The People People Speaker is a clever solution to a persistent, cruel and terrible first-world problem: big, ugly speakers eating up the visual space of your home. The answer isn’t to make the speaker smaller, but to make the speaker less visible.

Thus the almost invisible speaker was born.

China Unicom, China’s second-largest mobile carrier, began accepting iPhone 5 pre-orders on Monday ahead of the handset’s December 14 launch. And during the first day alone, it saw more than 100,000 orders placed online. Apple devices have become hugely popular in China, and it seems the iPhone 5 will be no exception.

iTunes 11 has undergone many different visual tweaks and changes, not all of which may be welcome. One of the big ones is how the Search field works. By default, when you type in your search term, a drop down menu appears under the Search field, listing the songs, albums, or apps that include those search terms. This can be handy for searching the whole of iTunes at once, but you might want to use the older style of search, using the sidebar to filter the search results within the different media types.

Here’s how to revert iTunes 11 to the older style.

Gameloft has announced that Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, the latest addition to its series of first-person shooters, will make its debut on iOS this Thursday, December 6, before arriving on Android “shortly after.” We’ve been following the title’s development since Gameloft released its first teaser tailer back in September, and we couldn’t be more excited. If you’re a fan of FPS games, this is the title to look out for.

Rockstar Games is bringing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City — the best game in the GTA series, in my opinion — to Android and iOS on Thursday (like you didn’t already know that!) to celebrate its 10th anniversary. And to ensure we’re super excited for its release, the company has teased us with a few screenshots from the game.

They’ll look very familiar to you if you’ve already played Vice City before, because it’s almost exactly the same game. But look closely and you’ll notice the game looks a whole lot nicer this time around.

Apple has flipped the switch on the iTunes Store in a grand total of 56 new countries around the world, including key emerging markets like India. Russia, a country where Apple is expected to hold a small celebration event, also now has access to iTunes music and movies.

The iTunes Store is now available in 119 countries in dozens of currencies. Here’s the full press release from Apple:

“All work and no play makes Homer something something…”

Fans of The Simpsons will know that all work and no play actually made Homer go crazy, so to celebrate those brief times when we get to play, Cult of Mac Deals has a pretty sweet ride that will keep you entertained for hours. And (hopefully) keep you from going crazy.

This remote-controlled hyperspeed stunt flier is the most dynamic of its kind – and Cult of Mac Deals has it for just $49 for a limited time!

Android technically sells more smartphones than Apple, but iOS devices continue to dominate mobile web traffic. Chitika Insights has been tracking web traffic on the top mobile platforms, and iOS commands 67% of usage and Android only 33%.

Since May, iOS has seen 2% traffic growth while Android has seen a 2% decrease. Both parties have put out a volley of new devices in recent months, yet the percentages have largely stayed the same for both. More people may be buying Android devices, but iOS device owners appear to be more active online.

There are two Steve Jobs biographical films in the works in Hollywood right now. One is being written by Aaron Sorkin and sounds like it might be a hit. The other has been fast-tracked for a 2013 release, stars Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, and is probably going to suck.

We’ll have to wait a while for Sorkin’s flick, but Ashton’s film, jOBS, has been filming throughout 2012 and will be making its official debut at the Sundance Film Festival this January in Park City, Utah.

Since Apple released iOS 5.1.1 for the Apple TV last week alongside iTunes 11, many users have reported problems updating to the new software over an ethernet connection. This appears to be the result of nasty bug in the latest Apple TV OS. Some Apple TVs even failed to boot back up after the update wouldn’t stick.

If you’ve been having problems updating to 5.1.1 on your Apple TV, then try updating over a Wi-Fi connection or manually restoring in iTunes.

Hunted Cow released its new iOS game, Battle Dungeon, in the App Store less than a week ago, and the title has already been pulled. Why? Rampant piracy. The number of illegitimate users put such a strain on the game’s servers that Hunted Cow was forced to shut it down.

The RPG-like strategy game allowed users to play with each other and compete in leader boards, upgrade characters, etc. It’s a sad day for the game’s paying users.

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.

What’s on the other side of the door for Day 3? It’s Jasmine, an exquisitely designed, utterly beautiful app that will make you rediscover how cool YouTube can really be.

iTunes 11 is a huge upgrade from its predecessor, and it has received lots of positive feedback since it became available for download on Thursday, November 29th.

Apple has baked iCloud into the core of iTunes, and the app’s interface has been decluttered and enhanced with new features like the MiniPlayer. We’ve been combing through the innards of iTunes 11 to find all of the little changes and additions. Here’s our updating list of iTunes 11 tips and tricks:

The new iMacs are lovely, but the smaller units are hard as hell to get into if you want to make some upgrades of your own. The recent iFixit teardown of the 21.5-inch iMac revealed that you’ll have to unglue your display if you want to swap out your hard drive or add more RAM, even though it’s a piece of cake on the bigger, 27-inch iMacs.

Apple added a new feature for the 27-inch iMacs that makes swapping out RAM easier than a push of a button. Well, it’s almost that easy – here’s how to do it.

Say what you will about Apple losing marketshare to Android and Samsung. The iPhone 5 is still the most lusted-after gadget of 2012 if search queries are any indication of where the public’s heart lies. People want the iPhone 5 more than they want to see pics of Kim Kardashian.

Yahoo released their year in review report on the most searched terms of 2012 and the iPhone 5 came in second place, beating out Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Upton, Kate Middleton, and Whitney Houston, while “elections” was the most searched term overall.

Looking for a gift for a loved one, a workmate, or even someone you secretly hate but are obliged to buy something for? Then let us help you. Our Cult Of Mac Holiday Gift Guide is running throughout November and December, thrice weekly with farm-fresh updates every time.

Looking for something in particular? Here’s the full rundown:

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.

We’re running a little behind, so playing catch up today by posting our first and second day picks along with our choice for December 3rd.

Our Day 2 choice? Clear, iOS’s best and most beautiful list-maker.

When most people think of Apple they think of hardware. Apple’s got the iPhone, iPad, and iMac — and they also make their own software to power those devices — but one of Apple’s secret weapons is its gigantic media division.

iTunes was just updated last week, and you already know that it sells everything from books, Apps, newspapers, music, TV shows, movies and more. But did you know that iTunes would be one of the largest and most profitable media companies in the world if Apple decided to set up iTunes as a separate company?

Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.

Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for the good gentleman in your life.

Apple has just released the third beta build of iOS 6.1. Anyone with a developer account can install the latest iOS 6.1 beta 3 on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch by either downloading the update directly from the developer portal, or checking for a software update from the Settings app in iOS.

We’ll let you know if we find any new goodies in the beta once we’ve installed it on our devices and ran our fingers through it.

The bad news? Instagram has a vulnerability that could allow a hacker to take over your account. The good news? That hacker would have to be close enough that he could just walk over and punch you to do so.

I can’t be the only person who took a look at the new iPods’ wrist straps and thought, “I want that for my iPhone.” I’m forever pulling my iPhone 5 from my pocket to snap something for Instagram, and it’d be totally neat if I could just keep the thing in my hand instead, and never have to worry about dropping it.

Happily, the fine folks at Photojojo also felt the persistent pull of gravity and did something about it. Presenting: The iPhone Wrist Strap.

The Transformers movies aren’t all that bad. Well, except for the moronic plots, Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Michael Bay, and the over-the-top explosions. I mean, at least the robots are kind of cool. Who wouldn’t want a Camero that can annihilate an entire city for you?

Brave Robotics is a Tokyo-based company that’s bringing Transformer-style robots into the real world, complete with arm missiles and everything. The only catch is that right now a humanoid that transforms into a car costs about $26,000.

Marvin is a neat little e-book reader for iOS – free for now, but likely to cost about $2 by next week. It’s packed with useful features for serious readers and students, plus some ingenious new ideas we’ve not seen in other e-book reading apps.

Apple’s future notebooks could be even thinner as Intel works to “significantly” reduce the power consumption of its future Ivy Bridge processors. The company’s existing chips — like those installed in today’s MacBook Air — are rated at 17 watts, but sources say the new version will be well below this.