It’s pretty much a proven fact that for Christmas this year kids want an iPad or something else made by Apple. Everyone knows it. Even Best Buy. So Best Buy’s newest commercial shows off all the phenomenal cosmic powers of Apple devices as a kid uses all of Apple’s products at the Best Buy Apple Store on his search to find Santa.

Source: Best Buy

Via: TUAW

Apple’s new Lightning connector is the perfect accompaniment to the Thunderbolt port, but the trademark hasn’t always been owned by the Cupertino company. In fact, it had to “partially” acquire it from motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, which uses it to cover motorcycle parts, protective helmets, and turn signals.

The ClearView is a simple alternative to pricey add-on camera viewfinders, both optical and electronic. The idea is that – instead of adding a new viewfinder – you can just repurpose the screen you already have. And this means that, with a bit of tweaking, it’ll work with an iPhone too.

Just last week, we learned that Samsung had requested to add the iPad mini, the fourth-generation iPad, and the sixth-generation iPod touch to its ongoing patent-infringement complaint against Apple. Now the Cupertino company is hoping to extend its own case by bringing Samsung’s latest Android devices into the mix.

Apple has targeted six Samsung devices in total, including its flagship Galaxy S III, the Galaxy Note II, the Galaxy S III Mini, the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.

Mall of America happens to have both an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store under one roof. In fact, they’re right across the hall from each other, so it’s a great place to gauge how enthusiastic people are for both brands.

On Black Friday, Gene Munster and his team of analyst from Piper Jaffray spend eight hours counting heads at the Apple Store. They also spend two hours monitoring the Microsoft Store and found that Microsoft didn’t sell a single Microsoft Surface tablet.

Here are some other facts that Munster observed:

Were you crazy enough to brave the murderous masses of people looking for deals on Black Friday this year? If you stopped by the Apple Store to get a cheaper MacBook or something, you probably noticed that the Apple Stores were even more crowded than usual. But then if you went over to a Microsoft Store it looked like just a normal day.

Here’s a video that compares the amount of people visiting the Microsoft Store and the Apple Store. Surprise, Apple won on Black Friday.

Use Simplenote to take and search notes on your iPhone or iPad? Love Evernote? Then you’re going to be totally stoked about Simple-For-Ever, a service which syncs the two accounts.

The shipping delay for Apple iPhone 5 has been steadily dropping over the past few weeks, and today it reached an all-time low of just one week. At least, that’s the case if you live in Australia. Estimates for other regions — including the United States — are still at two weeks, but we’re expecting those to drop soon, too.

Apple’s decision to give Samsung Display the boot over the iPad mini may be one that comes back to haunt the Cupertino company. Its tiny tablet is expected to be a smash hit this Christmas, but Apple is said to be battling with supply constraints as one of its two display manufacturers struggles to meet the demand.

Imagine an iPhone case which can hold not only the iPhone 5, but your keys, your cash, and your credit cards. Imagine that this case also comes with a built-in mirror and a telescopic pen. Finally, picture this case as a svelte beauty, a case worthy of the iPhone 5 it contains.

Sound impossible? That’s because it is. The case does hold everything in the list, but it’s as ugly as sin. If you were to take the branches of an ugly tree, fashion them into a giant tumble-dryer barrel and spin an iPhone case inside it – forever – then you’d end up with something a lot like the Cavity Case.

Ah, Reminders. They’re boring, but essential. Keeping track of the crazy number of things I have to do on a daily, weekly, even hourly basis relies on my remembering them, first of all, and a reminder now and then is essential.

One of the cool things about Apple’s Reminders app is that it allows you to set due dates and times with each task you enter. You can set these times and dates manually, or you can use natural language expressions with the app to set up your time-sensitive tasks a lot more quickly.

Here’s how to do it.

Sonic Jump, Sega’s latest iOS game, has received a great new update that’s now available to download from the App Store. In addition to 12 brand new levels, this release brings new characters and new enemies.

C’mon, who among us hasn’t snapped a photo on Instagram and thought “wow, that’d look great on my wall” — I know I have. So Art.com came up with Photos to Art, a slick app that painlessly, almost magically transform your digital snapshot into a piece of art — all you need to provide is some money and a bit of imagination (and they’ll even help you with that last one).

We’re a few weeks away from the start of a new year, which means the time to adopt new habits is fast approaching. Rather than adopt a new habit, some people learn a new skill – and building apps for the iPhone and iPad is very much in fashion these days. This soon-to-end Cult of Mac Deals offer aims to help you build those apps with the most in-depth and comprehensive Xcode course for complete beginners.

And you can get this course for just $79 — but do it before it’s gone for good!

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is Nokia’s great new mapping app called HERE Maps. It’s accompanied by an awesome App.net client called Stream, a great new app that tracks who stopped following you on Twitter, and more.

The iPad has become one of the premier video consumption devices on the planet. having access to videos in the palm of your hands anytime, anywhere is a huge bonus. But getting some videos to your iPad isn’t a slam dunk. You have to change formats for some of them – and that can be a pain.

But this freebie that we’re delivering today at Cult of Mac Deals will change all that.

For a limited time you can get MacX iPad Video Converter, the best iPad video converter on the market free of charge!

I hope you have some cash left after Black Friday, because we have some awesome iOS games for you in this week’s roundup. Kicking us off is Vengeance: Woz With A Coz, the first video game to feature Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. We also have Meganoid 2, and awesome new platform game; the best boxing game you’ll find on iOS, and more.

Apple is saying that the new iMac is having production problems overseas, and it’s looking like the new computer will barely be ready for Christmas. Demand for Apple’s latest desktop has spawned a Chinese knockoff called the “lavi.” Powered by Windows 8, the 21.5-inch model costs 3,350 yuan (about $540) with a 500GB hard drive.

Created by “Mr. Hong,” this knockoff has a 1920×1080 display, 4GB of RAM, and an Intel i3 dual-core or i5 quad-core CPU. A 128GB SSD can be installed for an additional fee.

Hip startup Studio Neat announced the original Glif on Kickstarter back in 2010, and the innovative iPhone tripod/mount hybrid became a huge success. Today Studio Neat announced that the iPhone 5 version of the Glif will start arriving to customers next week.

The regular Glif sells for $20, while the Glif+ with tripod lock and keyring loop costs $30.

There’s something about good food that inspires people to whip out their iPhones, snap a pic, apply a retro filter, and share it with the world on Instagram. Turkey Day was a massive successful for the Facebook-owned social network. Today Instagram revealed that a record-setting 10 million photos were shared yesterday, with an upwards of 200+ uploads per second. That’s insane for an app that’s only a couple of years old.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first decided to make a computer together their first invention was the Apple-1. At first, the Apple-I was just a do-it-yourself computer making kit. Buyers would have to solder the chips onto the circuit board, then find other parts like the power supply, keyboard, and display.

As the owner of the Byte Shop in Mountain View California, Paul Terrell was approached by Jobs and Woz to sell their DIY computer kits. Terrell told them he really needed computers that are fully assembled and that he’d buy 50 Apple-1s if Jobs and Woz put them together. They struck a deal and Byte Shop became the first Apple retailers. Thirty six year later, Terrell recently posted pictures of some of the first Apple-1s ever. Check them out below:

I’ve stayed in some pretty nasty hotels in my time, but none of them ever quite got as bad as Bad Hotel.

Bad Hotel is bad in the sense that I wouldn’t want to stay there. Too many bad guys trying to smash it down all the time. Unusual, for hotels, but there you go.

As a game, though, Bad Hotel is fantastic. It’s brilliantly different. It doesn’t care what you think of its weirdness. It’s there to entertain, and does so with charm and wit.

Right now, iOS’s notifications system is curiously bifurcated in design between the alert bubble system of iOS 4 and the banner notifications that appeared in iOS 5. A new concept floating around, though, has some great ideas on how these systems could be merged in iOS 7 by a new iOS UI design team lead by Jony Ive.

There’s a good chance you can think of someone who plans on giving an Apple product this holiday season. Apple has rolled out its own Holiday Gift Guide and has its own gifting information page, which details the basics about gifting Apple products. If you’re looking for a little more assistance when shopping for Apple products then this guide is for you. Here we offer some simple tips to help the average holiday shopper save time and money when gifting Apple products.

Twitter may have given up on its official Mac client, which hasn’t seen an update in well over 18 months, but one third-party developer hasn’t. Deniz Mert Edincik, an iOS developer from Turkey, has taken it upon himself to patch the application to provide support for Apple’s new Retina MacBook Pros.