It’s not often that a product stands the test of time, making adjustments when needed to keep up with the speed of the changes that directly impact its use. Roxio Toast 11 Titanium has done just that, and this latest version has been completely redesigned from the ground up.

Roxio Toast 11 Titanium features a new user interface that’s up-to-date, innovative, and intuitive. With newly refined workflows, built-in video tutorials and much more, Toast 11 is the ultimate digital media toolkit for newcomers and experienced users alike – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for a limited time at a price that’s really appealing: only $49.99.

Designed for professionals around the world, Illustrator can be a mystifying program. The latest Cult of Mac Deals offer brings a video course your way that will help you take your design skills to the next level. The Adobe Illustrator CS6 Beginner Course breaks it down into easy-to-understand sections that even an absolute beginner can understand.

You’ll learn the ropes from an expert author and trainer who guides you through the variety of powerful tools and techniques that Adobe Illustrator CS6 has to offer. And all for the ridiculously low price of only $39.

The iPhone 5 is the best mobile phone ever made, in my opinion. And the iOS platform has the best mobile apps.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t add up to the best phone experience anymore.

What Apple lacks is the best experience with using Internet-based services. And Apple will fall much further behind on June 26.

Here’s what Apple needs to change in order to offer the best overall mobile phone experience.

Automatic, the California-based startup that turns the iPhone into your own driving assistant, had planned to start shipping preorders this month. Unfortunately, the $70 car dongle + iPhone app won’t be shipping until the end of August now. Automatic needs more time to finish its app before drivers around the country start using it on the road.

If you’ve been wishing for an easy way to charge your smartphone when you’re on the go, look no further because now you can with this portable PowerBar smartphone charger offer courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals.

Never have your smartphone die on your again with this powerful little portable charger. When you travel as much as I do, this device can be a real plus – now I don’t have to think about how much juice I’ve got left on my smartphone. I can simply plug the PowerBar into my smartphone and the charging will begin.

This offer from Cult of Mac Deals saves you 44% on this gadget. It’s only $39 – but only for a limited time.

All work and no play makes any computer user a dull user. That’s why we’re excited to bring you a bundle here at Cult of Mac Deals that will keep you playing for hours on end – and you get to name the price you’re willing to pay for those hours of fun!

That’s right. We’ve partnered with 6 of the world’s best game developers to bring you The Name Your Own Price Adventure Gamer Bundle. You pay what you want for two different games including Gardenscapes and Storm in a Teacup. And if you pay more than the average price, you’ll also receive Pudding Panic, 4 Elements, Royal Envoy, and the Tiny Bang Story.

Apple’s iBooks provides one of the best, most accessible ereading experience on the iPad, in my opinion, and it’s pretty darn simple to use.

That said, there’s always room to learn just a few more tricks to make the experience even better for you. Here, then, are five tips to master iBooks on your iOS device of choice.

This week on The CultCast: Apple Chief Tim Cook brings his Southern charm to Washington, hints at an iHologram; we break down the Apple tax debacle and say why their overseas billions are too legit to quit; and Xbox One vs. Apple TV, should Apple be worried?

All that and more on this week’s CultCast. Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.

Show notes up next.

Apple has just posted a new pre-release developer seed for upcoming OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4, Build 12E55.

In the notes accompanying the seed release, which includes Combo (comprehensive) and Delta (just changes) update installers, Apple notes the same focus areas as the last few seeds: Wi-Fi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari. This seed, though, also has Windows File Sharing, a new addition to the list since the last seed, build 12E47, which was released at the beginning of this month.

Could this rapid release schedule mean that 10.8.4 is getting closer to actual release to consumers? As this is the sixth developer release of 10.8.4, and 10.8.3 went through 13 different seeds, the answer may be a qualified no, as Apple tends to iterate on its dot releases fairly often and consistently.

Source: Apple Developer Center

If history is indeed destined to repeat itself, Intel’s next-gen Haswell processors will power the 2013 gamut of Macs. Every year Apple typically puts the newest Intel silicon in its desktop and laptop models, and this year should be no exception. When Haswell desktop lineup specs leaked in December 2012, we got a peak at what will likely power the 2013 iMac.

Intel has now said that Haswell chips will offer 50% more battery life for laptops than Ivy Bridge. The main focus of designing Haswell was to lower power consumption for laptops and tablets while also doubling graphics performance. Sounds great. Maybe we’ll see something with Haswell announced at WWDC!

Source: Computerworld

God games tend to be pretty similar: build a little city, tell the inhabitants what to do, and watch them do it. Not in this game, though.

Skyward Collapse is a fantastic mashup of a 4X strategy game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) with a god-game (Spore, Black & White, Civilization). Your task is to create and populate a floating continent called Liminith. You get to create gods, creatures, and artifacts from Norse and Greek myth, and keep them from killing each other off until you’re summoned home by The Master. This will definitely be harder than it sounds.

PC makers have been copying the Mac for years, but every now and then you just have to shake your head yet again. HP has unveiled two laptops that blatantly rip off Apple’s designs. It’s so painfully obvious that it makes you wonder if HP wants customers to be fooled into thinking they’re buying from Apple.

The FDA has gone after Biosense, a health startup that makes uCheck, an automated urine analyzer sold directly to end customers. You pee on a strip then use the uChek iPhone app to take a picture and analyze the contents of your urine for health info like glucose. Biosense claims that it can help detect up to 25 diseases, like diabetes, pre-clampsia, and urinary tract infection.

A letter has been sent to Biosense from FDA about its home kit + iPhone app product asking why Biosense hasn’t gotten uCheck officially sanctioned by the government.

If you own an iPad with a Smart Cover or Case, then you know how much of a pain it is to use it as a stand for your iPad. It literally only has two positions that aren’t ideal for doing what you need to do on your iPad. Thanks to these Smarter Stand Clips your iPad Smart Cover (or Case) can now be transformed into a fully functional stand that creates 4 different stand positions. Moreover, these clips are designed to slide up and down your Smart Cover with ease so you’ll be able to quickly change your stands position in a flash.

And Cult of Mac Deals has the Smarter Stand Clips for just $14.99 for a limited time.

Apple is having some trouble with its signature store on 5th Avenue in NYC. The company rebuilt the glass cube above the store so it will have less seams, but ever since the renovation was finished Apple has had not one, but two leaks.

A rain storm hit New York City yesterday, and just like two weeks ago, the roof of the 5th Ave store began to bulge with large deposits of water that then leaked and flooded the lower level. To make matters worse, the roof of the Apple Store in SoHo sprung a leak too.

One Apple Store customer got the entire scene on video this time. You can watch the 5th Ave Geniuses scramble to solve the flooding after the jump:

With iBooks on your iPhone or iPad (or iPad mini, my favorite reading device), you can download electronic books from the convenient privacy of your very own iOS device. You never need to enter a bookstore again (sorry, Barnes & Noble!), making purchases of guilty pleasures and important intellectual tomes equally simple.

A real bookstore, though, lets you browse through the books before you buy them. Heck, you can pick one off the shelf, riffle through the pages, and even (gasp!) read some of it without paying for the book. iBooks has a way to allow you to see inside a book before purchasing it, as well, and I can’t believe I keep forgetting that the feature is there.

If you’re like me, and constantly forget about sample iBooks, here’s your reminder.

Apple might not make bumpers anymore, and Antennagate may be a thing of the past, but there are still some good bumpers out there… and top of the list is the AL13.

When rumors of the iWatch first surfaced, most insiders pegged its launch date for somewhere around the end of 2013 and everyone got super excited that our wrists are going to get blinged out by Apple really soon. However, lately we’ve been hearing that that might not be the case, and we won’t be able to slap Apple’s magical wrist watch on until 2014.

The unreleased iWatch isn’t the only timepiece Apple’s ever made though, so if you’re really desperate to get a watch made by Apple you totally can, but it might cost you more than your iPhone.

Here are 11 of the coolest retro Apple iWatches you can buy right now. We’ll start with the cheap stuff and work our way down:

AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid service has never been friendly to the iPhone. In fact, AT&T has tried to keep iPhones off it for years, hoping that iPhone users will pay for bigger data contracts instead. It looks like AT&T is starting to feel some pressure from T-Mobile and other prepaid networks though, because starting today you’ll be able to use an iPhone on the GoPhone network.

After preventing data access for iPhones for years, AT&T is enabling iPhone support to GoPhone, along with 4G HSPA+ and LTE access, and Visual Voicemail.

WWDC tickets sold out unbelievably quickly this year. We knew it was highly unlikely they’d be available for as long as the two hours it took them to sell out last year, but we also weren’t expecting them all to disappear in under two minutes.

But did Apple really sell out of WWDC tickets that fast?

The Cupertino company has since been calling developers to offer them a place at its event this June, and that’s led some to question whether all tickets were really sold or whether Apple’s too embarrassed to admit that its servers couldn’t cope with the demand they received when tickets went on sale.

Apple might unveil a new iPad mini at WWDC, but if the rumors are true that it might not have a Retina display, then you might want to consider getting a first gen iPad mini.

The Online Apple Store just dropped the price on all refurbished iPad mini and iPad 4 models today. The price drops aren’t huge (although a lot of models are not $100 cheaper than a brand new unit), but it’s a better deal than buying one brand new and you get the same warranty.

Here are the new prices:

Martin Hajek’s oft-shown iWatch model has been dusted off yet again, this time to show how the iWatch could act as a second-screen compass for Apple Maps running on an iPhone. Got to say, first obviously compelling use for an iWatch that I’ve seen yet.

Source: Flickr

By Silicon Valley standards, Apple doesn’t lobby much in Washington. Last year, they spent a little under $2 million on lobbying, a drop in the bucket to Google’s $18 million spent.

But scrutiny of Apple in Washington is starting to heat up, especially the company’s accounting methods. That’s why Apple is looking to double its lobbying spending this year to close to $4 million.

Apple has stopped advertising 24-hour dispatch for products sold through some international online stores. Many of the Cupertino company’s popular products offered 24-hour dispatch providing they were in stock, but in some markets that’s now been increased to 1-2 business days.

Steve Jobs received a lot of criticism for not giving away more of the cash he made from Apple and his other ventures, but thanks to wife Laurene Powell Jobs, the Jobs family contributes more than you might think. In fact, they’ve been giving money away for more then two decades, they just happen to be very good at keeping it under wraps.