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One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

Day 20 is upon us as the end of the world draws near, and today we’re recognizing a handy menubar app for the Mac called Bartender.

Could it be that, after spending a lifetime looking, I have finally found the perfect bag? Of course not. There’s no single bag that can perform every task.

But I might just have found the perfect day-to-day backpack. It’s the medium Velo from Rickshaw Bagworks in San Fransisco, and it’s pretty damn awesome.

It looks like T-Mobile wants 2013 to be the year they truly start competing against the dominant forces of AT&T and Verizon. They just sewed up a deal to bring the iPhone to their carrier, and they’ve been trying to hurry up and bring iPhone-friendly HSPA+ speeds to fourteen new metropolitan areas.

T-Mobile announced today that they spent $4 billion investing in the modernization of their network over the last 10 months. The improvements mean that more than 100 million people now have enhanced coverage that the iPhone can take advantage of.

“Click!” You hear that? It’s the sound of an iPad turning into a Microsoft Surface, with the help of the Nibiqü keyboard cover.

Now that we see it, it’s obvious that this product was completely inevitable. And almost equally inevitable is the fact that it comes by way of Kickstarter.

Readdle has issued a new update to its Calendars app for iOS today, introducing a number of new features and some nice improvements. And if that wasn’t enough, the company has also slashed 80% off its price tag for Christmas, so if you haven’t already go it, now’s a great time to pick it up.

I usually avoid posting about concept designs because most of them are so lame. But the iPhone Theater deserves a special mention, somewhat ironically for the very same reason – it’s so lame.

With your help, we’ve narrowed down the list of best iOS apps of 2012 to a handful of favorites: Clear, Temple Run, Angry Birds Star Wars, Google Maps, Letterpress, and Paper.

Big thanks to everyone who voted so far. Now’s your chance to pick a winner from the shortlisted finalists.

Verizon continues its quest to leave no city unturned when it comes to its 4G LTE network. Starting today, 29 new markets will enjoy the blazing fast speeds of LTE and bring the total of covered markets to an astounding 470!

Dear Theives. We’ve been over this like a thousand times. If you’re going to steal an iPhone, make sure you either A) Reset it, or B) Turn it off. There’s a wonderful application called Find My iPhone that’s going to lead the cops to you everytime.

Four armed robbers in Springfield Massachusetts still haven’t learned this valuable bit of information. The robbers donned their masked and rushed into an Ambis convenience store with their guns and plundered the store of its money, cigarettes, and a laptop. Then they stole an iPhone and that’s when everything went downhill.

Apple released its iOS 6.0.2 update over-the-air to select devices earlier this week, promising a fix for a frustrating bug that could impact Wi-Fi performance. However, the update comes with a nasty problem of its own. There are reports that it has greatly reduced battery life on the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini — even when the devices go unused for long periods of time.

Would you pay $53 for these Apple logo speakers? They’re beautiful right? Granny apple green cut in the precise shape of a famous Cupertino computer company’s logo. They’re mighty, just like Apple’s old mouse, except they probably got bass for days too, and I need me some bass cause I’m bossy.

We’re not exactly sure where you can purchase these stunning speakers, but we want them. According to Reddit you can find them at retail locations in Europe, and a Google search led us to this Direct Promotions website that let’s you purchase them in bulk. If you find out where to get them please let me know. My Jony Ive shrine needs some sitar music flowing from these holy speakers.

Apple’s quest for litigation has resulted in a few wins and a few loses. However, it would seem the big picture isn’t looking so good for Apple. The very patents Apple has been attempting to assert in its litigation crusade are now coming under high scrutiny and slowly being invalidated.

Over at his blog, Don Melton — the guy behind Safari and WebKit — has a fascinating post up about the many possible names Apple CEO Steve Jobs tested on friends and colleagues for the company’s web browser before settling on “Safari.”

They were all terrible. “Freedom” was one strong candidate, among other terrible options like “Alexander” and “iBrowse.”

As Apple slowly but surely turns its back on Google, Siri, its intelligent digital assistant, is doing the same. If you’d have asked Siri a question back in June, there’s a 60% chance the data it came back with would have been from Google. Ask it a question today, however, and that chance is reduced to just 30%. Not only has Apple given YouTube and Google Maps the boot, then, it’s shunning Google’s search data, too.

If you pop into your local Microsoft store and ask for a demonstration of Windows 8, there’s a chance the store assistant will disappear and send over an 11-year-old child to help you. That’s what the company is doing in Portugal in an effort to prove its new operating system is so intuitive, even a child can use it. Either that or it’s taking advantage of cheap child labor.

Dropbox — our favorite cloud-based storage solution next to the iCloud — has been hinting that it wants to be a major presence in the online photo gallery business, and now they’ve taken another step towards that goal, purchasing photo sharing and organizing tool Snapjoy for an undisclosed amount.

Apple’s App Store is widely considered the king of mobile marketplaces — even Android fanatics will admit that it offers a greater selection of high-quality apps and games. But it’s Google Play that’s currently seeing the most growth, according to the latest data from app analytics firm Distimo, while the App Store enjoys more than four times as much revenue.

ZeptoLab, the creators of the hugely popular Cut the Rope, just released their latest iOS game. It’s called Pudding Monsters, and it promises to be a deliciously addictive puzzle adventure filled with whacky characters and “innovative stick-’em-together game-play.” Check out the launch trailer below.

The excellent Autostitch Panorama app is now available for the iPad, and it is as fantastic as ever. Unlike Apple’s own implementation of iOS panoramas on the iPhone 5, the Autostitch app does things the old-fashioned way, quilting together a patchwork of separate images.

This has some advantages.

While regular ol’ cameras race to add touch screens, apps and pinch-to-zoom even while they strip away their physical buttons, Snapgripp is doing the exact opposite for the iPhone.

The little case’n’handle combo adds a finger grip to the iPhone 4/S and – in concert with a companion app – lets you pretend like your iPhone is a real camera. Except for that tiny sensor anyway.

The European Commission’s Vice President for Competition Policy, Joaquín Almunia, has confirmed that it will charge Samsung  “very soon” in an antitrust patent case after the Korean electronics giant broke competition rules by filing patent-infringement lawsuits against Apple. Samsung has been under investigation since January for a possible breach of antitrust rules, and earlier this week, it dropped all of its injunction requests against Apple in Europe.

If you’re hoping to get a new Android or iOS devices this Christmas, the first thing you’ll want to do is load up their respective app stores and take advantage of the holiday discounts. EA reduced a stack of titles on iOS yesterday, and today Sega has been slashing the prices of its most popular mobile titles. We’ve put together a list of titles on sale — check it out below.

Back in July, Apple purchased acres and acres of land surrounding its campus in the heart of Austin, Texas. It was later reported that Apple was making a $304 million investment to grow its operations in Austin and bring an additional 3,600 jobs to the area.

Now Apple has broken ground on its 39-acre Texan campus in an effort to expand its growing U.S. Operations Center.

Borderlands 2 from Aspyr is now available to download at the Mac App Store, almost exactly a month after it debuted on Steam — and there’s good news and bad news.

I’ve had a blog on Tumblr for years, and I’ve never been able to really get into using it on my iPhone until recently. A platform’s mobile presence is so important, and it’s been nice to see Tumblr work on drastically improving its mobile web and iPhone apps in recent months.

For some unfathomable reason, Tumblr has never had an official iPad app—well, until today. It just went live in the App Store.