When we were kids, my brothers and I drew all the time. We drew monsters, cartoon people, and faces. Tons of faces: goofy ones, serious ones, ugly ones, and beautiful ones.

We were fanatics. We thought we had talent. We’d take anyone aside every artist we met and beg them for tips and tricks any chance we got. Our granddad, an artist by profession, was our greatest source of inspiration. Our parents proudly hung every scribble on the walls.

I wanted to go to art school, but was persuaded to go to university instead. Academia instead of art. In college, I roomed with a gal who did charcoal figure studies. Our shitty apartment in Brighton, Sussex, was covered with the black dust as she churned out image after image of human figures in various states of undress. I, of course, recalled my artsy leanings from my youth, and headed to the art store to buy pastels, charcoal sticks and reams of thick, heavy, expensive paper.

I spent tons of money that I should have used to pay rent to buy watercolor paints, brushes and paper. I found a cheap easel for sale on a student bulletin board and spent many afternoons up on the roof, smoking hash, painting sheets of rain marching slowly over the South Downs.

Then I grew up. I got a job, a wife, kids. Painting? Drawing? Who has time for that anymore? Who has the money to do it, right? The space to store all the material needed to pursue such a dream, let alone the room to actually engage in artistic endeavors.

Luckily, I have an iPad. And judging by the amazing artwork out there, and indeed in this very issue, I might very well have all I need to rekindle my early love of artistic expression.

There are apps for painting, drawing, illustrating, photo re-touching, and the like. Tons of them in every category. There are styluses and capacitive brushes that rival the analog materials you’d end up paying a fortune for in an art store, and these can be used in the comfort of your very own touchscreen.

No wonder why Roz Hall, the iPad artist we talk to in this issue says, “I turned my back on the canvas and fell in love with the pixel.”

Honestly, why didn’t I think of this before? Who needs a room full of dusty, messy crap to just produce more work that end up in the basement? Not me – I’ve got an iPad and a few inexpensive apps.

Here I come, art world…

We knew this day has been coming for quite sometime now, but alas, the days of an ad-free Instagram are long gone.

The first official brand-sponsored ad was published to Instagram this morning courtesy of fashion brand Michael Kors. The ad features a Michael Kors gold watch surrounded by cakes and other trinkets with the title “Pampered in Paris,” making the fashion company the first to paid advertiser on the platform

[Editor’s note: This review has been stickied to the top of Cult of Mac. Scroll down for more news.]

Let’s face it, we’ve been waiting for Apple to make drastic changes to the iPad since it released the third-generation device in early 2012. While it did introduce a high-resolution Retina display with that model, and it has made nice improvements in speed and other areas since then, we’ve all been clamoring for improvements to its design.

We’ve got those with the iPad Air — and a whole lot more. The new slate looks just like a larger version of the iPad mini. It maintains its 9.7-inch Retina display, but it has narrower bezels, a substantially thinner design — it is now just as thin as the iPad mini at 7.5mm — and it’s 28% lighter than its predecessor at just one pound.

In addition to that, we get Apple’s incredible 64-bit A7 processor that promises up to two times the power and graphics performance of the A6X, the new M7 motion coprocessor that made its debut in the iPhone 5s last month, and two W-Fi antennas with MIMO technology. And all of this will cost you just $100 more than the iPad 2.

Rather than cruising the streets for candy, the guys at iFixit spent All Hallow’s Eve tearing down the new iPad Air with all the tender loving care we’ve come to appreciate from the fixit gurus.

iFixit found few surprises during their teardown, but did discover that the APL5698 A7 processor Apple packed away in the iPad Air is a slightly different from the  APL0698 version of the A7 found in the iPhone 5s, though it’s not clear what customizations Apple added to the chip.

The iPad Air comes with a gigantic battery that iFixit says is the one of the most difficult they’ve tried to remove, and the other components are much easier to swap out. As with most Apple devices, iFixit found that the iPad Air is horrifically hard to repair and gave it a repairability score of 2 out of 10.

Here are some of the internal goodies iFixit found in the iPad Air:

We’re all carrying sketchpads now, thanks to the great touchscreens on our iPads and iPhones. If toting an iPhone us all into potential artists, it turned a venerable pop artist into the world’s best-known iPad artist pretty much by accident.

David Hockney’s iPad made it into his artistic toolkit in 2010 because it happened to fit into the specially made pocket he has sewn into all his jackets – for sketchbooks.

The venerable pop artist has been using Apple devices to send daily sketches to friends since 2009. Some of those sketches are now living large in paper format at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in the aptly titled “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition” until January 2014.

Sumit Vishwakarma is an iPad art advocate whose use been creating works of art on the iPad with a variety of different apps and styluses. His work has been featured at the first Mobile Art Festival in Los Angeles, the Apple flagship store in San Francisco and the Mobile Creativity & Innovation Symposium.

After teaching various workshops on how to embrace iPad art, Vishwakarma decided to open his own art academy in San Francisco with a goal to educate people of all ages on how to create simple digital techniques based on the traditional painting techniques artists have fine tuned for centuries.

We talked to Vishwakarma about how the digital art world is maturing, what it takes to become a successful iPad artist, as well as how he’s giving kids a serious introduction to art through their favorite toy, the iPad.

Cult of Mac: What apps do you use the most to create and teach art?

Sumit Vishwakarma: Apart from ArtRage, Procreate and SketchBook Pro, I am also using “Paper” and, for animation, I use “Doink” and “iStopMotion.” Our education director Caroline Mustard is an expert in Paper.

Sumit Vishwakarma: Success is subjective. I feel, if you can create an iPad painting and you like it, it’s the first “pass.” When others like it – it’s a success!  Some of us don’t even know if we are artistic. I often hear: “I am not good at art,” however, this assessment is often made in relation to producing work that is judged in terms of accuracy of representation. With iPads or smartphones you can draw whenever inspiration hits.

Good art is good art, whether done on an iPad, wall or canvas. So we concentrate on empowering students to use their painting apps efficiently so they can produce what they want to create.

SV: Our academy offers three ways of teaching iPad Art:

Workshops: We are invited by schools, libraries, city parks and recreations and local art institutes where we conduct day-long workshops. Here we walk them through various art apps and techniques. The goal is to get them started with iPad art.

Classes: Our classes are mostly electives and after school classes. Students are given a wide variety of projects to encourage and inspire their imaginations, including traditional drawing techniques, plein air sketching, animation and even abstract art depending on the student’s individual creative choices. At the end, each student walks away with a  portfolio of digital art which they can display and share digitally or in printed format.

Online Classes: Many people who are interested in creating art on tablets are too busy to attend physical classes or they live too far away. Because our medium is digital, we offer our iPad art online class which consists of 10-HD video lessons covering the major art apps and techniques. These are starting to get popular because they can be taken anytime, anywhere — via laptop, tablet or smart phone! There’s a class preview here: https://www.mobileartacademy.com/classes.html

SV: Most schools where we are invited to teach have some kind of iPad pilot program where students have access to an iPad for a pre-defined time. In our elective classes and after school most students bring their own iPads. For workshops, we ask students to bring their own iPads.

CoM: Who are you teaching mostly?

SV: Our goal is to empower users from toddlers to seniors, artists to scientists and everyone in between. But our most popular iPad classes are those for middle-school aged children who have an immediate grasp of the technology and start creating fast. We have even taught kindergarten kids to use Paper 53 and they do great.

We even have a class of moms who bring their iPads and learn what they can do with them. And we have elderly students, including those who are retired and want to learn to paint. The best part about iPad Art is anyone who has some interest in art can create. Different apps have different uses and thus different sets of users. Some just want to draw while some wants to create professional paintings and illustrations.

SV: Yes, as you know parents want to limit “screen time” for their kids. They are using the iPad everywhere: in homes, schools, restaurants to watch videos, play games and for social media. All these represent consumption of the iPad, but I feel  it can be used innovatively to explore creativity.  Once parents see the value of learning to create with the iPad instead of just play video games they get behind the concept fast.

With our demo and workshop we show parents that the iPad can enable students to create and share digital content and media focusing on art and cross-curricular learning. Students can explore drawing and painting, digital photography, digital storytelling, animation and graphic design. When using iPads, mistakes can be erased and experiments are easily undertaken. This boosts their confidence and enhances creativity!

SV: Mobile art is becoming increasingly common. From one art app in 2010 to now about 100+ art apps in the Appstore tells us there is incredible growth in this segment. Growth of FaceBook and Flickr groups of iPad/mobile artists has more than quadrupled as compared to last year. A giant exhibit of David Hockney’s at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum highlights the influential artist’s foray into iPhone and iPad art.

SV: Apart from teaching iPad art, the Mobile Art Academy also conducts Mobile art exhibitions. We recently did our first Mobile Digital Art Exhibition at the Pacific Art League displaying top 50 selected artworks from all over the world. We used two types of print media: metal (aluminium) prints and acid-free paper prints – the results are outstanding!

There are misapprehensions that iPad- created artwork does not have high resolution. But there are apps and tools that can bump up the resolution and you can produce high-quality large professional prints. If you see what has been done with David Hockney’s iPad art your fears are quickly handled – his paintings are produced on 10-foot canvases!

SV: Well, during our exhibition we sold quite good number of iPad paintings. Most of our students create work for their own use. Some of our students have even published story books using their own iPad artwork (they write and illustrate their own books under our guidance). There are a huge number of growing iPad artists around the world and some of them are selling their work professionally.

SV: Technology is advancing at an incredible pace. Kids have more technology in their classrooms (and in many cases, in their backpacks) than existed in the workplaces of their parents 20 years ago. Teachers can help students become 21st-century problem solvers by introducing them to a broad range of thinking and creative tools – the iPad is one of them.

The iPad can enhance confidence in creating art as students have the freedom to change every aspect of their art elements without fear – anything can be replaced, modified or manipulated. This increase in confidence and willingness to try new things makes them better contributors in today’s competitive global society.

Funny story: In one of our Kindergarten intro classes, when we asked, “Can you draw on your iPad?” one kid literally showed us by drawing on the iPad screen using his crayon.

You can check out Vishwakarma’s work on his Flickr page, or at the Mobile Art Academy.

Cult of Mac reader Alvaro P writes, “After upgrading to mavericks, the Preview app doesn’t show the Bookmarks tab anymore. That’s no good, because I need them to quickly access pdf stuff during meetings.”

Having just upgraded my Macbook Air to Mavericks, I figured I’d give it a look. Here’s what I found.

BestRoute Free — Navigation — Free

Now that Halloween is over, the rest of the holidays are clamoring for our attention. And some of them require shopping, which can mean a lot of driving all over town. And if you want to make sure you’re taking the most efficient route possible, you might want to plug your stops into BestRoute Free, a new app that lets you quickly and easily mark waypoints (by searching or just a long tap on the screen). It’ll then tell you the best order in which to make your stops.

It would probably also come in handy if you suddenly had to deliver a bunch of pizzas or something.

BestRoute Free

The iPad Air has been on sale for nearly 12 hours now and early reports are starting to indicate that the higher end models are becoming scarce as initial supply is dwindling. It may not be quite as hard to get your hands on the iPad Air as a the gold iPhone 5s, but our pal who made the extremely useful iPhone Tracker tool is back with an update that will help you find the iPad Air you want.

The simple web app scrapes data from store.apple.com for the most up-to-date info on local pick-up options for the iPad Air. A chart of green and red squares indicate whether local Apple Stores have stock of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB units in the color of your choice,  so you can know where to head to for the best shot at getting the iPad you want.

Apple Tracker has also been updated to support stock information on the iPad mini with Retina display too once it becomes available this month. Use the drop downs to select the color and carrier you want, press submit and viola. There’s even a purchase button at the bottom of each inventory listing to speed up the shopping process.

Source: Apple Tracker

If you fancy yourself an expert on abbreviations, acronyms, and symbols, you might want to have a go at Name It!, a new trivia game that focuses on those three things (known collectively — and somewhat awkwardly — as “AASs”). It’s a pretty niche subject, really, but the game covers a lot of ground, including such disparate topics as Presidential history (“POTUS”) and the term “YOLO,” which stands for “I have failed at life.”

Name It! throws a startling number of questions at you across four rounds. And it’s all great fun until you get tired of it.

You can never have too many headphones. I’ve written before about how I’ve got different ones for different use cases, so when an ergonomic set of earbuds suited for the iPhone 5, 5S, and 5C become available at a low price — well…I’m all ears.

Cult of Mac has a set of earbuds that meets that criteria, The iPhone 5/5S/5C headphones are only $14.99, but you’ll also get free shipping to select countries. Plus, if you buy two pairs, you’ll get one at 50% off the already low price!

Wondering what to download first on your new iPad Air? If you’re an Angry Birds fan, you’ll probably want to get the new Angry Birds Star Wars II update, which adds a bunch of new “secret” levels, new characters — including silver C3PO and Darth Sidious — and more.

Unless you got incredibly drunk last night and you don’t know what day it is, you’re probably already aware of the fact that the iPad Air launches today. And if you don’t want to venture out and wait in line to get one, you can order yours now from the Apple online store.

If you picked up a new iPhone 5s this year, you’d better take good care of its home button, because you can no longer pick up a cheap replacement on eBay and fit it yourself. The repair experts at mendmyi have discovered that Apple pairs every Touch ID sensor with an A7 chip, and if you install a home button that doesn’t match up, Touch ID simply won’t work.

Forget for a moment all the talk about Apple’s recent quarter financials disappointing Wall Street analysts — and instead focus on two “nuggets” from Apple’s recently released 88-page Form 10-K, as picked up by ISI’s Brian Marshall.

In a note to clients sent Thursday, Marshall notes that not only is Apple’s $11 billion in projected capital expenditures for fiscal 2014 a double-digit increase for a company already “the single largest CapEx spender” in his “Big 7 Hyperscale group”, but also that Apple generates “off-the-charts” revenue-per-head metric compared to the other IT and networking companies he covers — which includes Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Facebook (FB) and Yahoo (YHOO).

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un might be an Apple user, but that doesn’t mean that North Korea’s state-run computer agency doesn’t see the value of launching a tablet of its own.

Costing around $250, the Korea Computer Center’s Samjiyon SA-70 has a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 4 GB internal memory, and a card slot equipped with an 8 GB micro SD memory card. There is also a 2 mega pixel camera, microphone, gyro sensor. Currently there’s no way to connect to the Internet, although there is an extendable antenna for receiving state television signals.

Apple had added its name to an open letter from the tech industry — also signed by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! — demanding “oversight and accountability” of NSA surveillance.

The letter, sent Thursday, was addressed to the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act, a legislation designed to end bulk data collection by the National Security Agency. It claims that the tech industry (including Apple) welcome debate about the best way to further national security, while also protecting individual user privacy interests.

For the first time in the country’s history, Turkey has an Apple online store. Apple’s full lineup of newest products is available except for the iPad Air and Retina mini—both should be available as the international rollout continues in the coming months.

Apple is expected to open its first retail store in Istanbul, Turkey next year. Apple executives recently flew to Turkey to discuss the country’s multi-billion dollar tablet initiative for schools.

Thanks: Sihirli

Keeping tabs on your brood this Halloween? Sure, you could use Apple’s Find My Friends. But it doesn’t have as many cool features as these two new apps, and it also can’t track Android phones — while these two apps can.

Apple was bested by Samsung in the results of J.D. Power’s latest tablet customer satisfaction survey, marking the first time that Apple hasn’t come out ontop in the rankings in over two years.

Samsung was the only tablet manufacturer to improve its score since the last survey was released in April by jumping from a 822 to a score of 835, even though it finished third behind Apple and Amazon in the last survey. Apple ranked second in the latest survey with a score of 833 with strong scores in both performance and ease of use.

In what little advertising attention the iPhone 5s has received from Apple, the device’s new gold color option has been the main focal point. There are both TV and print ads in circulation that tout the gold, and the gold 5s is still the hardest to buy.

While Apple capitalizes on gold fever, the company has required that third-party developers not use the color in any of their marketing materials.

I like some notifications. I try to keep it down to a dull roar, of course, but I enjoy knowing when I get a phone call, text message, and email from specific clients or friends.

It’s just that when I see all these notifications in my lockscreen, I mentally dismiss them, only to have them appear again the next time I check my iPhone for the time.

I messed around with it a bit yesterday, and came up with this solution, thanks to iOS 7.

So Apple won’t let you pre-order the iPad Air and the very thought of waiting in front of an Apple Store for eight hours send spasms of dread from your eye sockets all the way down to nether regions you don’t even want to think about. Standing in a line, any line, for hours, sucks.

Yes, it’s a huge time investment, and no one really wants to sit outside an Apple Store for a couple of hours before the break of dawn, but we’re here to help you come prepared and make the most of your iPad Air launch line waiting experience. In fact, this could even be a lot of fun. Just follow this guide and you’ll be in and out of the store and cradling your skinny new iPad Air.

Worldwide smartphones shipments reached a whopping 251.4 million units during the third quarter of 2013, up 45% from the 172.8 million units sold during the same quarter last year, and 81.3% of them were running Android. The iPhone’s share fell to 13.4%, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform reached 4.1% — an improvement over last year’s 2.1% share.

iPad Day is  less that 12 hours away if you live on the East Coast – or already here if you live in Japan. Either way, Apple fans across the globe are already lining up in front of the nearest Apple Store, waiting anxiously to fork over their cash for the new iPad Air.

We don’t expect to see quite as long lines as at the iPhone 5s and 5c launch last month, but early indications show that Apple’s new lightweight tablet will be in high demand over the weekend. One reader in Hong Kong told us their reservation system filled up in 15 minutes.

If you’re planning to brave the night in front of the Apple Store, tweet us a pic @CultofMac. If not, check out all these people crazy enough waiting for their iPad Airs.