Speaking to NBC talking head Brian Williams this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “When I go into my living room and turn on the TV, I feel like I have gone backwards in time by 20 to 30 years.”

Cook went on to upgrade Apple’s efforts in television from a “hobby” to “an area of intense interest.”

These cryptic comments support what Steve Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, told an interviewer, which is that Jobs said off the record that he wanted to “reinvent” TV, that Apple had “licked” the problems associated with said reinvention, and that Apple’s solution would liberate TV viewers once and for all from “all these complicated remote controls.”

If you want to tease predictive meaning out of these two Apple CEO statements, the key is in what each of them said and to whom and why. 

The iStack Mac Bundle won’t be around forever — in fact, it’s ending soon! In this worthy sequel to the original bundle, we’ve got 10 killer apps (and a bonus e-course for the first 3000 buyers) lined up at a massive savings of 93% off the regular price you’d pay for them separately.

That’s right…you’ll get this Cult of Mac Deals offer for only $49!

Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in January, and since then the photography pioneer has been trying to sell off its many patents. Over the summer it was reported that Apple and Google were leading separate groups in a bidding war for the valuable portfolio. Now a new report says that Apple and Google have teamed up to place a $500 million bid.

Since the iPhone 5 was released in late September, Apple’s online shipping estimates have had trouble catching up with demand. Earlier this week, Apple’s online store started giving an estimate of 2-4 business for new orders, and now Apple is finally showing the iPhone 5 as being in stock.

As the iPhone 5 expands to more than 50 new countries in the month of December, Apple has managed to stabilize supplies just in time for the holidays. Customers in several countries around the world, including the United States and Canada, will now have their iPhone 5 orders shipped immediately. Notably, the U.K. Apple online store is still showing a 1-3 business day estimate. Unlocked models in the U.S. are shipping in 1-3 business days as well.

Source: Apple Store

This week’s must-have games roundup is by far one of our best yet; it’s filled with five awesome titles that you won’t want to miss. Three of those titles are classic games reborn on iOS, including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City — my personal favorite, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, and Mutant Mudds.

We also have Gameloft’s incredible new first-person shooter, Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, and Minigore 2: Zombies, another terrific dual-stick shooter from Mountain Sheep.

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

So what’s behind the door on Saturday the 8th? Letterpress for iOS, a word game for the rest of us, with a simple, cutthroat strategy and an amazing visual design!

Say you’re out and about and you find a link that you want to remember to download onto your desktop  once you get home. You could copy the URL to Notepad, email it to yourself, or add the page to Pocket, but you’re probably going to forget to do it later or lose the info.

A new utility called Transloader, created by Matthias Gansrigler, makes such situations easier to manage by allowing iPhone and iPad users to remotely download URLs to their Mac when they’re away from the house.

One of Apple’s most prized software patents is commonly referred to as simply “the Steve Jobs patent.” The late CEO himself is listed as one of the key inventors in the patent’s documentation, and it was also referred to as “the iPhone patent” when it was approved back in 2009.

Apple has been using this famous patent in courtrooms to sue the likes of Samsung and Google’s Motorola, but now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has entirely invalidated the patent until further examination.

Apple has released a big update for all OS X Server users on Mountain Lion. Version 2.2 adds a number of notable features, including the ability to cache app and software updates in the Mac App Store for faster downloads. Administrators can also monitor multiple Time Machines connected to different Macs on the same network and see when they last backed up.

Use Instagram much? If you do, you’ll know that the best part about it is the community of users that’s over there. It’s as vibrant and rocking a community as Twitter or Facebook, all wrapped around photos you take, filter, and share. It’s what Flickr wishes it had become. Poor Flickr.

Anyway, you can have followers on Instagram, just like Twitter. And, also just like Twitter, people can unfollow you when you post something obnoxious, post too much, or just post something they don’t agree with. It’s all very democratic.

If you’ve ever wondered who was following you or who was un-following you, Followers+ might be the app for you.

Building an extremely useful and cool app is a start but just because it’s built doesn’t mean the customers will come. In fact, building the app is just the beginning. Now you need to spread the word, and that requires a whole other set of skills – skills you may not have.

We’re here today to help you acquire some of those skills with this free informative video course.

The iPhone 6 probably isn’t going to come out for another 18 months or so, but seems how it’s so far away, now seems like a great time to fantasize about possible features Apple might throw into the device based on patent filings. It’s Friday. I’m tired. So screw it, let’s talk crazy.

Yesterday the US Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that showed Apple is considering adding hidden audio sensors into the displays of the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and maybe even the iTV if they get around to it. What wasn’t detailed was how Apple plans to use those sensors,  but one crazy idea is that Apple might use them to create sonar-maps kind of like in the movie The Dark Knight.

I thought I had the whole “paperless” thing under control until Doxie sent over the new, budget-priced Doxie One for me to review. Trust me: If you snap photos of your receipts with your iPhone in an attempt to banish dead trees from your life, you should probably switch to a portable scanner.

It really is that much better.

One of the best things about Christmas is the endless number of Ugly Sweater Parties during the build up to Santa smothering me with presents. Sure, ugly sweater parties have become cliché, but I’m not bored of them just yet, and using an iPad to create the ultimate ugly christmas sweater sounds awesome.

I pride myself on my ability to dominate the competition at an ugly sweater party, but never before had I thought to integrate an iPad or iPhone into the costume with the elegance Mark Rober pulls of in the video above. Replicating Mark’s sweater is pretty easy. Just download his Digital Dudz – Christmas app, buy a sweater, cut a hole in it, duck-tape your iPad to the back and you’re done.

Rather than going with a simple fireplace though, I’m thinking of displaying an endless collection of the best/worst GIFs, or just this.

Source: YouTube

Via: Gizmodo

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

So what’s behind the door on Friday the 7th? Tweetbot for Mac, the best (and most expensive) Twitter client on the Mac App Store!

If you’re a gamer, enjoy yourself this lazy December Friday afternoon through this wonderful, whimsical two-and-a-half minute video — in which Link, the elven, immortal hero of the Legend of Zelda series — travels across a series of Macs and iOS devices in a university computer land in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the evil wizard Gannon.

Just incredibly well done. Makes me want to load Majora’s Mask up in an emulator on my MacBook Air and while the afternoon away.

T-Mobile recently announced that they’ve reached an agreement with Apple to start selling the iPhone in 2013. Coming on the heels of their iPhone announcement, T-Mobile says they plan to stop subsidizing smartphones in 2013 to give customers more freedom.

All four of the major U.S. carriers offer smartphones at a subsidized price, giving subscribers a discount in exchange for tying them to a two-year contract. The contract helps the carriers retain customers, and the lower price point of the smartphone makes customers happy, but it also ramps up costs and restricts customers from upgrades. T-Mobile says they want to get rid of that system entirely.

Catcha Catcha Aliens calls itself “a mission-based catching game”, which in English means it’s an infinite runner in the style of Temple Run. With a bit of a twist, some great music, and celebrity voiceovers. What’s not to like?

Square Enix has announced today that it will be bringing Final Fantasy IV to iOS devices on December 20, and to Android at some point during 2013. The port appears not to be the original, but instead the title’s remake that was brought to the Nintendo DS with 3D graphics among other features and improvements.

Unlike Facebook and Google, when Apple decides to build a huge new data center, they’re not going to let anybody inside to see the technological marvels that they’ve cooked up. Apple just broke ground on a $68 million data center in Prinveville, Oregon, so rather than waiting forever to get an invite to tour the place, Wired sent out their spy plane to get some pictures.

Only a few parts of the data center have been completed, but it is interesting how close Apple is building their data center to Facebook’s gigantic new twin data center. Maybe being neighbors will help the two companies become best friends.

Here’s the pics of the future iCloud of the West.

Apple made its new iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad available to customers in China today, where its iOS devices have recently been seeing record demand. However, that wasn’t the case at the Cupertino company’s new retail store in Beijing. Lines outside the building were almost nonexistent when doors first opened, while only four customers entered the building in the following hour. Most of those who did walk out with a device sold them straight on to scalpers waiting outside.

Google’s social network, Google+, rolled out a new Communities feature this week. Your favorite blog has already established the biggest and fastest-growing Apple-related community on the network.

Click here to join the Cult of Mac Community on Google+.

You should also circle the Cult of Mac Google+ page!

Apple warned us that supplies of its new iMac would be extremely limited this year, and it hasn’t taken long for its initial stock pile to diminish. The 27-inch all-in-one, that was once shipping in “3-4 weeks,” now won’t be sent out until January via the Apple online store.

T-Mobile customers are quickly jumping ship, turning to rival carriers to bag the iPhone. But on Thursday, the company announced that it will finally begin selling Apple’s immensely popular smartphone from next year, and it is hoping that the move will help it claw back some subscribers. Chief Executive John Legere wants to see it making a positive impact on the carrier’s subscription numbers by 2013.

“It is an aggressive target but we think it is possible,” Legere told reporters on Friday.

On Tuesday I went to a party at San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord to celebrate the launch of Fuze For Mac, a nifty cloud-based videoconferencing tool from FuzeBox.

I heard several interesting things about Steve Jobs and some intriguing Apple TV rumors. One of the rumors made me think that Tim Cook’s new Mac — the one that is going to be made in the U.S.A. — might actually be a big-screen Apple TV.

Here’s what I heard:

• The software was developed at the behest of Steve Jobs himself, who persuaded FuzeBox to make the software not just for the Mac, but for an upcoming Apple TV.
• Steve Jobs gave the company a special dev lab on Apple’s campus.
• According to FuzeBox’s CEO, the upcoming Apple TV has a 60-inch screen. It has no inputs whatsoever, except an AC power cord. No wires. You can’t plug in a cable box or a game console. Nothing.
• It does have Gigabit wireless Wi-Fi and gesture controls, equivalent to Microsoft’s Kinect accessory for the Xbox.
• And finally, the story of how FuzeBox got an ultra rare meeting with Steve Jobs is worth telling — details below.

Now, I’m the first to admit that not all of this adds up. I got it from Jeff Cavins, FuzeBox’s CEO, who told a good tale, especially after I’d had a couple of pints. While I was fascinated and entertained, it didn’t get to pin him down on details. The party was loud and crowded, and we were constantly interrupted. So mostly for entertainment purposes, this is what he said: