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Quora is a fantastic site in which members ask questions of experts in various fields, and for the past year or so, there’s an absolute fantastic thread going asking about how Apple keeps its secrets… and it contains not only some fantastic insight there on what lengths Apple will go to be secretive about new products, but about how information on new products leaks… like, say, the time the Pentagon leaked the 1998 iMac to the world.

Although we’re excited about the iPhone 5S, we’re not expecting it to be vastly different to the iPhone 5. We at least expect it to look largely identical. But according to a new rumor that has surfaced in China, the device could come with thinner bezels and a new display that offers twice as many pixels.

Back In The Day™, when men were men, cars were cars and boys were forced to work to support their families before their stupid brains were even half developed, we fixed automobiles by kicking their tires and sucking our teeth.

Fast forward to the Space Year 2013 and cars now repair themselves. All you have to do is take it to a repair shop, where they plug it into a computer which sucks the money from your bank account while you take a spin in a “courtesy” car.

But what if you want to tinker? If you own a Ford and an iPad, and don’t mind getting your hands (literally) dirty, then you’ll be happy to hear that there’s a (concept) app for that.

As Flickr is to Instagram, so 500px is to Flickr. 500px is a photo-sharing site that focusses (huh…) on showing only your best pictures. To this end the website and various apps bring beautiful hi-res images to your iDevices (it’s especially good on the Retina iPad), and the account upgrade options are geared towards professional portfolios.

But the quality of the official apps hasn’t deterred the folks behind ISO500, a brand-new iPhone app which brings a super-minimal interface to the 500PX site. And, like 500px itself, the app is free. Mostly.

This is the Bridging Book, and it “bridges” the gap between reality and virtual reality by combining an iPad app with an actual paper book. The concept is simple and yet looks to be very effective, if the smiles on the kid in the video are anything to go by: The iPad detects page turns made in the book using magnets. Yes, frikkin’ magnets.

Quick question: How do you feel about 60˚? That’s the angle, not the temperature. Do you like it? Still not sure? Then let me put it another way: Are you a fan of tilting things back by 30 degrees?

If so, and if you don’t like to adjust things, then the ChillTab2 might just be the perfect stand for you.

We know that the iPad’s dock hole is pretty much a USB port in disguise, and that the camera connection kit is also a stealth adapter which lets you plug in all kinds of USB accessories and use them.

But I never even thought that it might be possible to import photos from a floppy disk this way. Luckily for us, Niles Mitchell wasn’t so short sighted: He grabbed an old USB floppy drive and hooked it up.

It’s hard to believe, but some people don’t like the image-crunching, JPG-mangling special effects of app like Instagram. Instead, they want the output from the iPhone’s highly-tuned camera to be clean and as good as it can be. Which is why Olloclip’s new iPhone app goes in the opposite direction to most grungification apps and corrects errors introduced by the company’s clip-on lens of the same name.

My camera eats batteries. I’m not sure exactly why — maybe it’s because the NP-95 battery it uses is tiny; maybe it’s that its hybrid viewfinder is particularly power hungry; or perhaps it’s just that I refuse to engage any of the performance-slowing power-save modes — but my X100s is thirsty.

I get around this by carry a pocketful of those tiny batteries, but taking the giant Fujifilm charger on vacation is a pain. So I set out to find a USB charger that would do the job without frying the batteries.

Then I realized I was doing it wrong. Instead of a USB-powered battery charger, what I needed was a proper camera battery charger which had a USB port in the side. Thus I could charge everything from one wall socket, in one compact unit.

The device is the Digipower TC–55.

Later.fm is like Instapaper for music. And like Instapaper, it is beginning its life as a web-only app, although it works so well in Mobile Safari that you won’t care about the lack of an actual iOS app right now.

The Mutator is a hardware mute switch for your iPhone. What’s that you say? You already have a hardware mute switch on your iPhone? Well, yes you do. But – as the poor fellow who caused Mahlergate found out – mute doesn’t always mean “mute”.

I have three very good reasons to write this post. One is that the camera lucida is just a kick-ass gadget, the kind of thing that all you creative iOwning folks out there will presumably love. Second, the Kickstarter video which accompanies it is both interesting and educational. And third, I have an idea for a version that will use your iPad and iPhone.

Farensius is a simple menubar app for your Mac which will let you know what the weather is doing outside, should you be too busy to turn your head and steal an unproductive glance through the nearest window. You get a little icon showing you the type of weather you’ll find beyond the confines of your office, and a temperature in – yes – ˚F or ˚C.

I know what you bike nuts are thinking. You’re jealous of all the hue-controlled lighting available to the stay-at-home folks, and you want a little bit of that color-changing action for your ride. Well, the folks at Helios have heard you, and are just about to launch a couple of crazy handlebars with built-in LEDs. And that’s not all they do. Oh no…

The iPhone 5 is the best mobile phone ever made, in my opinion. And the iOS platform has the best mobile apps.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t add up to the best phone experience anymore.

What Apple lacks is the best experience with using Internet-based services. And Apple will fall much further behind on June 26.

Here’s what Apple needs to change in order to offer the best overall mobile phone experience.

Automatic, the California-based startup that turns the iPhone into your own driving assistant, had planned to start shipping preorders this month. Unfortunately, the $70 car dongle + iPhone app won’t be shipping until the end of August now. Automatic needs more time to finish its app before drivers around the country start using it on the road.

This week on The CultCast: Apple Chief Tim Cook brings his Southern charm to Washington, hints at an iHologram; we break down the Apple tax debacle and say why their overseas billions are too legit to quit; and Xbox One vs. Apple TV, should Apple be worried?

All that and more on this week’s CultCast. Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.

Show notes up next.

Apple has just posted a new pre-release developer seed for upcoming OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4, Build 12E55.

In the notes accompanying the seed release, which includes Combo (comprehensive) and Delta (just changes) update installers, Apple notes the same focus areas as the last few seeds: Wi-Fi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari. This seed, though, also has Windows File Sharing, a new addition to the list since the last seed, build 12E47, which was released at the beginning of this month.

Could this rapid release schedule mean that 10.8.4 is getting closer to actual release to consumers? As this is the sixth developer release of 10.8.4, and 10.8.3 went through 13 different seeds, the answer may be a qualified no, as Apple tends to iterate on its dot releases fairly often and consistently.

Source: Apple Developer Center

If history is indeed destined to repeat itself, Intel’s next-gen Haswell processors will power the 2013 gamut of Macs. Every year Apple typically puts the newest Intel silicon in its desktop and laptop models, and this year should be no exception. When Haswell desktop lineup specs leaked in December 2012, we got a peak at what will likely power the 2013 iMac.

Intel has now said that Haswell chips will offer 50% more battery life for laptops than Ivy Bridge. The main focus of designing Haswell was to lower power consumption for laptops and tablets while also doubling graphics performance. Sounds great. Maybe we’ll see something with Haswell announced at WWDC!

Source: Computerworld

God games tend to be pretty similar: build a little city, tell the inhabitants what to do, and watch them do it. Not in this game, though.

Skyward Collapse is a fantastic mashup of a 4X strategy game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) with a god-game (Spore, Black & White, Civilization). Your task is to create and populate a floating continent called Liminith. You get to create gods, creatures, and artifacts from Norse and Greek myth, and keep them from killing each other off until you’re summoned home by The Master. This will definitely be harder than it sounds.

PC makers have been copying the Mac for years, but every now and then you just have to shake your head yet again. HP has unveiled two laptops that blatantly rip off Apple’s designs. It’s so painfully obvious that it makes you wonder if HP wants customers to be fooled into thinking they’re buying from Apple.

The FDA has gone after Biosense, a health startup that makes uCheck, an automated urine analyzer sold directly to end customers. You pee on a strip then use the uChek iPhone app to take a picture and analyze the contents of your urine for health info like glucose. Biosense claims that it can help detect up to 25 diseases, like diabetes, pre-clampsia, and urinary tract infection.

A letter has been sent to Biosense from FDA about its home kit + iPhone app product asking why Biosense hasn’t gotten uCheck officially sanctioned by the government.

Apple is having some trouble with its signature store on 5th Avenue in NYC. The company rebuilt the glass cube above the store so it will have less seams, but ever since the renovation was finished Apple has had not one, but two leaks.

A rain storm hit New York City yesterday, and just like two weeks ago, the roof of the 5th Ave store began to bulge with large deposits of water that then leaked and flooded the lower level. To make matters worse, the roof of the Apple Store in SoHo sprung a leak too.

One Apple Store customer got the entire scene on video this time. You can watch the 5th Ave Geniuses scramble to solve the flooding after the jump:

When rumors of the iWatch first surfaced, most insiders pegged its launch date for somewhere around the end of 2013 and everyone got super excited that our wrists are going to get blinged out by Apple really soon. However, lately we’ve been hearing that that might not be the case, and we won’t be able to slap Apple’s magical wrist watch on until 2014.

The unreleased iWatch isn’t the only timepiece Apple’s ever made though, so if you’re really desperate to get a watch made by Apple you totally can, but it might cost you more than your iPhone.

Here are 11 of the coolest retro Apple iWatches you can buy right now. We’ll start with the cheap stuff and work our way down:

AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid service has never been friendly to the iPhone. In fact, AT&T has tried to keep iPhones off it for years, hoping that iPhone users will pay for bigger data contracts instead. It looks like AT&T is starting to feel some pressure from T-Mobile and other prepaid networks though, because starting today you’ll be able to use an iPhone on the GoPhone network.

After preventing data access for iPhones for years, AT&T is enabling iPhone support to GoPhone, along with 4G HSPA+ and LTE access, and Visual Voicemail.