Tim Cook has talked about this being an “iPad Christmas”, but plain calling it an Apple Christmas might be altogether more accurate — as Apple surged to a 2013 new stock high following news of the recent China Mobile deal.

Apple stock gained 3.8 percent to end Monday trading at $570.09, reflecting what Creative Technologies analyst Tim Bajarin has called, “a huge deal for Apple.”

Although it hit several year highs over the past several months, Apple stock prices had been depressed for some of 2013 as investors appeared concerned regarding a supposed lack of innovation from the company.

More recently, share prices had wavered as nervous shareholders fretted that the long-reported China Mobile deal wasn’t happening as fast as they hoped.

Although analysts are still arguing over the long-term impact the China Mobile deal is likely to have, this strong year finish nonetheless bodes well for Apple in 2014.

Twitter, Facebook, and Google shares also finished strong after the day’s trading.

Source: San Jose Mercury News

Don’t Starve’s intuitive nature from beginning to end makes it a highly addictive and enjoyable game to play, and almost perfectly teeters the edge of becoming a major time drain…without going quite that far. The combination of that well balanced gameplay and it’s super cool overall design makes it one of the best of the year.

And you can get Don’t Starve for 33% off – only $9.99 – courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

I love games like Canabalt, even though a world of tricky endless runners flowed from that simple endless platformer’s success. Last Bunny takes the Canabalt style and introduces tilt controls along with jumping to give you more control over the fearless rabbit bounding over buildings.

You play as, well, the last adorable bunny in a world overrun by those grumpy stone blocks from Super Mario Bros. games and missiles. You jump from building to building trying to avoid bombs and pitfalls. Unlike Canabalt, you have control over the speed at which the bunny runs. By tilting your phone to the right or left, you can increase or decrease his movement to make jumping more precise. This is very helpful when blocks fall just outside the rabbit’s jump distance which will ultimately lead you to running into them unless you’re moving at a slower speed.

If you’ve been looking for the ultimate file compression tool, then this offer is for you. Stuffit Deluxe includes Stuffit Archive Manager, Stuffit Scheduler, Stuffit Expander, and StuffIt Destinations™, giving you everything you need to compress and send files.

The best part? Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $9.99 – a savings of 80% – during this limited time offer.

Ever been surfing the web and find a nice bit of text you want to save? You can highlight the text with your cursor, copy, and paste into an app like Text Edit or Notes, sure, but maybe you just want a quick and easy way to put the bit of text aside to use later.

There’s no need to bother with opening an app and pasting in the text in OS X. Text clipping has been around for quite a while, but it’s a feature that we rarely use, for one reason or another.

Apple’s only Berlin store — — located on the city’s lengthy Kurfuerstendamm shopping avenue — has been broken into, with thieves crashing a stolen Opel Corsa through the attractively minimalist (but sadly overly vulnerable) plate glass entrance way this morning, and making off with MacBooks, iPads and iPhones.

Americans reportedly spend more than $5 billion upgrading their iPhones — or switching to Apple from a competing brand — each year.

She may have the fastest selling album in iTunes history, but not everyone is happy with Beyoncé’s success — and it’s not just limited to brick-and-mortar stores either.

Responding to Beyoncé’s iTunes exclusive, Amazon has joined Target in announcing that it will not stock physical copies of the Beyoncé album (although the album is available from Amazon’s online US MP3 store if a customer searches for it).

Nokia has taken aim at the iPad before. Just last month, we reported on a somewhat Freudian ad for the Lumia 2520 which showed a male iPad user unable to connect with the fairer sex because of the “shortcomings” of his chosen tablet.

If that wasn’t enough to get you to drop your Apple products immediately, Nokia now returns with an even more searing indictment against the iPad: it will make you ignore your dog.

It may have recently fallen out with Beyoncé over her decision to debut her new album on iTunes rather than in brick-and-mortar stores, but Target isn’t above going down the Apple route to grab a pre-Christmas buck either.

Customers searching for perfect last-minute holiday gift ideas can head to Target, which is offering deals on the iPhone 5c, 5s, and iPad Air between now and December 24.

Apple investors got their Christmas wish: The China Mobile deal, which could add billions of dollars to Apple’s revenue, has finally materialized.

The iPhone will be available to China Mobile customers beginning January 17, Apple announced Sunday, with pricing and availability to be released at a later date.

A new book called Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein revealed the mechanism by which Apple influenced the direction of Android — shock and awe.

Yes, the introduction of the iPhone changed the direction of smartphones. But I don’t think it’s going to happen again in the wearables market. Here’s why.

 Kanto’s YU2s seem to come from a time when speakers were solid, simple structures; proud temples to sound that said of their owners, Hey, I’m serious about music, and I know what I’m doing. Aesthetics were important, of course, but unquestioningly took a backseat to sound. Sound was king.

If you haven’t heard of Kanto before, that’s OK — the Canadian outfit just sprouted up in the Vancouver suburbs around five years ago. The YU2s are Kanto’s latest speakers, the smallest of their lineup of a half-dozen or so, and they’re designed to fit unobtrusively on a bookshelf or desk and play music from your computer or mobile device.

The YU2’s performance during our review, however, was nothing short of astonishing — and they could very capably substitute for larger speakers in a variety of roles. For those looking to elevate their desktop setup even further, pairing these speakers with a NuPhy Air75 V2 could create a seamless and high-quality workspace.

Christmas came early this morning for jailbreakers who have been waiting for iOS 7 to be cracked. Today the Evad3rs, the same group of hackers behind the iOS 6 jailbreak, released the full iOS 7 untethered jailbreak to everyone’s surprise.

Evasi0n7 is available now for free, but here’s why you should wait to jailbreak your iOS 7 device:

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Lumen Bluetooth Lightbulb

$70 — Home — Anything

Wi-Fi lightbulbs are either the greatest thing ever, or final proof that our society is about to collapse form absurd decadence into fully-deserved chaos and misery. But as long as we’re buying into the convenience of the modern-day Clapper, why not make it even more useful by adding Bluetooth?

That’s the idea of the Lumen, which can be controlled by your iPhone from even where there’s no Wi-Fi network. It changes color, turns on and off and — if the accompanying video is anything to go by — it can help you get laid. All this, and the incorporation of “automatic manners” too. Who wouldn’t want one?

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Alubolt

$50 — Docks & Stands — iPhone

The Lightning connector has made the iPhone and iPad dock a pretty tricky thing to get right: the plug is so happy and snug in its little Lightning hole that it just won’t come out without a good tug, and this means that the dock usually comes with the iPhone when you lift it up.

The Alubolt doesn’t help with this, but it does at least come with its own Lightning cable, so you won’t have to pony up another $20 just to use it — which is kind of a downer on Christmas day.

Alubolt

Dodocase Durables iPhone Wallet

$50 — Cases — iPhone

This article first appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand magazine

Versacover for iPad

$60 — Cases — iPad

The Versacover has two uses. One is to protect and support your iPad Air, offering many, many different ways to prop it up thanks to the origami-like folding front cover, which can be flipped into a large-but-limited number of iPad-bracing shapes.

The other use is to make work for idle hands, in the same way that a Rubik’s Cube used to do back when I was a child. All this and a microfiber lining to keep the screen clean: it’s the perfect Christmas Day accessory.

I like to travel light, bringing as few chargers and cables as possible. This Cult of Mac Deals offer is one I also like – because it helps me in my quest to travel as light as possible.

The Backup Battery Bundle features a high-end portable battery and a car charger that make for the ideal package for someone like me. And the price is right as well: just $59.99.

Please note: This offer is only available to customers in the continental United States. The sale price includes shipping and all sales are final.

This bundle includes Gum™, an ultra-compact (thumb-sized), super-stylish backup battery for smartphones and USB devices. Clad in high-quality aluminum, the Gum has enough juice to recharge an iPhone. recharge via micro USB, three green LEDs showing the remaining power.

Here are the top features fo this device:

Apple, Google and Microsoft all want to be your phone company. But with both competitors’ communication offerings in disarray, Apple has an opportunity to offer the best, most elegant and integrated communication platform.

All they have to do is keep moving in their current direction, make a couple of key rumors come true and keep Steve Jobs’ promise about FaceTime.

On our all-new CultCast: Apple has a new Christmas commercial and some are hailing it as their best ad yet; Mac Pro is Apple’s most powerful computer ever; Beyonce’s iTunes-only album release breaks all the records; an alarming new study shows pervs can use your Mac’s camera to peep your naked bod; and we choose on our favorite Christmas movies of all time!

Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest Apple stories! Download new and past episodes of The CultCast on iTunes or hit play below and let the audio enjoyment commence.

Thanks to DigiDNA and MacUpdate for sponsoring this episode. Need an easy way to wirelessly transfer movies, music, and data to and from your iDevice? You need DiskAid. Plus check out Macupdate’s new holiday app bundle and get $400 worth great apps for only $40.

If converting video files is for you, then this Cult of Mac Deals offer is for you…and all for the price of a movie ticket.

Tenorshare Video Converter for Mac is the all-in-one and fastest video converter software for Mac users. It supports more than 100 video and audio formats conversion, and the output video can be played on QuickTime Player, iMovie, iPhone, iPad, and many more platforms. And now you can get Tenorshare for just $9.99 – a savings of 83%!

Cult of Mac Magazine’s Unboxing Issue is a super-sized, mega edition packed full of good advice for your new device, whether you’re giving or getting.

We’ve got guides on how to set up your brand new iPhone and iPad, what apps and games you need as well as the accessories Cult of Mac reviewers won’t leave home without.

There is something unimportant and yet oh-so-important about choosing the right way to carry around your laptop.

Apple purists likely hate anything which covers up their beloved machines for even the shortest amount of time. For the rest of us, however, it’s about finding the most attractive way possible to transport your laptop without being mugged in the process.

The famous Square Enix tax, defined as the premium price the Japanese video game company has always charged for its ports of classic and new RPG games on the iTunes App Store, seems to be up–for a while, at least.

We’re talking huge discounts, like recently released Deus Ex: The Fall, originally debuting at seven bucks, now only $0.99, and The World Ends With You (perhaps my favorite Square Enix game of all time) at half the regular $20 price.

How about Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, classics in the role playing game genre, at half off, each going for $3.99 on the App Store? There are eight other Final Fantasy titles on sale, as well. Yeah, I thought you’d like that.

One of the most phenomenal — and frankly, underrated — aspects of the handheld computing revolution ushered in by the iPhone and its ilk is how much power, in the form of knowledge, has been placed, literally, in people’s hands.

Case in point: iCitizen is a new, free app that clearly and elegantly places pretty much all the information you need to know in order to make informed voting decisions — right in the palm of your hand. There you go: Direct democracy in the palm of your hand, courtesy of the iPhone (and the app’s developer).