Apple’s current “hobby” — also known as Apple TV — doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the living room.

It’s a good product under the right circumstances. But five years from now, living rooms are going to be transformed by all-encompassing systems that turn TVs into video phones, gaming systems, home automation control centers and artificial intelligence assistants.

Does Apple have what it takes to compete in the living room? 

When you’re coding or writing text, you want the app you’re using to get out of the way so that you can get things done rather than impede your progress. In many cases, less is more when it comes to text editing software, and our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is for Nuggit, an app that has done away with any of the features that aren’t all that necessary so that you can be more efficient.

And this deal gets you Nuggit for only $5!

Lucky Frame made one of my favorite games on iOS ever, Pugs Luv Beats. It’s no surprise, given the game’s focus on my favorite dogs of all time and a wicked-cool beat-making mechanic, adorable graphics, and a spin-off app, Pug Synth. They put out Bad Hotel, next, a quirky and innovative take on the castle defense genre that has the games studio’s signature graphic style and musical theme.

Now they’re taking a similar electronica vibe and marrying it with a two-button, arcade-style side-scrolling game on iOS called Wave Trip. And it looks a beaut.

A couple of days ago, Cult of Mac reported that Apple had been successfully sued by an internet security software company, resulting in a $368.2 million damages award due the patent holders. Apparently, that award sum just wasn’t enough, as VirnetX has filed another complaint, claiming that Apple willfully infringed four patents.

As if another suit isn’t enough of a craziness, these are the same exact patents that were involved in the first suit. This time, the suing company says, they complaint includes the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the latest iPod touch, products that were not yet released when the initial complaint was filed.

Mike Schramm writes about technology and games for Joystiq and TUAW during the week. He’s also a pretty decent guy. He also finds it fun to code on the weekends. I know, it makes no sense to me, either.

Schramm has just released his second iOS game to the iTunes app store, and it’s called Benediction. Actually, the full name is Benediction – a game by Mike Schramm, a name most likely necessitated by the many other apps out there with a version of the word ‘benediction’ in the title.

Benediction has three things going for it. Those three things got me to download the game, then play the game, then continue playing the game until I was forced to set my iPhone down and actually do some work. This is a great game, and you’ll be sad if you don’t check it out for yourself.

We don’t hand out five stars here at Cult of Mac just for any old thing. In fact, out of hundreds of reviews, I can count on my fingers the number of gadgets and apps that have received a five-star rating. But the 2Do iOS app was handed five stars, and it was well-deserved. Now Guided Ways Technologies has released a Mac version of its superb task manager — are you excited yet?

Did you know you could use Siri, Apple’s personal voice assistant, without unlocking your iPhone? Well, you can. Hold the Home button for the few seconds it takes for Siri’s purple microphone icon to show up, and you can ask it to do anything you like, like making a phone call, composing a Tweet, or sending an iMessage. This is a great feature for the person who owns the iPhone, but what about someone who finds your iPhone, or that one friend who can’t keep from messing with your stuff?

Luckily, you can turn this “feature” off, thereby preventing this from happening. Here’s how.

Advertisements are a vital part of what makes the Internet tick. Even though a lot of them are annoying and intrusive and ugly as hell, they provide websites (like us) with the cash flow needed to give you all the infotainment you can eat for free.

Sometimes those ads are just freaking horrific, and solutions like AdBlock make the web a better, more visually appealing place. Now you can get the hardware equivalent of ad-blocking software in a super portable box called AdTrap. 

The Ballistic Tough Jacket is the clearest case of overkill I have seen in a while. If you need protection at the cost of size, weight and style, then you should probably buy one now. Otherwise, read on. The case is actually pretty useful.

What is it with Thailand, Apple and Buddhist temples lately? First, an abbott of the Wat Phra Dhammakaya said that Steve Jobs was kickin’ it in the afterlife as a mid-level angel with his own celestial palace. Now, a temple in Thailand’s Chom Phra district has decided that Buddha carries around an iPad with him wherever he goes.

Fact: Kids love Lego.
Fact: Kids love cameras.
Fact: Kids love to choke on teeny, tiny sharp plastic bricks.

Fuuvi’s special edition Nanoblock camera satisfies all of these passions: It’s a tiny little kit made of even tinier little nano-Legos, and any child, even a stupid one, can use it to make all kinds of neat working digital cameras.

When you order an iPhone 5 from Apple’s website the current shipment timeline is 3-4 weeks. Foxconn’s chairman Terry Gou recently said that they’re having a hardtime keeping up with the demand because the iPhone 5 is the most complex gadget they’ve ever assembled.

It doesn’t sound like Apple is able to catch up with the demand for the iPhone 5 in a timely manner, but one analyst at BTIG Research says that supply of the iPhone 5 is “almost in balance.”

Anytime you think you’re scoring a super hot deal on Apple’s latest amazing device, you really should make sure everything’s 100% legit before forking over $200 to some shady dude at a gas station. That’s the lesson Jalonta Freeman learned when she found out the “$800 iPad” she purchased was really just a mirror.

Freeman was fueling her car at a gas station when a man pulled up beside her saying he had a bunch of gadgets he was selling for cheap. Thinking it would make a great Christmas present, Jalonta decided to purchase the man’s “brand new” iPad that he claimed was worth $800. He sold it to Freeman for $200 and quickly drove away.

Readers of a … certain age. Will remember. The way William … Shatner. Used to talk. On Star Trek. Few of you will have … wished to make poetry that sounds. Like. That. On your iPhones. But now … you. Can. My God, Bones. My God.

It seems to me that the least vulnerable part of your iPhone 5 is the rear panel: The glass windows at the top and the bottom are tucked away, and the rest is aluminum, which might scratch or dent but it will never shatter (unless you freeze it in nitrogen first).

But if you think covering the tough rear panel with a thick plywood coating is a good idea, then the SkateBack might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a candy-colored cover refashioned from old skateboard decks.

Apple’s new 4-inch iOS devices — namely the iPhone 5 and the fifth-generation iPod touch — appear to be suffering from a strange glitch that means they struggle to keep up with rapid touch inputs, particularly when scrolling at a 45-degree angle. The problem, which isn’t present on older iOS device like the iPhone 4S, is demonstrated in the two-minute clip below.

Judge Lucy Koh has agreed to re-examine the role of jury foreman Velvin Hogan, who found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages earlier this year. Samsung requested a retrial back in October after it became apparent that Hogan failed to disclose details of a lawsuit against Seagate that he was involved in 20 years ago.

Adobe has made available a new RC (release candidate) version of Lightroom, numbered v.4.3. On its own, this is clearly not worth an entire blog post, or even a tweet. But there’s one new feature that you Retina MacBook Pro owners might be interested in: HiDPI support.

Apple’s Find My iPhone service is often used to locate thieves who have stolen iOS devices, but it can also be a life saver. A 17-year-old was air lifted to hospital on Friday, November 2, following a car accident in Santa Barbara, California. But if it wasn’t for Find My iPhone, paramedics would have struggled to find him.

Have you ever purchased an iPad from Walmart, then got it home and found its box was battered, or worse, the device itself was smashed? It probably happens a lot in Pikeville, Kentucky, where employees at one Walmart store have fun with Apple’s latest tablet by throwing new units around the stock room.

And if that wasn’t stupid enough, they also recorded themselves doing it for a video that explains “why you don’t buy an iPad from Walmart.”

It is becoming clear that some case styles are better suited to the iPad Mini than others. And it seems that Pad&Quill’s bookbindery cases are clearly way more appropriate for the little mini than they ever were for the bigger iPad.

Not that the regular-sized cases aren’t great — they are. But the whole bundle always seemed a little big. Now, though, the match looks to be ideal.

So, your Mac has a name, and it identifies itself as such when other computers connect to it via Apple file sharing, the command line (like when using Terminal), or via Bonjour or AirDrop. Typically, you can set this name in the Sharing Preferences panel in the System Preferences app. If you put your name into the setup wizard when you set up a new Mac, the networking name will default to “Firstname Lastname’s MacintoshModel.” So, on my Macbook Air, it said, “Rob’s Macbook Air.”

However, you can set these three networking names to display differently, so that your IT support staff sees one name when she logs in via SSH protocols, your boss sees a different name when they connect to your hard drive to grab that important file, and your coffee shop buddy will see an entirely different name when sending you a funny picture via AirDrop.

Oh man. I’m trying so hard not to buy an iPad Mini, and this new Skech case isn;t helping any. It’s a variation on one of my favorite iPad cases ever, and now it has been made tinier and cuter.

It’s called the SkechBook, and it looks good enough to make me buy a new iPad.

On our newest CultCast, we reunite with Chis Foresman of Ars Technica, and with no new Apple hardware to wax on and on about, we were forced to come up with real, actual show content!

But we work well under pressure, so this week we cover some of our favorite and most useful productivity apps; tell you if you can ever expect to see Google’s answer to Apple Maps released to the App Store; and did you know Samsung’s about to change their logo to a pear with a bite taken out of it? Kidding! But rumor is they’re about to rebrand in a major, more “Apple-like” way…

All that and our thoughts on Microsoft SmartGlass, the app that let’s you control your Xbox with your iPhone! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App. And please note, if episode 42 isn’t yet showing up for you, subscribing will fix that problem right quick.

Apple has released a software update that’s recommended for all MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros released in June 2012 — including the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro. In addition to graphics performance and reliability enhancements, the update promises to improve compatibility with some USB devices.