This is absolutely one of the most striking cases we’ve seen. Adopted have taken their distinct embedded-leather-in-metal Leather Wrap case and tweaked it, substituting the leather for a soft, puffy silicone material; the result is the Cushion Wrap case, which looks like a tiny upholstered bed.

Out today, TurtleStrike brings iOS and Android gamers a new, turn-based strategy game with over 80,000 combinations of weaponized, armored turtle warfare. You’ll get Tesla coils and kamikaze turtles, a missile named Big Bertha, and the chance to compete in tournaments that have real monetary rewards.

Sound like fun? You bet your shell it does.

Market research firm Harris Interactive conducts a fairly extensive poll each year in the area of consumer electronic brands. This year, Apple again took the top spot in three major categories, named the best brand of tablet, computer, and mobile phone. The iPad, Mac, and iPhone scored the best across an array of specific brand markers, like brand recognition, emotional response to the brand, and purchasing consideration.

If you run a small business, then you know how cumbersome it can be to keep track of tasks, invoices, sales, and estimates. A new iPad app called Exigo is here to help you out, and it promises to keep you organized.

Since the beginning of this year, reports have been saying that Apple is working on a cheaper, ‘budget’ iPhone. In the last several months, we’ve seen part leaks and more info point towards Apple releasing the plastic-enclosed device this fall alongside the flagship iPhone 5S.

Apple has always dropped the price on the previous iPhone model by $100 when a new one comes out, but that business model hasn’t been able to help the company grow in emerging markets around the world. The budget iPhone is expected to cost around $300 unsubsidized, which would unlock a whole new market of potential customers.

There has never been two independent iPhone lineups at once, so introducing a totally separate model would be a big move for Apple. But what if the multi-colored, plastic iPhone everyone expects is just a retooled version of the current iPhone 5?

Let’s face it: you can never have enough fonts.

There are plenty of great fonts included with your computer, but when it comes to putting together something unique in terms of a website, document, or other design-oriented efforts, the morefonts you have at your disposal the better off you are. That’s why Cult of Mac Deals is pleased to bring you an offer that packages over 30 premium fonts in one bundle – and what’s more is that you can choose what you want to pay for it and get to help one of three charities of your choosing in the process!

That’s right. With The Name Your Own Price Premium Fonts Bundle you’ll get a slew of incredible fonts at a price that you decide to pay. Plus you can help Child’s Play, World Wildlife Fund, or Creative Commons as 10% of your purchase price gets donated to whichever one of those charities you choose. This bundle is a winner no matter which way you slice it.

Yahoo announced today that it’s launching a completely redesigned Fantasy Sports app for iOS and Android, just in time for the all-important fantasy football season looming on the horizon.

The redesigned app now lets you sign up for a league and draft players from your iPhone or iPad. There’s even some mock drafting help built-in to prepare you for that big day where you pull your hair out debating which elite running back won’t have a season-ending injury.

All the fantasy football features will be available for other fantasy sports as well. To get the word out on the relaunch, Yahoo enlisted beef-cake ahtletic-super-freak J.J. Watt to cajole you into trying app. Take a look at the trailer:

Ah, summer. Isn’t it just the best time of year? But like the other three seasons, it has its drawbacks. It gets too bright too early, ruining your lie-in; bugs and creepy-crawlies decide it’s okay to come live with you; and the sun is so bright you have to find some shade every time you need to reply to a text message because you can’t see your screen.

But the latter can be eliminated with the Tru-Fit HD Anti-Glare film for iPhone 5. It’s a screen protector that utilizes “the highest grade materials and cutting-edge technologies” to provide your iPhone’s Retina display with scratch protection and a matte finish that doesn’t reflect light.

Every Tru-Fit film is precision die-cut to ensure a perfect fit, and they are applied using the included Tru-Fit applicator, which ensures every film goes on straight, and without dust or bubbles beneath it.

Every one of its four layers has an important role to play, and they combine to create a strong screen protector that promises to install easily, stick well, protect your display from damage, and be removed with no residue.

The Tru-Fit costs $19.95 for two films, which isn’t exactly cheap when it comes to a screen protector. But let’s find out if you get what you pay for.

The European Commission announced today that it has reached a deal with publisher Penguin regarding the e-book price fixing charges raised by the EU back in 2012.

Like the four other publishers charged with colluding with Apple to fix the price of e-books, Penguin has agreed to ditch Apple’s agency model for e-books that let publishers set prices for e-books while distributors like Apple, Amazon or Barnes & Noble get a cut of the sale.

Logic Pro X  just launched less than 10 days ago, but Apple already has a big patch to update its audio software with some performance enhancements and bug fixes.

The new update fixes issues where downloads were stalling, improves stability when switching audio editors with Flex Pitch enabled, and more.

Here are the full release notes:

Apple was found guilty of e-book price fixing by federal judge Denise Cote earlier this month, and it looks like the total bill for colluding with book publishers for the launch of the iBookstore will be pretty steep.

The five publishers in the case – Hachette, Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster – have already paid out $166 million,  according to figures obtained by GigaOm. Based on the settlement payments publishers have already shelled out, it looks like Apple might have to pay $500 million to the states and class action lawyers in the case.

This Cult of Mac Deals offer features a bundle of style for your iPhone 5. Essentially, this bundle of iPhone protection gear comes with several components, including a glass shield screen protector. With that component alone, you can be confident that if your iPhone takes a beating –its glass screen won’t shatter upon impact.

This iPhone 5 Full Armor Pack – courtesy of Spigen – can be yours during this limited time offer for just $26.99. That’s a savings of 59%!

There are a lot of compelling reasons to buy a refurbished Apple product instead of a new one. Not only are they cheaper and come with the same warranty, but because they’ve been gone over with a fine-tooth comb for problems, there’s an argument to be made that they are even less likely to exhibit problems after purchase.

The only problem? Buying a refurbished Apple can be a crapshoot. You go to the official Apple.com Refurbished page and see if the machine you want is available. If it is, great! If not, you just keep checking back.

A new website by Guillaume Bourdreau makes this process a lot easier, though. It allows you to subscribe to email alerts when any refurbished Apple product you want comes back in stock, and it works even internationally. If you want a lightly used Mac for a rock bottom price, check it out!

Source: Refurbished Stock Checker

Reddit user sa1f posted this fantastic image of an original white MacBook developer kit. What you’re looking at here is less of a prototype than a hardware test unit: all of the hardware of an original MacBook glommed together for testing, but not actually put together yet. A heck of a Frankenstein’s Monster, don’t you think?

Source: Reddit

Verizon Wireless has turned to President Obama as it seeks intervention against an import on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 that is set to take affect in less than two weeks.

The International Trade Commission ordered the ban back in June after finding that Apple’s older iOS devices infringed a patent owned by Samsung, but Apple is still awaiting a decision on its appeal. The Cupertino company has already asked the ITC to postpone the move, and now Verizon has stepped in to help.

There’s always some scumbag who is willing to try to take advantage of a bad situation. Take Apple’s prolonged outage of the Apple Developer Center, for example. It’s a bad situation for everyone — Apple and developers alike — which is why, of course, someone’s now launched a phishing attack to try to trick people into thinking the Developer Center is back up.

Apple has added a new page to its website in China which urges customers to use official Apple USB adapters with their iOS devices. The move comes after two Chinese iPhone users were electrocuted by third-party chargers this month, which left one dead and the other in a coma for ten days.

Apple may not be snapping up big companies all over the place like Yahoo!, but it is buying lots of shares in one major corporation — itself. Last quarter, the Cupertino company spent $16 billion on 36 million of its own shares, which cost, on average, just over $444 apiece.

Screenshots are the life blood of this tips column, and I’m willing to bet a lot of you use the feature, built right in to your Mac, to capture images of stuff on your screen to share with friends, family, co-workers, and so on. It’s super simple to use; just hit Command-Shift-3 to take a picture of the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 to just select a portion of it.

Any challenger to this ease of use is going to have to have something a little extra. Share Bucket may just be that app. Not only can it take screenshots of portions of your screen, but it can annotate those screenshots with circles, arrows, and blurs (for confidential info). Better yet, it connects to not one, but three different cloud services: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

DJing used to be something only the pros did. Hardware was (and still can be) incredibly expensive, and the barrier to entry was set high. Only in the last four to five years has a new generation of untrained DJers emerged, and you can trace the movement’s genesis back to a single app.

Algoriddim’s djay is the leading consumer/prosumer app of its kind on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. With millions upon millions of downloads, djay has received a ton of love from its users, the press, and Apple itself. You may have seen it on an Apple commercial once or twice. Steve Jobs highlighted it during the iPad 2 event in 2011.

Today djay 2 has arrived for the iPad and iPhone. Algoriddim has rebuilt the app to include powerful, truly one-of-a-kind features for amateurs and professionals, while maintaining the same fist-pumping, enjoyable experience from the original version.

Ever wondered which episodes of our own CultCast feature conversations about WWDC? Or which episodes of the original The Talk Show have Dan Benjamin and John Gruber discussing a Bond movie?

Then try Poodle.FM, an experimental search engine for podcasts from the folks behind the podcatcher app Instacast.

Unlike pictures, sound is ambient – you can hear it even when you’re not listening “at” it the same way you have to look at something to see it. And this goes for recording, too. While you have to point a camera at a thing to tape it, you can record sound even if the mic is in your pocket.

And this in turn makes possible an app like Heard, which lets you record any sound you hear, even after you hear it.

It’s hard to see why the folks at Barcelona-based Honest&Smile built this crazy contraption into a Moleskine notebook, but that doesn’t make it any less neat — after all, Doc Brown built a time machine into a DeLorean. When closed, it looks like any other overpriced book of blank paper. When opened, it reveals a kind of analog Instagram playground.

If there’s one thing in your office that is likely immune to spills and dirt its the surface of your desk. Likely made from foil-covered MDF, or – if you’re fancy – from polished hardwood or glass or steel, the tough worktop will shrug of stains and liquids without even noticing them.

But if your “workstation” consists of a couple of upturned cardboard boxes, then Satechi’s waterproof faux-leather Desk Mat & Mate may be for you. And while you’re renovating it, it might pay you to read this random orbital sander review, for you could stand a chance of making your worktop more visually-appealing.

The Cocoon Grid-It, every geek’s favorite slightly-too-heavy travel organizer, has now been turned into a bag. It’s called the Slim, and it has enough straps and nooks to keep even a roomful of OCD freaks relaxed and happy.