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When you die as a billionaire who created one of the most influential companies in modern history, people automatically assume that you were pretty smart. And smarts mean good grades in school, right? That’s what your teachers want you to believe.

Mr. Stephen Paul Jobs was a genius, but not at getting As on his report card.<!–more–>

It’s common knowledge that Jobs was a college dropout. He left Reed College after only six months and ended up getting a job as a low-level technician at Atari. He would then go on to create the Mac with Steve Wozniak, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Atlantic did some digging through Jobs’s recently released FBI file and found a great nugget of history: his high school GPA. During his years at Homestead High School (1968-1972), Jobs averaged a 2.65 GPA, meaning he got mostly Cs and Bs. So he wasn’t a bad student, but definitely not the scholar you would expect from a future industry titan.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: AP

Notification Center, introduced with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, has quickly become an integral part of the Mac OS experience, replacing third-party apps like Growl and the like with a built-in system for notifying you of system and other events on your Mac.

Let’s take a look, then, at five tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your use of Notification Center, including getting rid of it all together, if that’s your thing.

iOS 7 concepts are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone is coming up with short video walkthroughs of what they think the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system will look like.

Rumors say that Apple is making iOS 7 “flatter” and less skeuomorphic (no pool table felt in Game Center, for example). That has led a lot of concept creators to what I think are, frankly, some overdone conclusions. Yesterday on Twitter I made the comment that, “My gut somehow tells me that all of these iOS 7 concepts are horribly wrong.” I haven’t seen a single iOS 7 concept that actually looks believable, well… until now.

Oddly named social photo sharing app, Oggl is available now in the App Store. It’s currently invite-only, so you’ll need to download the app and request an invite. Once you do that, you’ll be in line to get a spot in this new experiment from Hipstamatic, one of the first “put a filter on it” photo app developers in the iOS space.

Hipstamatic wants to position this app as more than just a way to snap retro-looking photos of your dinner, but a way to capture and curate some of the best iPhone photography around.

Hero Academy is a pretty fantastic iOS strategy game that plays out like a cross between chess and a tactical role playing game (RPG), played against a single opponent in asynchronous turns. Developer Robot Entertainment has created an experience that’s equal parts dead easy to learn and super fun to play, with a depth of tactics and strategy gameplay that hits the sweet spot for a fun on the go game.

Well, Hero Academy is now available on the Mac App Store, and it’s free to download and play.

This week on The CultCast: Adobe goes rental, Bill Gates gets crazy, Nintendo doesn’t come to the iPhone, 5S begins productio, Buster gets hit on by a goat, and the other fun Apple stories from the week. Baaaah!

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

Click through for the show notes!

If you’re looking for a new solution to back up your iPhone’s photos to the cloud and access them on other devices, Amazon has a new solution for you. The company just launched it’s new iOS app, Amazon Cloud Drive Photos, that lets you upload your photos to Cloud Drive.

Mother’s Day is in just a few days, and if your way of saying “I love you” is gadgetry, then T-Mobile thinks they have the perfect gift for you by heavily promoting its deal to get an iPhone for $0 down.

The deal has been running since April 12th, when the carrier rebranded itself as “The Uncarrier”. T-Mobile will ramp up the promotion by displaying prominent ads Mother’s Day iPhone 5 ads in the top 20 markets, along with 3 National ads in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times.

It seems crazy that iOS is six years old now, and Apple still hasn’t introduced a way to trial apps before buying them. Apple’s motivations in this aren’t clear — are they concerned that trialing apps will give users less incentive to buy them, and therefore make it less likely for Apple to get a 30% cut? — but it seems obvious to me that trial versions of apps would ultimately be a boon to the platform, allowing app developers to command higher prices on apps than they currently can.

How would such a system be implemented, though? iOS and Mac developer Amy Worral has some really smart ideas. And the best thing of all, they’re simple for Apple to implement.

The security features built into Apple’s iOS software are so good that the police are unable to gain access to defendant’s iPhones when they need to. Apple itself is able to bypass the security software and decrypt locked devices — and it do so when the police request it. But the company has so many requests that it has to add police to a lengthy waiting list.

If you weren’t grandfathered into an unlimited 3G data plan, then you probably spend each minute on your cellphone judiciously deciding what to spend your data on before you reach your limit. It sucks for users, and it sucks for content providers who want you to stream more videos and consume more content.

ESPN is trying to make thing better for consumers though by striking a deal with the carriers to subsidize your data plan so you can watch more sports video and analysis on your smartphone without it costing you anything against your data plan.

Asian messaging service Line, which has been a big success on iOS, turned over $58 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2013 with its new monetization model. But it’s just been dealt a massive blow by Apple.

The Cupertino company has unexplainably forced Line to remove its gift sharing feature, which allowed users to send stickers priced around $1.99 to their friends.

Nothing’s driving design nerds as crazy as the rumor that Jony Ive is taking a torch to iOS’s egregious skeuomorphic design elements and coming up with something for iOS 7 a lot more modern and flat like Windows 8.

In truth, any hopes that Ive is going to completely raze the ground of iOS skeuomorphism for iOS 7 are probably optimistic: Ive hasn’t had enough time, and it’s just too deeply ingrained into the operating system. More likely, Ive’s sensibilities will more immediately be felt in more subtle pairing-downs, like the way Apple’s Podcast app had the reel-to-reel player removed in a recent version.

But what does Jony Ive eventually want iOS to look like? A stunning new concept video has a very compelling take on that question.

Apple looks to be building another retail store in Beijing, which could open its doors in time for the launch of new iPhones and iPads this fall. Construction has begun on a building that bears a strong resemblance to a typical Apple retail outlet in Beijing’s China Central Place Shopping Center.

Speaking of Microsoft, they’re the latest company said to be eyeing the living room, designing a new set-top box to go head-to-head with the Apple TV. But Microsoft might have an ace up their sleeves.

There’s no denying that iTunes for Windows is one of the most important projects Apple has ever done. It allowed Apple to sell iPods, then iPhones, and then iPads (as well as billions of dollars worth of movies, books and music) to owners of Windows PCs at a time when the iOS ecosystem was much more tethered to the desktop than it is today.

But iTunes on Windows isn’t quite as important as it used to be, especially now that the iPad is king and Windows 8 is here, which has cratered PC sales thanks to the general confusion around its new “Metro” UI.

Any surprise, then, that Microsoft’s having a hard time convincing Apple to update iTunes for Windows 8?

We’re living in a particularly insecure digital age right now. It seems like every other day, a major internet company is getting hacked, or having its database of user passwords liberated by groups of hackers.

It’s pretty obvious at this point that we need something better than passwords to secure us from increasingly sophisticated hackers and data thieves. Many sites are rolling out 2-Step authentication — access the site on a new computer, and you have to enter a code sent to you by text message — but that implementation can be a pain. There’s got to be an easier way.

Michael Barrett, PayPal’s chief information security officer, thinks there’s a better way. It’s called the iPhone 5S.

Science! A 14-year-old girl has discovered that a regular old iPad Smart Cover can “accidentally turn off” a person’s implantable deibrillator… a device that might be the only thing keeping them alive.

Of course, I have no way of knowing whether space aliens actually had a hand in designing the Booq Boa Squeeze. I ran into a couple of Booq bigwigs in an elevator at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas once, and they seemed pretty cheery, completely normal, and not at all alien-like — too not-alien-like, considering Booq is based in Southern California (I consider myself a Southern Californian; we’re all weirdos). And Booq’s Sierra Madre HQ is suspiciously close to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories…

Anyway, whether or not of alien origin, what’s clear is that Booq’s bags are unlike any others on this planet — and their new lightweight, zillion-pocketed Boa Squeeze laptop backpack is no different.

A trademark lawsuit brought against Apple in regards to its use of the term “iBooks” was dismissed today in federal court. Black Tower Press sued Apple in 2011, saying that it owned a trademark acquired in 2006 and 2007. The lawsuit also noted that Apple had a trademark for the term “iBook,” which describes one of the distinctive plastic laptop Mac computers sold between 1999 and 2006, but that the current term was being used to describe a delivery method for electronic books beginning in 2010.

The judge did not agree, dismissing the case in a 71-page ruling.

In the latest free-to-play iOS game from the makers of Critter Escape, you’ll take on the role of a crystal mining critter who must take care of an endearing blob of muck named Chuck. You’ll be tasked with escaping the crystal mines with some flinging-action and bouncy platforming skill. You’ll need to keep Chuck fed with crystals, all while navigating through dangerous places and avoiding guards and exploding things along the way.

If you didn’t catch our post the other day about the newest game from living legend Sid Meier, the creator of Civilization and a heap of other ground-breaking games, here’s the nitty-gritty.

Meier’s newest masterpiece is called Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol; it’s a sort of turn-based tabletop miniatures game of whirling World War I dogfights, digitized for an iPad’s (or iPhone’s screen). It’s also partially free, looks amazing and is bound to be an instant classic.

One enterprising soul over on the Apple boards at Reddit has taken a bunch of comparison photos from the Camera+ app website and put them together to show just how far the iPhone camera has come, with the same image taken with the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G and 3GS, the iPhone 4 and 4s, and then the iPhone 5.

The difference between the first and last photos is stunning, but there’s an initial ratio of improvement between two models of the iPhone that’s simply stunning.

Apple’s plans for an ‘iRadio’ streaming service are still being stalled by reluctant music labels, according to a report today from the Financial Times. Last month it was reported that Universal was about to partner with Apple, and the deal has allegedly been sealed between the two companies since then. Now Sony is demanding more money before it signs on.

This morning we covered a report from Reuters that said Pegatron, one of Apple’s supply chain partners in China, is increasing its work force by 40% in anticipation of producing a budget iPhone in the coming months. The news was based on Pegatron’s investors conference yesterday and anonymous supply chain sources adding the iPhone ‘mini’ bit to Reuters.

Bloomberg decided to slant Pegatron’s comments and cite “falling iPad mini demand” as the reason for the company’s forecasted 25%-30% drop in revenue during the second 2013 quarter. Never mind the fact that the drop was expected for the entire consumer electronics division of Pegatron; it’s still the iPad’s mini fault.

Mainstream publications love to take hits at Apple whenever they can, but this specific instance has turned out to be an example of Bloomberg putting words in Pegatron’s mouth.