The Los Angeles Unified School District is in the process of rolling out iPads to all of its students in 47 K-12 schools. It’s a huge educational partnership for Apple, and the goal is to have students use the iPads to help learn the curriculum.

Apparently LAUSD didn’t anticipate that students would be able to easily hack around the security measures on the iPads and use them to surf the web and download apps. Hundreds of students at Theodore Roosevelt High School have already broken the restrictions, and the district is considering halting the iPad rollout until it figure out what to do.

Apple was hit with a Y330 million (about $3.3 million) bill  by the Tokyo District Court on Thursday after the company was found guilty of patent infringement. Japanese inventor Norihiko Saito was awarded by Presiding Judge Teruhisa Takano after the court ruled that Mr. Saito’s patent, which had been filed in 1998, covered technology for the Click Wheel controller Apple added to the iPod back in 2004.

U2 frontman and AIDS activist, Bono was on hand at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting where he announced that his Product (RED) partner Apple has raised over $65 million for the charity organization.

Bono at #CGI2013 on @RED partners: "Apple is certainly leading the crew" Thank you Apple for raising over $65 million to fight AIDS.

— (RED) (@RED) September 26, 2013

On the Mac, you can always hit Command-Z to undo something. You can also hit Command-Shift-Z to redo something and put it back to what it was before you hit undo. Make sense?

This isn’t so easily done on iOS, as there isn’t a Command key, to being with, but there is, in fact, an option to undo and one to redo hidden in the iPad keyboard. Here’s how to get to each of them.

Facebook announced this afternoon that Android and web users will now be able to edit status updates after they have been posted, meaning you can finally cleanse your status update masterpieces of careless typos without losing your cherished likes, comments and shares.

The new feature should be live on the web and Android versions of Facebook later this afternoon, but iOS users will have to wait a short while before it hits iPhones.

Seminal 1990s tabletop role-playing game, Shadowrun, has recently come to the digital domain, originally with a version of Shadowrun Returns for the Mac, PC, and Linux platforms. Cult of Mac gave the game a stellar review, calling it a “fully realized tabletop to digital RPG conversion.” Say that five times fast.

Now the game is finally on tablets, both of the Android and iOS variety, and the buzz is that it’s a note-for-note port of the desktop game, minus the campaign editor. That’s a lot of game to smoosh into a tablet.

Apple updated its Apple TV offering this morning to include new channels for Major League Soccer and Disney Junior. The new channels aren’t bound to raise much excitement from average consumers, but sports fans and parents of young kids are sure to enjoy the new additions.

MLS allows soccer fans to hookup to their MLS Live subscription to watch live games across the country, while also keep tabs on scores and standings. There are a number of soccer-themed videos that can be enjoyed for free, and you can watch highlights of your favorite team via the Club Channels.

The new Disney Junior app provides live access to Disney Junior with a cable subscription, as well as access to Disney Junior TV shows on demand, so you can load up an episode of Jake and the Never Land Pirates for your rugrat while you rush around getting ready.

Apple just released a new patch for iOS 7 that fixes a bug that allowed anyone to bypass the lock screen in the new iOS 7. The exploit involved swiping up on the lock screen to access Control Center, then opening the alarm clock. Holding the iPhone’s sleep/wake button brings up the power off option, and you could hit cancel, double click the home button, and have access to the multitasking screen. This would give anyone access to your photos, camera, email, Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr account.

Today’s update to iOS 7.0.2 purports to fix that, and reintroduces a Greek keyboard option for passcode entry.

Source: Apple

You know how it goes: You’re the king, you have prestige and power and piles of riches all around you … and then some goblin shows up and steals your pants.

Alright, maybe none of that has ever happened to me, ever, but it is the premise of Trouserheart, a new hack-and-slash action game out today by developer 10tons (makers of the Joining Hands puzzle series).

Given the “epic quest to rescue kidnapped pants” premise, you’d expect Trouserheart to be a pretty light affair. And it is, but it’s also a solid, satisfying experience.

With an odd mix of Bejeweled and Pokemon, including a dash of inspiration from Puzzles and Dragons, Dragon Academy aims to be your next iOS game addiction. available now in the App Store for the low price of free-to-play, Dragon Academy tasks you with matching jewels of different dragon-enhancing powers to level up your adorable, charming dragons for even more jewel-matching fun.

We got the chance to sit down with Trent Polack, creative director at developer Team Chaos, and chat a bit about dragons, “hatch-three” puzzle games, and why the team decided to go with such a saturated genre to begin with.

With the fifth-generation iPad set to feature a new design based on the smaller, sleeker iPad mini, Apple’s existing lineup of iPad Smart Covers aren’t going to fit it. But fear not, Smart Cover fans — Apple is already working on new models that will fit the iPad 5’s smaller chassis. Check them out in the hands-on video below.

I’ve got a Bluetooth speaker…and I love it. But when my family and I went camping this summer I left it at home. Why? Because I wasn’t convinced that the environment it would be in was going to serve it all that well. I could have used something more rugged, and even more versatile.

I could have used the Boombot REX.

With a ruggedized ABS housing, Boombot REX goes anywhere, but it also features full fidelity stereo sound, is water-resistant and plays for up to eight hours on a single charge – it’s built tough to withstand the demands of your active lifestyle. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 23% off the regular price – just $99.99!

BlackBerry failed miserably in its attempt to bring BBM to Android and iOS last week, but the Canadian company hasn’t given up on making its popular messaging service available to all. In fact, it isn’t just targeting other mobile platforms, but it’s also planning to bring BBM to your desktop, too.

Apple has moved to trademark the “Advertising Re-Imagined” slogan used to promote its iAd mobile advertising platform. The Cupertino company filed for the trademark on Wednesday, September 25, more than three years after it launched the iAd business.

We all know the iPhone is a huge part of Apple’s business, but how huge? A new chart shows that if it were a standalone company, the iPhone would have greater revenues than some of the most iconic businesses on Earth.

Earlier this morning in the Cult of Mac chatroom, Killian told me that “iOS 7 as a whole is little more than a lick of paint.” He was baiting me of course (I hope so anyway, or I have some punishment to administer), but it’s a common enough view. However, as we shall see, there’s plenty going on under the hood too.

Exhibit A: Mail app now lets you look right inside ZIP attachments and open the individual documents direct.

When it comes to mobile gaming, the upcoming Google Nexus 5 could be one of the most impressive Android-powered smartphones to date. Leaked benchmarks that have surfaced online this week reveal the new device outperforms the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One in graphics performance, matching the new 64-bit iPhone 5s.

Warning: Sarcasm follows.

“Are you drinking enough water?” asks BluFit. Well are you? This is how to tell:

1. Are you thirsty?

If the answer to the above question is “yes,” then you should drink some water.

I’m kidding, of course: BluFit is in fact a totally legit gadget that makes it easy to track how much water you drink. What is it? It’s a water bottle that connects wirelessly to an app on your iPhone.

Seriously.

Strava Run, the fitness-tracking app that records your runs and lets you compete against strangers who have use the same routes, might be the first fitness app to take advantage of the M7 Motion Coprocessor (MoCoPro) in the iPhone 5S.

Now the app will not only run for longer thanks to saved battery power, it’s more accurate too.

A somewhat concerning bug affecting a large number of Google Hangouts and Google Talk users is causing messages to be delivered to the wrong recipients. The problem, which appears to have started early this morning, is already being investigated by Google — but you may want to avoid using these services for the time being if you can.

Here’s an idea to file in your Evernote app under “Why didn’t anyone do this before?”: Evernote Post-It notes. That’s right; Evernote has teamed up with 3M to offer multi-colored, Evernote-branded sticky notes which can be scanned into the app to save, well, forever.

There’s a funny fact in the world of iOS apps: Whereas one-man shop can manage to have a radically new version of its app available day and date with a big iOS update, giant software companies seem to take years to get things done. Spotify took (literally) years to come up with a ho-hum iPad app, and Instagram still isn’t on the iPad. One can only assume it will never be designed for the tablet.

And speaking of Instagram, this new iOS “update” is a sham.

Vesper, the iPhone note-taking app made by the all-star team of Brent “NetNewsWire” Simmons and John “Daring Fireball” Gruber, was already pretty iOS 7-friendly at launch a few months back. Now it has received an actual proper iOS 7 update, and it’s even better.

It just got a lot easier to set up your Apple TV. Apple has detailed a new way to input login and WiFi network information when setting up a third-gen Apple TV with an iOS device. All you have to do is physically tap an iPhone against the Apple TV to instantly transfer settings over Bluetooth LE (low energy). The Apple TV needs to be on the latest 6.0 update, and the other device needs to be running iOS 7.

You might not want to use your iPhone 5s to find your way out of the woods just yet.

A number of users are reporting that their iPhone 5s compass and level are showing incorrect values when placed on flat surfaces. It might be a hardware issue, leaving Apple with a costly hardware recall or replacement issue. The problem could also point to a software snafu that needs speedy patching.

The problem was first spotted on by “tharepairguy” on a forum thread over at Mac Rumors. He set his iPhone 5s and his iPhone 4 to magnetic north. The iPhone 4 reads 179 south, while the iPhone 5s reads 165 south. His car compass confirms the iPhone 4 reading.

He then checked the level app on each phone. The iPhone 4 showed a surface to be level, as did two other Johnson analog levels. The iPhone 5s? -4 degrees.