2K announces Sid Meier’s Starships, hitting Mac and iPad early this year

Publisher 2K Games and developer Firaxis Games are gearing up to launch a new interstellar strategy game for Mac and Windows PCs and the iPad, Polygon said Monday.

Coming in early 2015, legendary game designer Sid Meier had a direct hand in designing Sid Meier's Starships, a turn-based, adventure-driven interstellar strategy game in which you'll take the role of a fleet commander after the age of the Seeding.

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 rumored to adopt touch-based fingerprint sensor akin to Touch ID

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6 flagship smartphone will include a much-improved fingerprint sensor which takes cues from Apple's Touch ID in that it will recognize a fingerprint when a user places their fingertip on the Home button, according to an unverified report last week by SamMobile.

The Galaxy S5 made some noise by adding a fingerprint sensor that requires users to swipe their finger on the sensor. It didn't win praise for quality or innovation as reviewers were quick to pan it due to inaccurate and unreliable performance, which ultimately frustrated the users.

Check out the original 1995 Apple Watch!

Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone maker's upcoming Apple Watch is not the first wrist-worn watch the company has created.

Back in 1995, two years before Jobs was brought back to save the company he co-founded, Apple had used a custom-made wrist watch with anodized aluminum bezel and scratch-resistant glass as an incentive for users to upgrade to Mac OS System 7.5.

Chinese thieves tunnel their way into a Beijing warehouse, stealing 240 iPhones

Nearly $230,000 worth of iPhones have disappeared through a 20-inch hole after a trio of daring thieves tunneled their way into a warehouse, Xinhua News Agency reported earlier in the month.

Three Chinese nationals were arrested on charges of stealing 240 iPhone 6 units, valued at 1.4 million yuan, or approximately $230,000. The suspects were arrested in late December after the police successfully tracked the phones’ serial numbers.

Snowden docs give new insight into how GCHQ tracked iPhone users

New documents by NSA leaker Edward Snowden were published this weekend by German newspaper Der Spiegel, giving us new insight into how the GCHQ tracked iPhone users without their consent.

Rather than tap specific exploits that GCHQ's U.S. counterpart, NSA, relied on in order to compromise the iPhone's software, GCHQ surveilled targets by following a device's UDID across different services.

They were even able to pull data from the device itself when syncing with a compromised computer took place.

Apple.com celebrates Martin Luther King Day

Apple is celebrating Martin Luther King Day with an appropriate graphics on its homepage.

Furthermore, the company is encouraging its employees, who did not get the day off on Monday, to volunteer and promised to donate an additional $50 for every voluntary hour worked by employees.

This is actually part of the iPhone maker's gift matching program that was put into effect by Steve Jobs's hand-picked successor Tim Cook shortly after he became the CEO in late-2011.

How to jailbreak iOS 8.1.2 using Mac OS X

It is now possible to jailbreak iOS 8.1.2 using a Mac, and this has been confirmed by iDownloadBlog. Up until this point, no Mac option existed for jailbreaking iOS 8.1.2, but that is no longer the case. A new tool entitled PP jailbreak for Mac has surfaced, allowing Mac users to enjoy what Windows users have been enjoying for some time now. Inside, we have a tutorial that shows how to jailbreak iOS 8.1.2 using OS X with the PP jailbreak for Mac.

This concept does an ambitious rethinking of outdated handling of contacts in iOS

I'm very displeased and unhappy (and I'm putting it mildly) that innovation in the iOS Contacts department has stalled out.

Argue as much as you want, but there's no denying that integration of contacts in Apple's mobile software is a convoluted mess, one that lacks consistency and completely eschews any reasonable expectations of a unified communications solution.

Product designer Frank Costa felt the same way so he went about creating a smart concept that tries to reimagine the address book experience on iOS, by envisioning an Invisible Address Book of sorts.

The ideas he proposes are quite intriguing. His Medium post, for example, describes profile pictures of frequently accessed contacts right in Spotlight for effortless one-tap interactions. From there, a list of apps that use your address book would be one swipe away, along with a handy log of your interactions with a friend.