I rely on the iPhone to get me around most places, even in my current hometown. I just really have a bad sense of direction. But ever since the advent of online maps and the GPS function of my iPhone, I’ve longed for the ability to quickly look up an address on my Mac, hit a button, and have the directions go to my iPhone.

That’s never been possible until now, with the advent of OS X Mavericks and the addition of the new Maps app to the Mac. Ideally, you’re supposed to be able to just launch Maps, get a set of directions, and then hit the little Share button to send those directions to your portable device.

I was super disappointed, then, when I went to send some directions to my iPhone from my Mac today and didn’t see my iPhone or iPad listed in the Share list.

As is their wont, gadget vivisectors iFixIt have gotten their hands on Apple’s new Retina MacBook Pros in both 13-inch and 15-inch incarnations. As usual, these aren’t the machines you want if repairability is concerned, but there’s additional bad news this time around: the battery in both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro has actually shrunk.

Apple unveiled a couple of incredible new iPads on Tuesday, including the new iPad mini with Retina Display and the svelte, one-pound iPad Air. They even kept the low-res iPad mini for sale as an entry-level iPad at $299.

What, then, is Apple doing selling the iPad 2 still? At $399, it’s as expensive as a more powerful Retina iPad mini. It’s also less powerful than the $299 iPad mini Apple is selling at the price-tier below it. So why does Apple even bother selling them? It’s as simple as the fact that people keep buying the iPad 2.

iPad Air. Retina iPad Mini. New Macbook Pros. The new Mac Pro. Mavericks goes free. So does the new iLife and iWork. There’s a TON to talk about on our Special Edition CultCast! Join us, and special guest (and MacCast host) Adam Christianson, as we discuss our first impressions of the huge pile of hardware and software Apple unveiled at the jam-packed event.

Have a few laughs and get caught up on each week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let baseline roll!

Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 5s and 5c continues. After launching on September 20 with limited supplies in 11 countries, Cupertino is now expanding availability to 11 new countries.

Last month, Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher called Apple’s new 64-bit A7 chip a “gimmick.” It was a hugely stupid thing to say, leading to Qualcomm actually correcting Chandrasekher’s remarks. But it also might have killed Chandrasekher’s career, at least in part, as the former chief marketing officer seems to have been sent into exile within the company.

If you read Ulysses III 1.1’s release notes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Soulmen (Ulysses’ developers) have just aded a few features that should really have been in v1.1. But take it for a spin and you’ll see that the the app has been polished in so many places that it feels both completely familiar and full of new tweaks.

With just hours left before the weekend, the Bungajungle is unlikely to be beaten for the week’s best-named gadget. It’s also a pretty fantastic-looking iPad stand, with enough flexibility (pun most definitely intended) to double up as a stand for your MacBook.

If you thought there wasn’t much Junecloud could so to improve its already-great deliveries-tracking app Delivery Status Touch, then you’re about to be amazed. In fact, so long is the list of changes in the newly-launched v5 that I have pasted them below for your goggle-eyed viewing pleasure.

In short, it now looks great on iOS 7, can sync via iCloud if you prefer, integrates with 1Password and is way way quicker.

There’s another new e-mail app available now for OS X, and it takes a different approach to your usual e-mail clients. It’s called Unibox, and it focusses on people, not messages.

I’m forever intrigued with Booq — a bag-maker headquartered just a stone’s throw from design-crazy Pasadena — and its maverick creations. The company’s latest is the Boa Shift backpack; while it doesn’t much that’s new, it seems to gather all their signature design elements into a single bag.

We know that the new Mac Pro — and as we learned earlier this week, the new MacBook Pros — sport new Thunderbolt 2 ports, which double the speed of the initial version to a maximum throughput of 20GB/second.

All that speed is academic without peripherals designed specifically for Thunderbolt 2. So today, Promise Technology is the first company to announce Thunderbolt 2 stuff — namely, their Pegasus2 RAID storage boxes and SANLink2 Fibre Channel-to-Thunderbolt 2 SAN device bridge.

Tapbots has released its highly-anticipated iOS 7 redesign of Tweetbot, a popular third-party Twitter client. Version 3.0 is a radical departure from the iOS 6 app, and it’s available now in the App Store for iPhone.

Been looking to find a fellow geek you can connect with? This freebie from Cult of Mac Deals can help.

That’s because we’ve partnered up with the name in internet dating – Match.com – to bring you an exclusive 10-day free trial offer.

Venerable pop artist David Hockney brought his art from the screen of the iPad to towering heights in San Francisco.

If you’re used to seeing his quick iPhone sketches on a screen, the 12-foot-high views to Yosemite are an eyeful. You can catch them at San Francisco’s de Young Musuem in the aptly titled “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibitiion” until January 2014.

We’ll have more on Hockney’s stunning work and the exhibit in the November 2 edition of Cult of Mac Magazine, dedicated to mobile art.

We didn’t get a glimpse of the new Apple TV at this week’s event, or even a major UI update, but Apple did release a small update for Apple TV this afternoon bumping it up to version 6.0.1.

Apple still hasn’t said what kind of new goodies version 6.0.1 Build 11B511d contains, but we’ll let you know if we discover anything worth noting in the meantime.Users can download the update to your Apple TV by going to Settings >> General >> Software Update

Here are the direct download links:

It has only been out for two days, but OS X Mavericks already accounts for 5.5% of OS X’s total web traffic in North America, according to tracking firm Chitika. For comparison, Mountain Lion adoption was only at 1.6% two days after its release next year. It took four days for Mountain Lion to reach Mavericks’ current adoption rate, so we’re looking at double the amount of people upgrading within the first week.

Mavericks’ success is probably tied to the fact that Apple has made it available for completely free. We should have more exact Mavericks numbers from Apple after its upcoming earnings call.

Source: Chitika

Tesla Motors announced this afternoon that it has managed to snatch up Doug Field who has been serving as Apple’s Vice President of Mac Hardware Engineering for the past five years. Field is joining the Tesla as its new Vice President of Vehicle Programs and will be responsible for developing new electric vehicles for the company.

Before joining Apple in 2008 to help make the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iMac, Field worked at Segway for nine years, but he actually started off his engineering career at Ford Motor Company. Elon Musk released the following statement regarding the company’s newest addition:

Today Twitter’s Vine app was updated with a few new features, most notably the ability to save multiple video drafts at once and editing tools.

Draft support, which Vine is calling “Sessions,” allows you to save up to 10 clips at once in the app. “Time Travel” means you can “remove, reorganize or replace” any clip before sharing. Tapping the green bar in the camera view enters Time Travel mode, and there’s also a new edit button while you’re reviewing a video.

Innovative iOS game, Badland, just updated with a new Halloween theme, four new multiplayer characters, and a new level. In addition, the update drops the price to $0.99, giving us all a chance to discover the scary action for 75 percent off the regular price.

This is the first time the developer has dropped the price so far, so be sure to check it out if you have a buck to spare; it’s worth it.

Last night Carl Icahn took to Twitter to talk about one of his favorite subjects, Apple. The billionaire investor tweeted that he had just sent a letter to Tim Cook and would be publishing the letter on his new website tomorrow.

True to his word, Icahn published the full letter this morning urging Tim Cook and the Apple Board to immediately tender an offer for $150 billion AAPL shares at their current price, rather than wait, as other investors have suggested. Icahn also stated that he will continue to invest in Apple and has already increased his stake in Apple from 4 million shares to 4.7 million.

Here’s the full letter:

Instagram already gave us the heads up that it’s introducing ads in the coming months, and now the Facebook-owned app is giving us a preview of what “Sponsored” posts will look like.

You’ll start seeing the above image in your feed in the “coming week.” It’s a “one-time ad from the Instagram team that’s meant to give you a sense for the look and feel of the ads you will see.” Tapping the Sponsored label will teach you how ads will work.

There you are, listening to your favorite song, when you just want to get to the good part. So you look at the Music app that’s playing that favorite song, and you wonder, “How on earth am I going to scrub through the song to move to where I want to?”

In iOS 7, the visual upgrade gives us a red line in the track being played. You can definitely tap, hold and drag that red line along the track for some high-speed scrubbing, but what if you want to move along the track more slowly, or have a more fine-grained approach?

Here’s how to do just that.

In order to make the Retina MacBook Pro so thin, Apple had to make some sacrifices. One of those was doing away with its optical drive — which is no longer an issue for most in the digital age — and another was using flash storage rather than old-fashion hard-disk drives.

But Apple made another, slightly more subtle change that the average consumer may not have noticed. It did away with the Kensington lock, providing users with no way to secure their device to their workstation to prevent it from being stolen.

Fortunately, Maclocks has a number of solutions to solve this problem, and I’ve been testing two of them over the past few months. First up is the Lockable Cover, a protective case that covers the top and the bottom of your MacBook Pro, and adds a lock to its base that you can plug a universal security cable into.

The Lockable Cover costs $24.71 on its own, or $30.90 if you need the security cable as well. That’s a small price to pay to protect your beloved notebook when you can’t always keep an eye on it, but is the Lockable Cover worth it?

Dead Trigger 2, the sequel to heavily-downloaded hit zombie game, Dead Trigger, burst onto Google Play and the App Store late Wednesday night, bringing next-level graphics and gameplay to devices in your very pocket.

This first-person shooter has an all new touch control scheme that was created, says the developer, Madfinger Games, specifically for casual gamers. You’ll be able to use the virtual joystick, of course, and Android players can use supported game controllers. What’s interesting, however, is the new casual-gamer-style touch control scheme.

You’ll immerse yourself into a world where the humans are fighting the zombies, like you do. The game itself, however, is played out in real time on a global scale.