took a crack at disrupting classrooms, cash registers, hospitals and airplane cockpits, but sales nonetheless slumped 10 percent from the same quarter last year. Simply put, Apple’s once white-hot tablet brand has cooled off. Relegated to a second-tier product, it just doesn’t seem as exciting any more.

“I own an iPhone, a Mac and an iPad, and out of these I use the iPad the least,” says Michael Grothaus, a former Apple employee, and the entrepreneur behind SITU, an iPad-enabled set of smart kitchen scales. “It occupies a bit of a no man’s land. As much as I love Apple products, recently I’ve been looking around at other tablets on the market to see what’s out there.”

Here’s what the top developers we talked to said might make the iPad a game changer again.

Apple is “actively investigating” if and how iCloud is to blame for the hacking of numerous celebrity accounts.  Dozens of nude and scandalous photos were posted on the internet over the weekend featuring famous actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst.

Though still unconfirmed at this point, many have speculated that the hack was a result of a flaw in iCloud’s security.

We’re fairly confident that Apple will show off the iPhone 6 at its September 9th media event next week, but when will the new hardware actually go on sale?

Signs are pointing to Friday, September 19th for the date that preorders begin—at least in the Netherlands. The Chinese media and Deutsche Telekom support representatives have already mentioned the 19th as new iPhone day too.

SEATTLE — It’s like Halloween two months early at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), with gamers and geeky fans of every stripe dressing up in costumes of varying quality and seriousness.

More than 70,000 gamers converge each year in Seattle for PAX, a fan-centric celebration of all things gaming that was created by web cartoonists Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik as a way to honor their passion for video, board and card games.

We saw hundreds of people wearing elaborate costumes from their favorite games, television shows and movies. Some do it for the attention, others really enjoy making the outfits, and all the folks we encountered in the expo halls were excited to show off their final products.

Take a look in the gallery above at the best of the many fantastic cosplay outfits we ran into this year.

All Photos: Hunter LeFebvre/Cult of Mac

Apple will show off the iPhone 6 to the world in less than two weeks, and like always, an executive in an untucked dress shirt will explain why it’s the best iPhone ever.

If you pride yourself on knowing Apple history, then we’ve come across a cool summary of each iPhone launch to date. The six-minute video hits the highlights from each iPhone event since 2007.

After years of reports saying that NFC is coming to the iPhone for mobile payments, it looks like it will finally be a reality on September 9th.

Part leaks have indicated that Apple’s next-gen iPhone hardware will indeed be equipped with NFC to make transactions for physical goods at brick and mortar stores. Now Apple has struck a partnership with American Express, Visa and MasterCard to support mobile payments in the iPhone 6, according to new reports.

Apple could charge an upwards of $400 for its highest end iWatch, according to Recode. Apple executives have reportedly “discussed charging around $400 for the company’s new wearable device,” although there will also be different models set at lower prices.

Does that mean the top-of-the-line iWatch will actually cost $400? Not necessarily.

Last weekend, we reported that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 seemed likely to boast a 1334 x 750 Retina Display, while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6L could have a 461 PPI Super- Retina Display. Now it looks like that working iPhone 6 cobbled together may have confirmed the iPhone 6’s resolution.