Created in 1981, the Ultima series of computer games has a long and storied history. Richard Garriott (Lord British in-game) created Ultima while working at a ComputerLand, selling copies out of Ziploc bags and eventually getting picked up by a publishing company, creating his own publishing concern (Origin Systems), and finally selling Origin to Electronic Arts in 1992. In 1997, EA released Ultima Online, widely accepted as the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Fast-forward to today, and Mythic Games, along with publisher EA, has created a loving tribute to the Ultima franchise with Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar. These days, most EA games are created with a free-to-play aesthetic, and Ultima Forever is no exception.

What’s surprising, however, is just how little that matters: Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar is a delightful top-down MMO that’s easy to play without spending a dime. Which, ironically, is the reason many of us will.

A rumored September 10 iPhone event has been given an all-important “yep” from The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple. It’s the closest we’ll get to an official confirmation before Apple sends out invites to the much-anticipated shindig, which will likely see the iPhone 5S and the plastic low-cost iPhone 5C get their official unveilings.

You don’t have to spend too much time in a public place before you hear the iPhone’s default “tri-tone” alert — it’s everywhere, and everyone knows exactly what it means. But do you know where it came from? You might be surprised to hear that it wasn’t actually composed for the iPhone, but for a 1998 MP3 player for the Mac called SoundJam MP.

The Skype app for iPad has been updated today to introduce support for HD video calling — but there’s a catch. The feature is only available on the fourth-generation iPad with Retina display, and not any of its predecessors or the iPad mini.

The fifth-generation iPad will use the same touch-panel technology as the iPad mini to allow it to become thinner and lighter, according to “people with knowledge of the matter,” who have been speaking to The Wall Street Journal. The device is expected to look just like the iPad mini, with narrow bezels and a significantly thinner shell, but it will maintain a 9.7-inch Retina display.

One of the cool new features of OS X Mavericks is the ability to tag files in the Finder, making Finder labels a bit more useful. Want to sort a bunch of files for your upcoming vacation into one place? Make a tag for “vacation,” and then add the tag per file with a right-click as we showed you a while back.

Want to track some of those vacation files with the destinations they pertain to? Go ahead and tag them with a second tag. Can’t do that with a label.

While it’s easy to right-click on a file and choose a tag, it’s even easier to add tags with a simple Mac OS standard move. Here’s how.

Although the new fingerprint sensor gets all the attention, another big draw of the forthcoming iPhone 5S is the rumored camera improvements. We’ve heard that we’re at least looking at a megapixel jump to 12MP, but dual-LED flash is also rumored to be in the cards, and when it comes to the latter, it looks like we may have just received our confirmation.

The big headlining feature of the iPhone 5S is believed to be the fingerprint sensor underneath the home button, which could necessitate a new, icon-less sapphire home button. But could problems with the new technology make for a muted iPhone 5S launch?

If Abbyy’s upcoming new Textgrabber+Translator app came in a tin, then the app would do exactly what it said on that tin. And the tin—to stretch the metaphor—would be a beautiful, iOS 7-styled container.

The updated app, which now comes in an iPad-shaped tin to match the iPhone-shaped one, uses the iPad/iPhone’s camera to scan text, turn it into actual editable text and—if you like—translate it into any of 40 languages.

At first, the iPhone came in just one color, like a Model-T: black. By the time the iPhone 3G came out, though, the iPhone settled into a two-tone color scheme: classic black, and equally classic white.

But this seems like the year that Apple experiments with color. Not only is it widely accepted that Apple will release a colorful budget iPhone this year, probably called the iPhone 5C, but it looks like Apple might add one more color to the classic iPhone line-up: gold.

The Atherton is — in name and in design — the iPhone case that 1970s- and 1980s-era U.K. football (soccer) managers would have used. Famous for their sheepskin coats, these hard-talking, hard-smoking sports trainers wouldn’t hold truck with lily-livered modern materials like nylon or — gasp — fleece. Nope. The only covering fit for a testosterone-filled football coach was the skin of a dead sheep.

When I pick up a guitar, pretty much the only thing I can do is tune the thing. Well, that’s not entirely true: I can coil the strings and keep a burning cigarette in there, Eric Clapton-style, but as I quit smoking a few years back that’s not so useful anymore.

However, I’m fully aware that there are people out there who can thrash some amazing sounds out of their axes, and yet have trouble keeping the things in tune. SteadyTune, a Mac app that’s always waiting in the menu bar, is there to help.

The last thing I want to do as I stumble into my bed through a bourbon-soaked fog is to set up my sleep-tracking device. It’s nice to have an app tell me how fitful is my kip, but the pre-sleep perambulations are a pain: you have to slip your Fitbit into a wrist strap, or plug in your iPhone and launch the sleep-tracking app.

Beddit takes a different approach. It’s a strap that stays permanently wrapped around your mattress, ready to record your snoozes.

Ever wondered why you can’t pick up a cheap used Mac Mini? No, me either—I always figured the new ones were already cheap enough.

But the answer is both interesting and unsurprising. Unsurprising, because it’s just down to supply and demand. Interesting because—well, let’s ask some people who really know about selling used Mac Minis: Macminicolo.

Instapaper has a new beta website, and it’s the biggest change to the whole read-it-later Instaverse since the app was bought by Betaworks. In short, it’s gorgeous for reading, and makes the management of your account quite a lot better.

The rumor mill is starting to kick into full gear when it comes to Apple’s plans for the iPhone lineup in 2013. Over the weekend, it was reported that Apple would be holding an iPhone event on September 10th, and the company is widely expected to unveil not one, but two new models: the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. The 5S will be the successor to the flagship iPhone 5 and sport upgraded specs, while the 5C will have a plastic back and come in multiple colors.

When it comes to the iPhone 5S, this year’s upgrade could be pretty predictable—A7 chip, better cameras, etc. But then there’s the bet that Apple will do something radically different with the hardware and add a fingerprint sensor. Now the 5S could feature a redesigned home button made of sapphire. And we can’t forget about the iPhone 5C…

Yeah, I said it. Google should — and probably will — sell an Android TV.

No, not a dongle. And I’m not talking about a Google TV of the kind you can buy today in which Google technology puts the “smart” in the smart TV feature.

I’m talking about a full-blown, Android-based, big-screen, high-def TV set.

I’m going to tell you why, but first: Let’s understand why Google sells hardware at all.

The Disney Legends Award is presented annually to a person who has left a significant impact on The Walt Disney Corporation. This year, the late Steve Jobs received the honor, and last night John Lasseter accepted the award on Jobs’s behalf at the D23 Expo. Lasseter is the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar, a studio Jobs co-founded, and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He created Toy Story and is arguably the most influential and iconic storyteller in the history of animation.

Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the award before bringing Lasseter onstage to accept. Both men were friends with Jobs, and Lasseter got choked up a few times while sharing stories about Jobs’s influence on the early days of Pixar.

Thanks: Ricky

The final season of Breaking Bad begins tonight on AMC, and if you’re like me, you can’t get enough of the show. Fans like myself need to check out Breaking Bad: Alchemy, an awesome book from the show’s creators. It was my pick on Faves n’ Raves during the last CultCast.

Smartphone technology gives us a whole lot to have at our fingertips in terms of innovation. Things like being able to scan things using the phone’s camera (which Prizmo 2 takes advantage of) and being able to use it as an all-in-one inbox with an app like Drafts demonstrate how more productive our iPhones can help us be.

But this particular Kickstarter success story has me very intrigued.

It’s called Hone, and it uses your iPhone (along with other iOS devices) and allows you to locate valuables that you may have misplaced.

Apple will hold its next iPhone event on Tuesday, September 10th, according to AllThingsD, a site that has a spotless track record when it comes to predicting these dates. Last year’s event for the iPhone 5 was held on Wednesday, September 12th.

Never heard of the British Oreo? You will on this week’s CultCast! Of course we’ll also cover the week’s best Apple stories, including what’s new in iOS 7 beta 5; our own Leander Kahney’s new book about Jony Ive; the strange new buzz around the upcoming Jobs movie; plus we pitch our favorite tech and apps in a little segment we call Faves ‘N Raves.

Have a few chortles whilst getting caught up on this 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 the audio adventure begin.

Show notes up next!

The new Jobs movie hits Friday, August 16th in theaters. And it’s not going to be pretty.

The movie covers the life of the late Apple co-founder and CEO from 1971, before the founding of Apple, to 2001, when Jobs announces the iPod, thus setting the company on the path to glory and dominance.

You’re going to hate the movie. Here’s why. 

Gone are the days when you absolutely needed a scanner to deal with document scanning. With the emergence of smartphones, we’ve seen a ton of new applications hit the market that allow you to do things that were unheard of before. Scanning documents is one of those things – and Prizmo 2 is just one of the apps that gives you that ability.

If you don’t have an app that handles scanning right from your phone, then now would be the time to take advantage of the pricing at Cult of Mac Deals. Because Prizmo 2 is only $24.99 during this limited time offer.

Apple just sent developers an email stating  all developer program services are finally back online.

The developer center went down on July 18th, which prevented developers from accessing documentation need to code apps for iOS and OS X, as well as beta builds for Apple’s platforms.

A Turkish security researcher by the name of Ibrahim Balic came forward shortly after the outage and claimed responsibility as the intruder that breached the Dev Center’s database. No personal data was stolen from users, but Apple decided the breach warranted a complete rebuild of the backend.