Walk into any Starbucks and be cast by the glowing eye-con of a thousand MacBooks, staring at you, poor PC laptop user, with a piercing gaze of recrimination and scorn. “You are not one of us,” they murmur. “You are not of the seraphim.”

If you’re stuck with owning a Windows laptop but want to fit in with the Starbucks set, maybe consider an ASUS Taichi 21? It’s a cool piece of hardware in its own right, featuring a touchscreen display on the back, and you can make it do cool, obfuscating things… like, say, flash a glowing Apple symbol even bigger and brighter than the most expensive Mac.

Via: GigaOM

The SkechBook case, from master iPad case-maker Skech, was one of the things that drove me to buy and iPad mini, so slim and cute and retro-tastic is its tiny form.

Since succumbing to the mini’s charms, though, I have come to believe that it really needs no case other than the Smart Cover, and the Smart Cover is only really needed to lock and unlock the screen quickly. Why? Because the iPad mini weighs just 307 grams on my kitchen scale, making even the 68-gram Smart Cover a significant addition to its weight. And apart from the glass screen, the little iPad is so light, tough and compact that further protection seems like unnecessary coddling.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Witty, engaging, hilarious, beguiling — Saturday Night Live  and Portlandia actor Fred Armisen just gave a room of 2,000 people a Macworld experience they’ll never forget, and it had absolutely nothing to do with tech.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – If you’ve ever watched an episode of Portlandia then you probably have the feeling that its two stars, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, are huge fans of Apple products.

A lot of Portlandia’s comedy sketches revolve around society’s obsession for technology. They’re brilliant. Many of the sketches feature Apple products, but it’s very rare to see a PC or Android phone on the show. At Macworld this morning, Armisen said that they only put PCs in the show at places where it’s appropriate – like the DMV.

A number of Apple executives, including Vice President for Education John Couch, met with Turkish president Abdullah Gül today to discuss a deal that could see the iPad introduced to Turkish education. The Turkish government’s FAITH project was set up to put more than 15 million tablets into its schools at an estimated cost of around $4.5 billion.

Google won the award for Best Mobile Application at the sixth edition of the TechCrunch Crunchies Awards, beating out Grindr, Instagram, and Square.

“I see a few empty seats, so it looks like those guys haven’t downloaded the app and got lost somewhere,” said the Daniel Graf, Google’s director of mobile maps, accepting the statue of a gorilla smashing a TV set.

Another week, another todo list. Given the fundamental simplicity of todo lists as we used to know them (scraps of paper with stuff scribbled on), it’s amazing that there’s so much endless innovation in the field of virtual ones. But so it goes, and Finish is one of the latest apps to try and add a new twist. And mostly, it succeeds.

Apple has overtaken Samsung to become the largest mobile phone vendor in the United States for the first time. The Cupertino company captured a record 34% market share during the fourth quarter of 2012 with around 17.7 million devices sold, while Samsung captured 32% with around 16.8 million devices sold.

Got a “Universal” iPhone dock? Yeah, me too, and it’s pretty useless now most of my iDevices are Lightning powered. But Shapeways user nginear can help. He’s come up with an iPhone 5 adapter which will plug straight into your dock, letting you keep on using it for at least another year or so,.

Path, the mobile social network that first launched on the iPhone in November 2010, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived its users by collecting personal information from their address books without their knowledge or consent. The settlement requires the company to establish a comprehensive privacy program and to have independent privacy assessments carried out every other year.

The company has also been fined $800,000 for illegally collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

The Rocksteady XS is a Bluetooth speaker with a big difference: it’s designed to be “as loud as possible.” To that end, it features a sealed design so that the sound can punch harder out of the end-mounted speakers. It’s also tough (with an aluminum shell) and cheap at just $99, making it ideal for outdoor use.

Apple is on the hunt for two senior software engineers that will join its iLife development team to “re-imagine how user interfaces should be built and work.” Both positions, which were posted to the vacancies page of Apple’s website, are based at the company’s Cupertino headquarters, and indicate Apple is working to overhaul the iLife software suite, which consists of GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto.

If you’re into iOS but don’t know how to turn that passion into revenue, then the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer will be just what the doctor ordered. With The Master iOS Programming Course, you’ll be able to turn your iOS passion into a new lucrative hobby – and for just $47 to boot!

Along with Evernote’s big Penultimate announcement yesterday came another big update. Evernote Hello, the person-remembering app, is now at version 2.0. It adds two great features: business-card scanning and a tie-in with social networks.

Yes, you’ve seen both these before, but not quite as slick as this.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – It was clear during his panel that playing Steve Jobs touched actor Ashton Kutcher in a deep and poignant way… but when he started choking back tears when speaking about the tech luminary, things started getting weird.

Yes, team Cult is here at Macworld 2013, and we’re reporting live from the show on our all-new CultCast.

Couldn’t make it this year? Don’t worry, we sat through 60 minutes of actors Kutcher and Josh Gad describing the process of making their new JOBS movie so you wouldn’t have to. Catch our new episode to find out what Jobs said that made Kutcher teary-eyed whilst reciting it, and why he and fellow actor Josh Gad feel Woz’s recent harsh criticism of their movie just isn’t fair.

Then—from the cool, to the useful, to the downright whacky—it’s our favorite Apple tech from the show!

All that on our newest CultCast plus, JJ Abrams, Star Wars Savior! Read on for the show notes.

 SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Like any other trade show, there are a lot of weird and cool things to see at Macworld. Even though there aren’t as many booths here as there are at CES, but there’s tons to look at.

We wandered the corridors of Macworld this afternoon to find the most fun and freaky booths at Macworld. Here’s what we found.

Well, we’ve shown you tips on how to master the Option key in OS X in the Finder, in iWork, in Safari, and in the Menu Bar.

Here are a few more that we thought you’d like, in no particular order.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Fujitsu is making an appearance at Macworld this year to demonstrate their first scanner to work with an iOS device, the ScanSnap iX500. The scanner can connect right to your device using an iOS app to easily view your scanned documents immediately onscreen.

The ScanSnap iX500 is designed to be easy to use, implementing several innovative features. Since the scanner can handle up to 25 documents per minute, it has technology built in to make sure that only one sheet passes through at a time, eliminating time consuming paper jams.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Lantronix is showing off at Macworld what they call the xPrintServer, a small device that you can attach to your network to allow nearly any printer to become compatible with your iOS device using AirPrint.

The xPrintServer comes in two models, a consumer edition that should suit the needs of the average user, as well as an office edition more suited for a corporate setting.

Dropbox’s new Albums feature, rolling out over the next few weeks, lets you share your photos and videos way more easily that you could before. Think of it as kind of a Shared Photo Stream, only anyone can use it, not just iOS6 users.

No, that headline isn’t wrong — Samsung has actually made a Galaxy commercial for the Super Bowl that doesn’t such. It features Knocked Up stars Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, who play two writers pitching ideas for Samsung’s next commercial to Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk.

It doesn’t mock other companies or rival devices, and it’s actually pretty hilarious. Check it out below.

When Minecraft Pocket Edition first launched, it wasn’t anything like the desktop (and now Xbox 360) versions; it was a neutered stub of a game. But with each update, the PE version gets more and more awesome as it adds the cool features of its big brothers. This update brings wearable armor, craftable signs, new renewable resources in the form of baby livestock and makes gravel and sand follow the rules of gravity.

Unfortunately, there might also be a bug that destroys your entire world.

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never really gotten into racing games. I do enjoy a bit of Burnout Paradise action now and then, but for the most part, I tend to avoid games that are all about racing. Unless they have karts and cute little mascots, of course. And iOS racing games? They’re ok, but not really my go-to genre.

Today, though, the adrenaline-fueled, high octane trailer for Table Top Racing has me wondering if maybe I should give this one a try.

Playrise Digital announced the release today of it’s first iOS title right on the iTunes App Store, and it just might make you a fan of racing games again, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSuJ5HOE42M&list=PLgqaIbvtBHtSwsxcRw4941vIoxMhY0DpN&index=1

A year ago I was working on a pretty large project with a buddy. We were hundreds of miles apart, but since we both had iPads, we figured, hey, no problem — collaboration will be easy.

But it wasn’t. Despite the wealth of iPad apps, none of them were quite the collaboration tool we wanted; too expensive, or lacking a particular feature, or not easy enough to use. I wish Moxtra had been around a year ago.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a bid from Apple today to review and reconsider the sales ban, originally granted and then reversed, on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus phones. While this type of reconsideration, called an en banc review, is rare, it makes sense that Apple (as well as Samsung) would ask for everything it possibly could in this still-hot case.

The three judge panel today rejected Apple’s request to reinstate a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone until the later trial, set for March of 2014.