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The finishing touches are being added to Moscone West as WWDC 2013 draws closer. In just three short days Tim Cook and company will take stage at Moscone West to reveal a redesigned iOS, new MacBooks, and possibly a new iPad.

Apple’s WWDC keynote is slated to start Monday, June 10th at 10AM PST. Don’t want to miss all the juicy details as they’re unveiled? Well, here’s a handy infographic so you know what time to hop on and check the Cult of Mac liveblog for the full scoop on everything that goes down at WWDC 2013.

Image: Twitter

Apple has been busy decorating Moscone West all week in preparation for WWDC 2013, but until now we haven’t see any iOS 7 banners.

Apple just unveiled one of the iOS 7 banners for WWDC that seems to be a pretty clear indicator that iOS 7 will have a new minimalist design. The banner simply features a huge ‘7’ against a perforated background.

We’ll keep you update with new pictures as more banners are posted up. Make sure to come back Monday morning for Cult of Mac’s liveblog of the WWDC keynote.

Source: MacStories

LEGOs and Apple products go together like celery and peanut butter. Tons of LEGO/Apple hybrid creations have graced the front page of Cult of Mac, but now there’s a small Taiwanese design group that created an iPhone 5 LEGO adapter that will allow you to morph you iPhone into a new LEGO creation.

The adapter plugs into your iPhone 5’s Lightning port and allows you to link your own LEGO bricks together with your iPhone or iPad, perfect for building your own LEGO iPhone case.

Here are some of the creations you can create with the LEGO adapter:

Apple has been praised by Chinese environmental activist Ma Jun for its “aggressive” adoption of progressive environmental policies in China. The Cupertino company, which initially refused to cooperate with the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), has gone further than any of its peers in the technology industry, Ma said.

Yesterday, The Washington Post broke the story that the NSA, according to a leaked presentation, is “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies” to collect information on users, including e-mail, chat, photos, videos, and social network details. Basically everything, in other words.

The program is called PRISM and Apple is one of the many companies that a leaked presentation notablyclaims is involved.

Apple is denying that they have participated in PRISM, or even heard about it. That would seemingly end matters, except for one thing: even if Apple was part of PRISM, they would be required by law not to admit it if asked.

Arrrr! Avast, ye scurrilous sea quims! Why are you even reading this? Go download Scurvy Scallywags right now! It’s hilarious, addictive, cheap and the best game to come to iOS in recent memory.

We’ve been hearing reports for weeks now that Apple has been slowly signing deals with the three major music publishers to launch their new streaming music service, iRadio. There was just one conspicuous holdout. Sony. But now, the deal has been inked.

SwiftKey creator TouchType will be closely watching Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, hoping that the Cupertino company opens up its iOS platform to third-party keyboards for the first time. The SwiftKey keyboard has been exclusive to Android since its inception, but the company is itching to bring it to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.

The famous Macintosh Picasso logo was developed for the introduction of the original 128k Mac back in 1984. A minimalist line drawing in the style of Pablo Picasso, this whimsical graphic implied the whole of a computer in a few simple strokes. It was an icon of what was inside the box, and became as famous as the computer it represented.

The logo was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Mac development team. Originally the logo was to be a different concept called The Macintosh Spirit by artist Jean-Michel Folon, but before the release Steve Jobs changed his mind and had it replaced by the simple and colorful drawing by Hughes and Casado. It’s been beloved ever since, and the graphic style has endured across decades.

Hulu has unveiled a brand new Hulu Plus app for that’s been completely redesigned to focus on “discoverability, efficiency, and our overall user experience.” The company hopes that the change will make it easier for users to find their favorite shows and discover new ones.

Oh man, does Mischief ever look amazing. It’s a Mac (or Windows) drawing app which feels like it uses pixels, but stores your strokes as vectors. This means that you can daub away with your favorite pressure-sensitive stylus, but enjoy the infinite zooming and tiny file sizes of vectors. Adobe Ideas does something similar on iOS, but this is a whole lot bigger.

Gameloft has today release Gangstar Vegas for iOS, the latest title in its open-world, Grand Theft Auto-inspired series of action games. The title takes you on a dangerous adventure through the “City of Sin” as you play as a mixed martial arts fighter through 80 action-packed missions.

EA’s latest SimCity game was scheduled to arrive on Mac next week, but the company has announced that it will be delayed because it is “not ready for primetime yet.” Mac gamers won’t see the title until August now, with EA working to provide “a great experience” for those on OS X.

You’ve all used those personal guided museum tours, right? The ones that use a button-covered box and a pair of filthy headphones to tell you all about the painting/sculpture/diorama in front of you?

Well, imagine that instead of a stupid box and worn out headphones you got to use your own iPhone. And instead of having to tap in a number to hear the guide, you just relied on GPS to know what you’re looking at. And finally, imagine that instead of being a guide to a dusty old museum, the “museum” was instead the whole of New York.

That’s Urban Wonderer.

Tall Chess might as well have been called “LetterChess:” it’s like a cross between the amazingly addictive Letterpress and actual, you know, chess. It’s an iPhone 5 game (hence the “tall” part – it uses the whole of the iPhone’s screen to show the board), and it lets you play the great game against folks you’ll find on Game Center.

Booq’s new Fibre Snapcase is yet another shell-style iPhone 5 case, but this one at least has the distinction of using the neat linen-y material also found in Booq’s excellent Mamba device bags. I kind of like the look of it, but I wish that it had gone little further.

Today the story broke about PRISM, a supposedly top-secret program at the US National Security Agency (NSA) that has been in operation since 2007.

According to The Washington Post, current intelligence reporting increasingly relies on PRISM as its main source of raw data and is used in almost 1 out of every 7 intelligence reports these days.

Here’s the basic breakdown of what’s happening so far in the story, who’s involved, what’s being looked at, and more.

Today, the fourth day of the Apple e-book anti-trust trial taking place in New York, Google’s director of strategic partnerships testified as a government witness. Thomas Turvey, under cross examination from Apple lawyer Orin Snyder, told the court that while the publishers named in the original suit had told him that they had moved to an agency model due to deals with Apple, he also acknowledged that his lawyer had helped him draft his own statement for the court, and that he was unsure of the details within the statement.

In other words, the exact opposite of what a credible witness says.

The Washington Post has reported that the NSA has created a $20 million spy program called PRISM, that has been allowed to directly access citizens’ private data on Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple servers – the company joined the program in that order as well..

Both Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have all denied any involvement in the PRISM program, however, the Washington Post’s story alleges that the companies “participate knowingly in PRISM operations.”

PRISM was started in 2007 when Microsoft became the first corporate partner. Apple demonstrated the most resistance to the program and held out for five years before joining in 2012.

Here’s what data PRISM collects, according to the Post:

Yesterday we reported that Joseph Brown, the young developer behind the recent carrier hacks, had found evidence that carriers are throttling iPhone and iPad data speeds without cause.

After investigating into Brown’s report (which has been deleted), AnandTech published its own investigation into the matter that proves Brown’s throttling claims are not true.

In his article, Brian Klug gives on general reason of why the iPhone throttling conspiracy is false:

There are hundreds of apps on the App Store that claim they’ll help you boost your productivity, keep your thoughts organized, and help you finish all of those great side project ideas you have floating around. Some of those apps are genuinely helpful, but famed Apple-blogger John Gruber just released a new note-taking app that challenges them all.

Vesper is a sublime note-taking app for iPhone that just hit the App Store. Its price tag is a bit steeper than most apps, but even at $4.99 it’s a pretty good deal. Designed by John Gruber’s new company, Q Branch, Vesper is a hybrid of notes and list-making features that helps you keep your thoughts organized.

“What’s the difference between a thought, an idea, and something you want to do? I don’t know exactly. That’s why we made Vesper.” – John Gruber

In an effort to boost iPhone unit sales, Apple is planning to roll out a new trade-in iPhone program later this month, according to a new report from Peter Burrows at Bloomberg.

Details on the new iPhone trade-in program are scant right now, but according to the report Apple is teaming up with Brightstar Corp. to run the exchange program. The new trade-in program will only be available at Apple retail stores, and should serve as a big incentive to get customers to upgrade their iPhone 4 and 4s units to an iPhone 5. 

VSCO Cam has already become one of our favorite camera apps on the iPhone thanks to its film emulation effects and clean interface, but a big update for the app is making us fall in love all over again.

Visual Supply Company just released VSCO Cam 2.0 on the App Store and it comes with a huge batch of new features, including new presets, more efficient editing, and separate Focus and Exposure rings that give you more control when shooting pictures.

Best of all, Visual Supply Co. dropped the price on VSCO from $0.99 to free so there’s no reason for you not to give it a whirl. You can pick it up from the App Store now, or dig into the full list of new features after the jump:

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Jason Citron is a veteran of both the console and gaming space, involved with developing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend in 2006, and then releasing one of the first hit iOS games in the early, heady days of the iOS App store, a match-three puzzle game with a twist, Aurora Feint. Soon after, he created OpenFeint, which was the de facto leaderboard and multiplayer matching system for Apple mobile devices long before Game Center.

After OpenFeint was sold to Japanese social-gaming company, GREE, in April of 2011, Jason headed out to engage his passion for video game development once again with a new company, Hammer & Chisel, and a new game, announced today, called Fates Forever, an iPad-only massively online battle arena (MOBA) game.

Citron took some time out of a busy schedule to talk to Cult of Mac about the new game, it’s mechanics and business strategy, and his own take on what iPad games should be.

Mail Pilot, the email client that was born on Kickstarter and first hit iOS back in April, is coming to the Mac. We don’t have a release for it yet, but if you’re itching to get your hands on it, you can sign up for the public beta today.