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When Facebook snapped up virtual-reality company Oculus VR this week, it got us wondering what other interesting startups Apple might want to buy before Mark Zuckerberg can get his hands on them.

While Oculus is most well known for its Rift gaming headset, Zuckerberg sees a far more wide-ranging application for the company’s VR tech, envisioning it as a futuristic communications platform. “One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people,” he said in his post about the acquisition.

That’s the kind of big thinking Steve Jobs brought to the table when he talked about the way the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad would change the way people interact with technology. While Apple rarely dips into its $150 billion cash hoard to buy other hardware firms, here are seven awesome companies whose technology could help Cupertino enhance and improve its existing devices — as well as build entirely new ones.

We all have busy days, and going to sleep at night is the perfect remedy for having to do it all over the next day. While regular alarm clocks can serve their purpose in waking you up, they can’t ensure they’ll do it at the most convenient time in your sleep. The app Sleep Cycle strives to wake you up while you’re in your lightest sleep, resulting in a better awakening. Simply place your phone on your bed and let the app do the rest. Will Sleep Cycle become your go-to alarm clock?

Take a look at the video and find out what you think.

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the iOS application Sleep Cycle, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s that time of year when the biggest Apple fans in the world congregate on Moscone North for a three day celebration of all things Apple. This year’s Macworld/iWorld show offers a little something for everyone from hands-on tutorials for taking better iPhone photos or live-recording with an iPad, to parties, tons of exhibitors, games, and more.

Cult of Mac will be covering all the Macworld festivities starting today on our live-blog, but if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about for Macworld, an event that even Apple doesn’t attend anymore, here six things that you won’t want to miss this year:

It’s been almost two years since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s still the only Mac with a Retina display. But according to sources in Apple’s supply chain, that’ll change this summer when the Cupertino company finally unveils the Retina MacBook Air.

Following news of Facebook’s surprise acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg shared some impressive numbers regarding the social network’s sustained mobile growth. Facebook has an “active” mobile user base of 1 billion, Zuckerberg announced, while the Facebook-owned Instagram has 200 million active users of its own.

This means that Instagram has added 100 million users since Facebook acquired it back in April 2012. Under Facebook’s control the Instagram iOS app has been regularly updated, much like Facebook’s own iOS app.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, Facebook had 945 million active mobile users, out of a total of 1.23 billion users.

Ahead of the next round of the Apple vs. Samsung legal battle, one of the original iPhone engineers, Greg Christie, spoke to the WSJ about the development of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Much of what he discusses in the Apple-approved interview is already well known, but a few neat details emerge.

At one point, Christie says that Jobs gave the team a two week ultimatum, after which he would move the project to another team if they were unable to create what he was after.

“Steve had pretty much had it,” said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple’s user-interface team. “He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts.”

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BlackBerry — the beleaguered Canadian smartphone maker that controls literally 0 percent U.S. market share — is now suing its own executives to prevent them from quitting their jobs and flocking to Apple. Really!

We’re still months away from the big reveal of the iPhone 6, which means concept designers still have plenty of time to toss around fanciful dreams of what Apple might do for the redesign of the iPhone.

Teaming up with Martin Hajeck, iCulture created the following concept mockups that would see the iPhone taking some design cues from the iPod Nano, with curved edges, a narrower bezel, and larger screen to boot.

Take a look:

The app store has found another craze almost as popular as Flappy Bird. Developers everywhere have been releasing their own versions of the hit app Threes, a tile-based game that has players swipe to add numbers. 2048 is an application that features this same addicting gameplay with its own twists and no cost. Can you reach the score of 2,048 or even higher?

Take a look at 2048 and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application 2048, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

Selling a half-billion of anything is impressive, especially when you can do it in less than seven years. That’s exactly what Apple has managed to do with the iPhone.

Apple had sold 472 million iPhones in total at the end of 2013, and given analysts estimates of 38-42 million units sold this current quarter, the 500 million milestone has most certainly been reached.

I’m typing this review on the Filco Majestouch 2 Tenkeyless keyboard. It has blue Cherry MX switches, and a standard ISO layout with UK English markings. It is the best keyboard I’ve used, but despite that this won’t be a regular review – a million people have already written about this keyboard.

Instead, I’ll tell you what I like and then tell you how I made this Windows keyboard play well with my Mac. Warning: includes nerdy hacks.

MacWorld/iWorld 2014 is less than a week away which means the Cult of Mac team is gearing up to descend on Moscone North for three days of non-stop Apple-related gizmos, speakers, workshops and other nonsense.

We’re bringing the best 30 minute Apple conversation you’re going to hear aaaaaaaall week long to the event live on Thursday, March 27th at 8pm. Come join us for our live CultCast recording party at The Box SF for a night of prizes, Apple conversation, drinks galore and hopefully a couple surprises.

Erfon, Leander, Buster and Alex will be hanging out all night bringing out the laughs and immature humor along with the rest of our SF staff. Hopefully we’ll get around to talking about Apple too thanks to our hosts DigiDNA and MacUpdate.

Entry is free and we’ll be grooving all night thanks to music from producer Egadz and his funky arcade electro button box – a must hear for electronic music fans and geeks.

And beer will flow like wine. (Shhh… yes you know: open bar!)

A new high quality video was posted online Monday — showing the demolition of a building on the site of Apple’s forthcoming Campus 2.

The video was uploaded to YouTube by an anonymous user under the name Apple Internal. It depicts the destruction of a building along Ridgeview Ct., one of the main arteries running through the 100-acre plot of land Apple will use to build its new 2.8 million square-foot “spaceship” headquarters.

85% of iOS devices are running iOS 7 or later, Apple claims.

Refreshing its iOS usage numbers on Monday, Apple measured usage of its most recent mobile OS for a seven‑day period ending March 23, 2014.

Apple has added a new “related apps” feature to the app store when viewed on an iOS device. Now, along the top of the screen, over the details of an app, you’ll see the breadcrumb trail in the picture above.

Just over a month after Apple launched the second story on its ‘Your Verse’ microsite, chronicling how iPads help mountaineers climb the world’s tallest peaks, Apple has released a new update, detailing how the tablet can help diagnose athlete concussions.

Yup. Thirteen years ago today, on March 24, 2001, Apple and Steve Jobs unleashed the first version of Mac OS X 10.0 (code named ‘Cheetah’) on to the world.

Despite officially being a teenager, OS X is holding up better than most 13 year olds: its voice isn’t cracking, it’s not awkward around girls, and since Scott Forstall’s departure, there’s barely a blemish to be seen on its otherwise pristine countenance.

What’s your earliest memory of OS X? Share it with us in the comments.

Seeing how far you can go has been a common theme in many games in the App Store. Since the release of hit apps like Temple Run and Subway Surfers, players everywhere have become fans of this “endless runner” genre. The app The Collider is an original endless runner that has players dodge obstacles for as long as possible while in a rocket. Do you think you can handle the increase in speed and climb the high-score charts?

Take a look at The Collider and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application The Collider, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

Tim Cook might have claimed that iPhone 5c demand “turned out to be different than we thought” on Apple’s recent quarterly earnings conference call, but there’s one company that doesn’t seem too upset about the 5c’s performance: Apple supplier Pegatron.

This week, our intrepid Games Editor Rob LeFebvre brings readers of Cult of Mac Magazine all the news from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

There were dueling VR 3D headsets, discussions about sexism in the games industry, contests, awards and plenty of action on the show floor.

But the million-dollar question this year was: How do I make the next Flappy Bird?

What if Apple’s iWatch is’t an iWatch at all? What if it’s a spec, like CarPlay, that lets folks like Casio and Rolex put an Apple chip inside their watches to make them talk to your iPhone?

Problems solved:

• Apple doesn’t have to get into the fashion watch game, or make “ladies” and “gents” watches.
• The watch industry gets a shot in the arm (pun intended) as watches get useful again.
• You don’t need a power-sucking display. The iPhone is the display.

Apple and Comcast are in the early stages of negotiating a streaming TV service, according to The Wall Street Journal. The service “would use an Apple set-top box and get special treatment on Comcast’s cables to ensure it bypasses congestion on the Web.”

Rumors have been saying that Apple is working on a TV streaming product for years, and this latest report suggests that Apple is concerned about its customers have enough bandwidth to make the experience worthwhile at home.

A curious download hit Apple’s App Store this week: a messaging app called FireChat.

It’s a new kind of app because it uses an iOS feature unavailable until version 7: the Multipeer Connectivity Framework. The app was developed by the crowdsourced connectivity provider Open Garden and this is their first iOS app.

The Multipeer Connectivity Framework enables users to flexibly use WiFi and Bluetooth peer-to-peer connections to chat and share photos even without an Internet connection. Big deal, right?

But here’s the really big deal — it can enable two users to chat not only without an Internet connection, but also when they are far beyond WiFi and Bluetooth range from each other — connected with a chain of peer-to-peer users between one user and a far-away Internet connection.

It’s called wireless mesh networking. And Apple has mainstreamed it in iOS 7. It’s going to change everything. Here’s why. 

The MacBook Air already feels impossibly thin and light, but it’s set to get even thinner and lighter if a rumor out of Asia is to be believed.

In the Marvel universe, Captain America is a World War II era super soldier who happens to get frozen in ice, only to dethaw in modern times. As such, there’s a lot he’s missed out on, and in the latest Captain America film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we get a quick list of Captain America’s notebook, tracking the things he doesn’t “get.”

Lo and behold, Steve Jobs and Apple made the list, alongside Nirvana, Rocky, Thai Food, the moon landing, and — inexplicably — I Love Lucy.

Via: Reddit