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This week in Cult of Mac Magazine: drive smarter, with a little help from the app store.

Your iPhone. Great apps. Your car. What could be better? Well, maybe an Apple-designed  driving system.

We’re all eagerly awaiting for release of iOS 7 In the Car, you know, what Apple is calling the “best passenger ever.” (We bet it won’t need to pull over for the pit stop. Or tell you to stop and ask for directions, either.)

Until then, you may find yourself like our games editor Rob LeFebvre with a clunker that could use a bit of future-proofing. Rob discovers out the joys – and limits – of what you can do with about $20 and the best the iTunes store has to offer. Turns out, your old ride may be more of a smart car than you think. The mag also brings you the best from the apps store, books, movies and music in iTunes plus advice from an actual Apple retail Genius.

As always, if you hit any speed bumps with the app, please write to me directly or hit the “send” tab top right. We’ll fix it!

Cult of Mac Magazine

This time on The CultCast: iBras make the world a better place; Apple TV is your tele’s next gaming console; iPhone 6’s get huger screens; Net Neutrality and why you should care; and Erfon pitches the best Fave N Rave pick EVER…

Chuckle your way through this week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

Thanks to Ting for sponsoring this episode! Ahh, Ting, the straight forward wireless carrier who doesn’t overcharge. With Ting, you only pay for the data, minutes, and text messages you use. Plus, no contracts! See how much could be saving on your wireless bill at cultcast.ting.com.

When should you take your iPad and when should you take your MacBook?

If you use your iOS devices for work on the move, and often find yourself wishing that your tablet came with a built-in physical keyboard so you didn’t have to haul your laptop everywhere, you’re most likely the perfect target audience for M-Edge’s nifty keyboard case — the 10-inch Tablet Universal Stealth Pro Keyboard Case (to use its full and slightly Tom Clancy-sounding name).

Want more details? Read on.

Daniel Hjelm has a pretty nifty game on his hands here: Loot Hero.

It’s the essence of RPG games, distilled down for the mobile platform. You tap on the left and right sides of the screen, and mow down enemy bad guys with your upgradeable weapon.

Here’s a quick video of my impressions and play through.

Tyler Fisher is not an Apple employee. In fact, I’m pretty sure the guy doesn’t know the difference between an iPad and an iPod Shuffle, but that didn’t stop him from dressing up as an Apple Specialist, going to work at his local Apple Store, and recording the entire prank as he sprayed customers with misinformation on everything from iPhones having retina scanners, to MacBooks with so much cloud it melted into a puddle that’s perfect for storing your naughty pics.

Not only did Tyler educate Apple Store customers to the “fact” that polio, lyme disease, and syphilis were invented by Apple thanks to the chemical mishmash that goes into MacBooks, but he also offered customers a 75% discount if they knew someone that had the diseases – an apology on Apple’s behalf.

Check out the reactions in the video below:

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson ruffled some fanboys’ feathers earlier this month when he said Google is outpacing Apple on the innovation front. Pointing to the Nest acquisition as evidence, Isaacson says the greatest innovation is coming out of Google.

During an appearance on Bloomberg TV this morning Isaacson stood by his comments but clarified that while innovation is great, the most important trait for tech companies to acquire is the ability to execute, and no one executes better than Apple.

Asked about Apple’s problems coming out with a great low-end device, Isaacson responded that Apple won’t ever be good at low-end because it makes “insanely great products” so it will have to come out with a new disruptive device.

Listen to Walter’s full comments in the video below:

Tim Cook has made a journey over to Ireland this week to visit with staff at the company’s Cork offices. Along with addressing the 4,000 employees responsible for assembling the MacBook Pro, Cook also met up with the country’s prime minister, Taoiseach Enda Kenny today to talk about Apple’s presence in the country, and the Irish tax laws that help it avoid paying billions extra.

The Irish Prime Minister denied claims that the Irish government courts multinational companies like Apple to give them special deals on their corporate tax rate. According to a report from theJournal.ie, Edna Kenny said the tax issue came up during his conversation with Cook and told him they’re in discussions with the OECD about an international response, but the country’s statutory rate of 12.5% applies to all companies.

I’ve had iPhones for years, but I’ve never really been keen on using one that wasn’t jailbroken. As much as I love iOS, some of Apple’s decisions always kept my iPhone from working exactly how I wanted it to.

Jailbreaking gave me the ability to sidestep those limitations and make iOS my own. I could experience some of the freedom that Android users have grown to love while retaining the reliability, stability and polish of iOS. While I was frustrated that Apple wasn’t making major changes to improve its platform, I was happy that I could make them myself using unauthorized third-party tweaks.

Then I started using iOS 7, and everything changed.

PlayStation’s official app has received its first update — adding several notable features to the service, which functions as a second-screen app and social networking hub for PS4 players.

Chief among the updates is “Live from PlayStation” integration, which allows users to view live streams from Ustream and Twitch — although it is worth pointing out that this service works by redirecting you to an external Web browser — or corresponding live-steaming service app — to watch the footage, rather than streaming it directly within the PlayStation App.

The New York Times has updated its official apps for iOS.

Both NYTimes for iPhone and NYTimes for iPad now promise complete coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, which will take place from Feb 7 to 23 — including news alerts which can be signed up for once the games begin.

This Sunday is the Super Bowl and, contrary to what Steve Jobs may have thought, yes, people will be watching it — around 108 million, if last year’s numbers are any indication.

The real question is whether Apple will have an ad ready for the event, to commemorate three decades since the company’s iconic Macintosh commercial kicked off an advertising trend that is still followed today.

To celebrate Chinese New Year (that’s the Year of the Horse to you!), 2K Games has launched a massive iOS sale — with reductions on a ton of its titles.

Among them is the popular tactical role-playing game XCOM: Enemy Unknown (down from $19.99 to $9.99) and the much-anticipated racer 2K Drive (going for just 99 cents, compared to its usual $9.99).

The full list can be seen here, alongside their usual prices:

Apple has regained its lead over Android in the battle for U.S. smartphone marketshare, according to the latest report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

Going by CIRP’s figures, in the final quarter of 2013 iOS eked out a 2 percent advantage over Android — with Apple capturing 48 percent of the market to Google’s 46 percent.

Arguably, the iPad needs an external camera add-on more than the iPhone, stuck as it is with a previous-gen camera and features. And Sony seems to agree. Now it will sell you an adapter that puts one of its neat QX lens cameras onto any table (or phablet, I guess).

Transloader 2 is an update to the very handy iOS/Mac utility that lets you browse the web on your iPhone or iPad, and have any files you want to grab downloaded to your Mac, automagically. V2.0 gets an overhauled design, but otherwise keeps performing the same useful service as before.

Apple has released the fourth beta of OS X Mavericks 10.9.2 to registered developers — suggesting that the OS update could be made public in the very near future.

The update follows one week after developers received Apple’s OS X 10.9.2 beta 3, and more than five weeks following the launch of the first beta.

Quick! If you want to bake iPhone-shaped cookies, you should grab this i-Cookie Cutter from ThinkGeek before Samsung buys them all up to help it make more iPhone clones.

Chil’s Notchbook iPad Air case has one great feature that sets it apart form other cases. There’s a notch, or rather a slice, cut into the bottom of the front cover just next to the spine, and this notch lets you shove your palm up in there making the whole caboodle sit on your hand with no effort needed to grip it.

Neat, especially for when you’re reading books.

PDF Scanner is a new iOS app that scans your paper documents and turns them into PDFs. The gimmick that sets this app apart from all the others that do the same thing is that PDF Scanner can auto-detect and split double-page spreads into single sheets. And if that’s what you need then it may be worth struggling through the rest of the app to get to them. But probably not.

You know how when you open the Evernote iOS app to joy down a quick note, or snap a quick photo reminder? Usually what happens is that you spend the first half a minute desperately trying to remember whatever it was you wanted to remember while you tap around trying to find the new note buttons. Well, the new Evernote doesn’t help you if you launch into the depths of a previously-taken note, but it does at least make the main page a lot easier to use.

Just like the old Trapper Keeper, the STM Dux iPad case keeps all your notes (which are actually inside your iPad, safe within the Dux’s covers). You can plaster photos all over the inside of the clear plastic back. And it even has a little flip-open clasp that keeps the front cover from opening.

WordPress is one of the titans of desktop blogging, but when it comes to mobile, the WordPress app has been my least favorite ways of publishing from my iPhone. Since the release of iOS 7 though the company has pushed to revamp their app, including an update today that brings a redesigned post editing experience.

The free update is available in the App Store now but is exclusively for iOS 7, bringing with it an enhanced Reader  section so you can follow your favorite blogs while you blog. They’ve also improved inline commenting, notifications, and stats while throwing in lots of bug fixes into the mix.

Here’s the full list of changes:

Realmac’s Clear ushered in a new approach to designing productivity apps, and a new calendar app called Peek has taken the same visual aesthetic and built upon it.

The name says it all. Peek is designed to let you see your schedule at a glance, and there are plenty of fairly intuitive gestures to help.

How do you increase the size of a touchscreen without increasing the screen real estate? Answer: by creating a smart bezel.

A new patent published today reveals how a future generation iPad could feature a bezel able to detect gesture and touch inputs through Force Sensing. Not only would the technique described allow gestures — such as swipes — to continue off the normal surface of the screen, but it would also allow specific virtual buttons for tasks such as scrolling to be incorporated into the iPad’s bezel.

Apple holds one of the world’s largest collection of active credit cards in the world thanks to iTunes, yet despite all that purchasing power, it has only recently begun to look into processing payments for physical goods, and PayPal is desperate to play a role in the action.

Payment industry executives say that PayPal is pitching Apple hard to let it in on the company’s rumored payment initiative, according to a report from Re/code. At this point, executives aren’t sure what type of tech Apple wants to use, or even how big a role it wants to play in the industry, but they’re willing to go as far as white-labeling their payments service, just so Apple will use it.