A lot of companies have tried to imitate Apple’s trackpads because they kind of just melt into the rest of computer. They’re one of the most underrated features of the MacBook, but it’s going to be harder for companies to completely ripoff the feature now that Apple has a patent on it.

Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple has cut its iPhone 5 component orders by as much as half following “weaker-than-expected” demand for device. The news sent Apple’s stock price plummeting, but according to some analysts, there’s nothing to worry about. iPhone 5 demand is doing just fine, according to Sterne Agee’s Shaw Wu, and the component cuts are in no way related to poor demand.

Apple’s AppleCare Protection Plan has come under fire once again in Europe after Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats, a Belgian consumer watchdog, filed a complaint against the way in which the Cupertino company markets the product in Europe.

Customers within the European Union are entitled to a free two-year warranty with any consumer electronics purchase, but Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats claims that Apple’s warranty marketing doesn’t properly explain these rights to Belgian shoppers.

Apple’s Back to School promotion has begun in Australia and New Zealand ahead of the new school year. Like previous years, the promotion offers a free gift card with new Macs and iOS devices purchased for education, and it’s open to students, parents, and teachers. This year’s deal includes the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, the iMac and the Mac Pro, and the iPad with Retina display.

Poster, arguably the best WordPress blogging app for iOS, has received a major new update today, which adds a ton of new features and improvements. In addition to support for custom post types, version 2.0 brings the ability to edit a post’s excerpt and insert images anywhere you like, and the option to remove a post’s featured image. Check out the update notes below for the full list of changes and improvements.

If you use Bluetooth as much as I do, you’ll know that there are times when it works flawlessly and times when it does not. Many of the issues around sound quality of a Bluetooth speaker or the performance of a Bluetooth keyboard have to do with the strength of the signal going between your Mac and the Bluetooth gadget.

Here’s a simple way to check the signal strength of each device you’re using.

This post is brought to you by Gazelle.

Have you recently gotten a new iPhone, iPad or MacBook? Before you get a new one or if you already have it, make sure you sell your used phone or gadget to Gazelle for cash! Don’t bury last year’s gadget in a drawer — find out what it’s worth on Gazelle.com.

Gazelle takes the risk and effort out of selling electronic gadgets online with benefits such as free shipping and packaging and comprehensive identity and data removal. To date, Gazelle has accepted more than one million trade-ins, helping consumers upgrade to the latest technology and earn quick cash.

Facebook is set to hold a press event later today, and it appears the whole thing’s going to be a massive kick in the teeth for Google. Not only is the social network expected to unveil its own smartphone, possibly powered by its own platform, but it’s also expected to hit Google where it really hurts — in search. Rumor has it the company will unveil its own search engine, which will rollout to users “very soon.”

As an Apple guy with a whole lot of photography gear, I’m usually forced to slug my computing devices in one bag and DSLR and accoutrements in another while traveling. I hate doing that.

Think Tank’s new rolling camera bag, the Airport Navigator ($249), with two wheels, a telescoping handle, and space for a DSLR, lenses, and an iPad and Macbook Pro, seemed to be the perfect portable home for all my devices to live. But how well would it perform on the road? I decided to pack it full, take it to Vegas, and cart it around with me on the over-crowded floors one of the world’s biggest technology shows, CES 2013, and find out.

It’s pretty rare to find quality sounding earbuds that look as good as they sound. But you’ll find just that in our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer. That’s because you can get a pair of brown BodyGuardz Moxy earbuds with a mic by for just $35 — but your time to get this deal is almost up!

Rumors of a cheaper, budget iPhone have been picking up steam in recent weeks. After the infamous Digitimes reported that Apple was gearing up to launch a low-cost iPhone later this year, mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal chimed in with their own confirmations. Apple is “weighing retail prices of $99 to $149” for the unannounced device, according to Bloomberg.

Now Digitimes is saying that Apple could use plastic instead of metal or glass to cut costs for this new “entry-level” iPhone.

DeNA, the social gaming company that now owns ngmoco, just launched a new, free, 8-bit retro role-playing game, D.O.T. Defender of Texel, to the iTunes App Store and the Google Play store.

Texel is a world made of dots, at the end of a wormhole, waiting for you to jump in and save the world. The battles are turn-based, and you choose who will fight each battle by swiping across a grid of characters to place your fighters on the battle field.

Do you use Markdown to write for the web, or for publishing? And does it drive you crazy that every time you search through the Finder for your documents, you have to open them up in a text editor just to see which one is which?

Sure, you could use meaningful file names to identify them, but who has time for that? What you need is QLMarkdown, a neat Quick Look plugin for the Mac.

NEWSFLASH: Teens don’t want the iPhone! Parents beware! The Microsoft Surface and Samsung Galaxy phones are the new “it” things! Apple has lost its cool factor!!!

That’s what the Buzz Marketing Group, an organization that seeks to provide  “lifestyle and buzz marketing services for brands seeking to attract teen audiences,” wants you to think. You may have recently seen some headlines from big sites saying that teens think Apple is uncool now.

As my British boss Leander Kahney would say, that’s absolute bollocks.

As we all know, sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. You can usually tell when an idea is a winner because it seems so obvious that somebody should have made it already. And the Tethercell is one of these ideas: it’s a remote control battery that will let you switch any AA-powered device on and off from your iPhone.

Apple just sent out a press release confirming that cellular models of the iPad mini and fourth-gen iPad will officially go on sale in China this Friday, January 15th. During a trip to China last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that WiFi + Cellular models of the company’s newest iPads would arrive this month. The WiFi-only versions went on sale December 7th, a little over a month after U.S. sales began.

According to the manufacturer Teenage Engineering, the original OD-11 speaker was hot stuff in Sweden in the 1970s. The OD-11 was a cube which packed an amp, subwoofer and speaker into one box, and it sold over 100,000 pairs in Sweden alone.

Now it’s back. The new version is called the Cloud Speaker, and it packs Wi-Fi and Bluetooth along with all the rest.

$100 might seem like a crazy amount to spend on an iPhone case, but if you paid around €850 ($1,140) for an unlocked iPhone 5 like I did, then it actually seems like a pretty good investment to protect your, uh, other investment.

And coincidentally, $100 is exactly what you’ll pay for Otterbox’s Armor series case, billed as “The toughest case ever built.”

President Obama will be officially sworn into office for his second term on Monday, January 21st at the nation’s capital. If you can’t be in DC to witness the event, The Presidential Inaugural Committee has you covered with a dedicated app for your Android handset or iPhone.

The free Inaugural 2013 app is available for free in both Google Play and the App Store.

Continuing a new trend among senior executives, Apple’s general counsel has joined the Board of Directors at Vail Resorts, a ski resort company with locations in Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan and Wyoming. Bruce Sewell currently serves as Apple’s “general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Government Affairs. Believe it or not, he worked as a professional ski patroller during his college years.

EXIF data: It’s the unsung hero of iPhoneography, and digital photography in general. It’s where location data is stored so you can see your pictures on a map. It remembers when you took that photo, what ISO you used, along with all kinds of other handy data (focal length, flash on or off, even the white balance setting you used).

But on iOS, the EXIF data is mostly hidden from you. But with EXIF-fi, you can not only read it but edit it.

I have far too many photo apps on my iPhone and iPad, but I only ever use one of them to shoot pictures – the built-in camera app. Why? Because it is fast and good. It captures the best the sensor has to offer, and it is accessible right from the lock screen.

But there is a new app which might tempt me away. It’s called PureShot, and it is pretty great.

So, it’s Sunday evening, and you realize you have an email from your boss from Friday that you really need to follow up on. You launch your Mail app on your iPhone and go to the Inbox, only to find that the message you saw on Friday afternoon is no longer in the Inbox because you archived it all on your computer before you want home.

Instead of freaking out, you can find that archived email, right there on your iPhone, and move it back to the Inbox where it belongs, so you can follow up on it before your boss comes in on Monday.

Fruit Ninja is one of the all-time greatest games from iOS. What’s not to like? You get to pretend that you’re a samurai in training who slices and dices his way through waterfalls of falling fruit. It’s simple and addictive.

Now there’s a new fancy device that will actually let you play Fruit Ninja in the real world. Well, almost the real world. At CES a Russian company named Displair was showing off their device that creates a vertical wall of water vapor that has a projector attached to display images and a built-in camera to sense user inputs.

What it amounts to is the most expensive game of Fruit Ninja ever created. Here’s a video of the device in action:

Sentry, a designer famous for the awesome Auxo tweak that overhauls the multitasking tray on jailbroken iOS devices, has today published a new concept that reinvents the Do Not Disturb feature that Apple introduced to iOS 6. He doesn’t change the feature itself, he just changes the way it’s activated to make it super quick and simple.