Even though we have yet to see some truly credible evidence to support the countless claims that Apple will release a cheaper iPhone sometime in 2013, that’s not stopping another analyst from jumping on the cheap-iPhone train.

Analyst Brian White, at Topeka Capital, released a report this morning claiming that his research supports the claim that Apple will sell a cheaper version of the iPhone in order to attract new growth opportunities in China and elsewhere around the world.

Apple’s retail operations were mocked by everyone on the planet when the first Apple Store was opened. But now that the Apple Store is the most profitable retail store in the world, everyone wants to copy what Apple’s doing.

Thanks to some inspiration from the Apple Store, BMW has decided that starting in 2014 they will require all dealers to hire young tech-savvy employees to handle questions from customers about the vehicles on the showroom floor. They’ll even be equipped with iPads and be called Geniuses.

How happy are you with your smartphone? According to a survey of 92,825 smartphone user in the United States, the Motorola Atrix HD delivers the most satisfaction with an impressive 8.57 out of ten. Another Motorola device, the Droid RAZR M, is ranked second with 8.5 out of ten, while the iPhone 5 is ranked fifth with just 8.23 out of ten.

Google pays Apple around $1 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt, and that figure is going to rise in the years ahead. That’s more than a lot of companies turn over in a year, and Apple banks it for doing literally nothing.

Overseas customers of Apple products often feel like they are paying a premium for Apple products, but Australians believe they have it extra rough, and Australian parliament wants answers: Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have been called in to appear before a committee investigating potential price fixing in the land down under.

Is this the iPhone 5S? Leaked images purported to come out of Foxconn are claimed to show Apple’s next iPhone, and it looks pretty much identical to the iPhone 5, although some have noted that there’s at least one small change: the iPhone 5S uses the iPhone 4S’s softer vibration component instead of the louder rotating one used in the iPhone 5.

If you were used to inverting the colors on your Mac with a Control-Command-Option-8, you might have noticed that this has changed in OS X Mountain Lion. The older keyboard shortcut doesn’t work any more, and has been replaced with the less simple Command-Option-F5 shortcut to bring up an Accessibility Options dialog box. You have to then manually click the checkbox next to Invert Display Colors.

Here’s how to get the old shortcut back, for a quick invert.

A pair of European carriers have told iPhone 4S users not to upgrade to Apple’s latest iOS 6.1 firmware due to the 3G connectivity issues that come with it. Both Vodafone U.K. and 3 Austria have reported the issues, which sometimes makesit difficult for the device to connect to the network, or make or receive calls and texts.

Apple is secretly building an iWatch deep within the confines of its Cupertino headquarters, according to a new report from The New York Times. The device uses curved glass to bend with the movement of the human wrist.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumors of a mysterious iWatch. The Times reported that Apple was prototyping such a product in 2011. But with competitors like the Pebble smart watch starting to ship, the era of the iWatch may be drawing near.

Borderlands 2 is unequivocally the best first-person shooter available for the Mac. Right now it’s half off at the Steam store, making it $30, meaning you can snag a deal better even than the Mac App Store price of $45.

like its predecessor, Borderlands 2 combines fast-paced combat with role playing concepts like a skill tree, a witty, well-written storyline and a staggering degree of weapon selection. The Steam version also includes multiplayer, something the Mac App Store version doesn’t currently support. Better hurry if you want to catch the deal, though — Borderlands 2 is back at full price tomorrow morning.

As video surveillance goes, Netgear’s VueZone system is about as easy and user-friendly as it gets. But does VueZone sacrifice power and performance for ease-of-use? We tested the two-camera system, which cam with two motion-detecting cameras, four magnetic mounts and the master gateway for $290. It also came with a one-month trial subscription to the Premier service subscription; the no-frills Basic service, which allows you to montitor up to two cameras remotely from your computer, is free.

Terminal app can be daunting at first, but it’s really the best way to hack into your Mac’s configurations and preferences to customize things to work for you rather than against you. With the right Terminal commands, you can tweak the Finder, mess with the user interface, build a more private and secure Mac, and even enable features that aren’t officially supported on older Macs.

Here are a few of the better ones.

Apple’s Siri personal assistant has been in development for 10 years.

Apple doesn’t let app developers use the word “beta” for iPhone apps.

And the company spends millions on — and make billions from — the advertising of their “beta” product specifically.

Given these facts, is it disingenuous, unfair, inconsistent, hypocritical and inaccurate for Apple to continue calling Siri “beta”?

Want to harness the power and flexibility of Apple’s Mountain Lion Server? Whether you are setting it up for a school, home network or business, with this Cult of Mac Deals offer you will learn the most effective way to use everything Apple’s Mountain Lion server has to offer.

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This week’s must-have apps roundup kicks off with Mailbox, the best third-party mail client that’s available on iOS. If you haven’t already downloaded your copy and joined the queue, do it as soon as you can. Mailbox is accompanied by AudioBox, a new player for all of your cloud-based music; the latest game from Kairosoft, and more.

Speech to text dictation is getting better by leaps and bounds, and Apple’s Siri on iOS is one of the best implementations of the technology. While you may have known that you could punctuate your dictation by just speaking it aloud (comma) you may not know that there are some more commands that you can use to further refine your dictation performance, allowing you to write stuff just by speaking it, and no one will know the difference.

Here are some of the better ones.

Michael T. Jones has a helluva fun job. He’s the Chief Technology Ambassador for Google, and as such, he not only gets to work for one of the coolest companies in the world, he also gets to cruise around the world and tell people why Google is so darn awesome.

When it comes to Apple, you would think that Michael Jones would have some really mean things to say. In a recent interview with ABC News in Australia, Michael Jones actually praised Apple and said that customers can trust Apple with their private data. But then he added that using Apple Maps might kill you.

Even if the only traveling you do is from your home to your office, and even if that “office” is actually just your bedroom, then you will probably find the PlugBug wicked useful. But if you ever leave your home country’s own shores, then you might consider the PlugBug World, a globally-aware charger for your MacBook and iDevices.

Don’t use a computer any more? Hate “pirating” TV shows and movies? Wish that your country had something as awesome as Netflix so you could pay and stream everything to your iPad mini? Read on, because you can do just that, and it is dead easy – all you need is a credit card and maybe a half hour to get things set up.

We’ve been hoping for a quick and painful death to Flash for a while now. It’s been slowly coming, but we’re getting closer to the day of no longer needing the crash crazy, disease injecting plugin.

Flash is still everywhere though even if you don’t want it to be, and it’s still causing problems. Adobe announced yesterday that they’re releasing an emergency patch for Patch player to fix vulnerabilities that are being exploited to install malware on Apple’s Macintosh platform.

We have a lot to do – and having some form of trusted task management app in place is key in getting the most out of you time. This Cult of Mac Deals offer is ideal for those looking to take their to-do list prowess to the next level.

Firetask combines the advantages of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD)® with proven classical task management concepts so you can dominate your agenda efficiently and effectively. The principles that have helped entrepreneurs and startups thrive are all entrenched within this intuitive application. It’s essentially setting your tasks on a tee so you can hit them harder and with more focus than ever. And you’re going to get this app for just $30 for a limited time thanks to Cult of Mac Deals.

Apple makes some really great software and hardware. We love it. But sometimes there are certain little things you want out of your computer that Apple can’t or won’t provide. That’s why we have jailbreaking and modding.

We love it when someone takes an Apple product and morphs it into something completely different. There have been a lot of Apple hardware mods that have crossed our desks over the last few years. Some have been simple, while others have required over a hundred hours of work. Here are the five greatest Apple hardware mods we’ve ever seen.

The evasion jailbreak took longer than any other iOS jailbreak to come out, but it appears that the wait was worth it for millions of iOS users.

After only four days of being available to the public, nearly 7 million iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch owners have bulldozed through Apple’s walled garden and jailbroken their devices so they can customize each and every facet of their experience.

If you were ever a dork like me, goofing off in Trig class to play Wolfenstein 3D on your graphing calculator, this will be exciting: Texas Instruments has brought their graphing calculator software to the iPad.

The new software mimics the functionality of TI’s TI-Nspire calculator, and it’s Texas Instrument’s first entry into the graphing calculator app world.

After facing a lot of scrutiny for the past few years over working conditions at factories in China, Apple has made a lot of progress on cleaning up their manufacturing partners’ facilities. Pay has been increased. Forced overtime and child labor aren’t as frequent. And we haven’t heard of any massive brawls in a while.

Following Apple’s lead, HP has decided to get its act together in China as well by reducing the number of underage student laborers at its facilities in China.