Digital artists know that there’s no substitution for a graphics tablet when trying to draw on your Mac, except maybe the iPad Pro and Pencil.

Astropad co-founder Matt Ronge thinks his company’s $20 app, when combined with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, can match and even exceed the current champ of the tablet world, the Wacon Cintiq.

“iPad Pro is an amazing drawing platform but iOS is far too limited for the professional artist,” says Ronge. “So we wanted a way where we could get the best of both worlds, the power and flexibility of the Mac coupled with the touch interface of the iPad.”

The term ‘hacker’ has been hijacked by popular culture to be synonymous shady, nefarious people using their mastery of computers to wreak havoc. Obviously that’s not true, and hacking — which really boils down to the act of taking something apart to see how it works and how it might work better — operates on a spectrum like any other discipline. If you’d like to learn the arts of hacking, from the basics of hacking to specifics on how to hack Node.js apps, Windows, Wi-Fi devices, and a lot more. Name your price for this bundle of 7 courses full of invaluable knowledge — what’s more, portion of what you spend goes to support the work of Save the Children. Doesn’t get much more white hat than that.

Apple has slashed the price of the iPhone 6s in India, reportedly after lower than expected sales over Diwali.

The handsets are now at least 16 percent cheaper than when they first launched two months ago — with the the basic 16GB iPhone 6s now costing between Rs 52,000 and Rs 55,000 ($785 – $830), down from the Rs 62,000 ($935) launch price. Many retailers are additionally offering other incentives to try and get customers to buy.

It’s an age of abundance in the iOS gaming scene, with everyone from Apple to indie enthusiast blogs weighing in on what the best games are for our beloved iOS platform.

We’re here to focus on the best mobile games we have actually played and loved, rather than just the blockbusters everyone’s already heard of. If we kept a game on our iPhone for more than a few days and dug right in on a regular basis, it’s on the list.

Here are Cult of Mac staffers’ choices for the 10 best iOS games of 2015.

Apple users may get a music quality upgrade in 2016, with a new report claiming that the company has been developing hi-res audio streaming up to 96kHz/24bit.

Apple is reportedly set to start selling new accessibility-related peripherals and accessories for both Mac and iOS in its brick-and-mortar Apple Stores as well as online.

The accessories, which are reported to be going on sale in the first quarter of calendar year 2016, are designed to help users with disabilities to better engage with Apple products.

It’s nearly Christmas: the time of mince pies, good cheer, and, apparently, settling patent disputes with the potential to cost you hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

With that in mind, Apple has agreed a patent licensing deal with Swedish telecom company Ericsson, ending a dispute in which Ericsson was accused by Apple of engaging in, “abusive licensing practices.”

60 Minutes host Charlie Rose took a deep dive into all things Apple in an episode that aired Sunday.

Featuring interviews with Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, Angela Ahrendts and others, the show explored everything from the iPhone’s inner workings and Apple’s manufacturing in China to Cook dancing around the question of whether Apple is building a car.

Check out our 10 takeaways below.

‘Tis the season to take advantage of soon-to-end deals, and boy have we got some good ones. These are the top five deals of the year on comprehensive lesson bundles on several facets of web development plus a few other goodies, including a couple you can buy for whatever price you want. From learning to code for iOS to securing your internet connections with a VPN, it’s well worth checking out these top five deals.

This feature is adapted from my book, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. It offers a rare look inside one of Apple’s most secretive institutions: the Industrial Design studio.

Where do Apple’s great products come from?

For the last 18 years — since Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 — most of them have come out of Apple’s Industrial Design studio, a small and secretive group of creatives headed up by celebrated British designer Sir Jony Ive.

Best List: The ONE Light smart keyboard

Who doesn’t want to play piano? Learning to tickle the ivories must be right up there with writing the great American novel: Many of us have a hankering to become more musical.

The fantastic $299 ONE Light smart keyboard is the way to go if you want a piano that will show you how to play without hiring a teacher.

This week: the force is looking very strong with the new Star Wars movie; live football may be coming to the Apple TV; the tvOS app store hits a major milestone; why you shouldn’t expect 3D touch in the next iPad Air; and with 2016 on the horizon, we’ll review our favorite games, gadgets, and books of 2015. Hit play, you must!

Our thanks to FreshBooks for supporting this episode, the easy-to-use invoicing software designed to help small business owners get organized, save time invoicing and get paid faster. Get started with a free trial at Freshbooks.com/cultcast.

There’s not much time left to buy gifts but still plenty of amazing deals in the Cult of Mac Store to check out. If you’re looking for some new techy toys or tools that are guaranteed to please, let us make it a little easier on you. Have a look at the five best deals on gadgets and gear from 2015 on sale now:

For many of us, Christmas is a time for relaxing with family, sitting in front of the TV, overindulging and generally moving as little as possible. In other words, all the things your Apple Watch hates you doing.

So if you have a nice streak going in the Activity app, chances are it is about to come to an abrupt end. And that may not be a bad thing.

You know how it is: You press and hold the Home button to set a quick timer and Siri comes back all loud, “OK! Setting the timer! I’m in suspense!”

Or some such nonsense. Sure, you want to confirm that Siri’s not, say, adding an event to your calendar or calling your Aunt Tilly instead of setting a timer, but maybe you don’t need Apple’s AI helper to be all chatty about it.

Here’s how you can tamp down Siri’s sometimes-annoying banter.

Happy holidays, everyone! No matter what you celebrate (or don’t), we’ve got a ton of great stuff in the latest issue of Cult of Mac Magazine, right here for you.

There’s a sneak peek inside Apple’s secret design studio to start you off, plus the best games for your Mac from 2015, a deep dive on what the management shake-up means for you, how to maximize your MacBook trade-in, a look at new Siri-style voice technologies coming down the pike, and a bunch of how-tos and tips to keep you rocking all the way through your season.

Here’s the rundown this week:

Tim Cook will sat down for a wide-ranging interview with 60 Minutes host Charlie Rose for Sunday night’s episode inside Apple HQ, and it appears that the two will have a heated exchange about Apple’s tax practice.

In a preview of the interview released this afternoon, Tim Cook defended Apple’s tax policies, noting that the company pays more taxes in the United States than anyone. Rose also prodded Cook about the company’s massive pile of cash stashed overseas, asking why the CEO doesn’t bring all that money back home.

“It would cost me 40% to bring it home, and I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do,” replied Cook, before launching into a rant against the US tax code that was built for the industrial age and not the digital age.

Watch the heated exchange below:

The ONAGOfly is a quadcopter like all the rest – four props and an onboard camera that records video at heights once the domain of TV news choppers.

But you don’t need to stand back to launch the ONAGOfly – not when the palm of your hand will do for a launch pad.

Best List: Trace tracker for snow sports and surfing

You can track your every mogul experience, tree run and back-scratcher with this tiny disc of a tracker attached to your skis or snowboard.

Using inertial and GPS sensors packed into a miniature hockey puck package (with all-day battery life), the Trace tracker captures all the stats you need to give you the ultimate playback of your day in the powder.

Target is reportedly looking to become a player in the mobile wallet game. The fourth largest retailer in the U.S. would be joining a market that’s quickly becoming pretty crowded. The next mobile payment solution on your smartphone very well could be Target Pay, though it can’t be confirmed at this time.

Very few outsiders have been inside Apple’s Industrial Design Studio, the amazingly creative product lab behind the company’s blockbuster hardware.

That may change this weekend, when 60 Minutes broadcasts a tour of the design lab. Apple’s lead designer, Jony Ive, gave journalist Charlie Rose a peek at the facility earlier this year — and his report airs this Sunday.

But you can take a tour of Apple’s secret Industrial Design studio right now. A virtual one, anyway.

Drones of any size, especially if it carries a camera, usually mean dropping big bucks on a big bird. This miniature flier is an exception to the rule, with a built-in camera perfect for capturing aerial video and photos while fitting in the palm of your hand. It comes with a 2 gig memory card, and all for a mere $34.99.

Evernote’s efforts to streamline its business will see it chop a number of apps from its lineup, including the popular annotation app Skitch. Clearly, a browser extension for Google Chrome, is also getting the boot — as is Evernote’s Pebble app.

2015 brought us a souped-up Apple TV, so it’s great news that the same year yielded plenty of high-quality entertainment to watch on the fourth-generation device.

From tenured favorites like ’60s Madison Avenue masterpiece Mad Men to the arrival of smash hits like Mr. Robot, there was no shortage of great entertainment gracing our screens.

In our humble opinions, these were the best TV shows of 2015.

Apple Pay will finally arrive in China next year, and it’s going to have strong competition from day one. Just hours after Apple announced the expansion of its mobile payment service, Samsung confirmed its own will be following after it struck an almost identical deal with China UnionPay.